The Bringing Them Home report is the 1997 findings of Australia’s National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families, tabled in Federal Parliament on 26 May 1997 after a two-year investigation by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission.1Australian Human Rights Commission. Bringing Them Home: The ‘Stolen Children’ Report (1997) The 689-page report documented decades of government policy that forcibly removed Indigenous children from their families across every Australian state and territory, concluded that the practice met the international legal definition of genocide, and set out 54 recommendations for how Australia should respond. It led to a formal national apology in 2008 and, more slowly, to a patchwork of redress schemes that are still open to applicants in 2026.
What the Inquiry Documented
Attorney-General Michael Lavarch directed the Commission in 1995 to investigate laws, practices, and policies that had separated Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families “by compulsion, duress or undue influence.”2Australian Human Rights Commission. Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families Over the next two years, hundreds of people who had been taken as children gave testimony, and the Commission worked through church and government archives.
The central finding was that between one in ten and one in three Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families between 1910 and 1970.3Australian Human Rights Commission. Bringing Them Home Prime Minister Kevin Rudd later summarised the evidence as up to 50,000 children taken from their parents over those six decades.4Australian Embassy France. National Apology Full Speech 13.02.08 The removals were not responses to neglect in individual homes. They were carried out under state and territory statutes designed to absorb Indigenous populations into white Australian society, on the assumption, as the report put it, that “there was nothing of value in Indigenous culture.”5Australian Human Rights Commission. Bringing Them Home – Chapter 2
Removed children were placed in government or church-run institutions, or with non-Indigenous foster families. In both settings, they were actively discouraged from speaking their languages, practising cultural traditions, or contacting their communities. The people affected became known collectively as the Stolen Generations.
The Genocide Finding
The inquiry’s most legally significant conclusion sits in Chapter 13 of the report, which applied the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, ratified by Australia in 1949.6Australian Human Rights Commission. Bringing Them Home – Chapter 13 Article II of the Convention defines genocide as any of several acts committed with intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group, including “forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”7OHCHR. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
The report concluded that removing Indigenous children and raising them “separately from and ignorant of their culture and people” was genocidal under binding international law from at least December 1946 onward, and that the practice continued for almost another quarter of a century after that date.6Australian Human Rights Commission. Bringing Them Home – Chapter 13 The Commission emphasised that a state cannot excuse genocide by pointing to its own domestic laws. The report also identified breaches of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, on the basis that children were targeted according to their ethnicity.8OHCHR. International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination
The 54 Recommendations
The report set out 54 recommendations covering acknowledgment, compensation, record-keeping, reunification services, and legislative reform.9Australian Human Rights Commission. Bringing Them Home – Report Recommendations At the centre was a call for the Australian Parliament to issue a formal national apology to the Stolen Generations and their families.
On compensation, the report recommended that the Council of Australian Governments establish a joint National Compensation Fund, administered by a board with a majority of Indigenous members. Any Indigenous person removed from their family by compulsion or undue influence would be entitled to a minimum lump sum, with additional compensation available on proof of particular harm. The Commission set out ten categories of compensable damage, including racial discrimination, arbitrary deprivation of liberty, physical and sexual abuse, disruption of family life, loss of cultural rights, and economic loss. The proposed fund would not displace a person’s right to bring a common law claim through the courts.
The broader reparations framework had five components: acknowledgment and apology from the agencies that participated in removals; guarantees against repetition through legislative reform; restitution measures aimed at restoring what was taken; rehabilitation through specialised medical and psychological services; and monetary compensation through the proposed fund.9Australian Human Rights Commission. Bringing Them Home – Report Recommendations
The report also recommended that no records relating to Indigenous families or removed children be destroyed, that government agencies urgently preserve and index those records, and that specialised Link-Up family tracing and reunion services be established and funded. Many survivors lacked basic information about their own identities, and reunification was impossible without opening archives held by governments and churches.
The Howard Government’s Response
Prime Minister John Howard’s cabinet rejected both the formal national apology and the proposed compensation fund. The government’s position was that compensation for child removal was “inappropriate and unacceptable,” and that a Commonwealth response would intrude on state and territory responsibilities. Its stated Indigenous affairs priority was addressing current disadvantage in health, housing, employment, and education.
Howard expressed personal regret but refused to deliver the apology the report called for. That refusal became one of the defining political fault lines of the decade that followed. National Sorry Day was first observed on 26 May 1998, one year after the report was tabled, with communities signing “sorry books” and holding events across the country.
The 2008 National Apology
The apology recommendation was finally fulfilled on 13 February 2008, when newly elected Prime Minister Kevin Rudd told Parliament: “We apologise for the laws and policies of successive Parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians. We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country.”4Australian Embassy France. National Apology Full Speech 13.02.08
Rudd offered the apology “without qualification” and acknowledged that the removals were “the product of the deliberate, calculated policies of the state as reflected in the explicit powers given to them under statute.”4Australian Embassy France. National Apology Full Speech 13.02.08 Dr. Tom Calma, then Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, responded formally that Parliament had “acknowledged the existence and the impacts of past policies and practices of forcibly removing Indigenous children from their families.”10National Museum of Australia. National Apology
The apology carried no financial component. The report’s most concrete recommendation, the national compensation fund, remained unaddressed at the federal level.
Redress Schemes in 2026
The single National Compensation Fund the report envisioned was never created. Reparations have instead arrived piecemeal through separate schemes covering different jurisdictions and offering different amounts. Three main schemes operate in 2026.
The Territories Stolen Generations Redress Scheme covers survivors removed as children in the Northern Territory, the Australian Capital Territory (prior to self-government), or the Jervis Bay Territory. It offers a redress payment of up to A$75,000 plus a A$7,000 healing assistance payment. Applications remain open until 31 August 2027.11Territories Redress. Apply
The Victorian Stolen Generations Reparations Package offers a payment of A$100,000, with applications closing on 31 March 2027. The Western Australian Stolen Generations Redress Scheme offers a payment of A$85,000.12Territories Redress. Redress Schemes
Applicants to the Territories scheme should know that prior payments received through state redress schemes or legal settlements are deducted from the A$75,000 figure. If a prior payment equals or exceeds that amount, the applicant will not receive the redress payment but remains eligible for the A$7,000 healing assistance payment and a personal acknowledgment from a senior government official. Redress payments are exempt from income tax and generally do not count toward means-tested Commonwealth benefits, though they may affect assets tests.11Territories Redress. Apply
The fragmented picture reflects what the Howard government identified in 1997: child removal was carried out under state and territory laws, and each jurisdiction has moved at its own pace. For survivors, the practical result is that the amount of redress available depends largely on where they were taken from, not on what happened to them. Survivors in states without a dedicated scheme have received nothing.
Intergenerational Impact
The damage documented in the report did not end with the people who were taken. Roughly a third of all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults are descended from Stolen Generations survivors, and in some states and territories that share exceeds half the Indigenous population. Research has described survivors and their descendants as a “gap within the gap,” meaning they face worse health, social, and economic outcomes than other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, who already experience significant disadvantage.
Forced separations disrupted cultural transmission, severed family structures, and created cycles of trauma that continue to shape communities. Many descendants grew up with parents who had no model of family life to draw on, having themselves been raised in institutions.
The Report’s Standing Today
Nearly three decades on, Bringing Them Home remains the foundational document in Australia’s reckoning with the Stolen Generations. National Sorry Day is observed every 26 May, the anniversary of the report’s tabling, and the week that follows is National Reconciliation Week. The 54 recommendations continue to serve as the benchmark against which government action is measured.
Some recommendations have been fulfilled. The national apology was delivered. Link-Up services exist and help families reconnect. Redress schemes operate in several jurisdictions. The single national compensation fund the report called for was never established, and many people who gave testimony to the inquiry in the mid-1990s have since died without seeing full implementation of its recommendations.