Australia pledges $1.1m for indigenous peoples

Scott Morrison Australia’s government yesterday pledged AU$1.1 billion ($1.15b) to address Indigenous disadvantage, including compensation to thousands of mixed-race children who were taken from their families over decades.

The AU$378.6 million to be used to compensate the so-called Stolen Generations by 2026 is the most expensive component of the package aimed at boosting Indigenous living standards in Australia.

The compensation of up to AU$75,000 in a lump sum plus up to $AU7000 for expenses such as psychological counselling will only be available to mixed-race children who had been under direct federal government control in the Australian Capital Territory, Northern Territory and Jervis Bay Territory.

Most members of the Stolen Generations had been under state government control when they were separated from their Indigenous mothers under decades of assimilation policies that ended as recently as the 1970s. Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the compensation was a recognition of the harm caused by forced removal of children from families.

“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.

“To say formally not just that we’re deeply sorry for what happened, but that we will take responsibility for it,” Morrison added.

Australian states have legislated their own compensation plans for Stolen Generations survivors between 2008 and last year.

But Queensland and Western Australia, states with some of the country’s largest proportions of Indigenous people within their populations, do not have specific Indigenous compensation plans. Anyone who experienced neglect or abuse while in a Queensland or Western Australia state institution is entitled to compensation.

Turner said it was time Queensland and Western Australia also acknowledged the Stolen Generations’ human rights.

“I’m quite happy to say to the WA government and the Queensland government: time’s up for redress of the Stolen Generations.”

Minister for Indigenous Australians Ken Wyatt, the first Indigenous person appointed to the job, said his mother Mona Abdullah was separated from her siblings in Western Australia. “You can’t undo the emotional impact that that has,” Wyatt said.

Among the Stolen Generations members who won’t receive federal compensation is Lorna Cubillo.

In 2000, Cubillo lost a landmark Federal Court case against the Australian government seeking compensation for the abuse and neglect she suffered in a home for Indigenous children in the Northern Territory city of Darwin. She died in Darwin last year at age 81.

A centre-left Labor Party government launched the ambitious Closing the Gap initiative in 2008 aimed at achieving equality for Indigenous Australians in health and life expectancy within a generation.

But Morrison’s conservative government last year scrapped the 12-year-old timetable, declaring the policy had failed.