#31 Hearing the Voices of Aboriginal Children and Young People with Meena Singh

(gentle piano music) - Hello, I'm Doctor Ritz Schmidt-Nevin, Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist and Clinical Psychologist. Welcome to Talking Child Development, the podcast of the Association of Child and Family Development in Melbourne, Australia. The Association is a not-for-profit organization that aims to disseminate information about all aspects of child and family development to other professionals and the wider community. In these podcasts, we go a little deeper into the wise and wear-falls of child adolescent and family life. We try to get away from a focus that's purely behavioral and quick-fix-based to delve more deeply into the emotional, social, and cultural issues that affect the healthy development of children and young people. You can find more information on our website at www.acfd.com.au. Today, I'm delighted to welcome Mina Singh, who is the Commissioner for Aboriginal Children and Young People in Victoria. Mina is a Yorta Yorta and Indian woman, born, raised, and living on the land of the cooling nations. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree and a Bachelor of Law degree. Mina started her legal career with Victoria Legal Aid, where she practiced in human rights and criminal law. She was also there in Orgural Associate Director Aboriginal Services. She has led legal services and programs at the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service and the Human Rights Law Center, as well as consulting, in training, and organizational development across many organizations. Welcome, Mina. Thank you so much for having me. I'd like to start by asking you, if you can briefly describe the role and responsibilities of the Commissioner for Aboriginal Children and Young People, does your role connect with other states or federal commissioners for Aboriginal Children and Young People? Yeah, happy to talk more about my role. Just before I do, I'll also take a moment to acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands that I'm participating in this podcast from. I'm on the lands of the Bunarong people of the coolern nation and I paid my respects to their elders, past and present, and acknowledge whoever we are in this continent. Now it's called Australia. It's a continent of many of hundreds of countries where you're on land over which sovereignty was never stated. Yeah, so my role is interesting. I'm actually the third Commissioner for Aboriginal Children and Young People in Victoria. The role was established about 11 years ago. And it's a funny role because it's not written in legislation anywhere other than that the government can appoint another commissioner. So there's the Commissioner for Children and Young People's Act and that act allows other commissioners to be appointed. So my role, I work alongside Principal Commissioner Leanna Buchanan and focus on what happens obviously to Aboriginal children and young people in a whole range of different settings. So I focus on what happens to our kids in out of home care and in out of home care. Our kids are grossly over-represented. We've got about 9,000 children overall in Victoria in out of home care and about 2,900 of those are Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander children. So significantly high removal rates of our kids from their families. And we monitor what happens with them in out of home care. We monitor what happens to kids in youth justice settings. Again, we've got over-representation of Aboriginal kids who are engaged with the criminal legal system. So these are places and systems that we consider kids to be vulnerable in, not an inherent vulnerability, but made vulnerable by the situations that they're in. So we're really interested in, you know, how they're being treated, any abuses of power against them, those sorts of things. I also have a lot of engagement with our community in Victoria and probably the best part of my work is being able to get out and talk with community, but especially talk with Aboriginal children and young people about the issues that are impacting on their lives and making sure that their voices are heard in decisions that are being made about them. And you know, whether that's themically about, you know, how to re-change the systems that impact on their lives to reflect what their needs and their experiences are and make those experiences better, or whether it's individual advocacy. We're always seeking, we're always positing the child or the young person as the expert in their life, and they know what it is that they want and what they, what things they want to have, you know, dealt with or changed for the better or what things they want to aspire to in their life. So we take hearing from children and young people really seriously as an integral part of our work. And one of the unexpectedly fun things and enjoyable things from when I became a commissioner was our regulation work, which involves us overseeing or regulating child safe standards. We're one of six co-regulators for child safe standards. So they are standard, 11 standards that are designed to keep spaces wherever children and young people are playing, going to school, getting services from, participating in hobbies, activities, wherever children and young people are, that they're safe and they're protected from harm and abuse. And we also are responsible for the reportable conduct scheme. So if something does happen to a child, at the hands of an adult, and it's a particular type of conduct, we oversee investigations by organizations into those experiences. And I say it's unexpectedly interesting because a lot of it is about behavior change and really getting organizations to understand the importance of keeping children and young people safe. And centering their voices in, and centering their voices in decision making and in participation. And so yeah, it's, you know, I'd never been in regulation spaces before, but I am a self-confessed regulation nerd now because of the work that I do at the commission. So yeah, we, there's, let's see, there's four, sorry, three other Aboriginal commissioners for children in the country in South Australia, ACT in Queensland. And then our two commissioners for children and young people in WA and Northern Territory are both Aboriginal women. So we, all the commissioners, the guardians, the advocates, we all get together on a regular basis and sort of connect and see what joint advocacy we can do. We see a lot of the similar issues coming up for Aboriginal kids in our different jurisdictions. And so really thinking about how do we, how do we collectively put pressure but also how do we support one another? When say, for example, what's happening in the Northern Territory, they've just raised, sorry, I wish they've raised some, they've just lowered their age. - Yes, yes, yes. - They've just, they had kept it raised. Yeah, they've just reduced it back down to 10 years of old, which is 10 years of age, which is absolutely devastating. And, you know, so how do we support, how do we collaborate with our co-commissioners to support them in their work and their individual jurisdictions as well? - Yes. I think, you know, what's so very, I mean, there's so many interesting things you've talked about in terms of the legal responsibilities and social responsibilities, but also back listening to children and hearing the voice of the child. And it's a fascinating thing these days that people want to do a lot of things for children. And children are sort of taken into all kinds of activities and parents get very worried about children. Yet, there's very little of the voice of the child that's actually heard right across the board. - Yeah. - And it does seem to be something that, you know, children seem to have things done to them, rather than hearing from them. And there are sorts of excuses for that, as you would know so well. But I think, you know, it's lovely to hear that you put the voice of the child right at the center of what you're doing. - Yeah. - I'm sort of jumping in here a bit. - Yep. - I just wonder, would you say that dealing with racism is one of the most significant problems that you deal with? And I also wonder how that might be most commonly manifested? - Hmm. Absolutely. Whether it's over interpersonal racism that our children and young people are experiencing, often in school settings, or, you know, when they're playing sport or they're, you know, just out and about in public, something that often gets raised with me, or whether it's seeing how systemic racism impacts on children and young people and seeing how we have systems that are born out of a legacy of invasion and colonization and actively positing Aboriginal community, Aboriginal children and young people and their families as lesser and as a problem to be dealt with, and how those sorts of attitudes have become embedded in in our systems and our attitudes around and towards Aboriginal children and young people and how they manifest out in the use of power against them or when decisions are being made about them. We see it in a whole different range of places. And I think we, it's not enough to, we see a lot of discussions about inclusion and diversity and multiculturalism and all these sorts of ideas, but what we don't often see or what we're only starting to see and starting to scratch the surface of is that active anti-racism work that requires undoing and firstly understanding how our systems are built on these narratives and how because of that Aboriginal people, Aboriginal children, young people get often a raw deal or perceived as lesser as different. I think one of the most pervasive, one of the most frustrating types of racism that I see our kids experience in the school setting is an assumption of lack of ability that they won't amount to anything that because they're Aboriginal, they won't be any good at learning and anything and so that low expectation that gets put upon our kids so that could be, being gently encouraged not to be at school on a napkin testing day or being actively told, you shouldn't sit this or, I mean, I'm just astonishing. I mean, I've just, I've just finished and horrified. I can't believe that. It's interesting, there's part of me that still gets astonished and then there's part of me that's kind of like, okay, not a lot has changed and we hear about racism, the kids experience from their peers but sadly, we hear about racism that our kids experience from their teachers or from adults and school staff and again, you know, whether it is that, that insidious kind of low expectation type of racism that makes assumptions about what our kids can't do or whether it's, you know, we've had kids tell us about racially charged or regulatory language that teachers have used against them in classrooms to talk about them, different kinds of treatment of Aboriginal kids compared to non-Aboriginal kids, you know, things that kids can see and actively feel that they're being excluded and they're being dealt with differently and not being given the same opportunities. We've seen it all and I think the most, not the most, I mean, obviously, you know, someone who grew up experiencing a lot of racism and, you know, continue to experience racism and as an adult and it's horrible to, you know, that our kids are still dealing with that but I think what's most frustrated, that's possibly the most frustrating part that have we actually developed and gotten further with these things, with this work and in lots of senses it feels like we haven't and I think, you know, the referendum last year really brought out a lot of ugly dialogue and rhetoric about our community that really impacted negatively on our kids. Yeah, so I was going to ask you about that and you know, perhaps we can talk about it straight up actually, but it was a devastating experience and I think, I mean, you would know how the community responded to that and how, how can this, of course, the rhetoric, as you say, that was used and the confusion that was engendered and how, I mean, that the, you know, politics tends to play with people in the most appalling way, but it was as though people were being played with the same politics that it really was. It was a deeply disappointing experience and it seemed to encourage the worst in people, supposed to be encouraging the best and something had, something was released as it were into the world and it couldn't be put back. Yeah, something horrible would come out of a bottle as it were. Yeah, it could not get it, but yeah, I think that's a really good analogy, something was released and I think, you know, there's always been that level of avert racism, but it's just, it just went next, it kind of went nuclear, there was so many of us and I remember my husband driving up from Melbourne to Mildura for work and getting to a certain point on the trip and all the 110 signs, speed signs. Someone had gone along the road for every sign and put a diagonal line between the two ones to make it a no and it was like this constant repetition of no, no, no all the way into and out of Mildura and you know, Mildura had the highest, I think the highest in Victoria, the highest no vote, nearly 80% and you know, we've done some work with since six, with our kids up in Mildura and talking to them about their experiences and just how things got especially heightened, leading up to and now after the no result and just a feeling that yeah, that it's really involved and a lot of people just to be so out now racist now, it's almost like they've got a legitimate, I don't know and I've sort of said, you know, we always understood these sentiments in Australia, but it's now we've got the receipts. Yes, I'd like to come back to that point about the referendum, but just while we're talking, just going back to the point about education, how do you think it's possible to approach schools differently, if racism or minimizing Aboriginal children's experiences, the key factor, how can manage that? I mean, I don't often schools are very hard, it's very hard, oddly, to create change in education and in schools. Yeah, and it's interesting, so last year we did the Commission table November last year, so nearly a year ago, we tabled a systemic inquiry report, let us learn and it's about how children at a home care experience the education system and you know, news flash, but honestly not news, so many of them don't experience education in a positive way. You know, from the fact that they're out of home placements can be really unsettled and so that makes it difficult to engage with education, to educate, you know, schools expecting a kid to just be able to walk in the school doors and flick a switch and be able to learn and you know, not really understanding how trauma impacts on a child's development on how the brain lands and you know, a child who's experienced all sorts of trauma that hasn't been addressed, that hasn't been dealt with, you know, will inevitably behave in certain ways and play out in certain ways, so we saw overuse of things like suspensions of expulsions of modified timetables, you know, so kids are attending school fewer hours than the full school day and you know, we saw some great examples of trauma-informed teaching practice that really acknowledged about, you know, you can't, that acknowledging that kids can't learn unless they're settled and they feel safe and they feel like, you know, those basic needs have been met and then we'll open up, be able to open up for them for their learning to take place. But I think it's really interesting this, you know, if I knew it before but this inquiry really ran for me, that education doesn't happen in a vacuum, you know, you need that safe place to engage with education from and you also need education itself, that's setting to be safe and for the kids that we spoke to, they were experiencing their placements are safe or they weren't experiencing the school is safe or at least understanding what it was that they'd been through and it's just really, you know, depending on who you asked, you know, if you asked kids at school, if you asked and it would change, the answers would change with their hands, with their ages, it compared to if you asked parents, compared to if you asked a principal, compared to if you asked a teacher or if you asked the general public or business or who were politicians or whoever, I think everyone would give you a completely different answer about what school is for and I think that, you know, understanding why we have kids go to school and what they should be getting out of school, is a really fundamental question that doesn't center or doesn't involve asking kids what they want in their education and how they want to engage. And so it's, you know, school in lots of education, in lots of ways, serves so many different purposes in addition to teaching kids their basic learning. And I think when you've got all these different purposes and sometimes cross purposes, and for some kids, you know, they just don't fit in these settings, it becomes very difficult to address what their needs are in the context of what schools say they're required to do. You know, there's constantly that log ahead, I think, between, you know, what we ask and what we demand of teachers so much of their role is shifting. And I think the thing is, is that education settings schools are just now the domain of just teachers. They need to have a whole range of other people that can support children in other ways. Absolutely. I often think that the school setting is about the most under-use setting, especially as a setting, which also encompass people working in some sort of psychotherapeutic or appropriate way. You know, the actual environment is so limited. And also the task cannot be limited, simply to teaching the subject. So, you know, and as you say, the difficulty is, I think, with all children is they children can't leave themselves behind at the school gates. They can't leave behind who they are and maybe have come from and what is in their minds and suddenly sit down and concentrate on work. It's simply not possible to do that. And how that can be thought about, you know, in a manner that is progressive and promoting the best in children as opposed to limiting or punishing is still in the 21st century a problem that is something out of the 19th century. Yeah, I think the mindset, and I know, I mean, I have great respect for teachers and I think it's fantastic and I do a huge amount and I think it also becomes very bureaucratized. But I think we have to develop, I think one of the big problems about education is that we want the children to learn, but teachers have to learn and the organization of education has to learn. Everyone has to be part of a learning environment. And I have sometimes what happens is that the poor teachers feel that they just got to give, give, give to the kids. In fact, they've also got to be given something for their self. Absolutely, absolutely. And, you know, again, the most wonderful, so some wonderful examples of inclusive education in the flow schools, the flexible learning option schools. So often it was, you know, they've got kids who haven't, you know, there might be kids who've been in out of home care or there might be kids who have learning difficulties and challenges or, you know, for whatever reason, the main school, school's education setting hasn't worked for them. And, you know, just seeing the different approaches and the different environments that can be envisaged and the different players that can come into the school setting to support. And, you know, I won't name names or anything, but, you know, there was one school that had, you know, it was about re-engaging learners who would be disconnected from learning for quite some time. And, and I had to kind of confront my own reality and challenge myself on things because, you know, I went to one primary school, I went to one high school, I always did well with my grades. It's very, you know, the thought of never going to school, just not going to school was something I was very, that was very foreign to me. And so just hearing the challenges that some kids are facing and how school becomes such an alienating environment for them, but then seeing how some amazing people can just rethink spaces and rethink connections. And I think also rethink timeframes, you know, and, you know, we have such, you know, right from this age to this age, this is what you do and this is what's happening. But, you know, as someone who's mum went back to uni when she was in, well, not back to uni, went to uni and got a, you know, BSAE equivalent, you know, 40s and went on to do a degree and everything. And, you know, I've always seen education as quite fluid in timeframes. And, you know, so to encourage young people and young learners that, you know, it doesn't have to be linear and it doesn't have to be, you know, there's a point here. I don't know, we just should be able to have a different degree. - I agree with you. - Yeah. - You see, I think that applies to all children and people because learning isn't linear. And one of the things we leave out is that we leave out the nature of development, the developmental tasks, and readiness to learn and the readiness to encompass certain things. And some children are prettier than others, which doesn't necessarily superior. - No, you know, there are simple examples that sometimes I don't, I'm old enough not to look back, you know, say with my daughter's generation of kids, some of whom did, you know, brilliantly well say at school and they go out into life, and they don't necessarily do as much brilliantly as you might expect. People who may not have appeared to have been noticed, you know, suddenly up there doing something very interesting. So how people develop and how they learn and how they grow is a, it's a life, I mean, that people talk about lifelong learning, which speak up a bit of a cliche, but that's exactly what it is. - Exactly. - And that is the lockstep nature of learning for children, I think is a problem. - Yeah. And I think, you know, I had the benefit of two big sisters and parents who absolutely valued education. So I started reading, not on a specially early age, but you know, reading is one of my earliest memories and always having someone around to read to me or to encourage me reading and doing all those things, and always had people to encourage that. But if you've not got that in your life, if, you know, it doesn't mean that you can't, you know, yeah, it's that readiness, and it doesn't mean that you're not going to get to that point. It just means what additional supports you have. And then especially with this inquiry for the kids who are in out of home care and the kids who have experienced trauma, and it's, it's impact on them. You know, their development is different. And you know, some of the kids we spoke to that were so intuned with the fact that I don't think the way that other kids think, I think differently, and this is because I've had this happen to me or I've experienced this, and I need to have teachers understand that, just have some understanding of it. So again, we ask so much about teachers. We really do. - You see, I think it's, we can't, I mean, this is a topic, another thing I think you have to reprain, educate, you know, that the other thing is that these days with internet and, you know, the transmission of facts for people is going to be, it's revolutionized already. So schools can no longer simply be about the transmission of facts. So we are going to have to move into the 21st century and different sorts of educational places. - Yeah. - You know, so, I also think what can't be underestimated, underestimated in schools is the, I hate saying normalising, but it's, it's the readiness not just in terms of, say, educational workforce. It's the readiness to engage with society. And if we, you know, if you think about, you know, primary school, you learn how to share and you learn how to cooperate and you, you know, you learn different activities and skills that are teaching you things to carry through with life and then you think about going into high school and you, you know, you're start learning, you're learning about planning and because you're moving from one class to another and you've got a timetable and, you know, different classes in different buildings and so you're working at your time management and you're you know, at home work, you know, it's all this sort of stuff. All these things kind of feed into how you behave in society or how you can get ready in society. So how do we also support children and young people now to be ready to engage in society, not just in a workforce sense, but in a, a social citizen type sense, you know, and, you know, how do we, you know, foster empathy, how do we foster humanitarianism, how do we foster critical thinking and, and yeah, all those sorts of things, I think, are really, yeah. Absolutely vital. And I think that that sort of leads to the next question. You mentioned a topic for our discussion which I think is very relevant. Refer to the impact of having your community talked about in the media, Italy, and never talked to. And could you say something more about this? Yeah, so a lot of what I guess guarded my work of late and I'm a lawyer by trade. So I'm an advocate on for individuals and for about system reform. So many of the, if I talk about the referendum, you know, and or if I think about the the the marriage equality vote a few years ago and that experience of having everyone talk about you but not talk necessarily talk to you and not have your voices leading on these things. You know, and I see it with other issues in community. I see it especially over the last couple of years it feels like when we hear youth crime get talked about, you know, we always have very specific narratives and ideas about young people who offend and children who offend. And you know, in our state, it's as low as 10 years of age that you can be arrested and you can be put into custody and sentenced to jail. And it's the helplessness that comes from that of not having a way to combat or come back at this narrative in a way that puts things on an equal footing because we know it's really difficult because there are certain dominant voices in society that get to control how things get spoken about. But it's also what it does is that it creates certain, it creates narratives and it creates stereotypes about a particular community. And, you know, you know, mob that I've spoken to before and after the referendum, you know, they said one of the, one thing that's come out that can be considered good is that Aboriginal people will never be seen again as one single group of people with exactly the same ideas. And the referendum showed that so many of us had very different ideas about the referendum and about how, you know, the when, the what, the how. And lots of people did just had different perspectives. And so it wasn't possible to dismiss or it wasn't possible to kind of just disagree with people with a particular narrative. And I think the challenge of being talked about is that you just use a simply don't get a voice in, you don't get, you don't get to be heard. And it also makes you somewhat expendable, I think, you know, and it makes you, you know, that lots of other people, you know, I mean, for the for the for the referendum last year, it was, you know, 97% of the voting population are not Aboriginal. So we had all these people deciding whether or not Aboriginal people should be included in the constitution and should have a right a voice department. So, you know, the idea of self-determination is was really lacking in that whole process. It was a first principle, wasn't it? Yeah, yeah. I, you know, I'm not born in Australia and I've still, I've been here for over 30 years. I'm still getting used to the things that happen. And I was completely shocked and terrified that they needed to be a referendum in which a group of people needed to have a voice, who should have had a voice anyway. Yeah, I'm bothered that other people should make a decision part of Aboriginal people. It seemed to me so, I mean, I have to say frankly outrageous and should never have happened. There was no place for that. I mean, it was so obvious that of course, people should have the have a voice in the constitution and the and the and the request was so modest. I mean, it's the no one's life was going to be changed. No, that'd be fair. Really. So it was unbelievably modest and I thought I thought there was something probably well meaning on one level matter the same time problematic that it should even have been considered that we or others should be voting on whether someone has, you know, certain basic human rights. I found that particularly disturbing, I have to confess. Yeah, and it's it's um, you know, there's the legal aspects of it that, you know, they wanted the voice to be in the concert, you know, in trying in the constitution so it'd be difficult to get rid of because we've seen that happen with previous similar bodies like Atsyk and you know, be able to be just dismantled. And it's it. I think that I think one of the, you know, I think about it in comparison say to, and this is the thing referendums rarely get up, you know, that the the failure rate of referendums is massive. And you're asking people to change effectively a status quo. And so they people have to be absolutely convinced that they're willing to change something. And with, you know, the 1967 referendum, that was giving Aboriginal people recognition in the constitution, you know, to be countered, to be part of the census, all these sorts of things. But it was effectively bringing Aboriginal people up to a level that was equal with with non-Aboriginal people. And so you could people I think could see the clarity of that. Similarly with the marriage equality vote, we were bringing everyone on equal footing, we were making sure everyone had the equal right to vote, to marry whoever they wanted, you know, so people could clearly see that. But with the with the referendum last year, I think what so many people didn't like was the idea that Aboriginal people would be getting something that no one else had. That this voice would suddenly be able to give immense powers and immense, you know, whatever, which was never the case. It was simply as we always try and do in our work, giving a giving a group of people who've had decisions made about them a right to be heard in those decisions. Well, that's but in a way, I think what the way you describe it is so interesting about bringing people up to the level that everybody has. The voice was the same thing. Because I was, we were trying to think about different lobbies and yeah, needed that had to be enshrined. Yeah. Yeah. And it just seemed to me, well, it was a very, very sad, very sad. It was, yeah, it was, I went to an anniversary gathering last Monday and it was really lovely. It was been put on specifically by and for Aboriginal women and allies and it was just a really lovely space of strength and, you know, I think you'd hear of the Aboriginal Family Violence organization. You know, this slogan has been, you know, it's for us, it's always yes, you know, and it's, you know, the ways that we were going forward that continue to give a voice and continue to push our perspectives and reach that positive change. So, yeah, it's always yes. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I think that's a very positive way of looking at it. I just like to also ask, I think you're mentioning, I think that Aboriginal children and young people tend to be overrepresented in youth justice. I always think youth justice is a terrible misnown and I'm just so I'm in justice and he's just I don't want to. And I just wonder why that might be the case. Yeah, I, um, I guess I ask this a lot and what I do is I, I usually kind of flip the question and I say, how is it that perhaps you and I, I'm going to make assumptions, um, I haven't been engaged with the criminal legal system. How is it that we've managed to avoid it? How is it that most people managed to avoid and get age with it? But we see a different narrative for Aboriginal children and young people and certainly children from other communities or other cohorts of community with specific challenges than their life. But, um, you know, when I, and I always use myself as an example and I say, well, I grew up, I had both parents working growing up, had a very stable upbringing. I went to one primary school, one high school, no changes in my education. I think I grew up in two houses, didn't have to move around a lot. Didn't have any learning challenges, didn't have any disabilities. was always good at school, was able to take part in sport, had two big sisters who were able to, you know, model good behaviors and things for me, and had parents who really emphasised the importance of education and what it could lead to and what I could get out of it. So I had all the, you know, my parents were both far, you know, my parents, nearly 50 and my parents are both still alive and doing okay and, you know, I didn't have to deal with anything that upset my upbringing, really. That's not to say there were challenges, but I didn't have, you know, on paper I had it pretty solid. When you look at the circumstances of kids who get engaged with the criminal legal system, you see how many of those very basic factors are missing. You see the stories of kids who haven't had a stable upbringing, they've maybe moved around a lot because, you know, folks had, you know, difficulties with jobs or all weren't able to hold jobs or, you know, they were, you know, struggling financially, there might have been illness or sickness or disability for the parents or for the children themselves that, you know, it could make it difficult for them to engage in school or, you know, connect with people and participate in the things they wanted to. A whole range of things that are points of disconnection, I guess, and points that can lead you to connection with the criminal legal system. And so many of the things that have kept Aboriginal children and young people strong for tens of thousands of years with our communities, they're caring for them, but the very things that were eroded with colonisation and following invasion. So, you know, deliberate, you know, disease, and we still have massive rates of chronic illness in our communities, you know, dispossession of land, massacre, you know, active laws that actively excluded Aboriginal people from participation, from working, you know, stolen generation that removed kids from their families causing lifelong intergenerational trauma, all of these things connect. And then they create also, they connect with issues of poverty. And, you know, last week was anti-poverty week, raising awareness about how poverty comes from systems rather than from individual failings and recognizing that so many of these issues intersect with the experiences that Aboriginal community have had. And so, what you get is that you get Aboriginal community with higher rates of disease or chronic illness, you get higher rates of disability, you get higher rates of housing instability or a whole range of things that are the very factors that lead people to engage with the criminal legal system. And then on top of that, you can have an overlay of racism and that you have Aboriginal people historically being closeted as problematic, as criminal, as having to be responded to through police action. So, you have over-policing, you have policing and watching of Aboriginal people and policing that, you know, might not happen just through the police, the legal, that particular criminal legal system, but policing that happens in other ways like in Adaham Keeh and monitoring, over-monitoring of Aboriginal families. So, there's all these different intersections that kind of create gaps for children and young people to fall through. And to, you know, like I was saying before about racism, you know, we hear about kids who don't want to go to school because of the racism they're experiencing and nothing has been done about it. So, they disengage when kids are disengage from school. They've got all this time on their hands, you know, other kids disengage, you know, kids don't always make the right choices. So, we see those things play out in a much bigger way for Aboriginal community. And so, we see those responses coming out and behaviours manifesting in a way that sees interaction with the criminal legal system. That's a yes. It becomes, would you say that it has a sort of intergenerational element to- Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And, you know, it's, you know, there's research to say that, you know, the earlier you're exposed to the criminal legal system to custodial settings, the more likely you will stay entrenched, such as the impact of those systems. And such is the stigma that those systems have once you've connected with them. And, you know, it's, you know, a few years ago, my predecessor, Commissioner Justin Marmer did a systemic inquiry, our youth, our way, which looked at how our kids experience the criminal legal system. And, you know, the aspects of normalising criminal activity, and again, this isn't limited to Aboriginal kids, or, you know, we see this that the some groups of kids, the people that they see as family, or as we understand them, are other kids who have the same similar backgrounds are engaging in the same similar activities. And that's who they find their connection with. So, there's definitely that intergener- you know, we see that intergenerational- that poverty can be intergenerational. That's really difficult to get out of poverty generation. It's, especially now, it's really difficult to to get out of that entrenched poverty. And there's so many ways that poverty is criminalised as well. Yes. I mean, the other aspect is the the the notion, you know, the police presence, I don't want to talk about, I don't mind the police, but when we see people in the media, very often you have someone talking about youth crime, and then there's a police representative. And I've found that very depressing. I think that I would like to see the police representative as the last person you would want to have on screen. And I would like to see other people representing the community, other people representing child development. But there's always a police and that police person, I'm afraid inevitably always speaks in very, relatively extreme terms. And it's very much about coming down on the child and young person. And then of course, there's the terrible problem of incarceration, which we know, we run all the research, all the evidence, everything that we observe is a complete internal disaster and it brings problems and kills people, people that are as you know, so would know so well. That is an intolerable, impossible and hopeless solution. I can, I know this is an enormous question to ask you. Why can we get people to stop thinking that incarceration could ever be an answer? Is it because we have to, there's a being of revenge as it were, and the community has to be appeased? Is that what it's about? I think it starts with a dehumanising of groups of people. And in the case of children and young people who were friends, there's a real dehumanising of them. The language that gets used to speak about them is horrible. And if people are only getting snippets of the story of issues and the understanding, those are the things that stay with them, the headline that screams, you know, "teen thugs", you know, blah, blah, blah, blah. So that's the narrative that gets painted. And it plays out, you know, I've had neighbours, my husband's a lawyer, I'm in this role, and you know, I've had neighbours, and they say to me, "Oh gee, this huge crime stuff is really bad, isn't it?" And you know, "Oh yeah, and the source of information is, will be a particular newspaper that is pushing a particular agenda." And this is a thing like you say, with those media press conferences, and we're getting very one particular perspective of what is happening for these kids. And you know, the reality is that the criminal legal system is the last, the system of last resort. It's a system that catches you when everything else goes wrong. So, you know, how do you, you know, how do you shift the, you know, we have to shift the narrative to think that every child, no matter who they are, in our society, deserves every opportunity. And we have to think about every child as if they were our own. But we don't do that as a society. We continually individualise children, and we only hold them as important if they've got some sort of personal connection to us. That's a very western It's a very important point. Yeah, that's an that is an enormously important point that the children can be the the most devalued and the humanized in the general but over-invested almost they're associated with us personally. Yeah, like extreme and extreme. And some of the decisions you know we we you know my work we see what happens to the kids in out of home care and we see some of the decisions that aren't or are made about them and I'm constantly and thinking of the thought would you allow this if this was your child and there are certain groups of children certain groups of communities certain whoever that are always being to humanized and once you do that it means that anything goes it means that you can that mean it means that they're expendable and what I don't want to say and I'm what I'm tired of saying is that there are certain groups of kids who are always expendable and certain groups of community certain communities that are expendable in terms of our societies care and our society's responsibility to them having as much of an opportunity as everyone else and I think until we you know there's this there's also the narrative that you go to prison and you come out reformed and that is not at all the case and I suspect that the majority of people who want to lock up kids have never actually seen the inside of the cell and actually thought about what would it mean to be a 10-year-old having handcuffs put on you being taken physically by adult people by adults into spaces and held in cells and confined and they continually think about it from an adult perspective they're not thinking about it at all from this is a child this is still a child that is experienced and even when a kid turns 18 you know they don't just that hey presto become so interested knowledge or something like that you know but we cannot keep this trajectory of just treating these kids as expendable because yes I was just wondering how does that sit together with the UN declaration about the rights of the child into which the Australia is a signatory how does that connect how can that possibly even be how can these activities these terrible things that we see that you know these children put into isolation and and the hopelessness of the situation well how can that how can that be allowed how can how can that how can that how can that ever be pursued as a course of action yeah it's you know well I mean there's so many things that you know we're signed on as part of the UN United Nations declarations and protocols and whole ranges of things that haven't been implemented into national into domestic law that means that they're just they kind of just end up as nice to have they're just signed the declaration but they don't implement it yeah yeah so if you if you see like you know say for example the racial discrimination act that you know is the embodying of the declaration for the I think it's declaration for the MLA elimination of racial discrimination and vilification so that act is is taking the international law and embedding it into into domestic law so we don't have any legislation or anything that specifically says about the rights of the child about how children should be looked after you know our own legislation for the commission we only just got the words human rights put in there from an amendment that that kicked in first of July this year that allows us an advocacy power so you know we don't see that connection from the lofty ideals which aren't that lofty they're very common sense you know if you take the if you consider that you know children need additional attention and responsibility that's our responsibility is adults you know we just don't see that connection down to on practice in practice in Victoria or out you know we are able to go into youth detention centers we have an independent visitor program we go in and see what's happening their children and young people we advocate for their needs whether that be something really you know what we might consider small but significant for that child but we also monitor what the conditions are like we've done reports we work to advocate and for change to improve how kids are experiencing prisons and it's not just Victoria it's other jurisdictions in Australia and it's other countries don't you know don't see children as deserving or as needing their own sets of rights and it desperately be needed to be upheld I think the whole children should be saying not heard is there at each that lots of people still like to adhere to yes it's it's a it's a terrifying prospect and I was just I think you've referred to Aboriginal informed and lead responses for criminalized Aboriginal children and young people as well as I for all children and young people and I wondered what kinds of responses do you envisage or which or which are already taking place yeah I think you know you know you talk you can talk about things in the preventative or the early intervention stages or then talk about things you know once children young people become engaged with the criminal legal system you know we have around the state there are Aboriginal Aboriginal local justice workers that will work out of Aboriginal organizations with children and young people who are engaged with the criminal legal system and basically workers as supports for them to to navigate the system but also connect them with culture connect them with activities with you know how be that person that they can always go to and get support from and to understand what their experiences are and and you know part of having Aboriginal lead responses is having Aboriginal community organizations Aboriginal people working with our kids because our kids don't have to explain anything of themselves to them to them they don't have to navigate their identity they don't have to you know explain you know why things might be problematic when they're engaging you know why they might have experienced something as racist or you know so it's really important having community support community but you know the prevention side of things it's all the things that we take for granted in our lives so you know how do we how do we make sure that kids and their families have got you know stable safe accommodation and housing how do we make sure that they've got their needs met in terms of food you know the lowest level type of offending the first thing that lots of kids getting engaged with is stealing food and your kids at we've spoken to kids of you know represented in the past you know a stole a chocolate bark as I was hungry or stole sanitary pads because I needed them like I had my period and I needed them and we didn't have money at home to to get them so you know that poverty that poverty becoming criminalized so you know having those basic needs met goes a long way to making sure that kids don't become criminalized don't find themselves engaging in behaviors that lead them further down the track but it's also it's also our responses as as a legal system to children and young people and the first point in a contact for an Aboriginal child with the legal system will be with a police officer so you know what's the response you know a child's stolen something they're holding to they're being held by a store police officer comes along what's the response that is actually going to a lesser change that kid is it going to be you know charging them putting them back in the car you know putting them through the whole process of arrest and and all of that and having them turn up to court with multiple resources or he's a better response actually what's going on for you like what's happening let's you know let's get your home let's talk to mum and dad all right let's get some supports in place let's get some things to help you out and you know so many year we often hear that families will be asking for assistance asking for supports but it's not until the child breaks the law and ends up in the legal system that they suddenly get some sort of assistance so how do we bring assistance how do we make seeking help easier and more accessible I suppose the two elements one is the input into the police but You know, the children have their first contact with the police. Do you have a particular input into the police service in being able to? No, not really. We don't, you know, you know, at the commission, we don't have an oversight remit over the police in the way of connecting and shooting. Yeah, look, you know, there's certain kind of forums or connections that, you know, spaces that Aboriginal community others put forward to the police where we can raise specific issues and. But, you know, the police are a big organization and they things can be slow to change and, you know, there's a lot of, you know, a lot of training and a lot of practice refocus, I think, that needs to happen, but, you know, part of it is building relationships with communities, I think. And really having some good supports for, you know, policing should be the last tool that we use. It's got to be the last resort. And I suppose the other element is prevention, the people seem to not realize that prevention has to be the fundamental plank. Absolutely. The court, the children and it's going to be less expensive than incarcerating them. And whether as children or as adults, and then never seems to be able to become, people try to convey that, but it never seems, I mean, to put it in a very simple way that penny never seems to drop. I mean, you can never seem to convince governments or organizations or the judiciary or the prison service. It never seems possible to convince them that the money needs to go into into prevention literally from birth. Yeah, yeah, exactly childhood. Yeah, and yeah, when people say, "Dee from the police," they mean put the money into those essential services that families that individuals need. And, you know, we've seen, you know, in August, we saw the government do what we call a back of a flip on raising the age to 14. It will be raised to 12 next year. We hope still, but, you know, and the ramp up and the attention about the issue was massive. And now in the Northern Territory, we've seen a new government elected on the back of tough on crime, tough on, you know, all sorts of things, law and order. And now Queensland goes to the polls this weekend. And again, we're seeing a very strong narrative about tough on crime, tough on youth crime. And it's, I really do think people don't, you know, it's like sometimes you read the comments section, you really shouldn't. But sometimes, you know, when you look at articles about youth offending and then always be someone who's like, "Oh, when I was 10, I knew the difference from right and wrong." And all these sorts of narratives and things, you know, or, you know, heaven forbid the ones that are like, you know, "Oh, when I was a kid, you know, there's nothing wrong with getting a good belting or what to what." And it's like, "Oh, God." It's just, you know, that's terrible. But there really is a lack of compassion for those people that have vastly different lives than the majority of us. And I'm not saying that we have to, I just think it's compassionate. I think there's an understanding for a different, the people have different experiences. I think maybe referring to something that's, it's sort of a co-syncing of social relationships and a sense of social obligation. Yes. We are all obligated to each other and we have got to look after each other because we're not going to survive otherwise. We're not going to survive climate change. We're not going to survive a vast number of things that we have to struggle with. But people seem to feel that they have no obligation. And then the other very worrying thing that I have to say, "I feel very strongly about," is that the adult world has an obligation to care for children, whether you are a parent or not. You have an obligation to the next generation. And I feel that's got to be, that's got to be identified rather more clearly. And I sometimes wish that there could be some kind of consortium of people like yourself and people working with children who understand about child development, who can be interviewed on these television interviews. You don't just have the policeman standing there and in his uniform talking about law and order will be enforced. But you actually have another, you have, you have other voices. You can hear other voices of people who are steeped in the world of looking at thinking about childhood and child development. And I think this got, I think maybe we just have to push for that. Very, very hard. Not hold back. Yeah, it's going, it's just going too far. I mean, the idea that Queensland thinks that they want to charge children as though they are adults. Yeah. They want to, they want to take any last remaining bit of protection for children away and charging us adults and the adult criminals. Yeah. Which is, it's a many evil really. And I think, yeah, that coarsening that hardening that, you know, also comes with this idea that we just shouldn't be looking after children, you know, that we expect kids to be tough from the word go and to be savvy and to know everything. And yet the kids that are getting involved in criminal legal systems are the kids who've been probably let down from so many systems. And we see the intersection of poverty, we see the intersection of disability, of mental health challenges, all sorts of things that means that they fundamentally have a different way of experiencing the world. And, you know, our criminal legal systems, you know, we've just had new legislation passed in Victoria. That is, has some positive things in it in terms of looking at diversion and early intervention and really responding in different ways to children and young people who offend. But there's so much that is still directed at purely punishment and rather actually than addressing, you know, behaviors and addressing circumstances. And, you know, you could have a kid that goes into prison and maybe they do great and make great. Sorry, I'm using a virtue of fingers. You know, they might, might be the shock of their life, or you know, they might take it, you know, they engage in programs, they do everything they're supposed to do and they come out. If they're coming out into the exact same broad life challenges they had when they went back in, the likelihood of them getting engaged again is just going to be increased. So you can't look at children in isolation. You need to look at them in the context of their circumstances and think about, all right, are we actually wanting to create some sort of behavior change? Are we actually wanting to address this? Or are we just seeking to punish? And I think that is the over arcing narrative that we just punish. And I think also that it's, we just, it is fundamentally wrong to treat children as if they are adults. There is such a difference. And these are the problems of our systems. We just tweak them a little bit. They had an adult criminal system. We treat them. We tweak it a bit and we say, hey, Presto, we've got a you just a system. But really nothing is different. And you know, something I always try and drop in some way is that, you know, when the first fleet came to this continent, the youngest person was a 10 year old boy who was a convict. And he had been sentenced to transportation or stealing, I think something like three shirts, a pair of stockings and a pistol and these ways of working have never worked. I think Thomas Full Circle doesn't do that. It sounds a little right. Really for a fine way. You know, I think that's something that you need to really see. I just want final question. Yeah, you know, I was just wondering despite the disappointing outcome of the referendum and about the voice, do you think that there are other forums that are being created for meaningful representation for a voice to be heard? Absolutely. I mean, in Victoria, we've got the first people's assembly. So that's been an assembly of First Nations people who have been elected by community, all involved in a voting process. So we literally have a voice in Victoria, but the voice still didn't get up. And as of next month, they're going to be starting to negotiate a treaty in Victoria with the Victorian Government. And it's phenomenally exciting times. It's a way of thinking differently about self-determination and about who gets to make the decisions. And it's, you know, I know lots of people that are involved. The government side who are involved on the treaty authority side and the first people's assembly. And it's taken such a long time, but it's the vision of so many people that this treaty come into place. And I think the key of it is that it's just providing us with different tools and different frameworks to think just differently about how might we be allowed to exercise self-determination over our own lives and how we might address some of those things, such as over-representation in out of home care or in your justice systems. And will the treaty have a legislative function so that it can't disappear? It can't be enshrined in some way so that I believe so. I'm not sure exactly how it'll work, but my understanding is yes, once a treaty has been agreed, that becomes a key document in terms of how we make laws in this state regarding Aboriginal issues. Well, I'm so pleased to hear about that. Yeah, it's a spark of, yeah, it starts, yeah, the negotiations start in November and it's going to be, yeah, it's at some, you know, I was at a lovely ceremony on Tuesday, more, yes, yes, I'm like, the Supreme Court here in Victoria did a ceremonial sitting, honoring, recognizing First Nations people and just a lovely, lovely ceremonial sitting in the bank of court, and it was a merging of Aboriginal ceremony and legal ceremony and a recognition of both. And it was lovely talking to so many people who were there who were engaged directly with the treaty process and the hope and the excitement and especially for a lawyer and having other legal, you know, Aboriginal lawyers be part of that process. It's a really exciting, it's exciting, it's really exciting. That's so great. So I think we might stop on that very positive note. I think that's so very important. So thank you so much. I mean, it's been an amazing journey to, your contribution and, you know, really all power to you for the future. Thank you so much. Thank you. Really enjoyed it. Hello, this is Dr Ruth Schmick-Nevin again. I hope you enjoyed the podcast. You may be interested to know about my audio trainings based on the many trainings I have run throughout Australia and overseas. These include training on relationships, attachment and the brain, time limited, psychodynamic psychotherapy and skill building in therapeutic work. You can access the details of all my trainings on my website, which is at www.centerforchildandfamily.com. That's A-N-D. So www.centerforchildandfamily.com. Thank you.