MANY Australians believe that the national apology for forced adoption, to be delivered on Thursday in the federal parliament, is overdue.
From the 1950s until the mid-70s, approximately 150,000 babies of unwed (mostly teenage) mothers were adopted by childless married couples.
The sentiments behind the national apology are good-hearted, and the aim is to acknowledge the pain and suffering some separated mothers and their children experienced.
Many vulnerable young women were traumatised by the harsh treatment they received.
However, the nation is in danger of practising the easy moralism that condemns previous generations for the sins of forced adoption, while ignoring contemporary policies that are toxic for child welfare.
The national apology has broader implications. There is a real danger that the parliament, in reaction to past forced adoption practices, will misguidedly reinforce the taboo that exists on adoption in child protection circles, and endorse the over-emphasis on supporting, not separating, the increasing number of problem families in which serious concerns are held for child wellbeing and safety.
Rates of child maltreatment have spiralled in recent decades.
State and territory child protection services have failed to respond appropriately to the child protection crisis. Child protection social workers give priority to supporting even highly dysfunctional parents via taxpayer-funded social service interventions in an often futile effort to address the serious and hard-to-resolve issues that impede proper parenting (welfare dependence, single-parenthood, substance abuse, domestic violence and mental illness).
The emphasis placed on "family preservation" at nearly all costs profoundly harms children by both prolonging the time children spend in the custody of abusive or neglectful parents, and the time they spend languishing in foster care placements while awaiting family reunions that are highly prone to breakdown.
This reflects the social work profession's desire not to repeat perceived historic wrongs.
Taking legal action to permanently remove children and provide safe and stable homes by adoption into suitable families is taboo (despite being a proven and effective child welfare strategy) because this is considered akin to forced adoption policies of previous eras.
Hence in 2010-11, fewer than 200 children were adopted in Australia despite more than 37,000 children being in government-funded care placements. Calls for the national apology have been led by the vocal academic-activists and advocacy groups that form the backbone of the anti-adoption movement in Australia, which uses and abuses the history of forced adoption to promote the idea that all adoptions (including overseas adoption) are wrong and harmful to grief-stricken parents and to identity-deprived children.
The morally intimidating argument is that having heard the stories told by the victims of forced adoption, we should "never again" repeat the same mistakes because unless we learn from the past, the national apology will be undermined.
This is code for persevering with the flawed family preservation policies for children by enfeebling the community response to child maltreatment.
If parliament endorses this position, the national apology could add to the political difficulties faced by state and territory governments interested in using adoption to provide children from highly dysfunctional homes with safe and stable functional families. Policymakers may become even more reluctant to mention the A-word in polite society, lest they be accused of backtracking on the apology and of "stealing" children from parents.
The parliament cannot ignore the politics behind the national apology and implications for child protection policy, which include casting doubt on whether adoption is acceptable and appropriate in 21st-century Australia.
To prevent white-anting the growing support for adoption, the notion that adoptions are inherently harmful and illegitimate should be explicitly rejected as part of the national apology.
The parliament should aim to weaken the taboo on adoption by strongly endorsing the appropriate and beneficial use of adoption to halt the growing scourge of child abuse and neglect.
Parliament should extend the nation's sympathies to those hurt by forced adoption malpractices, but saying sorry must not delegitimise adoption for child protection purposes, or else the national apology will set back the cause of protecting children in this country.
Jeremy Sammut is a research fellow at The Centre for Independent Studies. His report, The Fraught Politics of Saying Sorry for Forced Adoption: Implications for Child Protection Policy in Australia, is being released by the CIS today.