The pleas of Australia's 'stolen generation'
GREG BARNS

Special to Globe and Mail Update

June 15, 2008 at 7:07 PM EDT

In offering a formal apology last week to sit alongside his government's $2-billion compensation fund for Canada's equivalent of Australia's “stolen generation,” Prime Minister Stephen Harper has made Kevin Rudd look mean-spirited. In February, the newly elected Australian Prime Minister delivered an apology similar in sentiment to that delivered by Mr. Harper this week, to Australia's indigenous peoples who were similarly removed from their families and communities last century by governments and churches.

But Prime Minister Rudd ruled out a national monetary compensation scheme. Instead, around 100,000 members of Australia's stolen generation have had to litigate to gain compensation or rely on the generosity of state governments to accord them justice.

Whereas Mr. Harper's government has been prepared to offer monetary compensation for the sexual, physical and psychological abuse suffered, Mr. Rudd argued that his apology to Australia's stolen generation was simply a symbolic gesture.

“This is about getting the symbolic covenant, if you like, between indigenous and non-indigenous Australia right and then moving on,” Mr. Rudd said on Jan. 29, two weeks before the apology ceremony. “When it comes to future funding commitments from the government that I lead, it will be about fixing health, fixing schools and fixing communities in a very practical way on the ground, in partnership with local aboriginal leadership,” rather than offering compensation, Mr. Rudd added. Mr. Rudd's position was in line with that adopted by his conservative predecessor John Howard, who, when the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission's landmark 1997 report on the stolen generation was published, immediately ruled out both an official apology and monetary compensation.

The result of Mr. Rudd's and Mr. Howard's refusal to head down the Canadian path, has meant that individual aboriginal Australians are having to launch complex and lengthy litigation in order to be compensated for the hardships they have, and still do, suffer as a result of the policy of assimilation that had the same objective in Australia as it did in Canada – to wipe out the aboriginal race.

The first stolen generation case to be heard in Australia's courts was decided in 2000, but the claimants, Lorna Cubillo and Peter Gunner, who were removed from their families in the Northern Territory in the 1940s and the 1950s and placed with church missions, were unsuccessful for a range of reasons that included the time that had elapsed since the events took place.

Not until last year did a member of Australia's stolen generation win a case in the courts for compensation. Fifty-year-old South Australian Bruce Trevorrow was awarded more than half a million dollars by that state's courts because as a 13-month-old baby suffering from gastric illness, he was taken from his mother to a hospital and then placed in state care until his mother found him again when Mr. Trevorrow was 10. But for 100,000 or so other stolen generation members, there are very limited avenues for compensation available. Only one state government – from the small island of Tasmania – has established a stolen generation compensation fund for 106 families who were victims of assimilation in that particular state. And some churches have also made available limited funds for those aboriginal people who were removed by missionaries and welfare agencies.

Calls by aboriginal leaders in Australia for Mr. Rudd to establish a national compensation fund of $1-billion have so far fallen on deaf ears, as recently as last month when Mr. Rudd again refused to acknowledge the need for such action.

Perhaps the actions of Mr. Harper and those of his parliamentary colleagues this week will make Mr. Rudd think again. For the time being, however, the impression one clearly gets is whereas Canada believes its stolen generation deserve more than rhetoric and a heartfelt apology, Australia is still making its stolen generation plead their cases for real justice.

Greg Barns is an Australian political commentator and former government policy adviser