A politician who breezed in and out of Bourke earlier this year has again inflamed local people with his comments that have been widely shared on social media.

Back in July 2022, Member of the NSW Legislative Council (MLC) and One Nation party member Mark Latham arranged a whistlestop tour of the northwest.

In the weeks following, he posted a series of comments on social media describing an "epidemic of child sexual abuse" in Bourke, declaring that “every Aboriginal child in Bourke NSW over the age of 5 has been sexually abused, with some certain to have been raped last night”.

Not surprisingly, Latham's statements were considered by many community members and organisations to be non-productive and even defamatory.

On 30 November, Latham repeated his claims on social media while taking aim at Prime Minister Albanese over The Voice to Parliament.

Requests to his office for verification or the source of his "statistics" have received no response.

One Bourke resident, who wishes to remain anonymous, said a number of the Bourke mob would like Latham to return to Bourke and address the community.

“Politicians like Latham show a distinct lack of guts by showing up and using the children as political footballs whilst tarnishing every Aboriginal community member with the same brush," they said.

"He went around the school all caring like, and then says all the Aboriginal kids have been sexually abused.”

“How would all the politicians feel if Latham told them all their kids over the age of 5 had been sexually abused and raped last night. We would really like to tell him how we feel.”  

It is not just the Bourke community's reputation at risk and those who work in the sector say that sensational publicity does little to address the underlying issues facing Indigenous families and children.

The Hon. Mark Latham Source: Parliament House

During the last 2022 Parliamentary sitting and after a visit to Alice Springs the Leader of the Opposition, Peter Dutton called for a royal commission into the sexual abuse of Indigenous children.

The recently completed royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse found Indigenous children are at greatest risk when they are removed from their homes and families.

Current government data shows more Indigenous children are being removed from their homes, family and culture than ever before.

Secretariat of National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care (SNAICC) CEO Catherine Liddle said calls by the Opposition Leader for a Royal Commission into the sexual abuse of Aboriginal children were "an uninformed response" to an issue raised with successive Governments over many years.

Ms Liddle said the evidence did not support claims by Mr Dutton that Aboriginal children were being left in unsafe conditions because of fears of creating another Stolen Generation.

The commission found that:

• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children were 11.5 times more likely to be in out-of-home care than non-Indigenous children in 2021.

• Sexual abuse was the reason for a substantiation of harm in only 7% of cases for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, compared to 10% for non-Indigenous children.

• Neglect is a greater reason for removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children (31% of substantiations of harm, compared to 21% for non-Indigenous children)

“The reality is our children are being removed from family at ever higher and unacceptable rates,” Ms Liddle said.

“This is not because they are not loved or somehow Aboriginal people don’t know how to raise children. We have done that successfully for sixty thousand years”.

“It is because of poverty, systemic racism and the lack of appropriate supports available to vulnerable Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families”.

“What we know is years of failure to invest in and reform early childhood, child protection and family support systems is continuing to have devastating impacts for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families”.

State statistics

In May this year, the NSW Department of Communities and Justice released updated statistics relating to Aboriginal child abuse.

The results are more in line with statements made by Ms Liddle than Mr Dutton and Mr Latham.

Local agencies and community members also tell us that, while the problem cannot be dismissed, there have been gradual but ongoing improvements across our region in reducing child sexual abuse.

Between 2019 and 2020, 529 Aboriginal children from the Far West region made up only 2.2% of Aboriginal children involved in Risk of Significant Harm (ROSH) reports in NSW.

The following year, between 2020 and 2021, 526 Aboriginal children from the Far West make up only 2.0% of Aboriginal children and involved in ROSH reports in NSW.

FindMyRates.com statistics for all Bourke residents, including Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal residents of all ages, shows that sexual assault cases recorded in Bourke for 2021 were 13, down from 22 recorded in 2020.

Sexual touching, sexual act and other sexual offenses were also down from 17 recorded in 2020 to 7 recorded in 2021.

Child sexual abuse statistics usually do not include sexual activity between young people and children that may be occurring between consenting similar age peers, no different from that found in non-Indigenous Australians in the same age group. 

“One visit to Alice Springs does not give the Opposition Leader an informed perspective about the issue of abuse or indeed about the complexity of the issues we face," Ms Liddle said.

“And it certainly doesn’t give him insight into the work and solutions being driven by Aboriginal people and organisations”.

“Our children should not be used as political footballs," she said.