The Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service (VALS) welcomes the passage of the Children, Youth & Families (Stability) Bill 2025 (Stability Bill). The legislation is a positive and long awaited first step toward addressing a longstanding injustice of Victoria’s child protection system, which has resulted in the permanent separation of Aboriginal children from their families, communities, and Culture.
This new legislation removes harmful and arbitrary timeframes around family reunification, which meant that parents were given only 12 (or at most 24) months to navigate the complexity of the child protection system and receive the supports necessary to have their children returned home.
The strict timeframes imposed upon parents also meant that courts could not consider the significant barriers families face in accessing basic services, including lengthy waitlists for housing, mental health, and alcohol and other drug supports; with a lack of culturally safe parenting support provided and specialist family violence programs. Under these punitive measures, Aboriginal families were set up to fail. Many parents were punished with the permanent removal of their children, for circumstances beyond their control. Victoria has the country’s highest rates of Aboriginal children being removed from their families. The Bringing them Home Report was tabled almost 30 years ago, and the rates of removal in Victoria are significantly higher than they were during the Stolen Generations, our children belong with their families. We hope this reform will see more families reunified in a timely manner.
Reflecting a key recommendation of the Yoorrook for Justice report, the passage of the Stability Bill means that the courts will once again have discretion in deciding whether allowing more time for reunification is in a child’s best interests and will have to directly consider circumstances which might have impeded reunification.
The Children’s Court must now consider an expanded notion of the best interest principle, which recognises the need for cultural stability alongside physical and relational stability. These reforms bring the Children Youth and Families Act 2005 into closer alignment with the Statement of Recognition principles.
Restrictions around reunifying Aboriginal children with their families were based on a racist and flawed understanding of the best interest’s principle, which viewed the protection and promotion of Aboriginal children’s connection to Culture, family, and community as optional, or secondary.
While VALS strongly supports the passage of these measures, further work will be needed to ensure that they achieve their intent of ensuring that Aboriginal children grow up within their families and connected to their Culture and community. Investment in culturally safe prevention and early intervention supports, including access to legal assistance, is necessary to help keep our families together.
Quotes Attributable to Nerita Waight, CEO of the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service:
“VALS welcomes the passing of the Stability Bill, this is long awaited, and much needed reform. Whilst it doesn’t fully meet the full intention of what the Yoorrook Justice Commission called for, it will make a positive impact on the lives of Aboriginal children, young people and families by building in greater accountability and responsibility in cases where the state seeks to permanently separate Aboriginal children from their families. Aboriginal children, mothers, families and communities have been failed by punitive and racist laws and harmful policies since invasion. For too long, western understandings of attachment have been used to disrupt the connection between Aboriginal children and their parents under the guise that this is in their best interests. We know that these policies have caused irreparable harm.”
“The concept of “permanency” has been used to disrupt the connection between Aboriginal children and their parents, as well as ongoing disruption to their culture, causing irreparable harm. Victoria has the highest rate of Aboriginal children and young people being removed from their families, and the ‘Permanency Amendments’ which came into effect in 2016 significantly compounded this. They conflated a permanent placement with stability for children and failed to prioritise cultural permanency which is fundamental to Aboriginal children’s identity.”
“There is still significant work to be done to redress racist and discriminatory child protection laws and practices. Removing Aboriginal children from the care of their parent should be a last resort and uphold the principle of being in their best interests. This government must invest in culturally safe, therapeutic and holistic prevention and early intervention supports, including access to legal assistance to support families to stay together and to prioritise reunification where the child must be removed.”