And where are these children going to go?

Who do you propose will care for these removed children? Will you be offering?

How will you deal with issues of identity and knowledge of kinship?

Can you guarantee that the children will be safe after removal? Will you accept legal liability?

Did you know that the state can be a very neglectful parent?

What are you personally doing in regards to this issue?

Surely the author of this piece is capable of a more substantial solution to a complex issue.

Yes children need to be safe, but issues such as housing, health, education and policing are not for the future, these things were needed years ago.

Aboriginal people are citizens and are entitled to services, the same as anyone else.

This raises the equality issue - but I am sorry one size does not fit all. An older female needs different services to a teenage male.

A person in a wheel chair needs different services and assistance than an elite athlete.

What we need is EQUITY.

This is a good example of the Aussie tradition of giving everyone a "fair go" and the flip side of "kick em when theyre down - sink the boot in MATE"

ROTFL.

I can just see it now, half of DOCS being relocated to the back of Burke to check on every one of those nasty Aboriginal parents..yeah right.

Then after DOCS has moved, all of the legal appeal mechanisms would have to follow. One thinks that James is looking out more for his students than the children.

Aka I was informed by a person who had apparently worked in a child protection department that the Government/state cannot legally be charged with neglect of a child and that only the parents can?

So the State can neglect Aboriginal children and ignore complaints about abuse and neglect of Aboriginal children and ignore the plight of the Aboriginal children and not be held accountable.

They just blame the parents.

The amazing ignorance of this author has combined with his unwitting racism to give us the remedy of blaming and removing the victims. How about enforcing our universal laws prohibiting child abuse and criminal neglect and removing the perpetrators? barbh.

If this abuse happened anywhere else, DOCS and other organizaitions with the Police would be banging down the parents doors and take the kids away. Its time our public servants enforced the laws they are charged to do so, and feel that they have the support of the community and the government to do so. If some urban white mother who takes drugs can have the little one sent away, then what's the difference with the aboriginals??

One law for all and no less. If you're incapable of properly raising kids, don't have them and if you do, you deserve them taken off you if they're abused. No matter who you are.

There are lots of metropolitan poor with kids. Some [a minority] of those parents take drugs, gamble a lot or whatever. But their kids look a hell of a lot better turned out in life, despite their barriers, and despite what in the eyes of some are failings by those parents, such parents don't routinely expose their kids to sexual abuse.

All this stuff about "what about keeping up their kinship etc" well these communities have to own their problems, and ACCEPT REPSONSIBILITY FOR THEIR OWN ACTIONS. If that means dobbing in the uncle who rooted your kid, or moving to a new place, well you do all that you can for the best interest of your kids.....unless your simply having lots of kids to get a big family tax benefit cheque, what I suspect is the case in some remote indigenous communities.

I have a lot of sympathy and a preference for the use of the same laws for all of us.

What I do suspect would be a major outcome of the authors proposal is a reduction in the willingness to report abuse of indiginous children. Like it or not the emotional baggage around the stolen generation is going to leave a deep distrust about the removal of aboriginal children from their families for a very long time regardless of the situation those children live in with their families.

As an earlier poster pointed out different people do have different needs.

Now how can we protect these kids from abuse and neglect?

R0bert