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In November 2001, the Human Rights Commissioner announced an Inquiry into the adequacy and appropriateness of Australia's treatment of child asylum seekers and other children who are, or have been, held in immigration detention, including:

Indigenous mental health is finally on the national agenda. As participants in the National Mental Health Strategy, States and Territories acknowledge the importance of the issue. Some of the effects of removal including loss and grief, reduced parenting skills, child and youth behavioural problems and youth suicide are increasingly recognised.

The interim paper, Valuing Parenthood: Options for paid maternity leave set out an extensive range of objectives that paid maternity leave could meet. [242] Many of these objectives were dependent on the structure of the scheme that was implemented.

Within months of the `First Fleet' arrival at Sydney Cove in 1788 there was `open animosity' as Indigenous people protested against `the Europeans cutting down trees, taking their food and game, and driving them back into others' territories'. Bitter conflict followed as Aboriginal people engaged in `guerilla warfare - plundering crops, burning huts, and driving away stock' to be met by `punitive expeditions of great ferocity in which bands of Aborigines encountered were indiscriminately killed' (Bickford 1988 page 57).

While feedback in relation to the legal system was actively sought throughout all of the consultations, a number of targeted consultation sessions with individuals and organisations specifically involved or engaged in the legal system were also undertaken. These included:

I attach a report of my inquiry into complaints by Mr Huong Hai Nguyen and Mr Austin Okoye against the Commonwealth of Australia and GSL (Australia) Pty Ltd, pursuant to section 11(1)(f)(ii) of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Act 1986 (Cth).

As my predecessor pointed out in the Native Title Report 2003, native title is a political process as well as a legal process. Indigenous people enter a relationship with the State on the basis of their identity as the traditional owner group of an area of land. In some cases native title has provided the first opportunity since colonisation for a relationship of this type to be formed.

You would be hard pressed to find a newspaper, television or radio station that did not make mention of Sorry Day activities and National Reconciliation events over the past week.

The 2000-01 reporting year was a year of consolidation for the Commission’s Complaint Handling Section (CHS) following the legislative changes to the complaint handling function in April 2000.

There are a host of benefits associated with community arrangements for asylum seekers, refugees and stateless persons. Community arrangements are more closely aligned with international human rights law and standards than models of indefinite closed immigration detention. They also provide for far more humane treatment of people seeking protection.

It has now been over two years since the federal government introduced new arrangements for the administration of Indigenous affairs. One of the catchcries of the new arrangements is that they are aimed at ‘harnessing the mainstream.’ This is to be achieved by removing or reducing the barriers that prevent Indigenous peoples from accessing existing mainstream services on an equitable basis.