Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice links

• Government Services for Aboriginal and Islander Peoples

Research and key resources

• Australian Bureau of Statistics: Indigenous specific data

Stolen Children inquiry (1997)

One of the inquiries the Commission is best known for is the 1997 inquiry into the removal of children from Indigenous families, also known as the Stolen Generation.

• Report of the Inquiry-  Bringing them home.

Indigenous Deaths in Custody (1996)

The Commission prepared a report for the Indigenous Deaths in Custody Inquiry.

• Indigenous Deaths in Custody 1989-1996

 

• Wiyi Yani U Thangani Community Guide (2020)

• Close the Gap: 10 Year Review (2018)

• Targeted recruitment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people: A guideline for employers (2015)

Learn how Indigenous peoples are among the most vulnerable peoples in the world and how the Commission works to protect and promote their rights.

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I would like to thank the Minister, Philip Ruddock, his Opposition counterpart, Bob McMullan, and Australian Democrats deputy leader, Senator Aden Ridgeway, for their contributions today. It is now my task, on behalf of ATSIC, to give a response to the plans outlined by the major political parties as to how they would move the stolen generations issue forward.

I am pleased to be here today at the Moving Forward: Reparations for the Stolen Generation Conference. I have been following the Moving Forward project by the Public Interest Advocacy Centre, ATSIC and the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission closely and look forward to hearing the outcomes from this project.

Acknowledgement of guests from overseas, Parliamentary colleagues, Social Justice Commissioner Mr Bill Jonas, Justice Elizabeth Evatt, ATSIC Commissioners, distinguished guests.

Having said that, I thank the organisers for the opportunity to put to you an honest explanation of the government's position on these important matters.

The NCCA comprises fifteen Protestant, Anglican, Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches. The Council is not a "superchurch," with authority over its member churches. I can tell you what I believe the churches are thinking and doing. I can advise them as to what they ought to be thinking and doing. But I cannot command them. Each church is autonomous, making decisions according to its own lights, following its own timetable and processes, consulting with its own Indigenous members and taking account of its own inner dynamics.