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The Commission would like to thank the children and young people who participated in the project and demonstrated great courage in allowing us to hear and tell their often painful and traumatic stories, in a hope that things would change for the better.

Within months of the `First Fleet' arrival at Sydney Cove in 1788 there was `open animosity' as Indigenous people protested against `the Europeans cutting down trees, taking their food and game, and driving them back into others' territories'. Bitter conflict followed as Aboriginal people engaged in `guerilla warfare - plundering crops, burning huts, and driving away stock' to be met by `punitive…

Commissioners: DR SEV OZDOWSKI, Human Rights Commissioner MRS ROBIN SULLIVAN, Queensland Children's Commissioner PROFESSOR TRANG THOMAS, Professor of Psychology, Melbourne Institute of Technology MS VANESSA LESNIE, Secretary to the Inquiry

Note: This overview is based primarily on the Bringing them home report and provides a background to the policies and practices that authorised the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families. It is not intended to be used as a comprehensive historical document.

Following the founding of the Swan River Colony in 1829 relations between the British settlers and local Indigenous peoples in Western Australia became characterised by conflict. As a result of fierce fighting,

1. I am a qualified youth worker who was employed by Australasian Correctional Management (ACM) at the Woomera Immigration Reception and Processing Centre (the WIRPC) from May 2000 to January 2002.

The major finding of this Inquiry is that Australia’s treatment of individuals suspected of people smuggling offences who said that they were children has led to numerous breaches of both the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).

4. I was the Business Manager at the Woomera Immigration, Reception and Processing Centre (WIRPC) from May 2000 to the end of May 2001. I was the senior DIMIA official at the WIRPC.

My name is Katie Brosnan. I am a permanent resident of Australia and a citizen of Ireland. I qualified as a high school teacher in Ireland in 1995 with a bachelor’s degree in education. I have taught in Ireland, Poland and Australia in mainstream educational facilities as well as with marginalized groups e.g. refugees in Ireland, gypsies in Ireland.

Between late 2008 and late 2011, 180 young Indonesians who said that they were children arrived in Australia having worked as crew on boats bringing asylum seekers to Australia.

From 1835, when the European occupation of Victoria commenced, until the 1880s government policy was one of segregation of Indigenous people on reserves. These were mainly controlled by missions.

The colony of Moreton Bay was established as a penal outpost of New South Wales in 1825. Extreme violence accompanied the rapid expansion of European settlers, particularly in the north. This violence and the spread of introduced diseases resulted in a rapid decrease in the Indigenous population. Kidnapping Indigenous women and children for economic and sexual exploitation was common.

Following the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families and the release of the report Bringing them home several questions have been frequently asked and statements made about the Inquiry’s findings and recommendations.

This executive summary is divided into two parts. Part A sets out the major findings and recommendations of the National Inquiry into Children in Immigration Detention (the Inquiry). Part B provides a chapter summary of the Inquiry's report: A last resort?

Note: This overview is based primarily on the Bringing them home report and provides a background to the policies and practices that authorised the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families. It is not intended to be used as a comprehensive historical document.

My grandmother, Rebecca, was born around 1890. She lived with her tribal people, parents and relations around the Kempsey area. Rebecca was the youngest of a big family. One day some religious people came, they thought she was a pretty little girl. She was a full blood aborigine about five years old. Anyway those people took her to live with them.

Every morning our people would crush charcoal and mix that with animal fat and smother that all over us, so that when the police came they could only see black children in the distance. We were told always to be on the alert and, if white people came, to run into the bush or run and stand behind the trees as stiff as a poker, or else hide behind logs or run into culverts and hide. Often the white…

Commissioners: DR SEV OZDOWSKI, Human Rights Commissioner MRS ROBIN SULLIVAN, Queensland Children's Commissioner PROFESSOR TRANG THOMAS, Professor of Psychology, Melbourne Institute of Technology MS VANESSA LESNIE, Secretary to the Inquiry

I want to tell you that actually I spent about fifteen nights in the ride to Australia. I was in a small boat if you want to call that a boat, because it was smaller than that, with lots of difficulties. When I saw [we were] getting near Australia I was becoming a little bit hopeful. When we passed Darwin I got to the detention centre as soon as I looked at these barbed wires my mind was full of…

It was established to consider whether Australia's immigration detention laws and its treatment of children in immigration detention comply with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.