Calma, Tom; Gooda, Mick --- "Editorial: Strength, resilience and community-led solutions" [2020] PrecedentAULA 38; (2020) 159 Precedent 2

---

STRENGTH, RESILIENCE AND COMMUNITY-LED SOLUTIONS

By Professor Tom Calma AO and Mick Gooda

A common theme running through 2020 has been the need for community strength and resilience. When the devastating bushfire season made thousands of people homeless, Australians reached out to support those in need. When the pandemic hit, people stayed home to protect our most vulnerable. First Nations communities demonstrated leadership, in some cases closing their communities before government restrictions were introduced.

Following George Floyd’s murder in the US, we saw Australians come together in a different way – on the streets, and online – in a demonstration of anger over the deaths of black men and women in Australian prisons and police custody and the systemic racism and disadvantage at the heart of our system.

Australia’s First Nations communities know a lot about resilience; their resilience has been fired in the forge of dispossession, disempowerment and discrimination, and has sustained their advocacy and calls for change in the face of the government’s continued inaction.

We first proposed incarceration targets in 2006. It wasn’t until 2018 that COAG announced it would consider draft incarceration targets as part of the Closing the Gap ‘refresh’. Now, 14 years after our first proposal, there is a draft plan to include very modest targets, to be discussed at national cabinet. Our governments need to be serious about this issue. Any targets should be ambitious, and the effort sustained.

To meet these targets, we need coordinated legislative and policy reforms and a commitment to shifting power and resources.

The 2017 Australian Law Reform Commission’s Pathways to Justice report delivered a blueprint for these reforms, to be underpinned by a justice reinvestment approach. However, with the exception of the ACT, governments have again failed to act.

We must recognise, challenge and dismantle the racism and discrimination embedded in our systems. The problems extend beyond the police and criminal justice systems – it is crucial to address the underlying drivers of offending and incarceration, including intergenerational trauma, poverty and inadequate access to essential services like housing, health and education. For example, school discipline policies result in disproportionately high numbers of First Nations children being excluded from their education, pushing them towards the criminal justice system.

While we wait for governments to act, First Nations communities are stepping into the void to create futures for their kids, working tirelessly to build safe and strong communities.

The Murri School in Brisbane is Indigenous-owned and controlled. Ninety-five per cent of its over 270 students are Indigenous. The school delivers a wholistic, wraparound suite of programs which include a focus on health, comprehensive family support and ‘at school’ meals to address those underlying issues that impact negatively on education outcomes. It is a community-led solution delivering results.

In 2013, Bourke in NSW became the first major Australian site to implement community-led justice reinvestment. Maranguka is driving change toward their community strategy: Growing our Kids up Safe, Smart and Strong. KPMG’s impact assessment reported a 23 per cent reduction in police-recorded rates of domestic violence, 31 per cent increase in Year 12 retention, and 42 per cent reduction in days spent in custody. Maranguka is now working towards building a First Nations’ model of self-governance.

We have long championed community-led justice reinvestment as the key to addressing over-incarceration of First Nations people. This was echoed in the Pathways to Justice report, which recommended support for communities looking to work in a similar way to Bourke.

In order to build strong and resilient communities, governments must invest in and support community-led solutions. This is true for environmental challenges like bushfires, health challenges such as pandemics, or social challenges such as community well-being.

The Black Lives Matter protests have brought people together from across a broad spectrum of society, not only in frustration and anger but also to express solidarity and hope for a brighter future in which our children are safe to thrive. Community-led solutions are the way to unlock that future.

An extended version of this article was published in The Guardian on 10/07/20.

Professor Tom Calma AO, from the Kungarakan and Iwaidja tribal groups, is Chancellor of the University of Canberra and Co-Chair of the Senior Advisory Group of the Indigenous Voice co-design process (taking leave as Co-Chair of Reconciliation Australia). Mick Gooda, an Aboriginal man of the Gangulu people, was Co-Commissioner of the Royal Commission into the Protection and Detention of Children in the Northern Territory from 2016–2017. He is Co-Chair of Just Reinvest NSW.

Professor Calma was Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner from 2004– 2010 and Mick Gooda from 2010–2016.