Lets talk about child abuse in indigenous communities. Lift our deeply buried heads from the sand. ....Warren Mundine, chairman of the Prime Minister’s Indigenous Advisory Council, said it was time to talk openly about the “vicious cycle of abuse” plaguing indigenous communities. “We’ve got to stop pussyfooting around it,” he said. “We’ve got to confront this, we’ve got to talk about this openly and move away from throwing glib one-liners at each other.” The figures, from the NSW Department of Family and Community Services, reveal there were 6793 Aboriginal children in NSW in out-of-home care at June 30, up from 6203 the previous year..... FULL ARTICLE: ALMOST one in every 10 Aboriginal children has been removed from parents in NSW, prompting calls by Tony Abbott’s top indigenous adviser to “stop pussyfooting around” the issue of child abuse and neglect. Figures obtained by The Australianreveal the number of Aboriginal children taken into care in NSW — which already had the highest rates of indigenous child removal — jumped almost 10 per cent over the past year. Warren Mundine, chairman of the Prime Minister’s Indigenous Advisory Council, said it was time to talk openly about the “vicious cycle of abuse” plaguing indigenous communities. “We’ve got to stop pussyfooting around it,” he said. “We’ve got to confront this, we’ve got to talk about this openly and move away from throwing glib one-liners at each other.” The figures, from the NSW Department of Family and Community Services, reveal there were 6793 Aboriginal children in NSW in out-of-home care at June 30, up from 6203 the previous year. Mr Mundine said he did not believe children were being removed unnecessarily. “In most of these cases there is genuine concern for the safety of the children,” he said. “You’re looking at family trees where there are five generations of abuse ... You are seeing this vicious cycle of abuse continuing.” Indigenous communities, governments and community groups needed to work together to deal with the problem. “People just can’t point fingers at each other.” The figures translate to 93.6 Aboriginal children in NSW removed per 1000 — up from 85.5 last year. In the ACT, 70.5 Aboriginal children were removed per 1000; 69.5 in Victoria, 60.7 in South Australia, 53.3 in Western Australia, 43.6 in Queensland, 28.5 in Tasmania and 22.2 in the Northern Territory in 2013. The national average for non-indigenous children was 5.4 per 1000 children in 2013. Centre for Independent Studies research fellow Jeremy Sammut said the figures were a wake-up call. “It’s time for serious national scrutiny of what’s going on,” Dr Sammut said. “While we’ve had a lot of attention on other areas of indigenous policy, rightfully — such as welfare, education and employment — child protection has tended to slip under the radar and hasn’t had the same level of national attention. It’s been left purely as a state issue and the states have comprehensively failed not just for indigenous but for non-indigenous children as well.” Josephine Cashman, another member of Mr Abbott’s Indigenous Advisory Council, said she believed the government needed to be “fair dinkum” about supporting victims of crime. “Taking children away isn’t addressing the core issue of making communities safe and functional,” she said. Ms Cashman, a former NSW prosecutor, said in inner-Sydney’s Redfern, relations between the community and police had improved and this had helped to bring down crime rates and stem the numbers of indigenous children being removed. Family and Community Services Minister Gabrielle Upton said the department was working closely with the community to ensure the best interests of children were protected. m.theaustralian.au/national-affairs/indigenous/warren-mundine-end-the-tiptoeing-on-indigenous-child-abuse/story-fn9hm1pm-1227170519453
Posted on: Wed, 31 Dec 2014 00:33:44 +0000
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