Vikki Campion: MPs have lost their Voice when it comes to protecting Indigenous kids from abuse

If there is one person who needs a voice, it is a five-year-old being molested by an adult. If there has ever been a reason for a royal commission, surely that is it, writes Vikki Campion.

You can drape the nation in red, black and yellow flags, and open every meeting with a Welcome to Country, but until you stop vulnerable children from being abused, all that amounts to is tokenism.

One white woman allegedly raped in Parliament House: the Labor Party will raise hell for you, millions of dollars will be spent on inquiries and reviews, and workplace laws will be changed.

One Indigenous female senator threatened by a white male senator in the stairwell of Parliament House, and the man will be sacked from the Liberal Party.

But if children are raped in remote regions, far from the shiny black Comcar convoy, and raised in a climate of fear of speaking out, it is crickets.

Those who so bravely advocate for all other victims including the Climate-200-backed independents, the Greens, Labor and child abuse victim Bass MP Bridgette Archer all of a sudden lose their Voice and vote against exposing it.

Labor’s Andrew Charlton in parliament. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

In leading his argument against a royal commission, Parramatta MP Andrew Charlton said Indigenous children were seven times more likely to be abused, at an average age of eight years old.

“Between 2021 and 2022, more than 13,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children were under child protection substantiation.,” he said.

“That is seven times higher than for non-Indigenous children.

“I’ll say that again: Indigenous children are seven times more likely to be exposed to child abuse.”

His argument was not to deny that this disgusting trauma happens, but that it doesn’t need another report.

But a royal commission is not just another report, it’s an independent investigation with coercive powers.

So who exactly does he think that will protect? Because it sure isn’t the kids.

If Indigenous child abuse is as prevalent as Dr Charlton told the house, until they are protected from harm at home, everything else is just perfunctory.

Child abuse is the bullseye of the dartboard of pain. Every other problem radiates from it.

If you are sexually abused as a child, you are on a highway to hell. That’s what the juvenile crime crisis stems back to, the high youth suicide rate, the high hospital admission rates, the alcohol and drug abuse which leads back to the low birth weights — and the cycle goes on.

A royal commission is for when the system fails and the normal processes are not open to victims.

Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price had called for a royal commission into the sexual abuse of Indigenous children. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Lingiari MP Marion Scrymgour claimed in the Matter of Public Importance debate on Friday that sexual abuse “was the reason for substantiated harm in only 7 per cent of cases for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander kids” and that “every time child protection is politicised, perpetrators go underground”.

To claim that the only time perpetrators go underground is when you have a royal commission into child abuse of Indigenous kids is an outrageous proposition.

Where are the pedophiles the rest of the time? Walking the streets?

When Senator Jacquie Lambie and Coalition MPs agitated for a royal commission into veteran suicides for a range of concerns, including young people in defence being raped and humiliated, nobody said “we can’t do this, as this will push perpetrators underground”.

In the royal commissions into aged care, robodebt, violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation of people with a disability, who was pushed underground exactly?

A royal commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody was a proper process, but a royal commission into abuse of Aboriginal children is not.

If there is one person who needs a voice, it is a five-year-old being molested by an adult. If there has ever been a reason for a royal commission, surely that is it.

What do you say to that child who asks “why did you let this happen to me?”.

Do you tell her or him that it would be racist to help? That it would upset Aboriginal bureaucracy on cultural grounds?

Would it hurt their feelings to question if they were doing their job properly or at all?

Being silent is being complicit.

Pedophiles create a power structure where the child is the bad one for speaking up. In remote Indigenous communities, the perpetrator also has more cultural authority than the child.

Young women who report abuse are ostracised from their communities, their whole families kicked out and left homeless.

Jacinta Nampijinpa Price actually brought them to parliament long before she was elected here, and the Liberal minister at the time, Ken Wyatt, refused to meet with them.

There is a correlation between young people’s suicide after reporting sexual abuse.

How could you have possibly pushed the Voice for 18 months, pushing out statistics of harm — such as in “remote areas Indigenous females were 51 times as likely to be hospitalised due to assault than non-Indigenous females living in the same region” — and continue to ignore little kids?

They have blasted us relentlessly with their concern for the Indigenous campaigning for the Voice, which would have cost untold billions, but now won’t support a child abuse royal commission because of cost?

You can have the most generous royal commission that ever existed just by soaking up the waste of duplication among agencies that refuse to work together because they fear their funding will be stolen.

The Voice has shown us that the Australian public is miles ahead of the politicians and is sick of political correctness instead of logic.

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