‘Culture’ Worth More than Safe Kids

As BFD readers are no doubt aware, certain groups in New Zealand are continually over-represented in domestic violence and child abuse statistics. Things in Australia are little different.

And in Australia, just as in New Zealand, the chattering classes and the elites’ obsession with valorising ‘Noble Savage’ delusions of ‘traditional culture’ mean that things are very, very far from ever getting better. In 2007, the Australian government released the Little Children are Sacred report, which detailed appalling rates of violent and sexual abuse of children in Aboriginal communities.

The report spurred the Howard government’s emergency ‘intervention’. But, of course, the left and the Aboriginal industry screeched, Racism!

So, a decade and a half later, things haven’t changed one bit. If anything, they’ve got worse.

And the very people who claim to have the interests of Aboriginal children at heart are still persisting to blame ‘racism’, rather than do anything about the abuse.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are 10½ times more likely than their non-Indigenous counterparts to be taken from their parents, with 22,328 Aboriginal children living in out-of-home care last year, the highest number ever recorded.

An annual report by SNAICC, the National Voice for our Children, the peak body for Aboriginal children, found that young Indigenous people continued to be over-represented in the child protection system: 5.7 times more likely to be reported to authorities and 10.6 times more likely to be subject to a protection order.

Indigenous infants aged under one are significantly over-represented in the figures, particularly in Western Australia where ATSI babies were 23.7 times more likely than non-Indigenous infants to be taken from their homes. The report also noted the high rate of notifications for babies not yet born.

SNAICC CEO Catherine Liddle said the disproportionately high number of Indigenous child removals had to be addressed.

So, does she propose demanding that abusive Aboriginal parents stop getting wiped out on booze and drugs and neglecting their children? That they stop bashing their kids and molesting them? That Aboriginal parents make sure their kids get fed and go to school?

You already know the answer to that.

Nah – just blame whitey for everything, as usual.

“Removing our children from family, culture and community causes ongoing harm and too often does not lead to safer outcomes,” Ms Liddle said.

No, what causes ongoing harm is drunken, violent parents and dysfunctional communities where kids are abused and left to run feral.

But you just know the Aboriginal Industry troughers are going to dish up a load of self-serving horse-shit about ‘culture’ and ‘colonisation’.

Systemic racism, it said, had rendered non-Indigenous services culturally unsafe.

“Through dismantling government systems perpetuating colonialism and restoring authority for raising children in safe and nurturing hands, we will see lasting change,’’ the report said.

Ms Liddle said it was devastating fewer than half the Indigenous children in care were placed with kin or community carers.

The Australian

Probably because they’re all too shitfaced, violent and rapey to be trusted with kids.

But for these troughers, pandering to garbage about ‘culture’ is more important than stopping Aboriginal children from being bashed, starved and raped.

The kids, on the other hand, are quite clear that ‘culture’ runs a very distant second to being safe and looked after, no matter what colour skin their carers have.

A young Indigenous man who made an impassioned plea to be adopted by his foster parents has been granted his wish by a NSW court, amid warnings that Aboriginality should never be weaponised in decisions involving children.

The NSW Supreme Court heard that Richard*, now 18, was aggrieved that his Aboriginal heritage posed an obstacle to his adoption by the non-Indigenous family that had reared him since he was two. An Aboriginal consultant told the court that Richard was “very angry that his cultural heritage is the one component that has impacted adversely on this adoption process’’.

The Australian

Other Aboriginal kids say the same.

Mary*, 9, who was removed from her parents when she was 22 months old, told an independent assessor that she wanted to stay with the foster couple “as they keep us safe and feed us healthy food. They love us most in the whole world.”

When asked if she had a message for the judge, she said: “Could you make sure he knows that we really want to be adopted, please.’’

Her brother Michael*, 7, was nine months old when he went into care with his sister in 2015. The children share a mother, Audrey*, but different fathers, and have a number of siblings.

The Australian

But who cares what Aboriginal children want? There’s a multi-billion-dollar, government-funded industry of ‘Aboriginal culture’ vultures at stake.