Compensation

A further and more substantive response called for in the Bringing Them Home Report and subsequently by others, is the establishment of a Reparations Tribunal to deal with compensation to affected Stolen Generations individuals.

John Howard's government rejected the idea, instead pouring millions of dollars into fighting civil compensation cases brought by stolen generations individuals denied compensation by the government. The Gunner and Cubillo cases, for example, were vigorously fought by the Australian Government, with costs well over $10 million. The only successful civil case for compensation has been the South Australian Supreme Court’s award of $525,000 to Bruce Trevorrow, who was removed from his family and handed over to a white family at age 13 months.

While differing on the need for an apology, the Rudd Government has followed Howard in rejecting compensation to the Stolen Generations, instead offering resources to address the inequality gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. However this offers nothing of particular or special significance to the Stolen Generations in that addressing Indigenous disadvantage is a separate and standing responsibility of the government.

The Rudd government's rejection of compensation to the Stolen Generations also ignores accepted principles and practices and legal precedent around compensating for harm done to individuals. It sets out a racially-discriminatory case where the Stolen Generations alone, because of their Aboriginality, are to be denied what would be available to all other Australians.

It also neglects that the issue of compensation has and is being successfully addressed by some state governments. The Tasmanian government made a commitment in 2006 to compensate Aboriginal Tasmanians removed from their families and has created special legislation, a $5 million fund and an assessment process which will determine claims by early 2008. Western Australia has also announced a $114 million fund to compensate all children who were abused in state care, including members of the Stolen Generations.

Implementing the Bringing Them Home report recommendations

The National Sorry Day Committee and the Stolen Generations Alliance seek to have all of the recommendations of the Bringing Them Home report implemented, including compensation. Reports into the progress of implementation of the recommendations have been produced by a Senate Committee in 2000, and by the National Sorry Day Committee in 2002. The 2002 report, Are We Helping Them Home? Surveys of progress in the implementation of the Bringing Them Home recommendations by November 2002, outlines the lack of progress in addressing the recommendations, finding that only 17 of the report's 54 recommendations had been acted on. This included mental health, parenting and family support services, family reunion services, an oral history project, language and culture projects and a records project.

Clearly, while the national apology is a welcome and essential landmark step, it will ultimately mean little if not followed by a process that seeks to work with Stolen Generations on the full implementation of the Bringing Them Home recommendations.

Further information and resources can be found on a separate webpage: Sorry: The National Apology.