Australia Apologises for Forced Adoptions
Premier delivers national apology to thousands of unwed mothers forced to give up children from World War Two to 1970s.
news.au 23, March 2013
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard has delivered a historic national apology in parliament to the thousands of unwed mothers who were forced by government policies to give up their babies for adoption over several decades.
More than 800 people cried and cheered as they listened to the apology in the Great Hall of Parliament House on Thursday. They responded with a standing ovation when it was finished.
A national apology was recommended a year ago by a senate committee that investigated the impacts of the now-discredited policies.
Unwed mothers were pressured, deceived and threatened into giving up their babies from World War II until the early 1970s so they could be adopted by married couples, which was perceived to be in the children's best interests, the committee report found.
"Today this Parliament on behalf of the Australian people takes responsibility and apologises for the policies and practises that forced the separation of mothers from their babies, which created a lifelong legacy of pain and suffering,'' Gillard told the audience.
"We acknowledge the profound effects of these policies and practises on fathers and we recognise the hurt these actions caused to brothers and sisters, grandparents, partners and extended family members," she said.
"We deplore the shameful practises that denied you, the mothers, your fundamental rights and responsibilities to love and care for your children,'' she added.
Support services
Gillard committed $5m to support services for affected families and to help biological families reunite.
The seven-member senate committee began investigating the federal government's role in forced adoption in 2010 after the Western Australian state parliament apologised to mothers and children for the flawed practises in that state from the 1940s until the 1980s.
Western Australia was the first of five state and territory governments to apologise for forced adoption. Australia has eight such governments.
Roman Catholic hospitals in Australia apologised in 2011 for forcing unmarried mothers to give up babies for adoption and urged state governments to accept financial responsibility.
Catholic Health Australia, the largest non-government hospital operator in Australia and which provides 10 percent of the nation's hospital beds, said the practise of adopting out such children to married couples was "regrettably common'' from the 1950s to the 1970s.
Adoption in Australia is mostly controlled by state laws, but the report found that the federal government had contributed to forced adoption by failing to provide unwed mothers with full welfare benefits to which a widow or deserted wife would have been entitled until 1973.
Australian adoptions peaked at almost 10,000 a year in 1972, before rapidly declining. The report found that decline could reflect the availability of welfare, the use of oral contraceptives and the legalisation of abortion.
RELATED:
Australia’s Hidden Shame
Andrew Thomas, Sydney Correspondent, AlJazeera
Out of sight, out of mind?
That seems to be the policy of the Australian government towards a group of 377 asylum seekers they have sent to the Pacific Island of Nauru.
As part of a tough new policy designed to deter asylum seekers from Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka taking to boats and heading to its shores, Australia has brought in a policy of ‘offshore processing’.
Rather than determine whether or not people are refugees on home soil – and therefore be obliged to give them residency in Australia if they are – Australia has started sending asylum seekers to other countries.
The first is Nauru – a dot in the Pacific Island that is heavily dependent on Australian aid, and therefore keen to help out.
I travelled there in September, just before the first asylum seekers were sent.
It’s a hot sticky place, hundreds of kilometres from any other land. The asylum centre there is better described as a camp: people sent to Nauru are living five to a tent.
If Australia’s policy is meant to deter people getting on boats, it does not seem to be working: people are arriving in as great a number as ever – 14,000 so far this year, with last month recording one of the highest numbers on record. Maybe they know that most of them won’t be sent off-shore, the facilities simply are not ready yet.
But some are being transferred to Nauru. And those unlucky ones are – quite frankly – being left to languish.
Determined to show that no asylum seeker will enjoy any ‘advantage’ by travelling by boat to Australian shores, Australia’s government deliberately wants the processing of their asylum claims to drag out.
Asylum seekers have been told they will be on Nauru six months before the asylum process even begins.
Years might pass before any are declared refugees.
And then it will be up to Nauruan authorities to resettle them – handing them over to any one of 22 countries.
Left in limbo, with no prospect of making what they feel are genuine claims for asylum, the detainees have started to protest. For a week, many have been on hunger strike.
But exactly how many, and what effect it is having on them is unclear because the Australian government will not let any media organisations into their camp. They were quite happy to show it off when there was no one in it; but now there are detainees, it is off-limits.
The government is scornful of refugee advocates who call their policy ‘inhumane’; but preventing the media from accessing the facility, and giving only the loosest information about the protest going on inside - “at least 200 meals are being taken" is all they’ll tell me - makes people think it must be just that.
Australia’s own human rights commissioner has criticised Canberra’s policy as a breach of international law.
She’s scornful of the government’s claim that their policy will save lives - the claim that deterring desperate people from getting on boats will prevent any from drowning.
A small minority of vessels heading to Australia sink.
But what if a hunger striker was to die? Could Australia’s government maintain the line that their policies are 'saving lives'?
At that point, it would seem a very difficult case to make.
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