In my previous programme I said that there wasn’t a genocide and there wasn’t any Stolen Generations. In the way of the world today you might be thinking I’m a racist but you won’t once you understand how this whole Stolen Generations thing works.
I’m not just making this up. I have all of the judges of the highest courts in the land who have heard cases where the plaintiffs claim to be members of the Stolen Generations, agree with me. The only cases that have gone to court to prove that the individual litigants were victims of genocide, members of the Stolen Generations, have failed. There’s been one High Court Case, a Federal Court case, and the unsuccessful litigants in that case appealed from the decision to the Full Federal Court and failed in their appeal. In all of the cases the judges found that there was no genocide.
In 1997, the Bring Them Home Report, by Sir Ronald Wilson, a former judge of the High Court of Australia, and Mick Dodson, an Aboriginal activist, and a barrister, found that there was a nationwide policy of genocide and consequently there were Aboriginals who were members of Stolen Generations. Those findings were substantially based on hearing only witnesses who argued that either they were members of the Stolen Generations, left wing academics who supported the view that there were Stolen Generations or people who supported that view. Effectively no witnesses were called of people who held positions as ministers or senior or junior public servants, working in the areas which were claimed to be conducting the genocide – the people who were said to be carrying out the genocide.
But significantly, just few years after the Bring Them Home Report had been delivered, Sir Ronald Wilson came out publicly and said … well I’ll get to what he said in the next programme.
The most vital part of the Stolen Generations report is findings that there was actual genocide. If there was no genocide, what does that mean? As it stands at this point in my programme, the only people who had to make a determination on whether there was, or was not, Stolen Generations, are the two commissioners who delivered the Bring Them Home Report – Sir Ronald Wilson and Mick Dodson. But … well that big but is for the next programme.
The only contested court case that has loosely been described as having as the plaintiff a victim of the Stolen Generations, that has succeeded, was a case brought by an unfortunate man by the name of Bruce Trevorrow. The facts of his case were appalling, but what ...
Genocide is the vital ingredient in the Stolen Generations. If it’s not there … well I’ll talk about that in later programmes. Let’s first look at an interesting exchange of letters between Sir Ronald Wilson, one of the joint chair of that Commission, someone you could accept as being an experienced judge, on the High Court of Australia no less, who made the finding that there was genocide. So I need to introduce you to Nicholas Hasluck because he plays an important part in the story of the Stolen Generations, which the media isn’t telling us about, but he did in his book Bench and Book – Diaries, Letters, Memories published in 2021.
Tag words: Stolen Generations; racist; High Court of Australia; Federal Court; Full Federal Court; Bring Them Home Report; Sir Ronald Wilson; Mick Dodson; Aboriginal activist; Bruce Trevorrow; Nicholas Hasluck; Bench and Book – Diaries, Letters, Memories; Sir Paul Hasluck; Minister for Territories; Sir Robert Menzies; Nazi holocaust; World War II; Shades of Darkness – Aboriginal Affairs 1925-1965; Geoffrey Blainey; Western Australian Equal Opportunity Tribunal; Chair of the Literature Board of Australia; National Press Club; Gough Whitlam; Hitler; Goering; Goebbels; The Sydney Morning Herald; The Fate of Reformers; Cecil Cook; the Protector for the Territory; Mr Bleakley; Mr Neville; national conference 1937; assimilation policies; biological absorption; White Australia policy; Bob Ellis; Eugene Bykhovsky; Colin Tatz;
