Special thanks to Dr Tracy Westerman AM, keynote speaker; author and Founder of Westerman Jilya Institute for Indigenous Mental Health for her tireless work. Sections of this article reference information that has been collated and shared from her analysis.
I wish I was writing an article about Country or the achievements on reconciliation; I’d even be glad to be writing and sharing my grocery list – anything other than this.
I know you were impacted by the recent news coming from the Northern Territory. Kumanjayi Little Baby died at just five years old. Five years. In the most horrific way.
This is so close to home for me, closer than you would think.
Yes, it impacts me as a mother of two young children. It impacts me as a someone who has dedicated her life to children, first as an early year’s educator and now as a consultant. It impacts me as an Aboriginal woman, that our children, with all the expectations placed on them with the promise of a better future, are treated so poorly. In life and in death.
It also impacts me as a kinship carer, I’ve been a foster parent to Aboriginal children, I’ve seen the issues right up front. I’ve begged, pleaded and screamed for change. And I knew exactly what was to come next.
Before the grief could even settle, before her family had space to mourn, the conversation shifted. Not toward accountability. Not toward systemic failure. Toward culture.
Toward removing more Aboriginal children. Again.
Every Time an Aboriginal Child Dies, the Response Is the Same
Let me be clear about what happens when an Aboriginal child dies in this country.
There's no national inquiry into why the systems designed to protect them failed. There's no emergency funding for support services. There's no reckoning with the fact that the same departments responsible for "child safety" are the ones who either missed the warning signs or were never resourced to respond in the first place.
Instead, what happens is this: politicians’ line up to tell the nation that Aboriginal culture is the problem. That Aboriginal families are the problem. That the solution is to remove more children, faster, with fewer safeguards. Some with tears in their eyes, others with anger.
When a non-Indigenous child dies, we don't see federal politicians calling for the removal of all white children from their communities. We don't see entire cultural groups painted as incapable of caring for their young. We see grief. We see calls for better systems. We see nuance.
But when an Aboriginal child dies, nuance disappears. Suddenly, it's open season on an entire people.
And here we are. Again.
The Numbers Don't Lie, Even If the Narrative Does
Dr Tracy Westerman AM advises “over the last ten years, the non-Indigenous child removal rate in Australia has decreased by 13%. The Indigenous rate has increased by 120%. Same decade. Same child protection system. Completely different outcomes.”
This isn't happening because Aboriginal families suddenly became less capable. It's happening because one group of families is being served by the system, and the other is being surveilled, judged, and punished by it.
Let's zoom in on the Northern Territory, where the rhetoric is loudest. 92% of children in NT care are already Aboriginal.
You didn’t read that wrong. Ninety-two percent.
It is impossible to remove more Aboriginal children from that system. The claim that we've "gone soft" on child protection in Aboriginal communities is not just wrong, it's an insult to every statistic, every family, every child already torn apart.
And if you want to talk about sexual abuse, because that's where the conversation always goes, isn't it? let's talk about it with honesty.
Dr Tracy Westerman AM continues “sexual abuse accounts for 6% of notifications for Aboriginal children. For non-Indigenous children, it's 10%. The data does not support the narrative being weaponised right now. It never has.”
Neglect Is Not What You Think It Is
“82% of Aboriginal child removals are classified as neglect.” Dr Tracy Westerman AM says, “Neglect sits at the lowest level on the risk continuum. The evidence-based response to neglect is not removal. It's intensive family support. Housing. Income support. Access to healthcare. Culturally safe services.”
But neglect is also the category most vulnerable to cultural bias. Queensland's child safety system recently removed its structured decision-making tool because it was found to disproportionately flag Aboriginal families for removal, not because of actual risk, but because of how risk was being assessed.
Studies have shown that Indigeneity is often a stronger predictor for child removal than an actual high-risk assessment. Here is where the system is weaponised. Being Aboriginal makes you more likely to lose your children, not because you're unsafe, but because the system sees you as unsafe by default because you’re Aboriginal.
That's not child protection. That's discrimination dressed up in policy.
The Geography of Removal Tells the Real Story
Western Australia has 20 child protection districts. Remove just four of them, the most remote, the most under-resourced, and the state's Aboriginal child removal rate drops from 61% to 38%.
Nearly half. Gone. Because of poverty. Because of cultural bias. Because of a system that was never designed to work for these families and has never been held accountable for failing them.
Dr Tracy Westerman AM shares that four districts tell the story:
- Kimberley: 100% of children in care are Aboriginal.
- Pilbara: 96%.
- Goldfields: 87%.
- Murchison: 88%.
This defies logic. The idea that there has never been a non-Indigenous child in the Kimberley in need of state care protection is absurd. What it tells us is that the system is not identifying risk, it's identifying race.
Dr Tracy Westerman AM continues “the Kimberley has the highest rates of child suicide in the country. Indigenous children are six times more likely to take their own lives than non-Indigenous children. This tells us very clearly that when you remove a child from their family. Those children never recover. Those families never recover. And the harm is collateral and generational.”
Only 5% of Notifications Come from Wealthy Suburbs
Child abuse happens everywhere. In mansions and housing commission flats. In private schools and public playgrounds. But only 5% of child protection notifications come from wealthy suburbs.
We are not catching child abuse. We are catching poverty. We are catching single mothers. We are catching families who can't afford rent, who don't have access to mental health services, who live in communities that have been systematically neglected for generations.
And we are catching Aboriginal families at rates that should terrify anyone who cares about justice. While we target poor Black families, genuinely abused children in other homes go unseen. Child abuse is a human issue. Linking culture to abuse is eugenics.
It has always been eugenics.
Let's Talk About the Myths, Because They're Everywhere
Myth #1: "Aboriginal parents choose not to care for their children"
The Reality: Many child removals linked to "neglect" are driven by systemic socio-economic inequalities. Housing shortages. A lack of culturally appropriate treatment services. When basic material needs aren't met, these issues get treated as parental failings rather than results of structural disadvantage.
If your family doesn't have stable housing, that's coded as neglect. If you're struggling with mental health and there's no culturally safe service within 500 kilometres, that's coded as neglect. If your child misses school because you don't have reliable transport, that's coded as neglect.
These aren't choices. They're conditions. And the system punishes families for surviving them.
Myth #2: "Extended family or community care is a sign of neglect"
The Reality: Child protection systems have historically evaluated Aboriginal child-rearing practices using white, middle-class standards. Extended family networks, shared parenting responsibilities, and kinship systems are core strengths of Aboriginal culture. They're not indicators of instability or dysfunction.
When a child is cared for by their grandmother, their aunty, their cousin—that's not neglect. That's culture. That's community. That's how many Aboriginal families have raised children for tens of thousands of years.
But the system doesn't see it that way. The system sees it as failure.
Myth #3: "Children were removed during the Stolen Generations for their own safety"
The Reality: The mass removal of Indigenous children during the Stolen Generations was driven by assimilationist policies, not child protection.
Historical records and findings in the Bringing Them Home Report make this clear: these policies were a destructive attempt to erase cultural identity. To "breed out" Aboriginality. To, in the words of the time, "smooth the dying pillow."
This wasn't about safety. This was about genocide. And we are repeating it.
Myth #4: "Mainstream child protection tools are objective and culturally neutral"
The Reality: Risk assessment tools used by statutory departments have been criticised for inherent cultural bias.
Indigeneity is often a stronger predictor for child removal and investigations than an actual high-risk assessment. That tells us the tools aren't measuring risk, they're measuring race.
Over-surveillance. Institutional discrimination. Call it what it is.
Myth #5: "Intervention is a last resort to prevent abuse"
The Reality: Despite policy frameworks prioritising early intervention, most government funding goes toward out-of-home care rather than preventative community-based support services. As a result, Aboriginal children remain disproportionately removed from their families. We're spending millions to take children away. We're spending pennies to keep families together.
That's not an accident. That's a choice.
We are Living Through the Second Stolen Generations
Removal leads to the justice system. To substance use. To violence. To poor health and education outcomes. Every poor outcome you can name, the Stolen Generations is at the root of it.
The entire workforce employed to manage those outcomes, child protection, youth justice, adult corrections, homelessness services, drug and alcohol programs, exists largely because of the damage the Stolen Generations caused. And we are building the client base for the next generation of that workforce right now.
We have now removed approximately 25,000 Aboriginal children from their families today.
That number is more than the children removed during the Stolen Generations. The systemic approach that history has judged as a dark stain on our Nation, and we just moved right past that number.
We are in the second Stolen Generations. The same arguments, the same policies, the same support from the Australian population. Again.
Senator Price and the Child Placement Principle
For those that are not aware, The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Child Placement Principle affirms that culture, family, community and Country are fundamental to the safety, wellbeing and identity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children. It recognises that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families, communities and community-controlled organisations are best placed to make decisions about children’s care and protection and must be actively involved in every decision affecting their lives.
It has been shaped by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders and community-controlled child welfare organisations, emerging from grassroots advocacy in the 1970s in response to the profound harms caused by child removal policies, including those that led to the Stolen Generations, and was formally recognised in Australian child welfare legislation in the early 1980s.
If Senator Price and the Coalition genuinely believe the Child Placement Principle has prevented children from being placed with safe families, they need to show us exactly where? Not rhetoric. Actual cases.
Because the evidence says the opposite: the principle has never stopped authorities from acting to protect a child at genuine risk. What it does is prevent us from repeating history. What it does is say that if a child must be removed, they should be placed with family first. With community second. With culture always.
That's not radical. That's basic human dignity. And it works.
Undermining it, without evidence, without data, is a direct attack on Aboriginal sovereignty, kinship, and survival. That, Senator Price, is the truth-telling you are looking for.
This Is Not About Child Safety. This Is About Control.
There's a strong, deliberate drive to confuse, omit, lie, and deceive about these issues. To make the broader Australian population believe that Aboriginal people are just built to provide inadequate family support. That child abuse is somehow part of Aboriginal culture.
This approach ignores the impact that successive government policy has had in Aboriginal communities. It ignores the violence of colonisation. It ignores dispossession, forced removal, stolen wages, the missions, the Welfare Board, the Protection Acts, the generational trauma that was designed into the system.
The constant undermining, particularly the claim that child abuse is part of Aboriginal culture, seeks to eradicate and undermine Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander identity and culture. That's the goal. It always has been.
And every time an Aboriginal child dies, that campaign gets louder.
We Know What Works. We're Just Not Funding It.
Intensive family support. Housing. Income support. Culturally safe mental health and drug and alcohol services. Community-led programs. Proper resourcing for Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations.
We know what works. The evidence is there. The communities have been saying it for decades.
But instead of funding solutions, we fund removal. We fund surveillance. We fund a system that treats Aboriginal families as problems to be managed, not people to be supported.
And when that system fails, when a child dies, we don't blame the system.
We blame the culture.
Kumanjayi Little Baby Deserved Better
Kumanjayi Little Baby deserved a system that worked. She deserved services that were resourced. She deserved family support that was available. She deserved a community that wasn't under siege.
She deserved better than to become a talking point. Better than to have her death weaponised against her own people.
And every Aboriginal child in this country deserves better than a system that sees them as a threat before they've even learned to walk.
We are repeating history. And this time, we don't have the excuse of ignorance.
We have the data. We have the stories. We have the evidence. What we lack is the will.
Here's what I need you to do: when you see the headlines, when you hear the politicians, when you feel the pull of the narrative that says Aboriginal culture is the problem, pause.
Ask who benefits from that story. Ask what's being left out. Ask why the solution is always more removal, never more support.
And then speak up. Because silence is how this continues.
For further reading and insight we recommend "Long Yarn Short We Are Still Here" By Vanessa Turnbull-Roberts. A blockbuster memoir from one of Australia's most powerful voices, Long Yarn Short is the incredible story of a young woman's journey - from being stolen from her family as a child to becoming a top advocate for First Nations young people.
