Abstract
May 2017 marked the 20th anniversary of Bringing Them Home, the Australian Human Rights Commission report into the forced and unjustified removals of Indigenous children from their families (NISATSIC 1997). The report concluded that these actions were part of a sustained campaign by the Australian government to eradicate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families, communities, and culture. Nearly a third of the report examined and made recommendations with respect to contemporary removals under child welfare, juvenile justice, and family law. These recommendations were part of the reparations and were aimed at creating laws and policies designed to ensure the discriminatory practices would cease and would not be repeated. Twenty years post-Bringing Them Home, however, Indigenous children are being removed from their families in unprecedented numbers (Libesman 2016, pp. 46–7).
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Notes
- 1.
See, for example, Recommendation 3 stating that, for the purposes of responding to the effects of forcible removals, ‘compensation’ be widely defined to mean ‘reparation’; that reparation be made in recognition of the history of gross violations of human rights; and that reparation consists of acknowledgment and apology, guarantees against repetition, measures of restitution, measures of rehabilitation, and monetary compensation (NISATSIC 1997).
- 2.
In a presentation to the NSW Legal Aid Care and Protection Conference, 7 August 2015, Judge Peter Johnstone, President of the Children’s Court of NSW, noted, ‘I am informed nearly 50% of casework for children in the care of the Minister has been transferred to NGO’s.’
- 3.
This language is pervasive in popular media. For an analysis of political rhetoric which frames Indigenous peoples as deficient, see, M. Lovell (2014) ‘Languages of neoliberal critique: The production of coercive government in the Northern Territory intervention’, in J. Uhr and R. Walter (eds), Studies in Australian Political Rhetoric, (Canberra: ANU ePress), 221–240.
- 4.
For reduction in company tax, see, for example, S. Mann (2001) ‘The social cost of corporate welfare’, Australian Journal of Law and Society, 15, 209–222; for claims with respect to the cost of child welfare being unsustainable, see, for example, NSW government (2017) ‘Their Futures Matter: A New Approach to Reform Directions from the Independent Review of Out of Home Care in NSW’ https://www.facs.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/file/0005/387293/FACS_OOHC_Review_161116.pdf, date accessed 10 April 2017. For a discussion of current (April 2017) debates to cut Australian company tax, see, for example, B. Oquest (2017) ‘The economic case for a company tax is collapsing’, https://www.crikey.com.au/2016/03/29/the-economic-case-for-a-company-tax-cut-is-collapsing, date accessed 10 April 2017.
- 5.
For critical consideration of these programmes, see, for example, R. Scott and A. Heiss (eds) (2015) The Intervention: An Anthology, (Australia: Concerned Australians); N. Watson (2014) ‘From the Northern Territory Emergency Response to Stronger Futures–Where is the Evidence that Australian Aboriginal Women are Leading Self-Determining Lives?’ in S. Perera and S. H. Razack (eds), At the Limits of Justice: Women of Colour on Terror, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press) 335–355; S. Bielefeld (2016) ‘Income management and Indigenous women: A new chapter of patriarchal colonial governance?’ UNSW Law Journal, 39(2), 843–878; I. Katz and M. Raven (2013) ‘Evaluation of the Cape York Welfare Reform Trial’, Indigenous Law Bulletin, 8(7), 19–23.
- 6.
This is in practice taking place through permanency planning. Advocacy for this approach is seen in J. Sammut (2014) The Kinship Conundrum: The Impact of Self-Determination on Indigenous Child Protection, (Sydney: Centre for Independent Studies).
- 7.
See, for example, the Victorian Aboriginal Child Care Agency (https://www.vacca.org/), and for a discussion of the achievement of VACCA, see Libesman, above n.5, pp.160–4.
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Libesman, T. (2018). Human Rights and Neoliberal Wrongs in the Indigenous Child Welfare Space. In: Hendry, J., Tatum, M., Jorgensen, M., Howard-Wagner, D. (eds) Indigenous Justice. Palgrave Socio-Legal Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-60645-7_5
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