Tony Abbott has told Australians to prepare for pain in the upcoming May budget, with wide ranging cuts to social services anticipated. The mid year fiscal report released last December removed any doubt that Abbott will target the most vulnerable, and some of the cuts which have been already announced will hurt Aboriginal communities very badly – and particularly Aboriginal children.
Aboriginal Early Childhood Support and Learning Inc (AECSL), a NSW organisation which has been funded by the federal government for over two decades, received an email one week before Christmas explaining that all of their funding will be withdrawn. Similar agencies in other states have also been cut.
The policy work, advocacy, training and professional development provided by AECSL has been crucial for establishing and maintaining a strong network of Aboriginal controlled preschools across NSW. Without it, they will lack collective organisation, interface with government, or support with stringent accreditation practices, leaving them extremely vulnerable to further cuts and efforts to “mainstream” Aboriginal preschools. Staff with highly specialised knowledge and understanding of Aboriginal early childhood could be lost entirely.
One cut that has received some publicity is the $3.6m withdrawn from Indigenous Family Violence Prevention Legal Services (IFVPLS), part of a broader $13m cut to Aboriginal legal aid. Media coverage thus far has rightly drawn attention to the cruelty of this decision, given the horrific cycles of family violence gripping Aboriginal communities.
Over the past three years, through my work at Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning Research at UTS, I have been participating in the Indigenous legal needs project, investigating the civil law legal needs of Indigenous communities across Australia. IFVPLS have been important participants in this project; in every jurisdiction we visited, it was clear that they are often the “go-to” office for Indigenous women in regional towns for a myriad of problems, not just family violence, due to their compassionate, culturally sensitive practice.
In the same vein, the Queensland Indigenous Family Violence Legal Service told a recent inquiry that the vast majority of their work is in assistance for women who have had their children removed by child protection services. Such removals are causing immense pain in communities. This year, almost 14,000 Aboriginal children were in “out-of-home-care”, more than were removed at any time during the Stolen Generations. This is five times the numbers in care when the landmark Bringing Them Home report was delivered 1997, despite its warnings that the dynamics of the Stolen Generations remained present.
As one woman in our Indigenous Legal Needs Project focus group said: “it’s Stolen Generations all over again, so why did (the government) say sorry?”
Despite the heroic efforts of dedicated Indigenous services, resources are simply not being made available to ensure Aboriginal rights are protected, or often even considered, through this process – 22% of women in our focus groups in Victoria identified child removal as a legal problem arising for them in the past two years, but many of these respondents had not accessed any legal support.
Service providers told us that in early proceedings in the Victorian children’s court, when “out of home care” orders are made, most women are reliant on duty solicitors who have little or no time to consider their case. Once orders are made, it’s very difficult to have children returned, and families are not eligible for legal aid to appeal decisions made by the department.
In Queensland, service providers said a lot of families had no representation at all for these early hearings. In the Northern Territory, legal services said they often discover parents who have already signed consent orders for removal without representation, or any understanding that they could refuse to sign and challenge the orders. Across the country, we heard stories of families being actively discouraged to seek legal support.
A lack of legal support to deal with other problems faced by Aboriginal families can also feed into the process of child removal. Disputes with landlords over rent, repairs and maintenance or threats of eviction were identified as a problem by more than 50% of focus group participants in the NT and more than 40% in Victoria. Eviction from housing can be unjust, but without any support, people are steamrolled by landlords. Once homeless, families are very vulnerable to losing their children, not being able to meet benchmarks for reunification if children have been taken.
These problems are getting worse. A “three strikes” rule for WA state housing tenants alleged to have breached “behaviour” guidelines was introduced in May 2011. By November 2013, 519 Aboriginal families had been evicted, affecting approximately 2,000 Aboriginal children.
The other contemporary Stolen Generations dynamic identified in Bringing Them Home is the horrific rate of juvenile incarceration. Australia wide, Aboriginal children are 31 times more likely to be incarcerated. But the Liberal government in Queensland is set to change legislation dealing with juvenile offenders, removing clauses citing detention as a “last resort”. Shane Duffy, the chairperson of the peak National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services (NATSILS), has called for an urgent intervention from the UN to stop the terrible impact this will have on Aboriginal children.
But NATSILS too have just had their funding completely withdrawn, knee-capping such advocacy. Across Australia, Aboriginal legal services will have all their policy officer positions cut and are anticipating future funding agreements will prohibit them advocating publicly around the issues affecting their people.
As recommended by Bringing Them Home, there needs to be massive investment in community development across Australia to meet the desperate poverty and oppression driving crises around Aboriginal education, child removal and youth incarceration. This needs to include a huge boost for already cash-strapped Aboriginal legal services trying to defend people’s rights.
Instead, Abbott is set to rip more gaping holes in the paper-thin safety net protecting more Aboriginal children from joining the ranks of the new Stolen Generation.