Closing the Gap: Stolen children to be given $378m redress

PM outlines a new plan to tackle inequalities across health, education, justice, and employment.

The Bringing Them Home report concluded that between one in three and one in 10 Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their communities between 1910 and 1970.

Scott Morrison says the new Closing The Gap agreement, underpinned by partnerships with Indigenous organisations and government, will ensure delivery on the ground is achieved.

The Prime Minister today unveiled his government’s Closing the Gap update in parliament, outlining a new $1 billion “implementation plan” to tackle inequalities across health, education, justice, and employment over the next two years.

“At the end of the day, the only thing that matters when it comes to closing the gap is closing the gap,” Mr Morrison said.

“And that only happens when more than 50 Indigenous organisations are empowered and supported to go and do the work they’re doing delivering services around this country.”

Indigenous Affairs Minister Ken Wyatt said the new agreement was a “game-changing” outcome for the accountability and transparency of Indigenous health, social and economic priorities.

Healing Foundation chief executive Fiona Cornforth said the redress scheme for Stolen Generation survivors would help provide practical support to address “complex health and economics needs” that resulted from forced removal.

“The truth of this is important. Reparations to acknowledge that truth is important. It’s something, but it’s not everything,” she said.

“It won’t provide that end state of a healed nation, but there is hope in the priority reforms under the national agreement.”

$378m redress scheme for stolen generation

Earlier, Mr Morrison outlined the $378m redress scheme that would give thousands of Indigenous Australians who were removed from their families as children and taken to commonwealth-run ­facilities a one-off $75,000 payment.

The redress scheme will provide one-off payments of $75,000 to survivors removed as children from their families in the Northern Territory, ACT and Jervis Bay - jurisdictions which were administered by the Commonwealth at the time.

Mr Wyatt said he encouraged other state government to consider implementing similar policies.

“We’ve got to consider the policies that were implemented did tear apart families,” he said.

“My own mother was a member of the Stolen Generation and she and her brothers and sisters never got to see each other until they were in their 20s. So the first 20 years of their life they were not together.”

The Prime Minister said the scheme would recognise the harm inflicted on children from the Stolen Generation and give each survivor the opportunity to tell their story and receive an individual apology.

“To say formally, not just that we are deeply sorry for what happened but that we will take responsibility for it,” he said.

Mr Morrison, outlining the government’s response to the new national Closing the Gap agreement, told parliament an apology for the Stolen Generations was not enough.

“We have already confronted it with the national apology. But our deeds must match our words,” he said.

“This is a long-called-for step. Recognising the bond between healing, dignity, and the health and wellbeing of members of the Stolen Generations, their families and their communities.

Mr Morrison also paid tribute to Pat Turner, lead convenor of the Coalition of Peaks which negotiated a new national agreement on Closing the Gap in partnership with governments.

“The ultimate test of our efforts is that every Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander boy or girl can grow up with the same opportunities in the same expectations as any other Australian child. Or to put it a different way, that any Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islands child can walk uninhibited in two worlds, to feel at home wherever they walk in our country,” he said.

Mr Morrison said the new Closing The Gap agreement, which involves shared partnership with Indigenous organisations, required accountability and transparency.

“The partnership overdue built on mutual respect, dignity and above all trust,” he said.

He said an annual Productivity Commision report would mark the progress of priorities in the agreement.

He said the fact that no Indigenous people had died from Covid-19 in Australia was “one of the most significant achievements Australia has had.”

“Indigenous Australians have been six times less likely to contract COVID-19 than the wider population. That shows what happens when we work in partnership but we must invest in the capabilities of such partnership,” he said.

In response, Anthony Albanese said Australia had “yet to find within ourselves even a fraction of the coverage shown by members of the Stolen Generations.”

“That indictment falls on both sides of this house. Governments of all persuasions have failed First Nations people,” he said.

Mr Albanese said more than one year after the new agreement, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people remained “far more likely” to be jailed, die by suicide or having their children removed compared to non-Indigenous Australians.

“Out of the 17 targets that have been set, only three are on track. Dwell on that. Three out of 17,” he said.

Thousands to qualify for scheme

About 3200 people in the Northern Territory and 400 in the Australian Capital Territory will qualify for the scheme.

It is due to begin in 2022, 25 years after the Bringing Them Home report found that, under international law, from approximately 1946 the policies of forcible removal amount to genocide.

The report concluded that between one in three and one in 10 Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their communities between 1910 and 1970.

Mr Morrison revealed the ­redress payments as part of the commonwealth’s $1bn response to the new national agreement on Closing the Gap, a 10-year plan to reduce Indigenous disadvantage against 17 targets.

The new spending on Closing the Gap includes $160m on children’s health and early learning and $254m for community-controlled Aboriginal health groups.

Those organisations impressed the government by efficiently rolling out Covid-19 vaccinations to remote communities and – in some cases – by using their rapport with residents to counter misinformation about vaccines. The money will be used to upgrade health clinics and build staff accommodation as the organisations assume a bigger role as part of Closing the Gap measures. Indigenous Australians Minister Ken Wyatt says the organisations will do critical work, and on their terms.

The last Closing the Gap agreement is considered a failure because Australia did not meet five out of seven targets set in 2008. The new agreement differs in part because it is signed by each state and territory – as well as a coalition of 50 peak Indigenous organisations – in a commitment to work together to meet annual goals. Aboriginal community-controlled organisations will do much of the work currently done by non-Indigenous organisations and government departments.

The government decided to go ahead with the redress scheme after discussions with The Healing Foundation, whose chief executive Fiona Cornforth had been briefed on its operation on Wednesday and described it as an important step “to end these cycles of trauma”.

“We are so emotional about what will be announced,” Ms Cornforth said. “We have worked really hard as an organisation to elevate the voices of stolen generation survivors, their descendants and their families.

“We know, because the data is clear now, that because of removal these survivors carry a ­burden that is significant … we welcome this and we look forward to helping to build a scheme that will do no more harm.”

Mr Morrison said the Closing the Gap process instigated by the Rudd government was “born of the best intentions” but “remained hard of hearing”.

“It is why this government brought together a new 10-year (agreement), signed by all Australian governments, the Coalition of Peaks and the Australian Local Government Association,” Mr Morrison said.

“And from that partnership, the National Agreement on Closing the Gap was born.

“Today, we make the promises of that agreement real with the presentation of the first commonwealth implementation plan.

“In financial commitments, partnership, shared accountability and scope, this is the most ­significant and comprehensive response to Closing the Gap that the government has ever provided,” Mr Morrison said.

An annual commonwealth progress report will be tabled by the government in parliament

Mr Morrison said the ultimate test for the plan will be providing every Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander child “the same opportunities and expectations as any other Australian”.