Thursday, July 12, 2012

Will the Premiers of Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria follow Western Australia's lead and Apologise for Former Forced Adoption Policies and Practices?


Will the current Liberal Premiers  remember and acknowledge the words of its Party Founder?

Will our rights as  mothers and our taken babies (now adults) and our welfare be recognised and will the Premiers do their "duty?"

Towards the end of his term as Prime Minister of Australia, in a last address to the Liberal Party Federal Council in 1964, Party founder, and longest serving leader Sir Robert Menzies spoke of the "Liberal Creed" as follows:

As the etymology of our name 'Liberal’ indicates, we have stood for freedom. We have realised that men and women are not just ciphers in a calculation, but are individual human beings whose individual welfare and development must be the main concern of government

We have learned that the right answer is to set the individual free, to aim at equality of opportunity, to protect the individual against oppression, to create a society in which rights and duties are recognized and made effective."

The Forgotten People, Robert Menzies, 22 May 1942;

"I do not believe that the real life of this nation is to be found either in great luxury hotels and the petty gossip of so-called fashionable suburbs, or in the officialdom of the organised masses. It is to be found in the homes of people who are nameless and unadvertised, and who, whatever their individual religious conviction or dogma, see in their children their greatest contribution to the immortality of their race. The home is the foundation of sanity and sobriety; it is the indispensable condition of continuity; its health determines the health of society as a whole. '

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

More News of the South Australian Apology.

Post Adoption Support Service (PASS) is not a state government service. It is provided by Relationships Australia SA and is funded by the state government. PASS will be hosting live coverage of the apology. For further information you may call them on (08) 8245 8100. Copies of the DVD will be sent free of charge to anywhere in the world.  For further information about the apology, or to order copies of the DVD, please contact the office of the Hon Grace Portolesi, MP.  08 8226 1205. Please feel free to share this information with anyone who might be interested.
Thanks
 Evelyn

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

South Australain Legislative Council/ Wednesday 18th July 2012.

Notices and Order of the day: Private Business.

Page 5

31. Adjourned debate on motion of the Hon. T. A. Franks -That this Council -

1. Acknowledges that previous Parliaments and Governments share responsibility for the application of some of the policies and processes that impacted upon unmarried mothers of adopted children, and now apologises to the mothers, their children and the families who were adversely affected by these past adoption practices and expresses its sympathy to those individuals whose interests were poorly served by the policy of those times.
II Calls on the Premier to move a formal statement of apology in the Parliament in relation
to-

(a) past adoption practices for which it is now recognised that, for a significant part of the 20th Century, the legal, health and welfare systems and processes then operating in South Australia meant that many pregnant unmarried women were not given the appropriate care and respect that they needed and were sometimes coerced to give up children for adoption; and

(b) processes, such as the immediate removal of the baby following birth preventing bonding with the mother, which are recognised, in many cases, to have caused long-term anguish and suffering for the people affected - (March 28) - (The Hon. G. A. Kandelaars).

32. Births, Deaths and Marriages Registration (Registration of Still-Births) Amendment Bill (No. 37): adjourned debate on second reading - (March 28) - (The Hon. C. Zollo)4.

33. Criminal Law (Sentencing) (Mandatory Imprisonment of Child Sex Offenders) Amendment Bill (No. 42): adjourned debate on second reading - (April 4) - (The Hon. S. G. Wade)2.

34. Children's Protection (Long-term Removal Review Panel) Amendment Bill (No. 43): adjourned debate on second reading - (April 4) - (The Hon. G. A. Kandelaars)2.
Taken from South Australain Legislative Council pages.
ALAS has been informed that the apology will take place betwween 11 o'clock and 12 o'clock Adelaide time.

Australia is Leading the Way.

The Movement for an Adoption Apology
  (MAA)

Parliamentary Public Meeting & Lobby of MPs
  3pm Tuesday July 3rd 2012

Room E at 7 Milbank (a 10-minute walk from Westminster Tube, past Big Ben)

Seeking An Apology for Forced Adoptions

There will be opportunities for discussion with MPs

For many years until at least the 1980s pregnancy outside marriage was considered an outrage. Tens of thousands of vulnerable unmarried mothers to be were pressurised by the authorities and religious institutions into having their babies adopted or placed in care. They were denied information about available welfare services and financial help.. These women were not found to be unfit mothers, yet were subjected to humiliating, cruel and sometimes criminal practices.

The West Australian parliament has apologised to Australian mothers who were similarly ill-treated and the South Australian parliament is set to follow suit on July 18th. We seek a full government apology and a government enquiry into the full extent of these unethical practices and their effects. We call on all the religious institutions, which participated in these practices in the UK and Ireland to follow the example of the Catholic Church in Australia and to issue a full and public apology.

Join us at the House of Commons
(entrance at 1 Parliament Street, Westminster)
Please ask your MPs to attend so you can make personal representation to them.

Call on your MP to support Early Day Motion 92

hnp-//www.parliament.uk/edm/2012-13/92
 Contact the Movement for An Adoption Apology at maanpn@gmail.com

Friday, July 6, 2012

Next Meeting 14th July 2012.

Our next meeting is a a north side meeting.
It will be at a private home.
Please phone; Trish  mob;0417 077 159
                      Marg;  mob;0402 336 480 for details.
Time; 12 o'clock onwards.
Please bring a plate to share.
Gold coin donation.

Sunday, July 1, 2012

The ALAS Connection.

It is important, when bathing in the apparent success of a campaign to bring the Federal Government to acknowledgement of its past negligence with respect to a marginalized group of its citizens, that the chronology of events be acknowledged as well.

Kevin Rudd’s Apology to the Indigenous Australians affected all the “white mothers” profoundly- it was yet another occasion where the white girls whose babies were plundered for the infertile of Australia, were air-brushed over as non-existent, and their pain was of no con sequence.

In 2008, after returning home from the 9th Australian Conference on Adoption where I was a Keynote Speaker, on behalf of the mothers whose babies were taken, I immersed myself in a week of prayerful consideration, meditation, and heart focus on the act of Martin Luther who nailed his declaration to door of the Castle Church of Wittenberg and thereby united all like minded clergy. The Reformation followed. We needed a similar happening.

The “Declaration of Profound Loss” presented itself to me after a week of deep meditation. It became the means of uniting all the “white “support groups of Australia under one banner.

I showed it to Christine Cole, intoto, and asked if she thought all the groups, both mothers and there separated babies, would be able to come together and sign on their group as one in agreement with the ethos of the Declaration.

The first name on the Declaration is mine, and if you look carefully, you will see the date next to my name on the bottom of the Declaration.

Christine began presenting the Declaration to the different support groups in 2009, and she asked their spokespersons if their groups were desirous of an Apology from the Federal Government, and would they be prepared to “sign” under the title of “The Apology Alliance” and receive emails.

 The ALAS Queensland group had already began negotiations for our meetings at R.B.W.H (as I was aware other groups had this privilege in the past) and an apology from the Hospital Administration regarding the unlawful treatment of single mothers during the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. Professor Ian Jones was unaware of the way hospital staff treated, discriminated against, and assaulted the young unmarried pregnant women, before his time as CEO. I had never been treated badly at the RBWH, as I was married. But the other women in the negotiating team were treated the same way I was treated at the Hornsby Hospital Sydney as an unmarried mother in 1963.

The respectful negotiations continued for four months, until the wording was acceptable to Professor Jones, and the ALAS negotiators was reached, and signed off by him on the 19th May 2009.

 This was the first apology in the world to patients who had been young single pregnant women, who had received “ill treatment” at a large Government Hospital, was revolutionary. It had never been heard of. It was referred to as, “the spark that lit the fire”.

It changed the women’s perception of themselves. Even women who had not given birth at the Royal Brisbane and women’s Hospital were changed by Professor Jones very public affirmation of the historical fact.

Professor Jones was quizzed on his role by Kim Hames, Colin Barnett (West Australian Parliament) and Claire Moore,(Queensland Senator) to name a few. He was able to relate the nature of the negotiating process that he underwent with the ALAS negotiating team.  The ultimate outcome had been all good, both for women and the Hospital.  Professor Jones is very proud of his leadership role.

The next generation is very safe in his hands, as are all single pregnant women who find themselves giving birth at “The Royal”.

Jan Kashin.