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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the response from the Minister for Indigenous Australians (Minister McCarthy) to a question without notice I asked today relating to Indigenous Australians.

The Northern Territory government wants to weaken the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander child placement principle, which was a key recommendation from the Bringing them Home report—solutions from the people for the people. The principle is supposed to put family, community and country at the centre of all decisions about our children. It is about not putting our children with strangers that do not understand our ways. Data shows that only 17.5 per cent of First Nations children who are removed in the Northern Territory are placed with an Aboriginal family. That means the majority of our children are being given to white people to be assimilated. The Northern Territory government don't even follow the child placement principle yet they are complaining that it does not work. It seems to be working quite well; they just do not use it in the Northern Territory.

Minister McCarthy says she asked the Northern Territory government to meet with the Aboriginal children's commissioners. How is that working out? It is not enough to just meet with the children's commissioners if nothing is done. The Commonwealth has the power under the Constitution to override the racist laws the Northern Territory are legislating to hurt our people further. Doing nothing means this government is complicit in what the Northern Territory government are doing to Aboriginal people. What's going on in the Northern Territory is genocide.

And, might I add, the minister dishonestly twisted my question, pretending I was asking for an intervention on Aboriginal people. That was absolutely wrong—absolutely, disrespectfully wrong—because the only invention I'm talking about is her intervening in the genocide that the Northern Territory government are committing on Aboriginal people every day. Have a look at the statistics. All I want is for the minister to stand up for our people for once. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.