Governments must be held to account so First Nations children can thrive
By Sue-Anne Hunter
Australia last week passed historic new laws enshrining an independent National Commission for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children and Young People. As the body’s inaugural Commissioner, Wurundjeri and Ngurai Illum Wurrung woman Sue-Anne Hunter brings a bold vision for holding governments to account for their ongoing failure to support First Nations children.
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Last week, the Australian Parliament passed legislation establishing the powers of the National Commission for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children and Young People.
For the first time, we have what has long been missing: a mechanism to hold governments to account for how they treat Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children. As National Commissioner, I welcome this reform, which has been supported across the political spectrum. It is significant. But it is also overdue.
For more than 20 years, I worked alongside Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people and saw, time and time again, how the systems designed to protect our children continue to work against them.
This is not new. Since colonisation, systems meant to keep children safe have been used as tools of dispossession and disconnection. As a result, our children are more likely to be removed from their families, more likely to end up in the youth justice system, and more likely to die by suicide. This should shame our nation. It should have inspired change. History shows it hasn’t.
Australia’s failure to support First Nations children has been repeatedly called out on the global stage. At multiple United Nations Universal Periodic Reviews, countries raised concerns about the overrepresentation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in out-of-home care and detention.
When these issues were formally addressed for the first time in 2021, it should have marked a turning point. Instead, outcomes have worsened.
There are two reasons these failures not only persist but are accelerating.
Firstly, there has been no meaningful system to hold governments accountable for their ongoing failure to support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children. While initiatives like Closing the Gap track the outcomes, they cannot expose the decisions that allow disadvantage to persist. They do not reveal the policy trade-offs made behind closed doors, the quiet abandonment of commitments when political pressure rises or the repeated breaches of government’s own pledges.
Without accountability, failure carries no consequence. As a result, governments are able to get away with undermining the frameworks they claim to support and in the process, violate the rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children.
Secondly, Australia has no national approach to human rights. We are the only Western democracy without a national Bill of Rights or a Human Rights Act. Governments face no meaningful consequences for breaking their commitments to children’s rights, which seem to evaporate the moment they become politically inconvenient. Nowhere is this more visible than in youth detention, where Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children make up 57 per cent of children detained.
Detention centres are places where human rights commitments are not upheld, and in some cases, openly breached. Just last week, a young Aboriginal man died in custody in Darwin. This is not an isolated incident. It reflects a system that continues to disregard basic human rights.
These conditions have persisted for years, which has normalised the violation of children’s rights. This is incredibly dangerous. And the damage goes beyond immediate risk.
Detention centres sever Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children’s connection to culture, education, family and community. These are the very foundations that prevent reoffending. By removing children from these critical fundamentals, we are setting them up for a lifetime of contact with the criminal justice system. This is unacceptable.
I considered it essential that the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) were embedded as foundational frameworks in the National Commission’s legislation.
UNDRIP affirms the rights of Indigenous peoples to self-determination – including the right to raise children in our own ways and make decisions about their futures. This is the first federal law that puts UNDRIP into action. This operates with the UNCRC to affirm the universal rights of every child to safety, dignity and opportunity.
Together, UNDRIP and UNCRC provide a clear, principled basis for accountability. And crucially, my reporting powers mean that when governments fall short, those failures will be formally documented, tabled in Parliament, and made visible to the public.
This is not symbolic reform. This is structural accountability.
Our children are not statistics. They are custodians of the world’s oldest continuous cultures and the next generation of leaders.
Right now, we risk losing another generation to the same systems that have failed those before them. That cannot continue.
I will use the voices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and young people to advocate for change and reform. Governments will be held to account, and our children’s rights will no longer be optional.
About the author
Sue-Anne Hunter
Sue-Anne Hunter is the National Commissioner for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children and Young People. She is a Wurundjeri and Ngurai Illum Wurrung woman with extensive experience in governance and leadership. Ms Hunter has practiced as a qualified social worker and is a recognised leader in the First Nations child and family services sector. As the National Commissioner, she will work closely with First Nations peoples, communities, commissioners, guardians, advocates, other key stakeholders and, most importantly, directly with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and young people.
