Child abuse by another name

Why have pleas from Muriel Bamblett, representing Aboriginal children’s groups, and recommendations in numerous reports been so parsimoniously responded to during the decade in which John Howard has been in power?

Why does it take the Royal College of Paediatricians to warn that medical examinations for children suspected of being abused should be professionally carried out by forensic pediatricians, before it is announced that medical checks of all Aboriginal children are not going to be compulsory, but voluntary?

How did this compulsory medical examination plan come into being when this was not part of any of the 97 recommendations made by Rex Wilde and Pat Anderson? Who suggested this? We need to know.

How are we to deal with the PM’s plan for Land Councils when Pat Turner asks if the PM’s proposals for Indigenous Australians in the Norther Territory are a Trojan horse for clawing back the land rights they have fought so hard for?

Why did the PM not listen to Professor Mick Dodson, author of the Stolen Generation, when he told of the desperate plight of Aboriginal children in 2003; or to Senator Aden Ridgeway during his term in Parliament?

Why did the PM not declare an emergency in 2003 for Aboriginal children and for all children in 2004? Just before the last election Bill Glasson the former president of the Australian Medical Association provided him with a resolution from a child abuse summit we attended. This resolution noted that in February 2004, the figure for child abuse notifications was more than 40,000 children a year. If this had been a disease, instead of child abuse, it would constitute a pandemic among our children. The response after the elections was to abolish the Ministry for Children and to subsume it within the families’ portfolio. Did this show contempt or commitment?

Where is the funding for basic services, like maternal child heath centres, child care facilities, schools and school transport, not to mention adequate housing, clean water and sewerage systems for all Aboriginal communities?

Why has the emergency declared in Mutitjulu resulted in no police, no clinic and no child care services?

How many specialist trained staff are there to deal with child abuse, compared to police and army, in the PM’s plan? Where is the plan for compulsory checks for all paid and voluntary workers?

What training in prevention and dealing with child abuse do those that the PM intends to “deploy” on this “mission” have? Do we really need to use military language?

If we are to turn this sorry and ill conceived dark episode in our history into something positive for our children, we need to make our elected representatives accountable for all that is happening now.

Despite the government’s inaction until now we need to insist that this government, and any subsequent one, adheres to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, (UNCROC) ratified in December 1990 after extensive Australia-wide consultation.