00:01The report says there's over 23,000 people alive today, and bearing in mind this is 22,
00:0823 data, but it'd still be approximately right.
00:11Around 23,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people alive today who are classically
00:17referred to as members of the Stolen Generation, or as I refer to us as the Stolen Children.
00:23It's still a significant amount of the Aboriginal population, and the distribution is across
00:28the whole country.
00:29We're twice as likely as our non-Aboriginal colleagues as to be experiencing mental health
00:35issues.
00:35That's one that really sticks out because it reinforces the lifelong trauma that the policy
00:43of stealing of children inflicted across so many Aboriginal people for so long throughout
00:48the first half and into the second half of the 20th century.
00:51What does it mean for the children of the Stolen Children?
00:55What it shows is that there is a significant amount of Aboriginal people, roughly 45% of
01:02Aboriginal people alive today are descendants of those who were taken.
01:06Think about that.
01:07So that just says in the first instance, how many were taken in the first instance, that 45% of
01:12Indigenous
01:13Australians alive today are descended from the Stolen Children.
01:16So simply the numbers themselves are huge.
01:19And there's been data that shows or evidence that shows that this isn't just a ripple effect
01:24through the generations, it's a tsunami effect through the generations.
01:27So you have descendants of the Stolen Children themselves exhibiting worse outcomes than the general
01:34Aboriginal population as a whole, and certainly far worse than the general Australian population
01:39themselves.
01:39So this tends to ripple.
01:41So if somebody is taken, they're brought up in an environment where often they're in state
01:46institutions, where often they're in places where they don't experience at all any good
01:51parenting.
01:51So they have no role modelling for their own children.
01:54And this continues.
01:55When you think about the size of this, this is why a lot of issues confronting the Aboriginal
02:00community today can be traced back to the stealing of children.
02:04Stolen children are getting into the, quite frankly, the back end of their life, which rages
02:11a whole bunch of aged care and living issues for older generations people.
02:16Clearly how the aged care sector responds to the specific needs of the stolen generations
02:20is a really high profile one for us.
02:23The other part is how do you provide some sort of socio-economic wellbeing for this group
02:30of people in their declining years as well.
