Australia wants to repair “A shameful chapter of [son] national history ”. The Prime Minister of the country, Scott Morrison, on Thursday (August 5th) announced the payment of 75,000 Australian dollars, or nearly 47,000 euros, to many Aboriginal Australians who were forcibly removed from their families as children. .
Thousands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth were torn from their homes and placed with white foster families, as part of official policies of assimilation, which continued into the 1970s. Parliament on the “Stolen generation” Indigenous Australians, Scott Morrison recalled that while the authorities had “Already faced this by presenting a national apology”, “Our actions must continue to correspond to our words”. The stories of the suffering caused are not “Not just stories from the past but stories that continue to reverberate through the generations”, he added.
Indigenous rights advocates in Australia, who remain at a severe disadvantage in terms of health, income and education, welcomed the announcement, while stressing that it was long overdue.
A first at the federal level
The Prime Minister said that 378.6 million Australian dollars (236 million euros) would be allocated, to repair the human damage caused by the policy of assimilation. Payments will go to people living in the territories that were managed by the Commonwealth at the time of the forced displacement: the Northern Territory, the Australian Capital Territory, where Canberra is located, and the Jervis Bay Territory.
The program offers survivors a one-time payment of A $ 75,000, in recognition of the harm caused, a payment of“Healing aid” of A $ 7,000, and the opportunity to tell their story to a senior government official and receive an apology in person or in writing.
Other Australian states have put in place redress systems, but the federal government has so far failed to follow suit. The federal payments are part of a billion Australian dollars plan to reduce the severe inequalities facing Indigenous Australians.