First Nations Victorians should be given the power to make decisions over the potential removal of Indigenous children from their families as part of a shake-up of the child protection system recommended by the Yoorrook truth-telling commission.
The Australia-first inquiry on Monday published its second interim report, which looked at injustices faced by Indigenous Victorians in the child protection and criminal justice systems.
It said it has heard evidence of the “established process” to identify unborn children who may be moved into the child protection system – which it added is often a “pipeline” to the justice system.
“In effect, this means an Aboriginal child in our community can be in a pipeline to the justice system before being born,” the Yoorrook report said. “It is hard to imagine a scenario that more profoundly demonstrates systemic failure.”
It said the Victorian government must “transfer decision-making power, authority, control and resources to First Peoples, giving full effect to self-determination in the Victorian child protection system”.
The report recommends Victoria’s treaty process between the government and the democratically elected First Peoples’ Assembly determine what the transfer of powers looks like.
Sue-Anne Hunter, a Wurundjeri and Ngurai Illum Wurrung woman and the deputy chair of Yoorrook, said evidence about unborn child protection notifications was challenging to hear.
“As a mum, I found it quite harrowing that the first people some mothers are seeing after birth are child protection workers,” she told Guardian Australia.
“It reminds me of stories from the stolen generations.”
Hunter said she was most struck by the lack of accountability in the systems.
Argiri Alisandratos, a senior bureaucrat in the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing, told the inquiry that child protection reports for unborn Indigenous children were more than double those for non-Indigenous children.
The inquiry heard apologies from seven ministers and public officials about the state’s treatment of First Nations people. They included the state’s chief police commissioner, Shane Patton, who unreservedly apologised for the force’s past and present actions that inflicted trauma on Indigenous people
But Hunter said apologies needed to come with “action and change”.
The Yoorrook report made 46 recommendations in total, including raising the age of criminal responsibility to 14, establishing an independent police oversight body and going further on Victoria’s proposed bail reform.
It also recommended a separate child protection system for Indigenous Victorians, with legislation to be negotiated by the assembly, saying risk assessment tools used by child protection workers were affected by “racial bias”.
The report said Victoria police’s internal complaints system was failing First Peoples, who were subjected to racial profiling and policing, pointing to the need for an independent oversight body. Victoria police have previously rejected allegations of racial policing.
The First Peoples’ Assembly is expected to start negotiations for a statewide treaty with the government in the coming months.
The Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, last year flagged an overhaul of the state’s child protection system. He wrote to the inquiry earlier this year, describing the overrepresentation of First Nations children in Victoria’s child protection and criminal justice systems as a “great shame”.
The government has committed to raising the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 12 and to 14 within four years. But Yoorrook said it should be raised to 14 with no exceptions and that the detention of children under the age of 16 should be prohibited.
The report concluded there was an “unbroken line” between historical cultural and human rights violations – such as the sanctioned removal of Indigenous children from parents – and the current child protection and criminal justice systems.
Victoria has Australia’s highest rate of Indigenous children in the out-of-home care system. As of December 2022 Aboriginal children were more than 24 times as likely to be in that system compared with non-Aboriginal children, according to government data provided to the inquiry.
Indigenous Victorians are also overrepresented in the state’s criminal justice system.
Yoorrook is Australia’s first Indigenous truth-telling body and has the same powers as a royal commission.
Its mandate is to investigate historical and current systemic injustices against First Nations people and it will produce a final report with its findings by mid-2025.
