Rudd apologises to 'Forgotten Australians'

Never again vows Rudd

Between 7,000 and 10,000 child migrants were separated from their families and shipped to Australia from the UK and Malta over the course of several decades, until the 1970s.

Promised a better life, they were instead raised in institutions and orphanages, where many were subjected to mental, physical and sexual abuse.

Rudd admitted "a great evil had been done" to many of those children.

"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 their consent, that we are sorry," he said.

'Forgotten Australians' is such an apt phrase. 14 years in this country, and I'd never heard a single reference to them!

Wonder how so many came to come from such a tiny island as Malta - population even today is < 400,000.

I don't think they were so much forgotten, as not known about by a majority of Australians...There were some dreadful things done by various organisations and orphanages years ago and indeed may still be occurring today..Orphanages anywhere don't really have a reputation as being very happy places........I have a friend (a few years older than me) that was to be sent to Canada (and some relatives) during WWII, but the convoy was attacked and the ship damaged and he was offloaded onto another ship and as a result ended up in Western Australia and in an orphanage.....He still gets angry when he thinks about it...His Parents were indeed dead (killed in the blitz) but he is still very angry at, both the UK Govt and the organisation that ran the orphanage in WA......I understand that the UK prime minister intends making a similar apology next year....In Australia years ago, it was commonplace for children born of single unmarried mothers to be taken into care or (if they were lucky) adopted out to good homes, (there is one of them in my own extended family)

Really, I never heard about it. When I first saw the headline today, I thought it was the Stolen Generation they were talking about.

Now that these governments are apologising, will reparations be next on the agenda?

I don't think so....I think that is why the governments are treading very carefully.....Rudd wasn't even born when this crap started, but he thinks an apology is required, but like 'the stolen generation' apology, it doesn't include reparations..

The last I read Gordon Brown was make an apology too

I understand that the UK prime minister intends making a similar apology next year.

You may well be right..

Next year?? No...

Doesn't say when, but it does say he will: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8361025.stm

Yes, Gordon Brown has declared he will make an apology next year. 

Read over lunch Malcolm Turnbull's speech, here's an extract:

TODAY we acknowledge that, already feeling alone, abandoned, and left without love, many of you were beaten and abused, physically, sexually, mentally - treated like objects, not people.

Today we acknowledge that with broken hearts and breaking spirits you were left in the custody - we can hardly call it "care" - of too many people whose abuse and neglect of you, whose exploitation of you, made a mockery of their claim that you were taken from your own family "for your own good."

Today we acknowledge that your parents who, ground down by poverty, surrendered you into the hands of those who claimed, and your parents believed, to be able to give you a better life, but instead exposed you to horrors no child should ever have to endure.

It is no wonder, so many of you say that when you went into the "home" you felt you were going out of the frying pan into the fire.

Today I want you to know we admire you, we believe you, we love you. You experienced so many horrors it would be natural to bury their memory, too painful to recall.

But bravely you have climbed down that dark well of bitter memory and brought back into the light the stories of your life - stories that must … never ever be forgotten.

And by having the courage … to stand up and tell your stories, you have done more than paint a picture of an era of neglect, exploitation, cruelty and abuse.

You have, as Joanna Penglase [author of Orphans of the Living] reminds us, also set up a window. Through your story we look straight into our own hearts as well.

At the beginning of the "Forgotten Children" report there is a quotation of Nelson Mandela: "Any nation that does not care for and protect all of its children does not deserve to be called a nation."

And this nation did not care enough for you. It did not protect you as it should. And that is why we are apologising today.

This is an extract from Malcolm Turnbull's speech.