Former Commissioner Natalie Lewis reflects on her tenure as Queensland’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children’s Commissioner with a clear sense of purpose about what needed to change.
Rather than focusing solely on programs or policy settings in the Queensland Family and Child Commission role, she sought to reposition accountability across the systems shaping outcomes for First Nations children.
“For too long, Aboriginal parents and communities have been scrutinised in microscopic detail while racism, institutional violence and policy failure remained structurally invisible,” she said.
“We insisted that systems themselves must withstand scrutiny, not rhetorically, but through evidence, monitoring, participation and accountability.”
Gamilaraay woman and former Chief Executive Officer of Queensland Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Child Protection Peak (QATSICPP), the former Commissioner brought to the role a long-standing commitment to addressing the overrepresentation of First Nations children in statutory systems. Her approach was marked by a strong sense of urgency and a willingness to challenge entrenched assumptions.
That commitment is grounded not only in professional experience, but in formative, early exposure to the lived realities of removal and intergenerational trauma.
As a young woman, she supported community members participating in the Bringing Them Home Inquiry process, helping ensure their stories could be shared safely and with dignity. She describes sitting with women who had come together in family homes, making tea, others waiting to share their stories.
“Everyone had a story they wanted to share, just not necessarily knowing how or sometimes where to even start,” she called. “I would sit and listen, recording what they were saying and helping to make sure their stories were heard.”
The Bringing Them Home report became a kind of “policy bible”, shaping her understanding of the system and a core point of reference she returns to, reinforcing a deep sense of responsibility to those whose experiences informed it. It is a responsibility that has continued to guide her work.
Throughout her tenure, Ms Lewis established herself as a clear and persistent advocate for First Nations children. This advocacy was grounded in a deliberate effort to shift systems toward accountability and measurable outcomes.
“Australia does not lack inquiries or recommendations. We lack enforceability,” she said.
A key priority was strengthening the application of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Child Placement Principle (ATSICPP).
Ms Lewis emphasised that the five elements of the principle should operate as a practical decision-making framework, applied at each significant point in a child’s journey through the system.
It is the quintessential legislative and practice framework to safeguard to rights of Aboriginal children in contact with the statutory child protection system.
This approach was complemented by the establishment of the Office of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children’s Commissioner (OATSICC), designed to embed a sustained and explicit focus on First Nations children within the Commission’s work. The office reflects a deliberate shift in perspective, positioning children not as passive recipients of intervention, but as rights holders and decision-makers within the systems that affect them.
“Oversight that does not change outcomes is not oversight. It is observation.”
At the Queensland Family and Child Commission, her focus was on strengthening the oversight function and ensuring a clear and sustained focus on outcomes for First Nations children.
“Whether First Nations children and young people are visible, valued and protected should not be subject to the discretion, benevolence or otherwise of a non-Indigenous Commissioner,” she said.
Ms Lewis consistently argued for a model that ensures dedicated authority, visibility and sustained focus on outcomes for First Nations children.
“Our children are entitled to focused, unapologetic advocacy and accountability for the promotion and protection of their rights.”
Central to her work was a reframing of harm within the system. Rather than locating risk primarily within families, she drew attention to the role of institutions in producing harm through over-surveillance, removal practices and cultural disconnection.
“One of the most significant insights has been recognising just how normalised grave institutional harm can become when it is exercised through lawful systems,” she said.
“We continue to see grave harms produced through over-surveillance, unnecessary removals, criminalisation, cultural disconnection and punitive responses to trauma.”
The consequences of these decisions are lived by children.
“Children do not experience policy failure as an abstract governance issue,” Ms Lewis said. “They live inside our bad decisions.”
Her leadership was also defined by a strong commitment to elevating the voices of children and young people as part of system oversight.
“Young people trusted us with their truths, their critiques and their aspirations for what justice and safety should look like,” she said.
Ms Lewis is direct in her assessment that the ongoing overrepresentation of First Nations children is a clear indicator of systemic failure. She argues that meaningful reform requires a shift from crisis response to prevention, and from centralised control to community authority.
Her leadership has been described as disruptive, a characterisation she accepts. For the Commissioner, challenging the status quo is essential to achieving meaningful reform, particularly where that status quo continues to harm Aboriginal children.
Looking ahead, her work continues to centre on strengthening governance and accountability frameworks so that they are capable of driving implementation.
“Oversight has to evolve beyond observation and moral persuasion towards accountability systems capable of compelling response, implementation and measurable outcomes over time,” she said.
She also sees a critical role for the legal profession in advancing this reform.
“I would strongly encourage young professionals to ground themselves in child rights and human rights frameworks,” she said.
“Instruments like the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples provide practical frameworks for understanding power, accountability and self-determination.
“Access to justice is not only about whether a person can appear before a court. It is about whether children and families can meaningfully exercise rights, challenge harmful practices and participate in decisions affecting their lives.”
Her reflections return to a central principle that has shaped her work.
“The real measure of a society is whether children experience its systems as places of dignity, safety, justice and belonging, or as sites of control, exclusion and repeated harm.”
In her view, the challenge for policymakers, institutions and the legal profession is not to develop new frameworks, but to ensure that existing commitments are implemented, measured and enforced in ways that deliver meaningful change for children.
“The challenge now,” Ms Lewis said, “is whether we are willing to listen seriously enough to reorganise systems around what children have already been telling us for a very long time.”
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