Australia issues apology for colonial-era lost childhoods

Canberra: Australia's Prime Minister Kevin Rudd issued a historic apology yesterday to thousands of impoverished British children shipped to Australia with the promise of a better life, triggering calls for compensation for the abuse and neglect that many suffered.

At a ceremony in the capital Canberra attended by tearful former child migrants, Rudd apologised for his country's role in the migration and extended condolences to the 7,000 survivors of the programme who still live in Australia.

"We are sorry," Rudd said. "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."

The apology comes one day after the British government said Prime Minister Gordon Brown would apologise for child migrant programmes that sent children as young as three to Australia, Canada and other former colonies over three-and-a-half centuries. The first group was sent to the Virginia Colony in 1618.

Rudd also apologised to the "forgotten Australians" — children who suffered in state care during the last century. According to a 2004 Australian Senate report, more than 500,000 children were placed in foster homes, orphanages and other institutions during the twentieth century. Many were emotionally, physically and sexually abused in state care.

The Australian government has ruled out compensation, saying liability lay with state governments and churches that ran the institutions.

Compensation question

British High Commissioner Valerie Amos said her government had not yet addressed the compensation question.

Ian Thwaites, service manager of the Child Migrants Trust, which has advocated for child migrants in Australia for 22 years, said both the British and Australian governments were liable.

"It takes two governments working closely together to be able to make this mess and break the hearts of thousands of children and families," said Thwaites.

The motives

The British government has estimated that a total of 150,000 British children may have been shipped abroad between 1618 — when a group was sent to the Virginia Colony — and 1967, most of them from the late nineteenth century onwards.

After 1920, most of the children went to Australia through programmes run by the government, religious groups and children's charities. A 2001 Australian report said that between 6,000 and 30,000 children from Britain and Malta, often taken from unmarried mothers or impoverished families, were sent alone to Australia as migrants during the twentieth century.

Authorities believed they were acting in the children's best interests, but the migration also was intended to stop them from being a burden on the British state while supplying the receiving countries with potential workers. A 1998 British parliamentary inquiry noted that "a further motive was racist: the import of good white stock" into the developing British Colonies.