Bringing-Them-Home-Report-Web

separation’, admissions of responsibility from governments ‘for the development andimplementation of the policies and practices of separation’, admissions ofresponsibility from the churches for their roles and extension of apologies to thesurvivors for their ‘engagement in practices of genocide, forced assimilation andethnic cleansing’ (submission 186). The Aboriginal Legal Service of WArecommended,That the State government [and the Commonwealth government] make a public statement inParliament acknowledging the devastating impact of the policies and practices of removingAboriginal children from their families on individuals, their families and the Aboriginalcommunity, and express regret, and apologise on behalf of the people of Western Australia[and Australia] (submission 127 recommendations 3 and 5).Government statementsAustralian governments have only very recently admitted the history of forcibleremovals and its effects. While governments recognise the harms suffered, as thefollowing statements evidence, only the Government of New South Wales hasextended an apology.Addressing the United Nations Human Rights Committee in 1988, Australia’sRepresentative stated,[Australia] acknowledged that the Public Policy regarding the care of Aboriginal children,particularly during the post-war period, had been a serious mistake (quoted by AboriginalLegal Rights Movement submission 484 on page 18).Launching the 1993 Year of the World’s Indigenous People, then Prime Minister PaulKeating stated,It begins, I think, with the act of recognition. Recognition that it was we who did thedispossessing. We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life. Webrought the diseases. The alcohol. We committed the murders. We took the children fromtheir mothers. We practised discrimination and exclusion.It was our ignorance and our prejudice. And our failure to imagine these things being done tous. With some noble exceptions, we failed to make the most basic human response and enterinto their hearts and minds. We failed to ask – how would I feel if this were done to me. As aconsequence, we failed to see that what we were doing degraded all of us (Redfern, 10December 1992).The South Australian Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Michael Armitage, stated in theHouse of Assembly in September 1994,I remind members of the appalling and breathtakingly paternalistic practice of takingAboriginal children from their families, ostensibly to provide for them in a so-called ‘betterfashion’ …