00:01It's been another interesting morning of evidence given at the National Enquiry into racism
00:08directed at Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
00:11This morning's hearings have focused strongly on evidence given by community organisations
00:16and justice organisations, really showing the full spectrum of experiences from racism,
00:22hatred and violence experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children right
00:26through to adulthood.
00:27And one of those interesting threads that was pulled out this morning was how the introduction
00:32to racism and violence during those formative years has a real effect on the future pathways
00:39for First Nations people.
00:41We heard from representatives from the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal
00:46Service, the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service and the Victorian Aboriginal Child and Community
00:53Care Association.
00:54Let's take a listen to one of the things that Narita Waite from the national organisation,
01:02National Legal Services, had to say.
01:06There's a number of elements that need to work together in order to tackle racism because
01:11it isn't just interpersonal, it is systemic and funding alone is not going to solve this
01:17problem.
01:18And that is why, Senator, you know, we really focused a lot of our recommendations on actually
01:24how do you change those system approaches.
01:26That was Narita Waite there talking about how there needs to be more than just funding changes
01:32when it comes to dealing with the Aboriginal Legal Services.
01:36There was, of course, a federal recommendation from another inquiry just a couple of years ago,
01:42recommending a much better funding set up for the Aboriginal Legal Services and the Community Legal Services.
01:48Those recommendations have not travelled anywhere in the past couple of years.
01:53But pivoting now to the childcare and community sector, we also heard powerful testimony from Muriel Bamblett.
02:00This was talking about incidences of family and domestic violence and how differently victims are treated when they are identified
02:09as being First Nations.
02:10We had, sadly, a young girl passed away from family violence. We didn't want to go out and publicly say
02:18she was Aboriginal because we were concerned that people would move away from sympathising with her and start to vilify
02:25her as an Aboriginal woman.
02:27Now, isn't that sad?
02:28Dana, where to from here? When can we expect to hear outcomes from the process?
02:33Well, as you said, this is the final day of hearings for this inquiry that have been taking place across
02:39the country over the last four months.
02:42What will happen from here is that the committee will go away and begin to write their report and recommendations
02:48to the government.
02:49It's expected that they will probably be delivering that before the end of the year.
02:54But being a parliamentary inquiry, the deadlines around these things are pretty fluid and flexible.
02:58However, conversations I've had with the inquiry chair, a Wemba Wemba and Mutti Mutti woman and Labor Senator Jana Stewart.
03:06She's made it clear that she wants the government to act with the urgency that she believes that the evidence
03:10provided to this inquiry requires and that she doesn't want to see this inquiry sitting on a shelf gathering dust
03:16like so many previous inquiries into Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander issues.
03:21What remains to be seen is what will come out of this in terms of recommendations.
03:25The members of the committee can't preempt the inquiry report, but if we look at the the volume of evidence
03:31over the past four months,
03:32there have been recurrent themes, particularly around calls for a national truth telling process.
03:38Now, this is something that's been growing in the past 18 months or so since the loss of the voice
03:42referendum was something that the government had committed to previously when it first came to power in 2022.
03:48And Crabbe walked away from after the loss of that referendum, but calls for a national truth telling process have
03:54been consistent across all hearings of this inquiry,
03:57as have updates to the national school curriculum to accurately reflect the colonial history of Australia and the ongoing impacts
04:05it has on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
04:07So those will be things that we're looking out for when those recommendations come down, we're keeping a close eye
04:14out for you.
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