Queensland Inquiry Recommends Removing Ethnicity Limits on Adoptions and Finds No Evidence Racism Drove Removals

The Queensland Commission of Inquiry into Child Safety recommended last month that adoption should not be limited by cultural background or ethnicity. Abc reported that the panel also found no evidence racism motivated or caused removals of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children.

National Commissioner for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children Sue-Anne Hunter said the recommendation would fall hardest on First Nations children, who make up almost half of children in state care.

"It means the state can permanently and legally remove a child from their people and call it in the child's best interest," Hunter told Abc. She added that governments had accepted under the national Closing the Gap agreement that over-representation of First Nations children in care stems from colonisation, trauma and systemic racism.

Hunter urged focus on early intervention and said the recommendation showed Queensland was going backwards.

The only form of adoption available under Queensland law is plenary adoption, which severs the legal relationship between the child and birth parents. The inquiry advocated instead for simple adoption, under which children would maintain a legal connection to their biological parents.

Queensland Premier David Crisafulli said on Monday that not a single child had been adopted from residential care since 2019.

He described the absence of such adoptions as completely unacceptable and said the minister had already put steps in place for transition to adoption. Dr Jo-Ann Sparrow, president of post-adoption support group Jigsaw, said adoption had become less visible because governments and communities listened to people with lived experience.