Proposed Solutions

The “Bringing Them Home” report made many recommendations, including that: funding be made available to Indigenous agencies to allow Indigenous people affected by the forcible removal policies to record their history; that reparations be made to people forcibly removed from their families; and that the Australian Parliaments offer official apologies and officially acknowledge the responsibility of their predecessors for the laws, policies and practices of forcible removal.

But John Howard resisted, and his Government did the same. Reparation, in jurisprudence, means “replenishment of a previously inflicted loss by the criminal to the victim”. Monetary restitution is a common form of reparation.