First Nations Victorians
Anasina GRAY-BARBERIO (Northern Metropolitan) (09:52): This week marks powerful and painful milestones for Indigenous Australians: National Reconciliation Week, National Sorry Day and the eighth anniversary of the Uluru Statement from the Heart. These events are a reminder of the continued call for justice for our Indigenous people – a demand for truth – not to mention that the foundations of this country were built on dispossession, violence and the erasure of First Nations people. The legacy of colonisation lives on in our institutions, systemic racism, economic inequality, reduced life expectancy, worse health outcomes and the trauma of forced removal of the stolen generations. Twenty-five years after the Bringing Them Home report, too many of its recommendations remain unfulfilled. Reconciliation must mean land back, truth telling, reparations and shared power and decision-making. Shamefully, and sadly, as of 23 June Victoria had the highest out-of-home care rate for First Nations children in the country, at 103 per 1000 First Nations children. The Family Matters Report 2024 projects that by 2034 the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in out-of-home care and on protection orders will rise to 38 per cent, compared to a just 5 per cent increase for non-Indigenous children. We cannot move forward as a nation when we deny justice to the oldest living culture on earth. Sorry means working towards unity and equity. Sorry means you do not do it again.