As the election time nears it is disturbing to research the horrors and dismissal of human rights for First Nations people in Australia.
Recent reports (e.g. The Saturday Paper February 15, 2025) notes, ‘In the past year, governments jailed more of our people, they forcibly removed more of our children, more of our children fell behind in their growth and learning, and more of our people died by suicide.’ The NT government shredded the ratified charter on human rights enabling the incarceration of ten-year-old children.
As cruel colonisation continues it is not surprising to note that the NT Close the Gap funding package upholds the law-and-order draconian structures to aid policing. Of the $842 million announced to Close the Gap, $205 million is allocated to policing! Thus the prison population grows and incarcerating ten-year-old children, usually removed from their parents, is tolerated by Australian politicians and the Australian public.
Name me one outraged morally consistent Australian politician who upholds children’s ratified human rights?
Peter Dutton, an eager student of the fact-shredding think tank called Advance is keen to sanitise the history, well documented, of the Australian frontier wars. Utilising such techniques of sanitising history, we lose sight of the origins of intergenerational trauma, which when inscribed on the human body, lives for decades, and may I say, every human, whether white, brown, black, or brindle is inscribed with the potential of such a fate.
My heart goes out to the children of the world. To the innocents in Gaza, prepared to die with their parents and ‘write their will ‘ to our innocent First Nations children in settler Australia. The UN committee on the rights of the child has repeatedly denounced Australian governments for violating the UN convention. Human Rights Watch’s latest global report condemned Australia’s record, highlighting our treatment of First Nations peoples and children. Australia remains the only Western nation without a national human rights act or charter of rights. Remedy folks, Lets grow up together and share our humanity.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
