Tag: aborigines

Pioneering Aboriginal children’s advocate sensationally quits her role claiming that she was sexually assaulted by a Canberra bureaucrat

The ACT’s first Commissioner for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children and Young People has stepped down from her ‘dream role’ after an alleged assault.

Vanessa Turnbull-Roberts was appointed to the position in 2024 but has been on extended approved leave since July 2025.

She officially resigned from the role at the end of 2025 following months of questions about her absence in Canberra. 

However, Turnbull-Roberts on Tuesday morning alleged she had left her office after being subjected to ‘sexual harassment and sexual assault in Canberra by a public servant’.

She cited concern for her ‘physical and psychological safety’ as reasons why she left the role and added she needed to act in the ‘best interests of my family’.

‘This conduct has no place in any workplace,’ she said.

‘Appropriate reports have been made, including to police, and these matters are now with the relevant authorities. This experience has impacted me in ways too shattering for language to fully hold.’

Several ministers had previously voiced their concerns about Turnbull-Roberts’ ‘persistent absenteeism’, reported the Canberra Times last month.

Turnbull-Roberts shot down those report as ‘incorrect and harmful’.

‘It misrepresented the reality of my decision and caused me further harm. Taking steps to protect one’s health and safety should never be distorted or weaponised,’ she said.

‘No one leaves work of this significance without reason. As a survivor, a mother, and a proud Bundjalung woman, I know what it means to be unprotected in systems meant to provide care. I also know what it means to choose safety when it is not adequately provided.

‘I escaped the child ‘protection’ system at 18, after being forcibly removed from my family and communities at 10 because of racism. I have lived what children and families endure inside these systems. 

‘My focus since has never wavered: human rights, Indigenous rights, children’s safety, and defending mothers and families.’

The Canberra Times claimed that Turnbull-Roberts had a ‘part-time presence’ in the nation’s capital, writing: ‘There has been growing disquiet in the ACT First Nations community about the effectiveness of the [Commissioner and her office].’

Turnbull-Roberts on Tuesday said she valued her time as Commissioner, writing that she ‘witnessed extraordinary courage’ during her tenure. 

‘I sat with children and young people so often dismissed or silenced and watched them speak with clarity, strength, and spirit. 

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British committed ‘genocide’ against Aboriginal Australians – inquiry

British colonisers committed “genocide” against the Aboriginal people in the Australian state of Victoria after arriving in the area in the early 1830s, a commission investigating injustices against the indigenous population has said.

The colonization of Victoria, Australia’s second smallest state, located in the southeast of the country, took place between 1834 and 1851.

During that period, its indigenous population suffered “near-complete physical destruction,” falling from around 60,000 to 15,000, according to a report released on Tuesday by the Yoorrook Justice Commission.

The crimes by the British in Victoria included “mass killings, disease, sexual violence, exclusion, linguicide [the death of languages], cultural erasure, environmental degradation, child removal, absorption and assimilation,” it said.

“This was genocide,” the commission ruled after holding more than two months of public hearings and listening to accounts by over 1,300 Aboriginals.

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Children made to write apology letters in school to Aboriginal Australians ‘for taking their land’

Children as young as 10 are being made to write letters in school apologising to Indigenous Australians for ‘taking their land’, pictures reveal. 

The images taken by a parent were sent to One Nation Senator Pauline Hanson, who posted them online.

The letters, written by primary school children, were put together on pieces of paper shaped in the form of a megaphone with words referencing the nation’s colonial past.

‘We are sorry for everything that we have done,’ one letter reads. 

Another said: ‘We are sorry to Aboriginals. We took your land and we have now we feel sad of what we have done.’

‘Aboriginal people should have many more rights and should be treated nicely they should be also be a aboriginal voice to parliament [sic]’. 

Senator Hanson said teachers should ‘hang their heads in shame’ for psychologically burdening children with historical guilt.

‘Under no circumstances should innocent children bear the guilt of historical events, especially events that occurred long before they were even conceived. ‘This is not education; it’s emotional manipulation,’ she argued.

‘What legacy are we leaving for future generations if we instil in them a sense of guilt and shame for things they had no part in?

‘Rather than moving toward unity and social harmony, we are planting seeds for further discord and division.’

It comes after a mother on Thursday revealed how her daughter was told by teachers at her school to ‘go home and influence your parents to vote Yes’ for the Indigenous Voice to Parliament.

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