Canberra is an amazing place. Other cities have industries, ports, factories and things, but Canberra runs on paper. No other reason for its existence but to pump out all sorts of publications ranging from legislation, proclamations, press releases and government reports.
Especially that last category. The government reports on just about every facet of its activity. There is a story of a newly-appointed head of the Australian Government Publishing Service asking for one copy of every publication printed by his new empire to be on his desk in the morning. The next day he found his office crammed completely full, with more stacked up outside.
Every few days I poke my nose into the Commonwealth Government Bookshop here in Canberra to check out the latest arrivals. Dozens of new titles are published each week, and it is rare that I can't find something worth at least a look. I would quickly go bankrupt if I bought everything that caught my interest, not to mention finding myself in the same position as the over-eager bureaucrat, last heard from reading his way through to his desk.
Luckily the Canberra library service also gets a copy of most of this material, and I may browse at my leisure, with a photocopier close at hand for anything I really wish to take home with me. Something that caught my eye a little while back, at the height of the "Stolen Generation" uproar, was a report entitled "National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Survey 1994: Detailed Findings" produced by the Australian Bureau of Statistic in response to a recommendation of the Aboriginal Deaths in Custody Royal Commission (which, as you recall, found that Aboriginal Australians died in custody at the same rate as the general prison population, and that a series of continuing and expensive measures should be set in place to do something about this).
Page 7 of the report contained some interesting information:
Table 4. All persons: Whether taken away from natural family by age.
Australia 1994
0-14 15-24 25-44 45+ Total
Taken away 1.6 4.6 10.1 10.7 5.7
Not taken away 98.0 94.1 87.9 87.2 93.0
No answer 0.5 1.3 2.0 2.1 1.3
Total (% ) 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0
Total ('000) 118.6 62.5 85.1 37.1 303.3
That's a grand total of 17 288.1 individuals who were taken away from their natural family, out of all of Australia, and out of all living Aboriginal Australians. Leaving aside the "Stolen" tag for the time being, a maximum of 10.7% of a single age group is hardly a generation. In fact, the various States and Territories would match the total figure in a single year.
According to a recent Victorian Yearbook, 9 872 children had been subject to "protective intervention", and a third of these children in foster care were in extended family placements.
Considering that we are constantly told that Aboriginal Australians are a disadvantaged group, it is hardly surprising that State intervention was and is required to remove children from an environment that is unhealthy and unpromising for survival, let alone success. On the one hand we are told that Aboriginal Australians have a high infant mortality rate, yet on the other hand we are asked to feel guilty for removing children from their families. If the choice is between death and foster care, then there is really no choice for a civilised society.
Yet we are asked to apologise for this protective intervention! If children at risk are allowed to remain at risk, then there are grounds for a government apology, but it is monstrous that all Australians should be made to feel guilty for doing the right thing. Of course children removed from their natural families are going to experience anxiety, uncertainty, emotional discomfort and distress, and this will affect their continuing lives into adulthood. The point is that these people survived to adulthood and are around to tell their stories, rather than occupying a child-sized plot in an outback graveyard.