Time to close the ‘gap within the gap’

By EDITOR PETER ROWE

In May 1997 a 680-page Bringing Them Home report was tabled in Federal Parliament in Canberra.

The Bringing Them Home report of the Stolen Generations recommended changes – yet, and despite an apology from then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in 2008, only six per cent of those recommendations have been implemented.

Which equates to just five of the 83 recommendations.

That was the staggering number revealed by a University of Canberra report this week.

45 have just not been implemented at all, 11 have been designated a ‘qualified pass’, whatever that means and 10 a ‘partial failure’. Some are no longer even applicable.

Only four police forces have ever apologised – take note of those who have not: AFP, ACT, Queensland Police, Tasmania Police and South Australia Police.

Recommendations around education and training have not been fully implemented – nor properly funded.

The redress schemes, including reparation and the return of lands by Church organisations is still considered a failure.

Assistance to return to country has not been implemented.

Some NGO’s and Churches have made records available, but the report states many have simply “refused to open their files”.

Indigenous family information to trace lost loved ones has been declared a failure, as were many other recommendations.

“It is hard to conceive that gross human rights violations, documented and bravely retold by survivors in public forums, can be met with systematic inaction in so many areas,” the reports authors Professor Alison Gerard and Maureen Bates-McKay stated.

“Yet that is the confronting reality that exists in Australia. Since the BTH report was tabled, both the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children into child protection systems and the mass incarceration of Indigenous peoples have increased dramatically.”

They went on to say that action from both Federal and State governments, and their respective agencies, was “urgent”.

The new report makes 19 recommendations on reparations, rehabilitation and research, records, family tracing and reunions, acknowledgements and apologies, education and training, and monitoring and accountability.

“There is some movement in the Territories Stolen Generations Redress Scheme, and the Closing the Gap categories on youth justice and OOHC, but a 2024 Productivity Commission report has found the gap targets are worsening and that the whole agreement will fail without fundamental changes.

Practical solutions are needed, Healing Foundation chair Steve Larkin, said.

The Healing Foundation is an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisation that partners with communities to address the ongoing trauma.

Professor Larkin describes the Stolen Generations as “the gap within the gap”.

Read the full report here:

https://cdn.healingfoundation.org.au/app/uploads/2025/02/11122618/THF_BTH_Discussion_Paper.pdf