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Samaritans, the welfare arm of the Anglican Diocese of Newcastle, is one of the largest regional welfare organisations in Australia. We employ more than 500 professional staff and enjoy the continuing support of over 400 volunteer workers. Managed from Newcastle, Samaritans has a regional focus on the Hunter, Central Coast and Manning regions and an annual turnover of nearly $17million. The…

In its final recommendations, the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation proposed that there be a legislative requirement for the Social Justice Commissioner to monitor progress towards reconciliation on an annual basis. In the Social Justice Report 2000 it was noted that while legislative amendment to this end was desirable, this task could be undertaken under my existing functions. Accordingly,…

3.1 Introduction 3.2 Australia's human rights obligations for workers with family and carer responsibilities 3.3 Limitations of federal discrimination law 3.4 The need for law reform 3.5 Conclusion

The current mandatory detention policy of the Commonwealth of Australia breaches the fundamental principle of the rights of the child which is that children should be able to develop to their full potential. The policy breaches every article of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The policy violates the right to health as established by international law.

1.1 A snapshot of children in detention 1.2 Australian law and the detention of children 1.3 Does the Government owe a duty of care to children in detention? 1.4 International law and the detention of children My hope finished now. I don’t have any hope. I feel I will die in detention. (Unaccompanied 17 year old, Phosphate Hill Detention Centre, Christmas Island, 4 March 2014) Drawing by…

State and Territory legislation, programs and policies in the areas of child welfare, adoption and juvenile justice are intended to provide a non-discriminatory framework for the administration of services. In many cases, programs are designed with the objective of reducing the extent of contemporary removals of Indigenous children and young people. In spite of this, the over-representation of…

In June 2003, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) engaged the Centre for Cultural Research (CCR) at the University of Western Sydney (UWS) to investigate Australian Arabs' and Muslims' experiences of post-September 11 racism, the extent to which these experiences were going unreported and the reasons for this. The CCR team was charged with addressing the following questions:

...education is the engine room of prosperity and helps create a fairer, more productive society. It is the most effective way we know, to build prosperity and spread opportunity...[1]

Indigenous children throughout Australia remain very significantly over-represented `in care' and in contact with welfare authorities. Their over-representation increases as the intervention becomes more coercive, with the greatest over-representation being in out-of-home care. Indigenous children appear to be particularly over-represented in long-term foster care arrangements. A high percentage…

3.1 General findings In our consultations the Commission received information from people with disabilities and their advocates, support services in the community and in government and people in the police, courts and the custody and release system. The Commission also received many submissions and held a number of meetings with community members and public officials who work in or with the …

8.1 Needs and development of children at this stage of life 8.2 Emotional health and wellbeing 8.3 The role of parents in detention 8.4 Physical environment of detention and resources 8.5 School education 8.6 Excursions out of detention 8.7 Findings specific to primary school aged children [They are] crying all day long ... tortured by sadness. Take the children out and keep us in. (Parent…

This appendix summarises the main findings from research and consultations conducted by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission between 2001 and 2006 that relate to family violence and abuse in Indigenous communities. The summary has also been published in a more detailed research paper prepared by the Social Justice Commissioner in 2006 entitled Ending family violence and abuse in…

The Commission would like to thank the children and young people who participated in the project and demonstrated great courage in allowing us to hear and tell their often painful and traumatic stories, in a hope that things would change for the better.