Thursday, 4 August 2022

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children

Dr BACH (Eastern Metropolitan) (20:38): (2035) When it comes to Indigenous Victorians some people are very good at gesture politics and very good at virtue signalling, but mark my words: at some point in the not-too-distant future a Victorian Premier will be forced to stand up and publicly apologise for the appalling impact of the current practices of the Andrews Labor government upon Indigenous Victorians. I had the great privilege today of sitting down for some length of time with Aunty Muriel Bamblett. She is the CEO of the Victorian Aboriginal Child Care Agency, and it was great to be with her today given that it is National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children’s Day. Now, in particular we spoke about young Indigenous people in Victoria’s child protection system in our out-of-home care system. As I have discussed in this place on many occasions, Indigenous children are appallingly over-represented in our child protection system in our out-of-home care system. Fully one in 10 Indigenous children here in Victoria is in the care system right now. That is easily the worst proportion of any Australian jurisdiction. One in nine Indigenous babies in Victoria is taken by the state into care—one in nine. Again, that is worse than any other Australian jurisdiction, and for many years we have known what can be done in order to make inroads into these chronic issues.

I have been calling, like Aunty Muriel has been calling over a long period of time, for a radical reorientation of our care system, away from a crisis-driven approach that focuses on more and more child protection workers and instead to an approach that focuses on early care and prevention. Now, I know this is difficult for government because this is the opposite of what the CPSU tells the government it should be doing. Over the last nine months we have had four child protection ministers, which in and of itself is quite appalling. What I have committed to doing if I have the great privilege of being our child protection minister after the next election is to shift significant powers from the government to Aboriginal community controlled organisations, to get the government out of kinship care and instead place that responsibility upon our community sector and our fantastic ACCOs, and also to make sure that all kids coming into the care system have a therapeutic assessment, something that is denied them today by the Andrews Labor government—a broader radical reorientation, away from a crisis-driven approach and instead to early intervention and also to early care. The action that I seek is a progress report from the minister on the government’s Closing the Gap target when it comes to the over-representation of Indigenous kids in care.