Next Tuesday 3 March 2026, the Children, Youth & Families (Stability) Bill 2025 (Vic) – the Stability Bill – will again be debated in Victoria’s Legislative Assembly.

Djirra calls on the Victorian Government to pass the Stability Bill without further delay.

The Stability Bill is a critical reform to address the significant over-representation of Aboriginal children in out-of-home care. In Victoria, Aboriginal children are over 20 times more likely to be removed from their mothers than other children.

Under the current legislation, parents are only given 12, or at most 24, months to have their children returned to their care. After this period, they can be permanently removed.

For the Aboriginal women Djirra supports – who all experience family violence, and many of whom face homelessness, racial targeting, disability or mental ill health – safety and healing take time. The blunt timeframes imposed by the current legislation ignore this reality and punish women for the racism, systemic violence and gendered violence they experience, as well as for service delays and gaps that exist beyond their control.

Passing the Stability Bill will remove these rigid reunification timeframes and restore discretion to the Children’s Court to extend orders whenever this is in a child’s best interests.
The government must uphold Yoorook for Justice recommendation #25, and pass the Stability Bill to stop the permanent removal of Aboriginal children.

Reunification must never be taken off the table.

Specialist Aboriginal community-controlled organisations like Djirra must be funded to provide wraparound legal and non-legal support. Aboriginal women must have strong advocates to prevent unnecessary removals in the first place and to secure reunification where children have been taken. Aboriginal women must be supported to be safe and together with their children, not separated by punitive systems.

Quotes attributable to Antoinette Braybrook, CEO of Djirra:
“The over-representation of Aboriginal children in out-of-home care is not a failure of the system. It is the system operating exactly as it was designed to operate. The child protection system continues to expand while Aboriginal women are left grieving the permanent loss of their children, a separation driven by government and backed by legislation.”

“The Stability Bill must be passed to stop embedding permanent separation into law and to ensure Aboriginal children are not denied the right to grow up safe and thriving with their mothers.”

“Permanent removal is not protection, it is punishment. It is the continuation of policies that has impacted our people since the commencement of colonisation.”

“Arbitrary reunification deadlines are cruel and punitive. Ignoring the reality of Aboriginal women surviving violence, homelessness and systemic racism is itself a form of systemic violence. Healing cannot happen on a government stopwatch.”

“Government must act now. Pass the Stability Bill and properly invest in specialist Aboriginal community-controlled organisations like Djirra to ensure Aboriginal women have strong advocacy to remain safe and together with their children.”