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Child abuse by another name

By Patmalar Ambikapathy Thuraisingham - posted Monday, 9 July 2007


How do we make this an opportunity to properly address and reduce child abuse and prioritise the human rights of children in Australia?

I confess that I usually listen to music on ABC FM to soothe my soul, but occasionally to debrief, I vegetate in front of TV and luxuriate in cooking and lifestyle programs and avidly watch Oz soapies, where the characters are much more troubled by trivia than I am.

When I am really tired, paradoxically I stay awake to watch ABC Lateline, as TV has such a powerful soporific impact on my ability to stay awake. This means I have to really make an effort to watch Lateline. Aren’t little things pleasing to divert our serious thoughts?

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Imagine the rude interruption to my late night reverie on June 21 (how can I ever forget that day), as I was relaxing after a really good day in court. My colleagues and I persuaded a magistrate to order separate independent, legal representation for a child who had just had her fifth birthday.

The court deemed she was mature enough to give instructions: it was a great human rights moment for little children, who are usually silenced by legal and other systems. This includes the arm of government that is charged with child welfare, because they opposed the application.

Some in government, have a persistent belief they have the monopoly when it comes to knowing what is best for a child, and that they are the best vehicle for transmitting what a child has expressed to the court. It is strange how a child’s independent legal representative can help a court to get a different perspective from a child.

When children are empowered to express independent views they can challenge the prevailing paradigm, so it is no wonder that striving for this right for children, which we as adults take for granted, has been a long hard road.

Imagine how all of us who have worked long years for and with children, often against systems, are reeling from the Prime Minister’s firmly announced plans of what he was going to do “for” the little children who are, and were, abused in the Northern Territory.

So now we have a new form of systems abuse of children - a political one to add to the list.

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How can a PM that I did not vote for (no I am not a member of the Labor party), in one breath say what many of us in the electorate want to believe in our hearts, but to many of us also, his words look, feel and smell like a stunning blow against the rights of abused children?

Allow me to offer my jaded views that have been established after about 25 years of striving for the rights of abused children. We learned the bitter lesson early that there is more than one way to abuse a child: inaction is inexcusable, especially when many have cried out for help and we have not responded. But no amount of doing “something” is going save or salve a stricken conscience. Let other professionals speak the truth of what could be another betrayal:

The Australian Indigenous Doctors Association says that Aboriginal children are dying three times more often than non Aboriginal children: so why has this not been an emergency before now?

Why have pleas from Muriel Bamblett, representing Aboriginal children’s groups, and recommendations in numerous reports been so parsimoniously responded to during the decade in which John Howard has been in power?

Why does it take the Royal College of Paediatricians to warn that medical examinations for children suspected of being abused should be professionally carried out by forensic pediatricians, before it is announced that medical checks of all Aboriginal children are not going to be compulsory, but voluntary?

How did this compulsory medical examination plan come into being when this was not part of any of the 97 recommendations made by Rex Wilde and Pat Anderson? Who suggested this? We need to know.

How are we to deal with the PM’s plan for Land Councils when Pat Turner asks if the PM’s proposals for Indigenous Australians in the Norther Territory are a Trojan horse for clawing back the land rights they have fought so hard for?

Why did the PM not listen to Professor Mick Dodson, author of the Stolen Generation, when he told of the desperate plight of Aboriginal children in 2003; or to Senator Aden Ridgeway during his term in Parliament?

Why did the PM not declare an emergency in 2003 for Aboriginal children and for all children in 2004? Just before the last election Bill Glasson the former president of the Australian Medical Association provided him with a resolution from a child abuse summit we attended. This resolution noted that in February 2004, the figure for child abuse notifications was more than 40,000 children a year. If this had been a disease, instead of child abuse, it would constitute a pandemic among our children. The response after the elections was to abolish the Ministry for Children and to subsume it within the families’ portfolio. Did this show contempt or commitment?

Where is the funding for basic services, like maternal child heath centres, child care facilities, schools and school transport, not to mention adequate housing, clean water and sewerage systems for all Aboriginal communities?

Why has the emergency declared in Mutitjulu resulted in no police, no clinic and no child care services?

How many specialist trained staff are there to deal with child abuse, compared to police and army, in the PM’s plan? Where is the plan for compulsory checks for all paid and voluntary workers?

What training in prevention and dealing with child abuse do those that the PM intends to “deploy” on this “mission” have? Do we really need to use military language?

If we are to turn this sorry and ill conceived dark episode in our history into something positive for our children, we need to make our elected representatives accountable for all that is happening now.

Despite the government’s inaction until now we need to insist that this government, and any subsequent one, adheres to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, (UNCROC) ratified in December 1990 after extensive Australia-wide consultation.

Does the PM intend, in accordance with Article 12 of the UNCROC, to ask the children of the Northern Territory what their views are? Perhaps what they say will be too intimidating, but still they have a right to be heard.

We have fallen short of the benchmarks we were expected to reach in the decade after UNCROC and the World Declaration on the Survival, Protection and Development of children. This Declaration needs to be implemented urgently for Aboriginal children living in third world conditions, while our economy is booming. Let us unravel what is going on now and learn how we can all be effective in assisting our most marginalised of children, the first Australians.

For a start, we need a comprehensive early childhood strategy that has worked overseas and in NSW (“Brighter Futures” program) to reduce abuse and other social harms. The Perry Pre School project in America showed that for every dollar spent on early childhood services, seven was saved downstream in public spending.

Let us use what looks like a cynical political exercise, to actually advance the rights of all children in Australia - both Aboriginal and non Aboriginal. As we said at the 2004 summit, this will take “new money” to support and sustain our most precious beings and to begin to address the damage we have done to them by our inaction.

It is time for bipartisan determination to do what it takes to help children - show us real political will and commitment, decent policies and “core” promises, now, to save our children and safe guard their future and ours. Anything less will be a betrayal of monumental proportions by all who can help but choose not to.

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About the Author

Patmalar Ambikapathy, BA ( Durham) Barrister ( London), M.Phil ( Cambridge), is a Barrister and Human Rights Consultant for Children.

Other articles by this Author

All articles by Patmalar Ambikapathy Thuraisingham

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