Forwarded for Bruce Reyburn: August 2, 2000 THE STATE AND THE RIGHTS OF CHILDREN The ironies of life often strike me. Yesterday i spent the day sitting in the Banco courtroom, high up at level 13 in the Supreme Court Building at Queens Square, Sydney, listening to part of the appeal of Janaka/Joy Williams. A lion and a unicorn coat of arms sat above the three appeal judges, who were ushered in by a white rod. Black robes, white collars and wigs. All the trappings of justice. The core of Joy's original case, from what i could figure out, is that she argues that the Aboriginal Welfare Board (in whose hands she was placed when she was 4 weeks old) failed in their duty of care. It was known in the early 1950s that infants placed in the institutions at this age could fail to develop the types of attachment which are necessary for normal adjustment. The attachments usually result from having a mother or loving parent(s). The institution Joy was initially placed in was, i gather, overcrowded. As she grew up in the state's care Joy exhibited all the classic symptoms of this problem, but never received any form of assessment and remedial treatment, which experts say had a high chance of working. Despite a mountain of evidence which pointed to the opposite conclusion, the original judge considered that Joy was normal when she eventually left the state's care. Within weeks she was in trouble, trouble and more trouble and soon diagnosed as having a borderline personality problem. But, what is really striking is that the original judge found that the Aboriginal Welfare could not fail in its duty of care to those placed in its, er, care since it had no duty of care to any of them. This was a matter of 'policy'. The State's substitute carers could leave a child out in the rain, provided it was by negligence, and the child could die without the same sort of consequence which would apply to other state institutions such as a school, a jail or a hospital. I once heard of a case where a teacher on a train was found to be negligent because he had failed to provide supervision to a group of unrelated school kids since, as a teacher, he had a duty of care resulting from the notion of in loco parentis. No such principle for the State of New South Wales when it comes to the well-being of Koori kids taken in as Wards. The responsibility of the state in such cases simply vanishes. The whole state legal apparatus grinds through the smallest details of Joy's life. She was not present and i am not surprised, since it is such an ordeal. Yet the larger question concerning the behaviour of the state itself have no chance of being subject to similar detailed scrutiny. What was the role of the state in creating the disfunctional family situation which prevented Joy's mother and family from being able to care for her? Not relevant? What other State 'polices' should be examined in the court located between Phillip and Macquarie Streets - two earlier governors who declared war on local Koories? What was the role of state "policy" in producing a situation where Joy had to be removed from the care of family and into a state institution which, despite having "Welfare" in its name and conscious/purported reason for existence had no real duty of care? Accountability at the level of the state - a state which presumes to interfere/regulate so much of our lives - is something the state's courts seem reluctant or unable to come to terms with. But the real irony was reserved for the news story which was breaking as i drove home. The Howard Government had announced that it would be amending the Federal Discrimination laws to remove court protection for solo mothers and lesbian couples to make use of IVF and have children. This most direct form of state interference into the relationships between these people follows their recent victory in the Victorian court as a result of the protection of rights afforded at the Federal level. Shifting the goal posts is the name of the game, when the rule of law gets in the way to implement a world view of the nuclear family which would have be normal in 1950 - at the very time Joy was suffering. What impressed itself on me most forcefully was the reason John Howard gave for this transfer of more power to the states. He invoked the rights of children and proclaimed that every child had the right to "the affection and care of both a mother and a father". I do believe that i was not alone - in fact, part of a reaction across indigenous Australia - which proclaimed "Yes you expletive- deleted! And what about the rights of the children to that affection who were placed in the 'care' of the Aboriginal Welfare Board!?" Oh, the leader of the Anglo-Australian state is not talking about them. Nor is he looking at amending the Federal Discrimination legislation to ensure that their way of life and well-being is being given extra protection. Howard's problem is that he has never ceased to be the leader of the Liberal Party rather than becoming the leader of the country. The state he represents has opposed accepting responsibility for its actions in regard to removing children - actively in the court rooms and passively at the level of Prime Ministerial statements necessary for healing life in Australia. His present narrow and cockeyed view on the true locus of parental love, it must be said, is similar to the kind of thinking which underlies state policies which sought to remove Koori kids from their loving families on the basis of skin colour. In the light of the recent report of the United Nations Human Rights Committee on the stolen generation, institutionalised racism in Australia should be something our political leaders are striving to ovecome. Not a necessary pre-requisite qualification for the highest political office in the land. Joy's search for justice by standing up to the state continues. Bruce Reyburn 2 August 2000 Send reply to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- ********************************** 'Click' to protect the rainforest: Make the Rainforest Site your homepage! http://www.therainforestsite.com/ ********************************** ------------------------------------------------------ RecOzNet2 has a page @ http://www.green.net.au/recoznet2 and is archived at http://www.mail-archive.com/ To unsubscribe from this list, mail [EMAIL PROTECTED], and in the body of the message, include the words: unsubscribe announce or click here mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20announce This posting is provided to the individual members of this group without permission from the copyright owner for purposes of criticism, comment, scholarship and research under the "fair use" provisions of the Federal copyright laws and it may not be distributed further without permission of the copyright owner, except for "fair use." 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