“Yarning with Youth”: our new Commissioner for Aboriginal kids

I don't know.

I don't know how you can sit in front of these kids sometimes and not of a tear in your eye. I've been called too emotional, but if that's what it is, I don't care. It's humanizing our kids and I think that's part of what I want to do in this commission.

So Wen hundred has had a long career which started as a social worker and reached the heights as a commissioner for Victoria's Truth Telling Commission y Rook. Now she's been appointed as Australia's first National Commissioner for Aboriginal Entirestrade Islander Children and young people. And the way of the responsibility is very real.

It's been called for for a long time. And in saying that, can I just start by recognizing those people that have come before us, our ancestors, our elders, but particularly those that are fought for our children, those from stolen generation, those who turned home, those that didn't.

Her apportment comes at a time when aberig and on Tirestrude Island are adults are being imprisoned at one of the highest rates in the world, incarceration rates arising instead of falling. Indigenous people make up nearly a third of all deaths and custody and most closing the gap. Targets for children are not on track, with some going backwards. So the task to break the cycle that leads to these appalling stats is a huge one.

So when I walked in, it's huge, right. My first job is to get set the foundation. It's a solid foundation, so that this commission worked for later down, you know, years down the track.

I'm Daniel James and you're listening to seven AM today, National Commissioner for Aboriginal and Torrest Dratiland, their Children and Young People, sue An Hunter on the task ahead and giving voice to children who have too often been spoken about but rarely listened to. It's Friday, February twenty In terms of the issues that are confronting appalstra on the children. What's the priority there for you in terms of now that you're established, what do you want to tackle first?

One of the things we sort of have underway is we are commissioning a piece of work at this point around all the big commissions inquiries that have already been done, you know, and I know there's one hundred recommendations, there's hundreds of recommendations seeing the shelf.

The Human Rights Commission has now published its report.

It's called Bringing Them Home.

It's a profoundly moving, deeply disturbing document.

It is most of the recommendations put forward by the Bringing Home Report AH have either never been or inadequately implemented.

With the report of the Royal Commission to Aboriginal Destin's Custody, which showed we're devastating clarity that the past lives on in inequality, racism and injustice.

Twenty years ago, the Royal Commission into Original Deaths in Custody delivered its final report. Two decades on, Indigenous incarceration rates remain high and Indigenous deaths in custody is still happening.

And I think we'll start with the Bringing Them Home Report in our home care move forward from there. We'll also look at death in custody, how does that affect children? All those reports that will set a blueprint. I don't want to come out all guns are blazing doing another report that nobody's going to look at. The Other thing that we've started putting our.

Minds to is data.

Data is collected differently in states, territories, and jurisdictions. Around the place, particularly on our kids, and it's done differently because there's different laws in every state. So collecting the data nationally to get a really good solid understanding of where our kids are at in our home care, with justice, in health, in education data tells a story.

We really need that.

But also setting up a frame work of youth, of going out and consulting and I hate the word consulting that you know, yarning with youth about their views and what they want to see in and getting their views even into a lot of how we're setting this up. That's not really tackling the big issues to start with, but it's setting a really big foundation, a solid foundation that this commission can be built off.

This role has been written into law. What powers have you been given and how are they different from what existed before, if there was anything before.

This is the first time our kids are in there in a Commonwealth law. So we sit under like a Public Service Act at the moment. That will then give us the independence that we need so we're free of political interference, actually anybody's interference. It's big, like it's a big responsibility. That means we can motion our own inquiries. That means we can compel documents. That means we can ask people to come b for us and give us answer our questions. It also means that we can speak

Get picked up. I get that.

I've just been on the Yarrouk Justice Commission and if you look at once, we get this commissioned piece of work and we'll see how many taken up.

But it also gives me an in to.

Understand the issues of why and really work about getting them. I'm going to be persistent and continuous and I'm going to be really selective in recommendations.

But I'll also run that.

Past the kids, because it's them. This is for them, this is what they want to see. I think one of the things I've always thought about, Daniel is the gap between policy and on the ground delivery.

This is big gap.

I want to get into the policy level, and I've been talking to people already, you know, people in Parliament across the board, saying, if you have something you want to get through and it includes our children, let us know early. Don't just spin that on We will break that down and take it out to our kids and say, hey, this is what they're looking at.

What does that mean for you? What does that look like?

And then be able to give them some advice about what that looks like on the ground. What the kids are saying. You don't get better outcomes for our kids through their voices.

What powers haven't you been given that you would have liked to have had.

We've had a big jibaji about quite a few, but I will say I come in a bit cynical.

I didn't think we'd get much.

We have more than I actually thought we'd get, so I'm really grateful for that. The rights to entry, we don't have don Dale or Banksy Hill, you know those places.

Image you've just seen isn't from Guantanamo Bay or Abbergrabe, but Australia in twenty fifteen, a boy hooded, shackled, struck to a chair and left alone. It is Bob Barrick. This is juvenile justice in the Northern Territory.

What we need to remember is in most jurisdictions there's a Commissioner for children, or there's there's also maybe not everywhere, but there's commissioner original hundred children as well. They know their own backyard, they know what's going on in their own state, and I will be guided by them. Whether I'm the backup dancer in something is fine or whether they want me to be the you know, the front person in that will work that out as we go along.

As you've alluded to you throughout our conversation so far, so am many of the biggest leavers sit with states and territories. So what can a National commissioner realistically shift?

I think I'm just going to be like a little terrier and I'm constantly going to be at their door, you know, knock and knock and knocking, and have those in and make those relationships. There's power in numbers. We need to remember that. But I think if we can't with the voices and stories, you can't dismiss the voices and stories of our youth. I don't know about you, Daniel, but when you sit with our young ones and you listen the adversity they've been through to where they are now,

I haven't. This is amazing for our people.

And I said you need to just we're going to catch up and she said, I said, I need your story out there, and she said, I've come from nothing, And she's not even a I've come from nothing. They're the stories that need to be in front the humanize our kids, because they're dehumanized all the time.

Coming up, what's most broken about the system? Let's talk a bit about you, Sue, and what made you want to take up this position as a National Commissioner for Average Ultage rat On to Children.

In the first instance, I think the work I've done is a social worker on the ground with our kids, and I carry look, I carry hundreds of stories I've sat with our kids in hospitals, and I've sat with them in atension, sat with them in classrooms and homes and you know, little did I know then as a little social worker where I'd end up.

But those I learned.

More of those kids than I have ever in a classroom doing my social work degree. I do for them, That's why, and it really drives me. You know, I'm an aunty and a mum as well. Our kids deserve better, they just do. It's all been with and for our next generation. It's just such an honor. But it's huge, Like the enormity of it. I have to chunk it down and break it down, otherwise it would just be too overwhelming.

But the.

Everyone's willing to help. Everyone wants to chip in.

And I love that You've worked with Aboriginal children for a long time now in all sorts of different levels over the years. What have you seen what's most broken about the way we deal with Aboriginal entirestrana and the kids in a systemic sense and in a societal sense.

Yeah, I was thinking about this the other day. We were talking about different things in sort of our home care and stuff. Kids always go home right and whether they run from our home care or what, haven't you they always go home. We need to support the family as a whole. Sometimes kids need to be removed. Let's be really clear. It's about the safety and the rights of the child, and the rights of the child with the forefront for me and the safety and well being.

To go home.

Why don't we working with families. It's a whole, it's a whole family. We strengthen the family as well as the child, and then in doing that we're also strengthening the community. It costs more to lock a child out than it would be to put that into a family, a whole family and a child. There's more focus on policy. We lose that this is human beings. They're not statistics, their children, they're families.

You've seen firsthand that education has a big role to play in helping address the problems facing First Nations children and young people. So what do you want all Australians to know that they perhaps don't know right now?

I want people to understand that our children are strong, they're smart, they need opportunities and we can grow that by not doing the public narrative of their all criminals and they're not demonized. And we have this horrific public

For too long. That's what I want Australia to know.

Finally, Sueanne, recently the Government handed down it's latest Closing the Gap report and most targets aren't on track and several are even going backwards.

Mister speaker, where are now five years away from most of the target deadlines? We're clear about where there is more want to do. We must also guard against talk of failure, because talk of failure dismisses the aspirations and achievements of Indigenous Australians.

It ignores Why is that in your view? And can we ever turn that around?

I think we can turn it around, I really do. So what Closing the Gap does is give us the data yeah and tells us this isn't working. What I can do in this role. Let's look at the accountability. Why isn't it working, where is government investing, where are they missing out? Who's not doing what? And hold them have the accountability. I can call that out. I can call out those pieces. I can ask for those documents. I can have a look at what where the gaps

It deals with our kids, and so.

We all are accountable. We all can shape the future of our kids. But we all need to work together on getting this done.

Commissioner I Hatta, thank you so much for your time, Thanks for having me. Also in the news, a new reporters found that in twenty twenty eight, federal state and territory government gross debt as a share of the economy will exceed levels not seen since World War Two. Announce us by the E sixty one Institute says Australia will cease to be a load debt country and be more vulnerable than a future christ without a combination of spending