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As with any agreement, there are certain requirements that OPCAT signatories need to fulfill, and Australia has been given longer than any other country to meet our OPCAT commitments. Today – 20 January 2023 – is our extended compliance deadline, and Australia has failed to deliver on our promises.

Read Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, June Oscar's op-ed in support of the Voice Referendum, published in The Guardian Australia. "We’ve been advocating for a permanent representative body for decades. My old people wanted this. My family in remote Australia facing unbelievable struggles daily want this."

Child protection intervention in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families across the country is at crisis point. Women are telling me it’s like another stolen generation and as I travel across Australia hearing their stories, it certainly does feel that way. As the 2018 Family Matters report reveals, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children make up just over 36 per cent of all…

Covid-19 has triggered the most significant return to country by First Nations people since the homeland movement commenced in the 1960s. Thousands, like myself, returned to remote communities out of necessity. Facing the unknown, our family leaders who could made the courageous decision to gather loved ones and travel out to country, with minimal resources. Importantly, Australian…

"Just in the last week, three of my closest friends and a relative have been diagnosed with cancer. This is not an uncommon story, to be – as a community – constantly in grief, loss and trauma." These words, from Janine Mohamed, chief executive of the Congress of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Nurses and Midwives, will be familiar to our communities across Australia. As will her…

On the ancient lands of the Anangu, dust settled and ink dried on a document that marked an extraordinary moment in Australia’s history. From all points of the southern sky, we gathered in the centre of the country we’ve called home for more than 60 thousand years, to endorse a statement that would pave the way for First Nations peoples to have a voice enshrined in the Constitution. A voice…

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are not represented in our Federal Parliament. Five years ago, they ceased altogether to have a representative voice when the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) was abolished. We have suffered as a result.

Learn about the potential of the new National Congress.

The recent death of a 10-year-old in the Kimberley is a tragedy and I pass on my condolences to her family at this particularly distressing time. This tragedy has heightened my conviction that the lives of all of our children in Australia are precious and should be protected at all costs. Nearly 20 years after the Bringing Them Home Report documented the experiences of the Stolen Generations…

In 1994, phone numbers had seven digits, we listened to Crowded House, and it was legal to own a semi-automatic rifle. Mother And Son and A Country Practice disappeared from television screens, and The Adventures Of Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert and Muriel's Wedding showed off our magnificent country and sense of humour while touching on tough issues such as marginalisation, sexuality and racism.

The following opinion piece by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner June Oscar appeared on ABC Online on May 24, 2018 Next month, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians will celebrate NAIDOC week — with the theme Because of Her We Can. It's because of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner June Oscar AO that…

Learn about the representativeness of the National Congress.

The new century has thrown up enormous challenges, as well as breathtaking opportunities to us all. One such challenge is the protection of human rights.

As the Government points out on its Australia 2020 Summit website, the new century has thrown up enormous challenges, as well as breathtaking opportunities to us all.

Five years ago I began my term as the President of the Australian Human Rights Commission, confident in the ability of the common law and a robust democracy to protect human rights. I leave convinced we need a major legal and cultural overhaul in order to deal with the human rights challenges of the 21st century.

For most of us gaol is a theoretical concept. It's somewhere you go if you commit a serious crime. And that's fair enough. Neither of us have committed a crime, but in various roles during our lives we have visited places of detention. But for short times, and knowing we can always walk out. They are places where fear, despair and anger- a pretty potent cocktail as most prison staff would…