On New Year’s Day 2020, the Navy ship HMAS Choules left Sydney Harbour for a rescue mission to Mallacoota. Images of families huddled on the beach on this Victorian coastal town, as a firestorm closed in, became emblematic of the sense of existential crisis that gripped much of Australia. Long suffered by people at the margins, the climate crisis arrived in terrifying ways for the Australian mainstream.

Figures from the Productivity Commission show that at 30 June 1997, the year of Bringing Them Home, 2785 Aboriginal children were in out-of-home care. At 30 June 2012, there were 13 299 – almost a five-fold increase. For each of the last five years, approximately a thousand Aboriginal children have been coming into the ‘out-of-home care’ system long-term. This is a higher number than were removed during any time in the twentieth century. Half of the children have not been placed with kin or relatives.

The Evaluating New Income Management in the Northern Territory: First Evaluation Report was publicly released last week, four months after it was submitted to the government. The report’s findings vindicate those who have campaigned to stop compulsory income management.