See Australian Aboriginal History.

Few people would, in retrospect and on balance, defend this policy. However, people are very fast to point out the pain and anguish for parents and children arising from family separation, but not so fast to address the cost of leaving children with unfit parents.

• Many of the children were not taken by force, but were willingly given.
• Some of the children would have died had they been left with their natural parents (Australian Aborigines still have one of the highest infant mortality rates in the Western world).
• Many of them had educational and career opportunities which would never have arisen if they had stayed with their natural parents - Lowidja O'Donahue, former Chair of ATSIC, was given up by her parents. It is unlikely she would have such a distinguished career had she been raised by her alcoholic Irish father.

We may have learned our lessons from the forced removal of children, but we are overreacting to the past and ignoring the future. There is now so much reluctance to remove Aboriginal children from unfit parents that many disturbed adults in the future are likely to sue the Australian government for not meeting their duty of care by removing them as children.

We will learn the hard way, and suffering and injustice will continue into the next generation.

See

• Australian Aboriginal History
• Group Based Compensation