Today is National Sorry Day, which marks the release of the 1997 Bringing Them Home report – the landmark inquiry into the forced removal of our children, known as the Stolen Generations.
Today is about remembering the trauma governments inflicted, and continue to inflict, by tearing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families.
The Bringing Them Home report – based on the oral and written testimony of over 500 First Peoples – called the practice of child removal an act of genocide. It laid out 54 recommendations to stop the harm and bring our children home.
But for many of our families and children, Sorry Day isn’t just about history — it’s about now.
Today, governments continue to steal our babies in huge numbers. Twenty-eight years after Bringing Them Home was released, fewer than 6% of its recommendations have been fully implemented.
Recent data from the Productivity Commission shows that nearly 24,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children were in out-of-home care last year — more than 43% of all children in the system, despite us making up less than 4% of the population.
Our children are being removed from their families at ten times the rate of non-Indigenous children.
They are abducted from family, kin, culture and Country, and pushed into a system where they are neglected, abused, and isolated.
Media reports last week revealed that in Queensland, children in state ‘care’ have been subjected to serious harm, including sexual exploitation, neglect, and exposure to criminal networks.
In Victoria, data from the Commission for Children and Young People shows that one in three children in residential care is believed to have been sexually abused.
Similar abuse has been documented nationwide.
These are not safe places — they are sites of systemic neglect and abuse.
Children who are removed have a much higher likelihood of coming into contact with the criminal legal system. They are funnelled into child prisons, and then adult prisons.
This is called the out-of-home care to prison pipeline, and it continues to tear our families apart.
These are deliberate decisions.
Governments are choosing to spend billions on policing, surveillance, removals, and incarceration, instead of working to keep our families strong and together.
The consequences for our children are devastating. We know that many stolen children face lifelong issues with criminalisation, poverty, and homelessness.
They have a higher likelihood of dying by suicide.
Many die at the hands of the state in so-called ‘care’.
And many die in custody. Those who make it out alive are more likely to have their own children taken.
These are the outcomes of a system that targets mothers and punishes children. It is a cycle of cruelty created and maintained by the state.
This Sorry Day, like any other day, I don't want to hear any more empty apologies from politicians. I don’t want to see any more Sorry Day morning teas.
The federal government must take real action.
Prime Minister Albanese and the Minister for Indigenous Australians, Malarndirri McCarthy, need to step up.
They say nice things in Parliament, but during the last term of government – under their watch – the rate of removals increased.
When I’ve raised these issues, I’ve been given two excuses.
First, Labor says that this is a state and territory issue. I reject that. This is a national atrocity playing out in every jurisdiction. It demands national action.
Labor also said they couldn’t act without bipartisan support from the Coalition. Really, Labor feared that standing up for justice for First Peoples would cost them votes. But now, that excuse is gone.
Labor won a resounding majority in this month’s election. The Coalition has been pushed to the fringe. This new Parliament must mark the end of excuses. It must deliver the real action we need.
Labor has the numbers. They have a progressive Senate ready to support reform. They have First Peoples ready to work with them.
We will now see who Labor really are. We will see whether they care about driving progress and doing what’s right, or whether they only care about retaining power.
I’m calling on the Albanese Government to fully implement all 54 recommendations of the Bringing Them Home report and to properly fund community-controlled programs and services — not with pilots or as limited one-off grants, but with a commitment to permanent, structural change.
The federal government also has constitutional powers it could use to set national, enforceable standards on the states and territories to protect children. They must use these powers. They must stop the abuse and let First Peoples drive the solutions.
Programs like Bubup Wilam, Yarrabi Bamirr, and Nelly’s Healing Place are already doing the work to support families and keep children safe and strong. But these services are forced to fight for funding and survival while governments pour billions into removing and jailing our kids.
The latest Productivity Commission data showed that governments spend $6.6 billion a year on child removals.
It can cost up to $1.2 million a year to keep a child in residential care. Child prisons now cost $1 billion a year – that's $3,320 a day, or over $1 million a year for each child locked up.
Imagine the real, positive change that could be achieved if even a fraction of that money was reinvested in our self-determined solutions — in our families and communities, in wrap-around services, housing and healing. We know these solutions cost around 10% of what it costs to remove and lock up children.
Our peoples’ knowledge exists. Our solutions exist. What’s missing is the political will and courage to invest in them.
So today, on National Sorry Day, I say this to those in power:
We don’t want your morning teas and cupcakes.
We want our children. We want justice. We want the removals to stop.
And we won’t stop fighting until every single child is brought home.
Lidia Thorpe is a Gunnai Gunditjmara Djab Wurrung woman, and an independent senator for Victoria.
