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Addressing family violence in Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander Communities – Key issues

Mr Tom Calma

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner and Acting Race Discrimination Commissioner, Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission



Ending violence in Indigenous communities Forum

Monday 19 June 2006, Parliament House, Canberra

I would like to begin by acknowledging all of the Ngunnawal peoples,
the traditional owners and custodians of the land where we are gathered today,
and pay my respects to their elders and to the ancestors.



I would also
like to acknowledge:

• The Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs and
  Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Indigenous Affairs, the Hon. Mal
  Brough MP;
• Other Ministers present;
• Opposition Spokesman on Indigenous Affairs, Senator Chris Evans;
• Members of Parliament;
• Representatives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and
  organisations;
• Parliamentary staff and departmental officers; and
• Distinguished guests and fellow Indigenous Australians.

I
thank you for your attendance today. The presence of such a large and
distinguished group of people, able to attend at short notice, indicates the
seriousness with which we all see the issue of family violence in Indigenous
communities.



Can I also thank Australians for Native Title and
Reconciliation, who have taken the lead role in organising this event. The Human
Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission has had no hesitation in joining ANTAR
as a co-host of this important event. I’d also like to thank the many
organisations that are also hosting or supporting this event, such as
Reconciliation Australia, Oxfam Australia, the Australian Indigenous Doctors
Association, the Australian Medical Association and the Australian
Principals’ Associations Professional Development Council.



I know
that I speak for all these organisations when I say that we have created this
event because we are committed to seeing an end to family violence in Indigenous
communities. We want to work with governments to ensure that there are
deliberate and determined steps taken to address this issue, which is a cause of
such devastation to the cultures and fabric of Indigenous societies.



We
also see the need for a space for dialogue with Indigenous peoples to discuss
some of the complexities and the day to day realities that exist in communities
in addressing the many facets to family violence. And we have a breadth of
experience among our panellists today on the daily challenges that addressing
family violence raises for Indigenous communities.



My role today is to
provide some suggestions, from my national perspective as Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, on the issues that I consider we
must face if we are to make progress in addressing family violence in Indigenous
communities.



But first, let me state upfront and unequivocally
that family violence in Indigenous communities is abhorrent and has no place in
Aboriginal society.



Family violence is a scourge that is causing
untold damage and trauma among Indigenous communities. It is damaging Indigenous
cultures and it is causing untold damage to our women and
children.



Indigenous men, women and children are entitled to live their
lives in safety and full human dignity. This means without fear of family
violence or abuse. This is their cultural and their human right.



Violence and abuse is also in breach of criminal laws across the
country. I am on record several times stating that if an Indigenous person
commits these types of offences they should be dealt with by the criminal
justice system just as any other person would be. There should also be swift
intervention from care and protection systems to ensure that the best interests
of the child are the primary consideration.



Government officials and
community members should be fearless and bold in reporting suspected incidents
of violence and abuse. This means addressing the code of silence that exists in
many Indigenous communities about these issues. And it means government officers
meeting their statutory obligations, meeting their duty of care and taking moral
responsibility in the performance of their duties as public officials. Many do
already. Regrettably, some do not.



Let me also state upfront that
Aboriginal customary law does not condone family violence.



Family violence and abuse of women and children has no place in
Aboriginal culture. Customary law cannot be relied upon to excuse such
behaviour.



That is not the customary law that I know. Perpetrators of
violence and abuse do not respect customary law and are not behaving in
accordance with it.



HREOC has stated clearly in submissions to
sentencing courts and to inquiries that customary law must be applied
consistently with human rights standards. In other words, at no stage does
customary law override the rights of women and children to be safe and to live
free from violence.

What I intend to do today is to challenge you to
broaden your thinking about the dimensions of the issue of family violence and
abuse in Indigenous communities and to provide you with some possible ways
forward.



For while we all readily agree that violence should not be
tolerated, anyone who has worked even fleetingly on these issues knows that the solutions are complex, multi-faceted and require long term focus and
commitment to address.



It is hard going. And governments and
communities have by and large failed to solve the problem to date.



Later
this week, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission will release a
paper which provides an overview of the research, educational and advocacy work
that we have done over recent years on issues relating to family violence in
Indigenous communities.



We have looked at this issue in many contexts.
We have considered:

• the relationship to substance abuse;
• the interaction of Aboriginal customary law, violence and human rights;
• the need for human rights education among Indigenous communities;
• the significant role of violence and abuse as a causative factor in
  Indigenous women entering and then re-entering prison at alarmingly high rates;
• international models for programs aimed at addressing inter-generational
  trauma and grief through healing;
• the impact of violence on Indigenous youth in developing cognitive
  disabilities, in under-performance in schools and entry into the juvenile and
  then adult criminal justice processes;
• its relationship to the high incidence of mental illness and youth suicide
  among Indigenous peoples; and
• it being both a reflection of, and a cause of, poor health among Indigenous
  peoples.

I think you will find this a useful document when it is
released. I mention it here as this snapshot of issues captures how violence
relates to almost every aspect of policy making and service delivery to
Indigenous communities.



Because of this, we need to adopt a holistic
approach to address the causes and the consequences of family violence in
Indigenous communities. If we treat it as simply a law and order matter, a
matter of legal compliance, or a health matter, we will not achieve lasting
improvements to the lives of Indigenous peoples.



In saying this, I note
that the forthcoming Ministerial Summit on family violence is narrowly focused
on issues of law and order, customary law and school attendance. These are
important issues and they can make a difference. But they are not the only
issues.



We urge all governments to ensure that they do not forget the
total picture and that the narrow focus of the Summit is used as a platform to
create momentum to deal with all the relevant factors relating to family
violence. I personally am viewing the Summit as Stage One of the broad-based
approach that will be needed if we are to end violence in Indigenous
communities.



In the time remaining to me, I want to identify ten
challenges for addressing family violence in Indigenous communities. To me,
these are some of the key factors that we need to address to achieve lasting
change.



First, we should acknowledge that governments have been
making commitments to address this issue for some time already. What we need is
concerted, long term action which meets these commitments.



Let me
remind you of one of the most significant commitments which has been made in
recent years. The Council of Australian Government adopted the National
Framework for preventing family violence and child abuse in Indigenous
communities in June 2004. COAG set out six principles upon which action by
governments would be based, namely:

• a focus on safety;
• adopting a partnership approach, including with Indigenous families,
  communities and community organisations;
• strong leadership from governments and indigenous community leaders and
  sustainable resourcing;
• acknowledging that successful strategies would empower Indigenous peoples by
  enabling them to take control of their lives, regain responsibility for their
  families and communities and to enhance individual and family wellbeing;
• developing flexible approaches which work across jurisdictional and
  administrative boundaries, and enable local indigenous communities to set
  priorities and work with governments to develop solutions and implement them;
  and
• addressing the underlying causes of violence and abuse, including
  alcohol and drug abuse, generational disadvantage, poverty and
  unemployment.^[1]

It
is a wide ranging acknowledgement of the relevant factors and necessary
components of any response.



At the time, which is now two years ago, COAG
stated that “The extent of family violence and child abuse among
indigenous families continues to be a matter of grave concern for both
governments and indigenous communities. All jurisdictions agree that preventing
family violence and child abuse in indigenous families is a priority for
action that requires a national
effort.”^[2]



Now rather
than be discouraged at the lack of priority that has clearly been given to this
issue since the making of this solemn commitment in 2004, I want to commend
Minister Brough for putting this issue back on the agenda.



I don’t
think that Minister Brough needs to seek the commitment of anyone to work on
this issue – because you already have that ten times over. The time for action is long overdue.



Second, this action must be based on
genuine partnership with Indigenous peoples and with our full
participation.



It is important for governments to walk with
Indigenous peoples and not run ahead and expect that we will catch up.



In
my latest Social Justice Report I also put the challenge to all
Australian governments to ensure that appropriate support is provided to the
establishment of regional Indigenous structures as a matter of urgency.



I don’t intend to say more about this issue here, other than that
it is difficult to see how governments can adopt a partnership approach when
there is limited capacity to engage with Indigenous peoples in a systematic way.



Put simply, my concern is that governments risk failure if they develop
and implement policies about Indigenous issues without engaging with the
intended recipients of those services. Bureaucrats and governments can have the
best intentions in the world, but if their ideas have not been subject to the
‘reality test’ of the life experience of the local Indigenous
peoples who are intended to benefit from this, then government efforts are more
likely to fail in the medium to long term.



Third, and related to
this, there are significant processes and networks already in place to progress
these issues. We need to support them and build their capacity.



As
examples, I am talking about:

• the Aboriginal Community Controlled Health sector;
• Aboriginal and Islander Child Care services;
• Family Violence Prevention Legal Services;
• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services;
• the peak bodies for these sectors;
• Community Justice Groups, women’s groups and Night Patrols;
• CDEP schemes;
• state and territory based Justice Forums and Aboriginal Justice Advisory
  Committees; and
• leadership programs and institutes, to name but a few.

We
should be working with these significant resources within Indigenous communities
and supporting them to lead efforts to stamp out violence, including by
developing the educational tools to assist them to identify and respond to
family violence.



As a further example of existing resources, last week
the Aboriginal Health and Medical Research Council of NSW released a directory
of Aboriginal men’s groups, the focus of which includes anger management,
dealing with violence and grief and trauma counselling. It is a simple
initiative, but a vital one in making existing services for help known among the
Indigenous community.



My basis point is that we do have some structures
and resources in communities that could be better supported and utilised.
Let’s not reinvent the wheel and fracture existing services.



Fourth, there is a need for broad based education and
awareness-raising among Indigenous communities.



There have been media
reports recently about a report which is currently being considered by the NSW
government. The report has been produced by the Aboriginal Child Sexual Assault
Taskforce and is called ‘Breaking the silence – Creating our
future”.



Media reports have stated that the review found that
child sexual assault is not well understood in Aboriginal communities, resulting
in it going undetected and in creating a culture of silence and inappropriate
responses such as protecting perpetrators rather than children.



I await
the report’s release and its recommendations with interest. What is clear
to me, however, is that it supports my concern that there is not a clear
understanding or acceptance of the problem of family violence in many Indigenous
communities. This means that community dynamics do not confront and challenge
violent and abusive behaviour as much as they should.



In my view, raising
awareness among communities, working with communities to send strong messages
that violence won’t be tolerated, that there are legal obligations and
protections and individuals have rights, are critical if we are to stamp out
this behaviour for good.



Fifth, is a plea: don’t forget our men
and don’t stereotype them as abusers.



There are many Aboriginal
men who find family violence and abuse abhorrent. I am one of them.



In
the past two months I have addressed men’s leadership groups and health
professionals, and the concern has been put to me regularly that this debate is
demonising Indigenous men and typecasting us all as violent and abusive
and as perpetrators of abuse. Some remote communities have spoken out against
this and rejected that they condone violence.



We need the support of
Indigenous men if we are to make progress in stamping out violence. Indigenous
men have a critical role to play in ending violence in communities. As
Indigenous men, we need to model appropriate behaviour, challenge violence and
stand up against it, and support our women and nurture our children.



Many
Indigenous men already do – it would be a backward step if we did not
acknowledge these strong men, and if we didn’t direct some of our
attention, through services and programs, to support their needs.



A
recent study of men’s health services on the Anangu Pitjantjatjara lands,
titled Building on our strengths, by Dr Alex Brown states:

When searching the available literature, ‘gender and health’
tends to highlight responses virtually exclusively to the health and well-being
of Indigenous women. When relating to men, it tends to highlight the negative
consequences of male behaviour... Indigenous males are described and labelled as
the worst of health and social statistics, rather than as the dynamic, essential
elements of families, communities and societies. Perpetuating negative
stereotypes of Indigenous males as ‘problem males’, has led to the
development of health and social policy that continues to blame males for an
array of issues, without providing the necessary support, infrastructure and
political will to reverse male health and social
disadvantage.^[3]

We need to
bear this in mind in any response so it addresses the issues as they relate to
all members of Indigenous communities.



Sixth, and related to this, is
a further plea: we need to look for the positives and celebrate the
victories.



There are good things happening in Indigenous
communities, even if the national media is not interested in reporting them. In
my view there are two impacts of the continual negative stereotypes about
Indigenous peoples.



The first is that it contributes to a political
environment in which these issues are not important to the Australian public,
except when sensational allegations are made from time to time. What, for
example, is different about the debate of the past two months to the debate
around the time the Prime Minister convened a national summit in 2003? Why was
there no sustained interest or pressure from the media or the non Indigenous
community to address these issues in the three years since that Summit, and the
time before that and so on... This is reconciliation in action – we need
to work together and be in it for the long haul together.



The second
impact of this constant stereotyping is that it can further disempower and
contribute to negative self-image among Indigenous peoples. Let us confront the
problem, but also do so by reinforcing the inherent worth and dignity of
Indigenous peoples, not by vilifying and demonising all Indigenous peoples.



Seventh, and this one is directed solely to Indigenous peoples and
communities, we face a challenge among Indigenous society to re-assert our
cultural norms and regain respect in our communities.



Indigenous
peoples proudly identify as being a distinct group within society. We do so
based on our cultures, our identity and our systems of law.



These
systems are built on respect. This respect begins with respect for our elders
and continues on to respect for our mothers and women, our men and for our
children – our future generations.



One of the most insidious and
damaging effects of our colonisation as peoples, has been the breaking
down of our systems of respect. Poverty, disadvantage and discrimination have
bred dysfunction and have led to a lack of respect among sectors of our
communities.



We face a major challenge, as Indigenous societies, to
focus on rebuilding or re-asserting our cultural values which have been eroded
through lack of respect.



Family violence and abuse is about lack of
respect for Indigenous culture. We need to fight it as Indigenous peoples, and
rebuild our proud traditions and community structures so that there is no place
for fear and intimidation.



Eighth, and this is the main challenge for
governments working in partnership with Indigenous peoples, we need a long term,
bi-partisan commitment to do whatever it takes, for as long as it takes, to end
family violence in Indigenous communities.



This is not the same
as calling for a commitment to address this issue. It is calling for government
accountability on this issue.



By this I mean accountability where
governments’ actions match the commitments they make. Where
governments’ actions show that they have decided:

a) that they are committed to a particular course of action – such as
overcoming Indigenous disadvantage;

b) that they have considered what needs to be done to actually achieve this
outcome;

c) that they have a plan for when the outcome will be achieved – ie, it
is benchmarked with targets and goals for when it will happen;

d) that they have put all resources possible and made every effort possible
to achieve this, and;

e) have done so for as long as is necessary to reach the end goal –
even if this is longer than the electoral cycle. This requires bi-partisan
support, and if the policy intervention is sound and it has been developed with
the active participation of Indigenous peoples, such support should be
forthcoming.

When you have been downtrodden for all of your life and
governments have been promising to do something to address this for all of your
life, and they haven’t – why would you hold out any hope for change?
We can’t forget how disempowering, dispiriting and destructive empty
promises have been on Indigenous society over such a long period of
time.



What this means is that this Summit on violence must focus
on the accountability measurements that will be put in place to hold governments
to their commitments. I strongly encourage the development of robust monitoring
and evaluation mechanisms. These will also allow us to identify and celebrate
successes.



Ninth, and related to this, it requires a change in mindset
of government from an approach which manages dysfunction to one that supports
functional communities.



At present, the record expenditure on
Indigenous affairs is paying for the consequences of disadvantage and
discrimination. It is paying for ill-health, for unemployment, violence and
substance abuse. It is a passive reactive system of feeding dysfunction, rather
than taking positive steps to overcome it.



I want to see, we want to see
a pro-active system of service delivery to Indigenous communities – in
other words, a focus on building functional, healthy communities.



It
should be obvious that supporting good health and supporting functional
communities is good policy. It doesn’t take much to see that it makes
sound financial sense in the longer term. And of course, it is socially and
morally preferable.



This objective should be the dominant thought in the
mind of all policymakers and governments.



And tenth, and finally,
let us be bold in ensuring that program interventions are targeted to address
need and overcome disadvantage.

As it stands, government programs and services are not targeted
to a level that will overcome Indigenous disadvantage. Hence, they are
not targeted in a way that will meet the solemn commitments that have been
made. They are targeted to maintain the status quo.



In my
latest Social Justice Report to federal Parliament, I have proposed a
campaign for achieving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health equality
within a generation. That is how long it will take, if we treat this as a
crisis issue now.



What I have stated in the Report is that the factor
that is most striking in its absence from the current health framework is the
lack of a timeframe for achieving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
health equality. There remains a need for governments to take adequate
measures (including through the allocation of adequate resources) within set
timeframes to overcome the disparity in rights experienced by Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander peoples.



My office is working with a number of
organisations to progress thinking about what is needed to achieve health
equality within a generation – this includes thinking on violence. We will
be jointly convening a national summit on Indigenous health equality in the
latter part of this year. We see this summit on violence as an important process
which will inform that Summit.



So to conclude, in the latest Social
Justice Report I identify two things that Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander peoples and the general community can no longer accept from
governments. These apply equally to responses to family violence issues as they
do to health issues.



First, we can no longer accept the making of
commitments to address Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander inequality without putting into place processes and programs to match the stated
commitments. Programs and service delivery must be adequately resourced and
supported so that they are capable of achieving the stated goals of
governments.



Second, and conversely, we can not accept the failure of
governments to commit to an urgent plan of action. It is not acceptable to
continually state that the situation is tragic and ought to be treated with
urgency, and then fail to put into place bold targets to focus policy making
over the short, medium and longer term or to fund programs so they are capable
of meeting these targets.



A plan that is not adequately funded to meet
its outcomes cannot be considered an effective plan.



We
don’t want to see any more unfunded commitments from governments.



Commitments, such as those at the COAG level, must be benchmarked and
matched against need. They must be funded to achieve their goals and there must
be equality between the investment in government bureaucratic processes and
program funding that reaches Indigenous peoples.



Let me be provocative
and ask you: Is a commitment to equality which is not accompanied by any effort
to realise it any better than a system that actively discriminates against
Indigenous peoples?



Indigenous peoples get no joy from commitments of
governments which have not resulted in noticeable improvements.



The
status quo is not acceptable.



We want to see a positive future, where
the rhetoric of government turns to true reconciliation, as measured in tangible
outcomes.



This is achievable and it is realistic. And it is
overdue.



Let me conclude by reiterating one of my comments at the
beginning. We are at one on this issue. Government, non-government and
communities want to work together to end family violence in Indigenous
communities. On behalf of the workshop organisers, we offer you our support in
this effort.



Thank you

^[1] http://www.coag.gov.au/meetings/250604/attachments_c.rtf

^[2] http://www.coag.gov.au/meetings/250604/communique250604.rtf .

^[3] Brown, ADH, Building on
the strengths – A review of male health in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara
lands, Menzies School of Health Research 2004, p1.

Last
updated

June 20, 2006