Lidia Thorpe (Victoria, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

Today I wish to speak to the National Commission for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children and Young People Bill 2026. I welcome the statutory establishment of the commission with additional and ongoing resourcing for it to conduct its work. I hope that this role will be able to elevate the importance of justice for our children and young people. For decades our children and young people have suffered not just from political inaction but from being weaponised for political agendas. We are seeing this play out with terrible consequences in the tightening of youth justice laws in states and territories across the country over the last couple of years, in an attempt to appear tough on crime and promote so-called community safety.

Governments across the country—state, territory and federal alike—have completely ignored the evidence. They have ignored elders, families, lawyers and experts and are pursuing an agenda on what we know only leads to the further criminalisation of our children. All too often that means a lifelong cycle of contact with the criminal legal system, being disadvantaged and already given up on. What is happening in this country is an absolute disgrace. Other countries cannot believe that kids as young as 10 can be locked up or that they can be strip searched. They are children. Any of you present who have children will know that at the age of 10 a child is still learning and depending on their family, community and environment for this very purpose. How are they supposed to feel loved, learn and have dreams for the future when they are being locked up at the height of their childhood? Children need family and community and country. They need connection, love and care. It is our responsibility as adults to provide that, not to lock them up and close all of the doors to them for the rest of their lives. How can you live with yourselves doing that?

We know the connection between the so-called child protection system and incarceration. The out-of-home care system is basically a direct pipeline into prisons for our kids. This comes as no surprise, given the realities of out-of-home care. The last eight months of the Queensland Child Safety Commission of Inquiry have revealed the horrific treatment of children in the system. The stories are harrowing, with children being constantly moved from one place to the next and children in foster and residential care neglected, verbally, physically and sexually abused and even sex trafficked. Our children's rights are actively violated by the system in every way possible. All too often, this leads to drug use as a means of escape, and who wouldn't want to escape those realities? Drug use or escape from these conditions then leads to the children's criminalisation. They never stand a chance. You never give our children a chance. You can raise the age of legal responsibility in this country, Labor. You could do it tomorrow if you wanted to. But you're gammon because you won't.

We know that this is not isolated to Queensland; this is a nationwide catastrophe. Every year governments lament the failures of Closing the Gap, yet they are the very ones who take our babies from us. Removal rates of our children are increasing, as we know. Five per cent of our children are currently removed. That's every 20th child—every 20th child, people. If these were white kids, the world would have already intervened. Governments talk about the stolen generation, but this is the continuation of the stolen generation. Rudd said sorry, but what does it actually mean when you keep doing it? You don't hurt someone and say sorry and then keep doing it. You stop.

It is a continuation of a slow and sophisticated genocide of our people. That's what removing our children is. It's an act of genocide. Child removals constitute genocide, and that is exactly what the 1997 Bringing them home report pointed out. That monumental report, which my own mother was a commissioner of at the time, presented a number of tangible ways to tackle child removals. But it's 30 years later and it's increased to 24,000 of our kids. It's 30 years after a report that no-one's looked at and no-one's cared about. Those recommendations in that report remain untouched or only partially implemented. We have no national monitoring or oversight of implementation of recommendations like those from the Bringing them home report and the Make healing happen report. So we spent all this money on these deadly reports. We went out to the people, the community, the mothers and the children that survived this system. They were spoken to and they were asked: what is the solution? All the experts came together. Everyone put their time, energy, heart and soul into those consultations, and for what? Thirty years later, we still have nothing. We have the commissioner.

The calls from our people and the calls that I continue to make in this place are ignored. This must be something the National Commissioner for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children and Young People can elevate and pursue as part of their role. Someone has got to look at the recommendations, surely. I have had conversations with the current commissioner, Sue-Anne Hunter, and this seems to be part of the thinking—which I am grateful for, but I'll be watching. What I'm more curious about are provisions in the bill that would allow the commissioner or her staff to disclose personal information of children and young people and their families under certain circumstances. That's a worry for me and it is a worry for our community. It is important that there are safeguards in place to ensure that children and families are not being further vilified, separated or criminalised and that those powers are being used carefully and sparsely. As I understand it, Commissioner Hunter is planning to put guidelines in place for the use of these powers, and I cannot stress enough how important that is for the continuation of the role long term. We've had too many bad experiences with 'garbarments' and agencies acting 'in our best interests', which really was their own interests and led to the destruction of many families, communities and lives.

I believe the commissioner has the right intentions; however, it will be up to the government of the time to actually follow the advice. We see time and time again how undervalued commissioners are. They are struggling to even get meetings with ministers. The excellent National Anti-Racism Framework, presented by the Race Discrimination Commissioner, remains unanswered, unactioned and even untouched by the government, 16 months after it was handed down. That's how the Race Discrimination Commissioner gets treated. Let's see how Commissioner Hunter is treated and whether she is taken seriously or not. Commissioners do good work but, unfortunately, they remain powerless against what I see as an intentional lack of political will. It's: 'Look over there, guys—we've got a commissioner. We'll get the commissioner to do all this work. We'll get a report, but we don't have to do anything. We just need to be seen to be doing something.'

The Albanese government keeps palming off responsibility for addressing child removals to the states and territories, as we know. It's an ongoing excuse. They don't even know their real power or that they can intervene—or do they know their real power and just don't want to deal with it? But the federal government can and needs to do its part. When we saw revelations of abuse in the childcare sector, the federal government sprang into action. Why should widespread sexual and physical abuse of children under state care not receive a similar response? Why is it different for us? Is it because these children are poor? Or is it because so many are Aboriginal or black and brown children? It begs the question, right?

The federal government could legislate a national Aboriginal child placement principle, in line with the 1997 Bringing them Home report, to prevent children's connection to family and community being disrupted and destroyed, as it is today. The government can fund services for families who are struggling so that children can remain in their families. This benefits not only the child but the whole family and community. I have two grandchildren from out-of-home care and their mum—their real mum—gets no support. It's my family that are begging the services to support the family so that mum can have their children back. No-one cares. They just take the children, and that's it.

This is about stopping the ongoing stolen generations and the genocide on our people. There are many things that can be done. What's missing is political will. Labor, you say that you've got mob there that know what it's like in our communities. Don't let them down. You're meant to be allies. Allies stand with us and do the work. They don't stand with us and stab us in the back. This is about stopping the ongoing stolen generations and the ongoing genocide on our people. It's one part of the genocide journey that you can stop on us. There are many things that can be done. What's missing is political will. What's missing is actual care for our children. This new commissioner role cannot just be another token gesture to appease the government's conscience; it has to lead to real action.