More on the Stolen Generation Compensation By Tom North
It is a fine time for the Greens to start the push for compensation for the “stolen generation,” a notion which has been well criticised, with articles to follow up listed at the end of this article. Regardless of the entire debate, surely with this present corona crisis, this matter can wait until the economy at least gets moving again, if it ever moves again? Then sort things out.
Apparently, that is not the way the Greens, a radical Leftist party, think. I once had sympathy for environmentalism, but now I don’t care if the corporates burn down the entire planet, as long as the Left go down too. Just my opinion, and I am nobody.
“The Greens have called for a federal compensation scheme for the survivors of the Stolen Generation, ahead of National Sorry Day.
In announcing the scheme, Federal Greens Senator Lidia Thorpe said the party's plan would compensate each Stolen Generations survivor with a $200,000 lump sum payment, as well as a one-off ex gratia payment of $7000 to cover funeral expenses.
She said the plan also includes a separate package to support the mental health needs of survivors and their families.
"I've seen so many of our people pass away waiting for justice, waiting for peace," she said.
"This is my community, this is our community and our people continue to live in poverty and they continue to feel the effects of being taken away from their families and their communities.
"We call on the government to bring justice and to bring peace to our Stolen Generations members and take up the Greens initiative."
'Sick of waiting'
State-based compensation schemes have already been established in Queensland, New South Wales, Tasmania, South Australia, Western Australia and Victoria.
But Senator Thorpe said a national scheme is necessary to ensure Stolen Generations survivors are adequately compensated.
"Having a national scheme will bring some consistency across the country to Stolen Generations members, not these piecemeal offerings that some states and territories are offering," she said.
The "Bringing Them Home" report recommended a national compensation scheme for the thousands of Stolen Generations survivors when it was handed down in 1997.
Senator Thorpe said it is beyond time for Stolen Generations survivors to have justice.
"They are sick of waiting," she said.
"24 years since the Bringing Them Home report, and how long since Rudd said sorry?
"Sorry means you don't do it again, and Stolen Generations members just want peace."
John Leha, CEO of peak organisation for Aboriginal children and families in NSW AbSec, said while Sorry Day is a time to remember the injustice of the Stolen Generations, child removals are still having an impact on our communities today.
"Sadly, the impact of child removals on Aboriginal families is not a thing of the past," he said.
"In NSW, the overrepresentation of our kids in the child protection system continues to increase, and more must be done to support Aboriginal families and communities.
"We need a child protection system that focuses on prevention and keeping families together to avoid this developing crisis and ensure history does not repeat itself.”
If “we” are so guilty, then at least the compensation should be adequate, not a token $ 200,000 … at least $ 200 million each person, just so starters, and go up from there. Take the money from the rich, in good Leftist fashion, first, and work down to people like me on pensions. Close down the universities, selling them off. Useless anyway. Even the homeless, raiding bins for bottles, should pay for the sins of their ancestors, with a big slice of their bottle money. Migrants too, for some other reason that I have yet to think of! Not sure about refugees in the great chain of being; probably they are without sin. Why not do this, as the human rights lobby has said this was genocide, so there should in principle be no limit to compensation. Go ahead, do it for the sake of social justice, which knows no limits!
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/history-wars/2010/03/the-stolen-generations/
“In this new book, Volume Three — The Stolen Generations, once again the facts get in the way of good apology. Once again the revealed numbers tell a completely different story to the one used to denigrate the nation. Of children allegedly “stolen” from between 1881 and 1970 the number, on examination, falls from 50,000 to about 8250. The key words that emerge are “taken into care”. Most Aboriginal children were taken into care because they were in some sort of danger. Violence, neglect, illness were the main reasons followed by perceived opportunities for work, education or advancement. Sound familiar?
Windschuttle states:
In January 2008 the Tasmanian government announced it would pay 84 Tasmanian people $58,000 each because they claimed to be members of the Stolen Generations.
What was truly weird about the Tasmanian case was that this was the one state where it was legally impossible for anyone to be a member of the Stolen Generations.
Since 1876, when the last Tasmanian Aborigine, Truganini, died, the Tasmanina government could not possible have been guilty of removing any child from its home ‘simply on the basis of race’… after that date [1876] Tasmanian governments presumed all the Tasmanian Aborigines had died out.
Keith Windschuttle’s The Fabrication of Aboriginal History — The Stolen Generations (1881-2008) is truly a great book. For the first time, readers can judge for themselves the truth of the matter. As Windschuttle states; “The case records show a clear majority of children removed in New South Wales returned to either their families or to Aboriginal communities. In fact, welfare authorities gave the older ones assistance such as money for the rail-fare home, and usually accompanied the younger ones on the train.”
He goes on; “Rather than acting for racist reasons, government officers and religious missionaries wanted to rescue children from welfare camps and shanty settlements riddled with alcoholism, domestic violence and sexual abuse.” Most of the children had a white father and were not necessarily accepted by tribal elders.
In his 1997 review of Windschuttle’s The Killing of History in the Times Literary Supplement, Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford University, Hugh Lloyd-Jones, stated it was; “… a masterly refutation of the pretentious theorizing of the enemies of the notion of historical truth and the traditional discipline of history.”
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/bennelong-papers/2017/01/buried-truth-sas-stolen-generations/
https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2010/01-02/why-there-were-no-stolen-generations-part-two/
https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2010/01-02/why-there-were-no-stolen-generations/
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