Action against Queensland Government over Indigenous child removal

A landmark, mammoth class action against the Queensland Government claims thousands of Indigenous children were removed and wrongly not returned to their families.

Indigenous children are being removed from their families at ever increasing rates across the state.

A landmark, mammoth class action against the Queensland Government claims thousands of Indigenous children were removed and wrongly not returned to their families.

Explosive Federal Court documents filed by Cairns firm Bottoms English Lawyers allege the Queensland Government breached the Racial Discrimination Act by removing Indigenous children from their families and not reunifying them despite parents undertaking the required steps to facilitate the return.

The action, which could pave the way for a string of similar cases if successful, also claims the department failed to adhere to placement principles in the Child Protection Act 1999 meant to prioritise placement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children with their family where this was safe.

It alleges the department removed the children and failed to unify them with their families because of the children’s and parent’s race.

Jerry Tucker, special counsel to Bottoms English lawyers.

Court documents allege the Queensland Department of Child Safety “did not support children within the system to learn and practice their culture, language, or maintain their connection to Country, and failed to place children with Indigenous family members as required by legislation”.

There are currently several dozen families involved in Far North Queensland in the class action, part of several hundred claimants in the class action statewide, relating to Indigenous child removals after 1992.

However, the number could swell to thousands by the time the case resolves, the firm said.

The number of Far North Queensland Indigenous children removed by the state government has grown by more than 40 per cent in a decade, in what one advocacy group has labelled the “second stolen generation”.

Jerry Tucker SC with Bottoms English Lawyers told News Corp there had been “systemic failure within the Child Safety department” and that the bulk of the cases will be on the “lack of reunification, rather than the removal itself”, as well as the department failing to place removed children with extended families, “even in circumstances when there were at the times willing kinship or Indigenous or both carers available to care for them”.

“We found that the department kept changing the goalposts when parents took the steps that were required of them and therefore the only reason they were not reunified was because of race” Ms Tucker said.

She said the case was a “turning point in history where First Nations families in Queensland have said to Child Safety that enough is enough. Group members are taking serious legal action against a government to address discrimination and its lasting impacts on family, culture, language and community”.

The court documents say the department breaches the claimant’s “internationally recognised human rights” including the “right to remain free from unlawful interference with the parent’s family, and the parent’s right to the protection of the family as the natural and fundamental group unit of society” and “had the effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment, or exercise of the applicant’s right to decide what kind of education their children receive”.

Court documents state in addition to financial compensation, claimants are seeking several other orders including “training for Department of Child Safety staff to interact with First Nations families in a trauma-informed and culturally sensitive manner” and a “formal and public apology”.

The matter, which is expected to take several years to conclude, has its first court date on April 9 at the Federal Court in Melbourne.

Originally published as Action against Queensland Government over Indigenous child removal