Stolen generation in Tasmania.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)

SIR: As you will know, the Tasmanian government is determined to pay compensation exclusively to a small group of people having an Aborigine in their ancestry. The basis of the payment is that these people were unfairly removed from their families and taken into the care of the state, simply because of the Aboriginal connection.

The problem with the argument is that in the period of time when this process reached its peak, children could only be removed from their parents after a magistrate had been persuaded in a court of law that the children were neglected, or beyond the control of their parents, or exposed to moral danger. Michael Mansell has attempted to find a way around this problem by arguing in the Examiner newspaper:

 
   Police magistrates deciding 
   whether to declare Aboriginal 
   children wards of state had 
   information from one source 
   only--the prosecutors. 
      Intimidated by the police and 
   welfare officials, Aboriginal 
   parents had no legal 
   representation in those days. 
      Parents were hardly going 
   to stand up in court where 
   magistrates and police showed 
   remarkable familiarity and argue 
   a contrary case. 

In other words, for a long period of time Tasmania was not a democratic society. To meet government expectations, magistrates ran kangaroo-style courts where only the prosecution had a voice, and on the basis of entirely one-sided evidence, would "rip children from their families", to use Michael Mansell's expression, and place them into the care of the state.

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