Page 2412 - Week 07 - Thursday, 4 August 2022
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the recommendations put forward to us about how that will work. The advocacy role will be particularly important in supporting the intent of the other Our Booris, Our Way recommendations and its findings over the course of its important inquiry.
I also want to take a moment to acknowledge that the Our Booris, Our Way Implementation Oversight Committee today released a statement expressing their frustration at the lack of speed of response to the Our Booris, Our Way committee recommendations. I met with the committee on Monday, and I understand absolutely their frustration and that of the community in relation to this. I am confident that there are many people working very hard to deliver the recommendations and their broader intent; but I know that this is not happening as fast as people would like. I want to thank very much the Our Booris, Our Way Implementation Oversight Committee for continuing to undertake its important role and the broader Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community for continuing to work with us through these co-design processes, including the process to establish new Aboriginal community-controlled organisations and expand the functions of existing ones.
With that, thank you to Minister Cheyne for tabling this report. I hope people take the opportunity to read it, because it is a really important piece of work.
MS DAVIDSON (Murrumbidgee) (3.14): I rise as an ACT Greens member of this Assembly to speak in support of the ACT government’s commitment to establish an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children’s Commissioner as an independent statutory authority.
I thank the Jumbunna Institute and distinguished Professor Larissa Behrendt and Associate Professor Paul Gray for their work in facilitating the co-design process to design the role of the new commissioner in 2021, including hearing from young people at Bimberi Youth Justice Centre. True co-design work takes time and it required significant commitment from the community members who were part of the process. I am always thankful for the time they take to inform ACT government about the work that we need to do. Listening to and supporting our First Nations community is the best way to achieve the right outcome in designing the role of the new commissioner.
The ACT Greens support the full implementation of the recommendations in the Our Booris, Our Way review. This Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children’s Commissioner is an important part of those recommendations. The role of the commissioner includes both systemic advocacy as well as individual advocacy for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and their families.
I am pleased to see that the ACT government will work with community on the recruitment process for the new commissioner, providing a level of transparency that is important in such a fundamentally important new office being established. The right of First Nations people to self-determination underpins the way in which the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children’s Commissioner will work, including its framework, powers and functions.
I would like the final word on this to be from Archie Roach, whose loss is being felt across this country:
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