The forced removal of First Nations’ children has not slowed down. It has doubled since former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd delivered his “apology” to survivors of the Stolen Generation and their families in February 2008.

In that year, the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in out-of-home care was 9070 — already a tripling of the number identified in the Bringing Them Home report of 1993.

But, in 2024, it was found to have doubled to nearly 20,000. This figure does not include the approximately 3000 children on guardianship orders.

According to social policy scholar BJ Newton in the National Indigenous Times, the die was cast back in 2008, as both Rudd and then opposition leader Brendan Nelson failed to confront the racist and colonialist framing that had allowed the state to harm so many families throughout the 20th century.

Newton, a proud Wiradjuri woman and........

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