Protect the Baaka (Darling River), the Martuwarra (Fitzroy River WA) and all other natural rivers in Australia. Restore those already degraded to full health.

The refusal of all governments to meaningfully take notice of the cultural, spiritual and social interests of the Barkindji people in the Baaka was one of the core reasons for the formation of the IAPA.

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.

We demand 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 should be fostered.

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

We do not support NAPLAN as it encourages a narrow “teaching to the exam” which is not conducive to inclusive, culturally sensitive, education.

We demand inquiries into the NESA [New South Wales Education Standards Authority] and the VRQA [Victorian Registration and Qualifications Authority] in relation to 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 de-listed, information about new evidence is blocked and governments, and mining corporations constantly seek exemptions.

We are standing up for Aboriginal culture and significant sites.

Wiimpatja families of some of the important founders of the IAPA were members of the blockade of Mutawintji National Park in 1983. Among other sacrilege, tourists had been chiselling off pieces of rock painting, sometimes to sell. The blockade eventually led to Mutawintji becoming the first formally Aboriginal controlled National Park in NSW in 1998.

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 25 years after Federation, very few First Nations people who answer to other Indigenous people without compromise have been elected to parliament.

We want to help change that.

‘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.

We support highly collaborative approaches used by organisations such as the Yiyan Foundation in the Kimberley which aim to have residents of remote communities designing and building their own homes thus also leaving a legacy of training which will enable maintenance and further building by the communities themselves.

Support all water users by better managing our water resources and reducing over-extraction by large corporate enterprises, especially cotton growing in the Northern Murray-Baaka (Darling) Basin.

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

We are concerned about corporate over-extraction destroying the sacred Baaka and reducing the amount of water available to other farmers. The notorious fish-kills on the Baaka in 2019, where 50 - 100 year old Murray Cod died in the stagnant ponds that was all that was left of the mighty Baaka, showed the world that something was desperately wrong with river management in this country, And the problem continues with at least three more fish-kills since and communities often unable to drink or even swim in the waters of the Baaka, during outbreaks of blue-green algae.

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 staff was and 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 to advertise its existence very widely to those who need it most. Unfortunately such live-saving programs survive only at the whim of changing governments.)

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 continue to believe a well advertised suicide prevention phone service, manned by Indigenous people, will reduce those terribly disproportionate numbers.

Before the federal government funded Lifeline to operate 13YARN, the IAPA fund-raised through Chuffed to establish such a line. Once 13YARN started operating with government funding the money raised by the IAPA was donated to Gerry Georgatos and Megan Krakouer’s widely acclaimed ‘National Suicide Prevention & Trauma Recovery Project’ based in WA, but with a national focus.

We believe our fundraising and advocacy contributed to the clamor which finally forced the Federal Government in to action to fund 13YARN.

Governments must realise the nexus between racism, inter-generational 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.

We believe the Aboriginal 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.

The Federal Government have now bought the copyright to allow that use but the IAPA does not believe the flag belongs to the Australian government. As well a the original designer, it belongs to all the Aboriginal people who have rallied around it to struggle for Aboriginal rights, usually against the wishes of Australian governments.

So currently the Aboriginal flag is available for use by all and that is a far better situation than its previous corporate ownership, but like the continent itself, the Aboriginal flag is not rightfully or morally owned by the Australian Government.

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