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In a ceremony in the Great Hall of Parliament House on 16 November 2009, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologised to the ‘Forgotten Australians’ and former child migrants on behalf of the nation. More than 500,000 people spent all or part of their childhood in foster care, orphanages, children’s homes, and other institutions run by churches, charities and governments across Australia from the 1930s to the 1990s. Around 7,000 of these people came to Australia as child migrants from the United Kingdom and Malta.

The Hon Kevin Rudd AC (born 1957, signatory), Gemma Black (born 1956, calligrapher), Apology to the Forgotten Australians and Former Child Migrants, 2008, Official Gifts Collection, Parliament House Art Collections, Department of Parliamentary Services. Gift commissioned by The Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, 2008.

Children were placed in care for a myriad of reasons including family poverty. Institutional life was difficult and depersonalised. Many of these children experienced abuse, neglect, and deprivation and continue to suffer long term-consequences. The institutions to which these children were entrusted were under-resourced with poorly trained staff. Oversight and regulation were entirely inadequate.

The Apology arose from the recommendations of three reports by the Senate Community Affairs References Committee: Lost Innocents: Righting the Record, a report on child migration (2001); Forgotten Australians, a report on Australians who experienced institutional or out-of-home care (2004); and Lost Innocents and Forgotten Australians Revisited (2009).

Prime Minister Rudd said:

We come together today to deal with an ugly chapter in our nation’s history. And we come together today to offer our nation's apology. To say to you, the Forgotten Australians, and those who were sent to our shores as children without your consent, that we are sorry. Sorry – that as children you were taken from your families and placed in institutions where so often you were abused. Sorry – for the physical suffering, the emotional starvation and the cold absence of love, of tenderness, of care. Sorry – for the tragedy, the absolute tragedy, of childhoods lost – childhoods spent instead in austere and authoritarian places where names were replaced by numbers, spontaneous play by regimented routine, the joy of learning by the repetitive drudgery of menial work. Sorry – for all these injustices to you … who were placed in our care … And let us also resolve this day that this national apology becomes a turning point in our nation’s story. A turning point for shattered lives. A turning point for governments at all levels and of every political hue and colour to do all in our power to never let this happen again. For the protection of children is the sacred duty of us all.

Some 900 care-leavers attended the ceremony which was also live-streamed and broadcast on national television. Following the ceremony, motions of apology were debated and adopted by the Senate and the House of Representatives. 

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