Victorian government’s twisted priorities will help keep kids in dangerous settings

The Andrews government is playing dangerous political games with the lives of Indigenous children, in a shameful betrayal of the most vulnerable members of our community.

The Dan Andrews government is playing dangerous political games with the lives of Indigenous children. Instead of focusing on the protection and welfare of children by reducing the deplorable rates of abuse and neglect in the Indigenous community, they are focusing on the activist agenda of reducing the over-representation of Indigenous children in care. It’s a shameful betrayal of the most vulnerable members of the community.

Child Protection and Family Services Minister Lizzie Blandthorn is trumpeting the return of a Bill aimed at reducing the number of Indigenous children removed from their families.

“The new laws are a first in Australia — they help keep Aboriginal children with their families by enshrining Aboriginal self-determination in child and family services,” she said.

The Andrews government is focusing on an activist agenda. Picture: Aaron Francis

Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price was scathing of the Victorian government’s twisted priorities that will help keep children in dangerous settings.

“Minister Lizzie Blandthorn is condemning Australian children to abuse and neglect because of their race,” she told me.

“To ignore the reasons behind why there are so many child removals while simultaneously keeping children in dysfunction is a human rights violation.”

This is a government that prefers to pander to the inner-city activist class and focus on symptoms, not the cause. The sad reality is that the reason there is over-representation of Indigenous children in care is because there is a large over-representation in the numbers of Indigenous children abused, neglected and sexually assaulted.

Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price is scathing of the Andrews government’s plan. Picture Mark Brake

According to Australian government data Indigenous children are up to eight times as likely as non-Indigenous children to be the subject of substantiated child abuse or neglect. We know that Indigenous women are more than 30 times as likely as non-Indigenous women to be hospitalised due to domestic violence. Governments at all levels should be tackling this epidemic.

Indigenous academic Dr Anthony Dillon believes the insistence of placing Aboriginal kids only with Aboriginal carers is not so much “self-determination” as separatism and the priority should be finding “loving, nurturing care providers”, whatever their ethnicity. “The ‘us vs them’ mentality has only ever failed and will continue to fail,” he told me.

But sadly, such logic and nuance is lost on the activists that have the ear of governments of all stripes.