Overreaction to Australia's Stolen Generations hindering child protection: judge

Western Australia's chief justice has suggested child protection workers are hesitant to take indigenous children away from harmful family environments due to an "overreaction" to the controversial era of the Stolen Generations.

The comments, made by justice Wayne Martin to a senate inquiry into the experiences of Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islanders, who were removed from their families by law enforcement agencies, were published on Wednesday.

"I think there has been an overreaction to the stolen generation which has resulted in people being too willing to allow Aboriginal kids to remain in environments that they would not allow non-Aboriginal kids to remain in," Martin said.

Martin believed it was important to keep all Australian children, regardless of background, with their families if feasible.

The Stolen Generations involved forcibly removing 100,000 Indigenous and Torres Straight Islander children from their families as part of Australian government policy from 1910 to 1970.

On the issue of indigenous children being greatly over- represented in police custody, Martin said he had come across cases where aboriginal kids were purposefully committing serious crimes "to elevate the scale of their offending so that they are taken into custody".

"The reason they want to be taken into custody is so they can get a decent feed and a safe place to sleep at night," he said.

In 2008, Australia's then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made the first step in acknowledging the trauma the policy inflicted on families, apologizing on behalf of the government on what became known as Sorry Day.

Data from the recently released Amnesty International report found Indigenous children were 26 times more likely to spend time in custody than non-indigenous kids. Endi