Tuesday 16 April 2013

The Campaign to Make the Federal Apology into Past and Forced Adoption Practices Irrelevant

Starting prior to 21 march 2013 there has been a subtle campaign by the right wing media and think tanks to make a mockery of the federal apology in to past adoption practises. this process was exacerbated on the day of the  apology when some  of the Labor Party with a reputation for helping the battler, of whom so many mothers and adoptees are, used the Apology event to launch an unprecedented attack on the position of the prime minister. Quite frankly if such a happening had occurred on the day the indigenous folk had received their apology, there would have been a major scandal.  Under the cover of acknowledging the pan and suffering up to 450,000 had endured because of past policies of all governments, Simon Crean and his henchmen launched a attempted coup against the prime minister .  Such shameful deed is a act of treachery against all affected by adoption and the prime minister is to be applauded with the grace and dignity she displayed at the apology knowing that moves against her were afoot behind the scenes, but this act of treachery against us has given the right wing media and organisations like the Centre for Independent Studies the approval to attack the nature of the apology and to use the apology to now blame the situation with those children now  in out of home care. They now are able to falsely claim that adoption are an alternative to foster care or permanent guardianships but they fail to recognise the current studies showing just how damaging the long term effects of adoption are on all persons adopted even today.

The first shot in this campaign was fired by the Murdoch owned daily telegraph when Miranda Devine wrote the following comment piece

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/apologising-for-adoption-is-stealing-a-gift-writes-miranda-devine/story-e6frezz0-1226542338403?sv=13d3a09768bf370ac13f5a0d522fb108

I have already commented on the inaccuracies and false assumptions in a  previous blog so wont add any more.

This was followed up in  march this year wit a piece that implied that every single mother lived with a abusive boyfriend:

http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/mirandadevine/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/respect_a_mothers_choice/http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/mirandadevine/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/respect_a_mothers_choice/



This comment from that article says it all:

"It’s not that there are fewer couples longing for a child. They have just had to accept their childlessness.
The pendulum has swung so far towards keeping biological mother and child together at any price that the plight of babies condemned to a life of chaos and misery is willfully overlooked. The unpalatable truth is just because a woman gives birth to a child, that does not automatically make her a good mother."
 This shows a inflammatory attempt to portray all single mothers in a bad light.  In my work i have visited many homes over twelve years and quite frankly have yet to see more than one or two single parent homes where i felt the child was not being cared for in a way i would like. but in those few homes there was still love of their child.  To generalise is a betrayal to all women by Ms Devine.
Then on  27 March not long after the Apology, Denise Shanahan from the Australian, another Murdoch newspaper. i have to copy the article as i cant get a full linkage to it:


        
         MANY outside the realm of political intrigue were disturbed by the events last Thursday. I am not talking about the attempt to get rid of Julia Gillard.
        
         Many of us were appalled by the sheer hypocrisy generated by that irksome modern phenomenon, the institutional apology. Generally, I don't believe in mass apologies; they have taken the place of personal moral culpability and cheapened contrition, even when an institutional policy needs to be abrogated.
        
         Instead today's mass apologies use the sheer intimidatory power of political correctness as a way of forcing a single view. And that politically correct view allows no nuance. Witness what happened to Tony Abbott because the nuances of his speech were not "right".
        
         Abbott's crime was that he tried to be fair to adoptive parents. His language merely acknowledged that adoptees have two sets of parents, their birth or genetic parents and the adoptive parents who nurture them and bring them up.
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         That was not good enough for the extremists of the anti-adoption lobby who want to use a strict terminology to put adoption in the same moral realm as child kidnapping. This has happened before with these politicised apologies. Remember Brendan Nelson's reply to Kevin Rudd's stolen children apology? Nelson tried to introduce a bit of nuance into the apology. The policy was misguided, but some children were removed for their own good.
        
         However, political correctness gives no quarter. During his speech Nelson was booed and jeered and Labor staff watching in the parliament turned their backs on him, as did thousands of people watching screens in front of Parliament House, just as some turned their backs on John Howard at a reconciliation event when he was PM.
        
         But the hypocrisy of last Thursday's apology went one step further. The PM said of the child victims of forced adoption: "You deserved the chance to know your mother and father." Why doesn't that apply equally to the children of same-sex and single surrogacy?
        
         No one has bothered to point out that the PM's official apology about the rupture of the mother-child relationship, which she called a "sacred and primeval bond", leading to a conflict of identity, is all very well, but how do we get our heads around the hypocrisy of a society condemning altruistic adoption on the one hand and, on the other, going all gooey about two men or two women employing a baby maker or a sperm donor to get a child?
        
         What of those children's sense of identity? What of their confusion? How long will it be before we have to apologise for yet another failed social experiment on the innocent? And of course it is politically not at all correct to point out that a child who has two women on his or her birth certificate cannot actually be the child of both these women, or that the two men who have paid an Indian woman to carry a baby are not the parents of their baby.
        
         The irony here is that adoption of infants of single mothers in the past was encouraged purely so that they could grow up in a mother-father family. What is more, adoption practices were changed as far back as the 1970s precisely so children could settle questions of identity by finding their birth parents if they wished.
        
         All this is being ignored by extremists who want to ban adoption. They are offering an insult to the adoptive parents who work and struggle to bring up their children. Perhaps the birth mothers ought to be thanking them.
        
         Many of the adoptees of the past are people whose own emotional damage has blinkered them to the experiences of the majority who have had fulfilling lives.
        
         Abbott should not be defensive about this. He should not bow to political correctness. Mass apologies don't change anything, good policy does. Does anyone remember Dean Shillingsworth, born into misery and thrown away in a suitcase, aged two? What a pity he wasn't "forcibly" adopted.
March 27 at 8:13am · Like



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There is a sense of abuse of the process that led to the apology and the circumstances. The last statement " What a pity he wasn't "forcibly adopted" says it all. Instead of criticising governments for failure of their duty of care to ensure there is a competent well trained and well resourced to handle what governments are there for, the interests of the people, she decides to attack the government for the apology.Does she ever criticise government for putting money into big business which is  corporate socialism. NO she blames the  persons who were subjected to abuse of process and sometimes illegalities. Then to rub salt into the wound she says the  "Birth parents should be thanking adoptive parents"  How pathetic for a journalist to blame the victims and praise those who befitted from the plight of victims with their latest fashion accessory, a baby.

Now we come to the Centre of Independent studies and Mr Sammutt.  Let us all remember that one of the goals of the CIS is to :



  • Individual liberty and choice, including freedom of association, religion, speech and the right to property
  • An economy based on free markets
  • Democratic government under the rule of law
  • An autonomous and free civil society                                                                                       
    • With these huge ideals of a American style country where the market economy runs supreme and those who are unable to keep up with the progress are cast by the wayside
      there agenda is to reduce the public expenditure and promoting adoption is a way of absolving government of it prime responsibility of looking after the people. perhaps they then will push for grater corporate socialist policies much like the old country party of old did. They were experts at socialist policies for the farmers but none for the workers and ordinary folk.  This is evidence by this paper  by Andrew baker  last year shows their main purpose:

      http://www.cis.org.au/publications/ideasthecentre/article/4628-making-people-worse-off

      So it is now very easy to see how mr Sammutt with his subtle attacks on the apology in a series of  articles from  before tthe apology until well after the agenda of the CIS which is aligned to the objectives of the Murdoch press and the Liberal government in NSW. Even mr abbott's address to the apology was in line with this this thinking with statements like " free to chose' etc .

      http://www.cis.org.au/media-information/media-releases/article/4746-national-apology-must-lift-taboo-on-adoption

      http://www.cis.org.au/publications/issue-analysis/article/4744-the-fraught-politics-of-saying-sorry-for-forced-adoption-implications-for-child-protection-policy-in-australia


      http://www.cis.org.au/media-information/opinion-pieces/article/3672-myths-lies-and-adoption



      The last article is a prime example of selective use of statistics.  he shows that 36,000n children 0 to 17 are in care.What he fails to disclose is that the same report shows  45 percent are in the foster care system and 45 percent are with extended family/kinship.  he further forgets to highlight that indigenous children are ten times more likely to be in out of home care, which whilst a disgusting figure highlights the problems of caring for the indigenous community overall. he further fails to disclose that there are 4 million children aged between 0 to 15 in Australia which then highlights that only 0.455 percent of children are in foster care.  yet he uses his partial statistics to abuse and condemn the current system which tries to ensure that families remain together unless the child is at risk. The overworked staff of human services departments around the country are under enough pressure because governments would sooner subsidise GMH or Ford than invest in the most important commodity in the country , our children. They sooner give out extravagant baby bonus's than fund real support services..  But this is what the CIS wants, welfare on the cheap by using often good decent people to take responsibility for what are highly traumatised and  broken individuals.  They want individuals to pay for the care of these young persons whom have been let down by the state through government neglect.

      One wonders what the right wing agenda of the Murdoch Press and CIS will do to our country.Already we have seen the American Australian say the government is racist because they wish to clamp down on 457 visa rorts. yet 457 visas are only temporary visas and the people have to return to their own country when the job is done.

      Today these people have single mothers and disadvantaged families  in their sites  again. Who or what will be next on their radar


    2 comments:

    1. Well done again Murray. Who would have thought there could have been such a back lash about the exposure of so many wrongs done to mothers and their children - now adults.

      ReplyDelete
    2. Sammutt is the victim of confused thinking -what a great job, thinker in a think tank!highly paid to turn out ill prepared rubbish which confuses the issues.The Apology stands alone. Undoubtedly there is a great deal wrong with out care system and with child protection but it is legislation that ties the hands of CPW's.

      ReplyDelete