2016-11-08
I rise today to speak to the Commission for Children and Young People's report In the Child's Best Interests, which is the commission's report of its inquiry into compliance with the intent of the Aboriginal child placement principle in Victoria.
Child protection is a particularly vexed issue for many of Victoria's Aboriginal communities. On the one hand, the state does have a responsibility to ensure that each and every Victorian child is protected from harm, abuse and neglect in cases where natural parents cannot do so, for whatever reason. On the other hand, the removal of Aboriginal children from their families has so often meant their removal from their communities and therefore also from their cultures and source of strength and identity.
As a nation we all became fully aware of the consequences of separating Aboriginal children from their communities and cultures when the Bringing Them Home report was published and tabled in 1997. The Aboriginal child placement principle is a fundamental principle which is supposed to guide the placement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children who are removed from their natural parents.
It was first articulated by Aboriginal community-controlled organisations in the 1980s and has since been endorsed in a Victoria's Children, Youth and Families Act 2005, which is the legislation that governs the child protection system here. It is the underlying intent of the principle that Aboriginal children should wherever possible remain in the care of their extended families. If that is not possible, the next best options are, in this order: placement with another Aboriginal family from the local community, placement with another Aboriginal family elsewhere and, lastly, placement with a non-Aboriginal family with the assurance that the child's culture and identity will be maintained through regular contact with his or her natural family and community.
The Department of Health and Human Services child protection division is statutorily bound to comply with the Aboriginal child placement principle, which is very clearly set out in legislation. It is therefore deeply shocking to read in this report of the commission's inquiry that there is what the commission has described as minimal compliance with the principle by the department in its overall practices. It seems that while appropriate policies and procedures are in place, the practical implementation of those policies and procedures is sorely lacking. Time and time again the commission found that the department was not able to produce data to show its compliance or otherwise with the requirements of the Aboriginal child placement principle. Perhaps most shockingly of all — and I quote here from the report:
File reviews showed that not one Aboriginal child experienced complete compliance with all ACPP requirements.
On the eve of the 20th anniversary of the Bringing Them Home report into the stolen generation, we have here a document that shows a truly terrible record of non-compliance with fundamental statutory requirements in relation to the protection of Aboriginal children in Victoria. The awful irony here is that the non-compliance is by the very department that is tasked with the protection of children. In other words, it is clear that at least for the time period covered by this report the department has failed to adequately protect Aboriginal children for whom it is responsible.
The one cause for optimism is that the period covered by this inquiry ended in December 2014. There have been reforms since then, most notably the Aboriginal principal officer reform, which allow Aboriginal organisations to take over the role of the department with respect to particular Aboriginal children. Ultimately this report is merely the latest in a long series of reports which detail failure after shocking failure by Victoria's child protection authorities under multiple ministers and multiple governments.