Cathy O'Toole (Herbert, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My electorate, Herbert, has a very high Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population, and achieving the recommendations of The family matters report is critical to my community. The Herbert electorate includes Palm Island, where 43.7 per cent of the population were under 24 years in 2014, according to the ABS.

The findings of this report are very disturbing, but the report does identify measures to turn the tide on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander child safety and removal. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children deserve the right to grow up in nurturing environments in order to reach their full potential. In 1997 the Bringing them home report found that 20 per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children were living in out-of-home care. Now, in 2016, that rate has increased to 35 per cent. Despite the numerous legal and policy frameworks, in 2015 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are living in out-of-home care at a rate 10 times that of non-Indigenous children, and if no action is taken by 2035 this number will triple. Lack of support is a major cause, with only $700 million spent on family support compared with $3.3 billion spent on child protection systems. Poverty is another major cause. Forty per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families live in low socio-economic areas. One in four children under 10 are homeless. Children five years of age are 2.5 times more likely to experience developmental delay. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are 3.5 times more likely to be unemployed.

The report makes the following nine recommendations: a comprehensive national strategy to redress the causes of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander child removal and improve child safety and well-being; a target and strategy to increase proportional investment in prevention and early intervention services; a focused strategy to redress Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander poverty and homelessness; comprehensive investment in effective, culturally-safe reunification programs across the country; broad-based legislative and policy reform to strengthen representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations, communities, families and children; investment in service delivery by community-controlled organisations—which will definitely deliver much-needed jobs; a framework for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander child wellbeing; development and publication of data to better measure the situation of, causes and responses to over-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children; and state based commissioners and peak bodies for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children.

The statistics and details in The family matters report are a sad indictment of our community. This report clearly shows that we are failing our first nations people and their children. That is simply not good enough. We can and must do better.