Submission to the Parliamentary Inquiry into Racism, Hate and Violence directed at Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people

May 2026

Overview of the Submission

SNAICC – National Voice for our Children has submitted a comprehensive response to the Parliamentary Inquiry into Racism, Hate and Violence directed at Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, warning that racism in Australia is not isolated or incidental, rather it is systemic, structural and deeply embedded across government systems, political discourse, media environments and public institutions.

SNAICC’s submission to the Parliamentary Inquiry into Racism, Hate and Violence directed at Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people has a key focus on how racism operates structurally and impacts cumulatively across the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, young people and families. It argues that the ongoing impacts of colonisation continue to shape laws, policies, funding arrangements and institutional practices that perpetuate dispossession, exclusion, over-surveillance and punitive intervention.

SNAICC warns that mainstream systems are failing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, young people and families with worsening outcomes across child protection, youth justice, health and early childhood development. Evidence is presented in the submission that shows Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and young people continue to be disproportionately removed from their families, over-policed, criminalised and exposed to culturally unsafe systems that prioritise control and punishment over prevention, healing and self-determination. SNAICC makes it clear that racism is reinforced through policy design, funding priorities, institutional decision-making and deficit-based narratives that position Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families and communities as problems to be managed rather than strengths to be supported.

Importantly, the submission centres the voices and experiences of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and young people. Through engagement undertaken as part of SNAICC’s Youth Voice, young people described racism as an everyday reality experienced across schools, online spaces, healthcare services and broader public life. Young people spoke about being excluded from decision-making, dismissed within professional and institutional settings, and subjected to harmful public debates that undermine their identity, safety and sense of belonging. SNAICC argues that reforms developed without Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and young people risk reproducing the same patterns of exclusion and harm the Inquiry seeks to address.

Central to the submission is a call for genuine truth-telling and transformational reform. SNAICC argues that governments have consistently failed to deliver on commitments under the National Agreement on Closing the Gap and warns that progress will remain stalled unless governments confront structural racism directly and commit to systemic change. The submission calls for full and genuine implementation of the National Agreement, alongside the establishment of a nationally coordinated truth-telling mechanism embedded across education systems, public institutions and government reform processes to ensure Australia honestly reckons with the ongoing impacts of colonisation and systemic racism.

The submission also raises significant concern about the role of political rhetoric, media narratives and digital platforms in normalising racism and legitimising harm. SNAICC argues that deficit-based reporting, ‘tough on crime’ narratives and misinformation campaigns intensified racism towards Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people during the 2023 Voice Referendum and subsequent election cycles. The submission documents how these narratives contribute to increased online abuse, harassment and hostility directed at Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, communities and organisations, including coordinated racist attacks targeting SNAICC’s own social media platforms.

At the heart of the submission is a strong call for governments to invest in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community-controlled organisations (ACCOs) as the most effective providers of prevention, early intervention and family support services. SNAICC argues that chronic under-investment in ACCOs, combined with funding models that continue to privilege mainstream systems, is perpetuating poor outcomes and driving continued over-representation in statutory systems. The submission calls for sustainable long-term funding reform, increased investment in prevention and early intervention, greater transfer of services and decision-making authority to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community-controlled sectors and stronger shared decision-making across government.

Summary of Recommendations

The submission makes eight key recommendations aimed at addressing structural racism, strengthening accountability and advancing self-determination for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, young people and families.

• Establish a nationally coordinated truth-telling mechanism and embed truth-telling across education systems, public institutions and government reform processes, including curriculum reform and sustained support for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander-led truth-telling initiatives.
• Ensure continued bipartisan commitment to the National Agreement on Closing the Gap by fully implementing recommendations from the Productivity Commission Review and Independent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander-led Review, embedding the Priority Reforms across government systems, and strengthening accountability and shared decision-making.
• Strengthen standards for political and media discourse by promoting strengths-based, evidence-informed public communication about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and communities, improving regulation of racialised reporting and misinformation, and increasing accountability for racism and abuse across digital platforms.
• Embed genuine shared decision-making with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and young people into the design, implementation and review of reforms that affect them, including through long-term investment in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander-led youth participation and co-design mechanisms.
• Recognise systemic racism as a key driver of over-representation in child protection and youth justice systems and strengthen accountability under the National Agreement by ensuring government policies, funding frameworks and performance measures explicitly address institutional racism and its impacts.
• Invest in trauma-informed and culturally responsive anti-racism workforce development across child and family services, child protection, youth justice and early childhood education and care, including expansion of SNAICC’s Waterways Training Package and stronger organisational accountability for culturally safe practice.
• Strengthen and consistently apply cultural safety and anti-racism standards across regulatory and quality frameworks, including reforms to the National Quality Framework and improved monitoring, assessment and accountability across services supporting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and families.
• Implement long-term, sustainable funding reform to strengthen self-determination and grow the Aboriginal Community-Controlled Organisation (ACCO) sector, including increasing the proportion of funding directed to ACCOs, implementing the National Child and Family Investment Strategy, and transferring greater service delivery and decision-making authority to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community-controlled organisations.

Overall, the submission presents a clear warning that racism, hate and violence directed at Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are being enabled and reinforced through political systems, institutional practices and public discourse. SNAICC argues that addressing these harms requires far more than symbolic responses. It requires governments to commit to truth-telling, accountability, structural reform and genuine self-determination to ensure Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and young people can grow up safe, strong, connected to culture, community and Country, and free from racism and systemic harm.