Ideas@TheCentre
Indigenous people need less not more discrimination
Jeremy Sammut |
12 February 2010
The report, which the NT government refuses to release, shows Indigenous children are at particular risk due to the ‘Aboriginal child placement principle.’ Placing at-risk children with family members or other Aboriginal carers to ensure they remain connected to Indigenous culture is standard practice in every state and territory.
The problem is that well-intentioned ‘anti-racist’ policies are discriminating against Indigenous children and resulting in worse outcomes. In the Northern Territory, basic child protection considerations have been set aside. Most ‘kinship’ carers are not even subjected to background checks by the Department of Families and Community Service. As a result, children are often taken out of one dysfunctional home and placed in another abusive situation. What ‘culture’ are children learning in these environments?
Retired children's court magistrate Sue Gordon has called for a national review of the Aboriginal child placement principle. She maintains that child protection services should not hesitate to place removed children in non-Indigenous foster care and should not be intimidated by fear of being labelled racist and creating another stolen generation.
Gordon’s call for child safety to trump ‘politically correct’ considerations comes as Alastair Nicholson, the former Chief Justice of the Family Court of Australia, has indulged in the kind of cheap shot, race-baiting politics that Indigenous policymaking can do without.
Nicholson has branded the Rudd government's plan to extend income management of welfare payments into mainstream Australian as nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to perpetuate racial discrimination against Indigenous Australians.
This is a bizarre argument – how is it racist to treat Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians alike? As the NT child protection revelations prove, many vulnerable Indigenous children would benefit greatly from a bit less discrimination and a bit more equality, just as the federal government is proposing in relation to welfare quarantining.
Dr Jeremy Sammut is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies. Sara Hudson is a Policy Analyst at the Centre.
