Christmas is a time for children. Our contemporary Christmas has evolved from northern hemisphere seasonal celebrations, including the pagan harvest festivals and winter solstice celebrations encrusted with Christianity. Celebrating the birth of baby Jesus, the Christian King of Kings in the unlikely place of a manger in a stable. Nativity scenes celebrating humble beginnings of baby Jesus born into simplicity, humility, and poverty. The holy time of the babe.
According to Christian tradition, Jesus was born in Bethlehem, a town in the Palestinian West Bank. What would the experience be of a babe born today in that town of Bethlehem, in occupied Palestinian territory?
Conservative estimates of the impact on children in the occupied Palestinian territory are appalling. Oxfam report more than 6,000 women and 11,000 children were killed in Gaza by the Israeli military over the last 12 months. Save the Children cite that the occupied Palestinian territory is now ranked as the deadliest place in the world for children. They estimate 30 per cent of the 11,300 identified children killed in Gaza were younger than five and Gaza currently has the highest rates of child malnutrition globally. Palestinian children are experiencing constant exposure to violence in Gaza and a denial of adequate healthcare and food aid. UNICEF state the true cost of the violence in the State of Palestine and Israel will be measured in children’s lives – those lost and those forever changed by it. The children of the occupied Palestinian territory need their human rights respected and upheld, and they need an end to the violence, long term peace. We must demand it.
Intergenerational poverty
Back home here in Australia, in the grips of inflation and the devastating housing crisis, more children are being born into living in garages and overcrowded accommodations and poverty. The Child Poverty in Australia 2024 report released by Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre shows that rates of child poverty have risen substantially post Covid, with 823,000 children (or 14.5 per cent) living under a standard (50 per cent) poverty line. Mission Australia report one in every six children are living in poverty, and that sole-parent families and renters over 65 years of age are being slammed by the economic crisis. It’s grim.
This is compounded for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families and children. The enduring impacts of colonisation from dispossession of land to slavery and stolen wages have resulted in intergenerational poverty, especially for people locked out of housing markets. This is well documented and the statistics are alarming. This has resulted in the ongoing Close the Gap campaign which has commitments from all levels of governments. The continued failure to meet the targets under Close the Gap prompted Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community controlled peak body organisations to form the Coalition of Peaks and pressure the government to demand action. The outcome was the National Agreement on Closing the Gap, with four priority reform areas and 17 targets to address the appalling conditions for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples from the enduring impacts of colonisation, racism, and poverty.
Increasing risk to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children
This includes addressing the overrepresentation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in the child protection system. Target 12 is, by 2031, to reduce the rate of overrepresentation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in out-of-home care by 45 per cent.
The 2024 Family Matters Report, published by SNAICC found Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are grossly overrepresented at every stage of the child protection system and the overrepresentation grows as interventions become more intrusive.
Family Matters 2024 reported that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are 5.6 times more likely than non-Indigenous children to be subject to a child protection notification, but 10.8 times more likely than non-Indigenous children to be in out-of-home care (OOHC) or subject to a third-party parental responsibility order (TPPRO).
Since 2019, the rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in OOHC has worsened, rising from 54.2 to 57.2 per 1,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in 2023. The Productivity Commission estimates that by 2031 the rate will be 63 per 1,000 children.
We continue to be desperately far off course from meeting the Closing the Gap targets. The failure to address Target 12 has inextricable links to many of the other targets in the national agreement and is a driver for the overrepresentation of Aboriginal and Torre Strait Islander children in the criminal justice systems.
The national agreement also aims to address the overrepresentation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in the criminal justice systems. Target 11 is, by 2031, to reduce the rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people (10-17 years) in detention by at least 30 per cent. Nationally in 2022-23, the rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people aged 10–17 years in detention on an average day was 29.8 per 10,000 young people in the population. The 2022-23 rate is above the previous three years (from a low of 23.6 per 10,000 young people in 2020-21).
All governments in Australia remain committed to working together to address the targets in the national agreement, though the actions of many undermine this commitment. The minimum age of criminal liability is the youngest age at which a person can be charged with a criminal offence. In Queensland, the age of criminal liability is currently 10. Australia’s new law in the Northern Territory that lowers the age of criminal responsibility to 10 years goes against the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. We must do better for our children.
Behind all of these statistics are the stories of real lives, real children and families and real heart-break. Children are our collective future and we are letting them down. Children deserve to be nurtured with kindness, with love, with respect to their human rights, peace and an end to violence. This Christmas spend some time reflecting on the children in your world, in our world and how we must do better for them, for our own humanity.
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