Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The matter is that an Indigenous person is involved, either as a victim or a perpetrator, but this cannot apply to a situation where a white person is the victim or the perpetrator. I ask the minister whether it is true that, in the last year of statistics in this country, there were some 34,000 cases of assault against children that were documented and that 6,000 of these involved Indigenous children; therefore, more than 80 per cent did not involve Indigenous children. I ask whether it is true that these coercive Star Chamber powers can be used on a minority—in a minority of cases in Australia—on the basis that black people, not white people, are involved.