Sarah Witty (Melbourne, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I've spoken in this House many times about my experiences as a foster carer, and it is on behalf of the children who have been in my care that I rise today to speak in strong support of the National Commission for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children and Young People Bill 2026 and the National Commission for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children and Young People (Transitional Provisions) Bill 2026. For decades, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and young people have been overrepresented in systems of harm and underrepresented in the decisions that shape their lives.

Let me start with a silence. It belongs to a child, Mat, who learned too early how systems really work. He was Aboriginal, he was young and by the time I met him he was already carrying more than most adults ever should. He came from a home shaped by violence. His father was in prison for what he had done to his mother. For this boy, safety had never been consistent; it had been conditional, temporary and fragile. Before he came to me, he'd already had multiple foster placements not because he was a difficult child but because he was traumatised. He didn't trust easily. He tested boundaries. He pushed people away before they could leave him first.

One day, after a particularly hard moment, he said something to me that I will never forget: 'I know, if I keep breaking placements, they'll have to send me back to my family eventually.' Think about that for a moment. This was the child who had learned, through systems meant to protect him, that connection had to be earned through failure; that the only way home was to be too much; and that culture, kin and belonging was something you had to break yourself to get back to. Eventually, when he left my care, he went to live with family—with his uncle, alongside his cousins. While I was glad to see him back with mob, I was left asking a hard question: why did it take so much loss for that to happen?

This is why the National Commission for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children and Young People matters—because children should not have to weaponise their own pain to find belonging, because trauma should not be misread as misbehaviour, because culture, family and identity are not optional extras but protective factors and because every Aboriginal child deserves a system that sees them not as a problem to be managed but as a person to be held, safely, respectfully and in community.

If we are serious about listening to children then we must be serious about building systems that hear what they are really saying, even when they don't have the words. Mat knew exactly what he needed. It's time our systems did too. These outcomes are not accidental. They are not inevitable. They are produced by systems that fragment responsibility, deflect accountability and, too often, fail to listen. This bill is about naming the failure and acting to change it.

The Albanese Labor government made a clear and deliberate commitment to improve life outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and young people. This bill delivers on that commitment by establishing a legislated, independent and empowered national commissioner, supported by a national commission with real authority—not a symbolic role, not a temporary arrangement, but a permanent statutory body with the power to inquire, advocate, coordinate and report to parliament. As the Minister for Social Services said when introducing this bill, this legislation delivers a permanent independent statutory agency with the necessary powers to improve the lives of Indigenous children and young people today and into the future. Those words matter. Independence matters. Permanence matters. Power matter. What has been missing for far too long is a national voice focused solely on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children with the authority to expose systemic failures and the standing to demand better.

The scale of the challenge before us is confronting. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are 11 times more likely to be in out-of-home care and 27 times more likely to be in youth detention than non-Indigenous children. These are not just statistics; they are signals that something is deeply wrong. Behind every number is a child like Mat navigating instability, a family under pressure, a community absorbing loss. Behind those numbers are systems that intervene late, escalate quickly and rarely stop to ask whether they are doing more harm than good. We cannot keep managing crisis without confronting cause. We cannot keep cycling children through systems that were never designed to help them flourish. And we cannot keep calling incremental changes success while these inequalities remain entrenched.

That is why the Albanese government has chosen to act. This bill is not about language; it's about leverage. It's about building structures that force acknowledgement and enable reform. The national commissioner will not replace existing services or override state and territory responsibilities, nor should they. Instead, the commissioner will do the work that no single jurisdiction can do alone. They will draw together threads. They will identify patterns of failure. They will challenge silos. They will insist that responsibility does not dissolve when it crosses a border. The commissioner will work alongside state and territory children's commissioners, guardians and advocates and alongside other Commonwealth roles, including the National Children's Commissioner and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner. This is coordination with purpose, collaboration with intent and national leadership where fragmentation has failed

At the heart of this bill is a fundamental shift in how we see children. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are not problems to be fixed or risks to be managed. They are people with rights. The functions of the national commissioner reflect that principle—to promote the rights, interests, development, safety and wellbeing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and young people, to support them to speak, to be heard and to shape the decisions that affect their lives, to lift up their strengths, not just catalogue their trauma. All too often, the views of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and young people are not heard in the decisions that affect their lives. The commissioner will have the power to engage directly with children and young people in ways that are safe, culturally appropriate and trauma informed, to listen carefully, to hear what systems miss and to carry these voices into the heart of government decision-making.

This is the point where policy meets lived experience, because the bill speaks directly to what happens when systems fail children. It speaks of what happens when care becomes transitional rather than relational. It speaks to the long consequences that follow children into adulthood when safety, stability and trust are taken away too early. Those experiences are not isolated. They echo through communities across this country. Too often, interventions happen without listening. Too often, decisions are made without cultural safety. Too often, systems measure success by process rather than by whether a child is actually safer, stronger or more secure. This bill creates the conditions for that to change.

The national commissioner will have the power to conduct research, to inquire into systemic issues and to make recommendations to government. They will be able to advocate, to report to parliament and to ensure that findings are not quietly ignored. Transparency matters because reforms only happen when evidence is visible and responsibility cannot be avoided. The bill also provides the commissioner with information-gathering powers, including the ability to require responses from government agencies. These powers will ensure that, when questions are asked, governments must answer. This legislation strengthens Australia's human rights framework. The commissioner will engage with international human rights mechanisms, including the relative United Nations bodies, to ensure Australia meets its obligations to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and young people. This is not external scrutiny for its own sake. It's about internal discipline and about ensuring our actions match our values and our commitments are real.

This bill has been shaped through extensive consultation. First Nations advocates have called for a legislated national commissioner for decades. More than 70 organisations united behind this call. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leadership has informed the design of this legislation at every stage. The agreed minimum standard for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children commissioners is embedded in the bill. The current national commissioner, Adjunct Professor Sue-Anne Hunter, has played a central role in its development. As she has said, the statistics are grim, but our children are not statistics. They are our future, and they must be the centre of everything we do.

Since the national commission was established in January 2025, we have seen what focused national leadership can deliver. The commissioner has built relationships with Indigenous community run organisations, convened national networks, advised on policy reform and developed child-safe frameworks to ensure engagement with children is respectful, safe and culturally grounded. This bill ensures that work is not temporary. It ensures it is protected, strengthened and properly resourced. The Albanese government has backed this commitment with funding to ensure the commissioner can deliver on its statutory responsibilities.

This legislation also supports every Closing the Gap target relating to children and young people. Closing the Gap will not be achieved by aspiration alone. It requires accountability, it requires coordination, and it requires systems that listen to the children they serve. This bill strengthens the national framework needed to address the issues that overwhelmingly affect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, including out-of-home care and youth detention. It will give us a mechanism to see clearly where systems are failing and to act deliberately to change them.

This is not an easy bill. It does not promise quick fixes. It demands honesty, it demands follow through, and it demands that children remain at the centre of everything, even when the findings are uncomfortable. But that is what leadership looks like, and that is what the Albanese Labor government is demonstrating—a willingness to act, a willingness to build and a willingness to be held to account.

When you get it right for children, everything else follows. Families are stronger, communities are safer and the nation is more just.

This bill says clearly that First Nations children matter, their voices matter, their safety matters and their futures are not negotiable. It says we will no longer accept systems that harm more than they heal and that we are prepared to build the structures needed to do better, not just now but for generations to come.

At its heart, this bill asks a simple question of this parliament and of every government in this country: when systems fail children, who is accountable? For too long, the answer has been unclear. Responsibility has been spread thin, passed sideways or lost between jurisdictions. Children have paid the price for the ambiguity. Families have carried the consequences. Communities have absorbed the harm.

This bill changes that. It draws a clear line of responsibility. It creates a national voice that cannot be ignored—a commissioner whose job is not to manage headlines, but to tell the truth about how our systems are working and who they are working for. It says that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are not invisible. They are central to the future of this country. This bill recognises that the measure of a nation is not how it speaks about children but how it structures power to protect them. It recognises that listening is not enough without action and that action is not enough without accountability.

The Albanese Labor government is choosing to act, to build a permanent, independent institution that stands with children, listens to them and insists that governments do better. That is the spirit of this bill. It is a commitment to truth, to responsibility and to the belief that every child deserves safety, dignity and a real chance to thrive.

I am proud to support this bill. I am proud of the actions taken by the Albanese government. On behalf of Mat and other kids that I've met in my care, I commend this bill to the House.

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