Protect the Baaka and all natural rivers in Australia. Restore to full health.

We believe the flag belongs to all Aboriginal people and all should have a right to use it, whenever they want without cost or the need to seek consent.

Thanks to the federal government who have now bought the copyright.

The Aboriginal flag is available for use by all.

No children to be taken from their families unless they are at immediate risk. Intensive in home support to be provided instead.

In extreme cases, kinship care should be preferred with unnecessary bureaucratic obstacles to care by relatives to be removed.

High risk families should receive intensive in home support from highly trained Indigenous peers or Elders. Safety plans with pre-approved kinship options should be preferred to prevent the trauma of children being removed to strangers far from their home and school.

Governments to recognize most Indigenous kids are removed for neglect, not abuse. Neglect is usually caused by poverty. Address poverty; don’t remove kids.

Study after study has shown that contact with the criminal justice system at a young age can do lasting damage to children, their families and communities.

Aboriginal kids make up only 6% of all 10 to 17-year-olds in Australia but they are 54% of the juvenile detention population.

Recognise that most juvenile offend when they are in the care of the state. Improvements to the child protection system will also reduce youth offending.

The number of Indigenous Australian prisoners has continued to grow despite an overall reduction in the number of adult prisoners nationally.

We plan to end Indigenous incarceration, except for the most serious offences so as to protect the offender’s victims and community, but even then intensive rehabilitation should happen in prison always working towards release.

All fines to be worked out with community service and/or fines should be proportional to income.

The Australian government is increasingly spending less on police and more on prison systems.

Let’s spend on keeping Indigenous Australians out of prison - Prevention not punishment.

Indigenous control of Indigenous school education, particularly for school refusers.

We stand for schools that are independent and belong to the communities they serve.

An environment where learning is nurtured by cultural identity, traditional language and a sense of belonging to place.

We want schools that break down the barriers that prevent Koori kids from engaging in education.

No NAPLAN.

Enquiry into NESA [New South Wales Education Standards Authority] and the VRQA [Victorian Registration and Qualifications Authority] re the closure of Indigenous friendly schools and/or the obstruction of their formation.

The current legislation, the Aboriginal Heritage Act, does not allow for consent to be renegotiated when new information comes to light, sites can be delisted, information about new evidence is blocked and governments, and mining corporations constantly seek exemptions.

We are standing up for Aboriginal culture and significant sites.

For tens of thousands of years, Indigenous Australians managed the land. They hunted, gathered food, lit fires and fished in the ocean and rivers. Coming off the land after European settlement caused not only huge cultural and social dislocation and difficulty for Aboriginal Australians, it also proved a disaster for conservation.

We propose a return to traditional ways of caring for country.

Support Indigenous businesses through 10% of government purchases.

Support employment opportunities for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
Support growth of Aboriginal businesses via Government procurement policy.

To elect Indigenous people to the various parliaments in Australia.

Almost 60 years after being given the right to vote, very few First Nations people who answer to other Indigenous people have been elected to parliament.

We want to help change that.

As the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists has found: "The lack of recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the traditional owners of the land and waters of Australia in the Constitution impacts on identity and sense of belonging within the communities, perpetuating discrimination and eroding mental health and social and emotional wellbeing."

Source: Constitutional recognition of Aboriginal people - Creative Spirits, retrieved from https://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/politics/constitutional-recognition-of-aboriginal-people

Better housing, especially in Regional Australia.

‘Better’ housing includes quality of basic services, materials, facilities and infrastructure; habitability; affordability; accessibility; legal security of tenure; and location and cultural adequacy.

Innovative and flexible designs built in consultation with Mob to accommodate unique Indigenous extended family structures and lifestyles.

Support our farmers by better managing our water resources and reducing the number of cotton farms.

Water scarcity is a persistent and growing issue for farms across Australia.

We are concerned about cotton farms reducing the amount of water available for other farmers. For example, in the Murray-Darling Basin. What part did the cotton industry play in the Darling River fish kills?

Local Lands Councils must strive to implement the concerns of the local Indigenous communities when it comes to the protection of our land.

When conflict arises between the Lands Council and the local Indigenous population, an independent mediator, such as Traditional Owners should be sought. The independent mediator should be someone acceptable to both sides of the dispute.

Local community-based solutions are favoured over schemes imposed from above, by government or non-government agencies.

A national Indigenous Suicide prevention hotline manned by trained Indigenous volunteers is desperately needed. (The IAPA will continue to support 13YARN started on 16/3/2022 but monitor that it is being adequately funded especially including advertising its existence very widely to those who need it most.)

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are nearly twice as likely to die by suicide compared to non-Indigenous people.

Between 2015 and 2019, suicide was the leading cause of death for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and young people, at a rate three times higher than non-Indigenous young people.

We believe a well advertised suicide prevention phone service, manned by Indigenous people, will reduce these terribly disproportionate numbers.

Before the federal government funded Lifeline to operate 13YARN, the IAPA fundraised through Chuffed to establish such a line. The money raised has been donated to Gerry Georgatos and Megan Krakouer’s widely acclaimed National Suicide Prevention & Trauma Recovery Project.

Governments to realise the nexus between racism, intergenerational trauma, inappropriate child removals, judicial oppression, high incarceration rates, under-employment and crushing fines as factors in the high suicide rate of Indigenous people, working to rectify the causes as well as treating the symptoms.