Bill Shorten, where have you been?

Labor leader Bill Shorten and Chief Minister of the Northern Territory Michael Gunner talks with land council members and traditional owners in Barunga. Picture: Keri Megelus

The problem of sexual abuse of children as young as two in Aboriginal communities across the country has received widespread publicity over the last year or two. This is a healthy development, because too many of us knew of the problem and did nothing to fix it. Too many of us feared being dubbed “racist” or felt that our indigenous people should deal with the problem themselves. This conspiracy of silence simply meant that more and more children were subjected to the most vicious forms of abuse.

You would be entitled to believe that Labor leader Bill Shorten’s ears would have pricked up, particularly after the details of those horrific attacks in Tennant Creek were revealed.

Apparently one of the few people who missed all of this was the Opposition Leader. He claimed at the Barunga Festival this week that “whitefellas” who “come in paternalistic” have no business involving themselves in taking Aboriginal children away from their homes. He believes that indigenous Australians should be given “self-determination” on this issue. This is the solution which got us to where we are in the first place. Doesn’t Shorten realise that every year thousands of white or “non-Aboriginal” children are taken from their parents?

When I was Social Security Minister in 1991 I visited a group of children to whom the government was providing assistance to live away from home. I had been criticised by a number of Senators, including the highly conservative Brian Harradine, that I was destroying the concept of “family”. I was accused of keeping children away from their homes which were safe havens for them. Well-meaning the social conservatives may have been, but they were quite ignorant of the ugly world which existed away from their nice suburbs and white picket fences.

A 14-year-old girl in Melbourne had been so frequently sexually abused by her stepfather that she had run away and lived “rough” because she said that despite that lifestyle being inherently dangerous, it was far better than being raped at home on a regular basis. A 15-year-old in Sydney recounted how his mother had given him $2 when she dropped him off and told him not to come home because her new boyfriend didn’t want him around. There are plenty of happy homes but for some unfortunate kids their homes are houses of horror. How many more indigenous children will we leave in harm’s way? How many more times will the failure of State departments with responsibility for the welfare of children be hauled over the coals for failing to remove kids in danger from their home environment.

Drugs and alcohol affect adults and children in both indigenous and non-indigenous communities but there is no doubt those problems are far worse in remote communities where there is zero prospect of getting a job. Some “whitefellas” will have to be involved if we are ever to bridge the gap. That gap is too often determined by health, school attendance and completion or housing. These are all extremely important issues but they pale in comparison to the right of children to be free from violence or sexual abuse.

There may well be merit in the Treaty of which the Opposition Leader is talking about but the rights of those kids must come first. We don’t complain when a child at risk is taken from a home in suburbia and we need to be consistent in applying our outrage.

Mr best advice to Bill Shorten is to stop playing up to the audience he is addressing. Bill, other audiences hear and compare notes.