For Gillard, 'sorry' is the hardest word. Sadly, Australians missed it - Women's Agenda

For Gillard, ‘sorry’ is the hardest word. Sadly, Australians missed it

You wouldn’t know it scanning the front pages of the newspapers today or even watching the top stories on the news last night, but there was a bigger and much more important story than the Labor leadership spill yesterday.

That was the national apology over forced adoption practices in which Julia Gillard and Opposition leader Tony Abbott united for a rare moment, each delivering powerful speeches to an of audience of about 800 people affected by forced adoptions.

It is estimated that 250,000 children were removed from their parents by state and territory government agencies from the 1950s to the 1970s. Their babies were taken away due to the “stigma” associated with being unmarried and pregnant. Bureaucrats, medical staff, churches, charities and families played a part in what Gillard described as the “wrongful belief that women could be separated from their babies and it would all be for the best”. The mothers and children affected have fought tirelessly for decades to have their heartache acknowledged.

But the apology was overshadowed by the story that became a shambles: the Labor leadership spill.

I spoke to Lily Arthur this morning, whose son was forcibly removed from her just after she gave birth at the Royal Women’s Hospital in Brisbane in 1967. She’s the co-ordinator of Origins NSW, an organisation founded in 1995 by a group of mothers dealing with the pain of forced adoptions.

She was present during the apology yesterday and she was satisfied with the Prime Minister’s words. However, she was disgusted by what transpired in the afternoon with the Labor leadership crisis.

“I think it was the most disgraceful exhibition of bad manners from the government,” she said. “You had this event that the whole world was watching – I’ve been interviewed all over the globe about this – and then they [Labor] had to go and create their own circus.”

For Arthur, much more than an apology is needed. But it was a small step, and an important one, especially for getting more Australians to understand just what occurred. She shared a recent conversation she’d had with a taxi driver who said he couldn’t understand why we were apologising when “those mothers had given up their babies”.

“There is still this idea that these women had been capable of giving away their children to strangers. There was justification ‘she must have been a deadbeat or a slut’,” she said.

As Gillard noted during her address, mothers were tricked into signing adoption papers. They were often drugged and chained to their beds. It was cruel, immoral and inhumane – a period of history still so raw and recent its emotional ramifications are being dealt with today.

There could be little more disempowering than having your child taken away from you under such circumstances, or being told you’re not fit to be a mother because of your marital status. The level of imposed guilt and shame these mothers must have felt is unimaginable, as is the lifelong pain of living with such experiences – and wondering whatever happened to your child.

These women have been silenced for decades. Yesterday’s apology was the time to have their voices heard. And yet for many Australians, it could have been – and I’m sure it was – easily missed.

We talk so much about women in leadership, we celebrate the progress women are making in getting the top jobs and opening some of the most innovative and game changing businesses across the country.

And yet we’re still not effectively acknowledging some of the sins of our past: the women who’ve been silenced and disempowered. Policies, schemes and programs that long prevented women from having a voice, many of which have simply been conveniently forgotten.

Yesterday, Gillard noted the apology involved “Holding the mirror to ourselves and our past, and not flinching from what we see. What we see in that mirror is deeply shameful and distressing.”

She added it was a story of suffering and unbearable loss. “But ultimately a story of strength, as those affected by forced adoptions found their voice.”

They certainly have found their voice. We need to ensure Australians are listening.

Following the ceremony, singer Mia Dyson performed her song Jesse after one of her fans, Lesley Pearse, asked Dyson whether she could write a song about Pearse’s experiences as an unwed mother in the 1970s who was coerced into signing papers to hand away her baby.

The song deserves a listen. It’s much more interesting and important than any further analysis of Labor leadership speculation today.

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