Preposterousness

As always with these newsy posts, anything I've added is in the bluey/greeny/turquoisey colour...

KEVIN Rudd (Australian Prime Minister) and Malcolm Turnbull (Leader of the Opposition) have offered an historic apology to "forgotten Australians" and former child migrants who suffered abuse, exploitation and neglect in institutions and foster homes.  There were emotional scenes in Parliament House's Great Hall as the Prime Minister said sorry to those children whose childhoods were snatched away, as some survivors sobbed while others stood and cheered. A few angrily demanded compensation.

The event was the second landmark apology by Mr Rudd, who in February last year said sorry to the Aboriginal Stolen Generations. Andrew Murray, a former Australian Democrats senator who was instrumental in establishing the first of several Senate inquiries into church and state-sanctioned abuse, demanded the government establish a reparations fund. He said helping survivors of childhood abuse was a matter of reparations.

"When you look worldwide, harsh things have happened to people, whether it's the Jews in Germany or indigenous people in America - it is reparations that is the word used," he told reporters in Canberra on Monday. "Compensation is just one part of that."

In delivering the apology, Mr Rudd apologised for an "ugly chapter" in the nation's history: "Sorry that as children you were taken from your families and placed in institutions where so often you were abused . . . Sorry for the tragedy, the absolute tragedy, of childhoods lost. "We look back with shame that many of these little ones who were entrusted to institutions and foster homes instead were abused physically, humiliated cruelly, violated sexually. And we look back with shame at how those with power were allowed to abuse those who had none."

The Opposition Leader was choked with emotion as he recounted stories of small children separated from their siblings and abused. "You were failed by the system of care," Mr Turnbull said. "For far too long, your stories were not believed when they should have been, and for that too we apologise, and we are sorry." He urged Australians to speak out if they suspected children were being abused today.

Mr Rudd promised priority aged care services and support for those Forgotten Children, frightened to return to institutions. The government will fund a national database to help people find siblings and relatives they have lost, support projects with the National Library and Museum to ensure their experiences are not forgotten, and provide money to advocacy groups. About 500,000 children were placed in institutions and foster homes between 1920 and the 1970s. In addition, about 7000 British children were sent to Australia and institutionalised.

Source: Compiled by APN from media reports

APN Editors note:  Ten years ago the British Prayer Movement, at the invitation of the Australian Prayer Network, sent a team of around 50 leaders and Intercessors to Australia to apologise for the sins of their nation in the foundation years of European settlement, in what became known as British/Australian reconciliation.  I was privileged to be part of some of these early reconciliation meetings in my hometown of Moree, a town known for its past racial problems and now a centre for the ongoing reconciliation work between Aboriginal & white Australia

In particular they apologised for the massacre and ill treatment of the Indigenous People of our nation by those who came in the name of Britain to the shores of this great land, and also to the many thousands of child migrants who were sent here by the British Government without their parents knowledge or permission, to empty crowded orphanages in Britain.

Whilst the issue was dealt with on a spiritual basis ten years ago it has only been in the past two years that the natural outworking of that intercession has been seen. The apologies given by the Federal Government to our Indigenous Australians last year and the apology given on Monday to the forgotten and abused Australians, including the child migrants sent here by Britain, complete in the natural what was begun in the spiritual 10 years ago.  

We praise God for these apologies which will have far reaching consequences in both the spiritual and natural realms, not to mention in the lives of those people directly impacted by the events for which the apologies were given. The apologies go a long way in helping to heal some of the "wounds of our childhood" as a nation, which were spoken of prophetically at the time of the British visit as being on the heart of God in convicting both the British and Australian prayer movements to journey down the path of repentance and forgiveness relative to these areas of our nation's life.