'Overreaction to stolen generation' puts Indigenous children at risk – WA judge
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Version 0 of 1. An “overreaction” to the stolen generations tragedy has left Aboriginal children at risk because child protection workers are reluctant to place them outside their communities, Western Australia’s chief justice has said. Wayne Martin said while it was important for Aboriginal children to remain on country wherever possible, that had led to some situations where children remained in inappropriate homes. “I think there has been an overreaction to the stolen generation which has resulted in people being too willing to allow Aboriginal kids to remain in environments that they would not allow non-Aboriginal kids to remain in,” he said. Related: Indigenous children nine times more likely to be placed in care, report finds Martin made the comments at a hearing of the Senate committee into Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander experiences of law enforcement and justice systems in Perth on Tuesday. He gave the example of one case dealt with by the children’s court where an Aboriginal child, who was in the care of the state, was “running around what looked like to be a dump outside Port Hedland”. “The agents of the state had made the decision that that was an appropriate place for the child to remain,” he said. “You ask yourself, if that was a non-Aboriginal kid, would the same decision have been made? I think the answer would be, not. “So what concerned me was that because of the enthusiasm to leave Aboriginal children with their family, for understandable reasons, to leave them in a culturally appropriate place, there is a danger that certain minimum standards of safety and minimum standards of health and welfare are not being met. “And that in itself is a form of discrimination because we’re not requiring the same standards to be applied to Aboriginal kids as we are to non-Aboriginal kids.” Aboriginal children are being put into out-of-home care in increasing numbers. A report from the Productivity Commission in April found that children with an Indigenous background were nine times more likely to end up in care. Martin said a failure to address the underlying problems in some communities, combined with a lack of support services, meant police were being called in to deal with what were essentially social issues. “A situation I hear far too often is that kids in Western Australia and some regional towns, and I won’t mention one, they’re on the street at night because home’s not a safe place to be; because mum’s playing cards, dad’s drinking, and the mob are all there,” he said. “They haven’t been fed because mum is preoccupied, so they break into a house to steal food, and while they’re there, they trash the house. “And the reason they trash the house is not because they want to, it’s to elevate the scale of their offending so that they are taken into custody. “The reason they want to be taken into custody is so they can get a decent feed and a safe place to sleep at night. “Now what that tells me is that what is essentially a child welfare problem is manifesting itself in the criminal justice system. Related: Amnesty condemns Western Australia for keeping children in adult prison According to a recent report by Amnesty International, Indigenous children were 26 times more likely than non-Indigenous children to spend time in custody in Australia. In Western Australia, the overrepresentation of Indigenous kids was even worse – they’re jailed at 53 times the rate of non-Aboriginal kids. Broken down, that means one in 28 Indigenous boys and one in 113 Indigenous girls aged between 10 and 17 had spent time in detention, compared with one in 544 and one in 2,439 for non-Indigenous boys and girls. Martin said that jail was so ubiquitous in some Aboriginal communities that it was considered a rite of passage. “For kids in the leafy western suburbs of this city, being sent to detention would be an horrendous prospect,” he said. “For Aboriginal kids it’s not the same effect because their cousin’s in there, their father has been in prison, their brother has been there, it just doesn’t hold the same threat, the same effective sanction. “And, tragically, in some communities Aboriginal kids see it’s just what you do. It’s one of the things you do as part of growing up, you end up in detention.” That same Amnesty International report said that WA and the Northern Territory’s reporting of imprisonment statistics lagged behind the national average. Martin said that data would be useful but it wasn’t necessary to see exact numbers to recognise a growing problem. “In the Aboriginal space, tragically, the data is so gross, I don’t need detailed data to know how big the problem is,” he said. “It’s massive and the problem is getting worse.” Greens senator for WA, Rachel Siewert, sits on the Senate committee into Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander experiences of law enforcement and justice systems. She told Guardian Australia the argument that all Australians were equal before the law did not stand up to the weight of data about Aboriginal overrepresentation in the justice system. “There is systemic disadvantage and justice in the system,” she said. “Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people are not approaching the system from the same footing. We need a system that produces substantive equality.” Related: Nova Peris says government language around Indigenous people is patronising Siewert said the changes needed to rectify the problems Martin said were generational and needed the support of strong, consistent community programs, which was not possible in the current funding environment. She supported the words of Northern Territory senator Nova Peris, who said the federal government’s approach to Indigenous affairs gave “hope and aspiration on three-year cycles”. The Abbott government recently cut the length of its funding contracts to 12 months in the Aboriginal sector, ostensibly so it can monitor which programs are most effective. But Siewert said the short-term view did not allow community-based programs time to effect change. “We are talking about a generational change, and that’s why we are all saying that you need to provide certainty of funding for programs that work,” Siewert said. |