By world standards, human rights, including the rights of children, are relatively well respected and protected in Australia. But, on human rights generally and concerning children in particular, there are significant gaps and areas where we need to do better. This emerges clearly from a review of the state of Australia's children such as that presented in this special journal issue. It is also clear that we need to develop structures to perform just this kind of national stocktake on a national basis, and to have the results translated into effective action.

Governments in Australia, as in most comparable countries, are now committed to the development of a better educated population and to new ways of managing public school systems. These new ways of managing combine strengthened central policy direction with devolved responsibility for the operation of schools. The commitment to a better educated population is for the most part economically motivated, resting on the assumption that this is a key element in raised productivity. It also, however, necessarily has a strong social justice component as it seeks to widen educational success beyond those social groups in which it traditionally has been high. Newly developing directions in the operation of public school systems clearly reflect pressures to ensure value for taxpayers' money. But they also have important educational justifications which cannot be overlooked.

Jean Jacques Rousseau is arguably the grandfather of the modern discussion amongst educational theorists regarding the rights of the child. His own childhood was by contemporary standards a disaster and that of his own children even more so; nevertheless Rousseau laid down a programme for the education of one fictional male child, Emile. The proposal was radical in as much as it implied a child-centred focus for learning rather than a content-centered approach associated with the classical and mediaeval curriculum. Writing just before the dawn of modern democratic practices and two centuries before conventions of human rights, this romantic rogue reformer, was midwife to the tradition in education which focusses on the child. The discussion of this paper emerges from that tradition.

No other group of children in Australian society stands in greater judgement of the ability and willingness of this society to deal with their problems than aboriginal children.

The challenge that faces all of us in the nineties, including aboriginal community-controlled organisations like SNAICC, is whether we are going to be able to break the cycle of disadvantage, poverty and racism that keeps our children and our community at the very bottom of this society.

The 20th century history of Australia will be seen as the millennium of a great expansion of wealth in Australia. It will be regarded as a period of gigantic advances in science and productive technology. It will also - if historians record accurately - show the plight of aboriginal people as the single glaring blight on the record of this country.

Seven days after he had attempted to gouge out his own eye with a paintbrush, 29 year old Malcolm Charles Smith, died in Sydney's Prince Henry's Hospital on January 5th 1989. Apart from the unusual circumstances of Malcolm's tragic death, inadvertently caused by his own actions, everything about his brief life since 1965 had been a complete denial of his existence as a human being and an aboriginal child.

Since the Australian Institute of Family Studies was established in 1980, we have kept in mind two slogans about family links and supports: ‘Every individual has a family’; and ‘The family does not stop at the front door’. What we meant was that family policy cannot be based solely on a static image of parents and children living together under the one roof.

Most families start off as a couple, then go through a stage of parents and children living in one household. But once the children have grown and gone, does the couple no longer have a family? If the parents separate or divorce, do the children not have any family? When a partner dies or the children are grown, the family still exists, though the patterns of interaction have changed. Thus family policy has to address the nature of these interactions, across households and across time.

The state government Department for Family and Community Services (formerly DCW) in South Australia is currently seeking to clarify and where necessary change policy in the area of guardianship, long term legal status and related issues. To facilitate this aim in the context of a broader consultation process, a discussion paper was prepared by the author in his role of Chief Policy Officer of DCW in October 1989. The full paper covers a range of issues bearing on the department's role in relation to children and their families where there is a possibility of state care being ordered.

In my first decade with the Brotherhood in the 60's, the poverty of older people was a central concern. The Henderson Poverty Inquiry's recommendation that the age pension be indexed has led to significant improvements and protection for retired people. But during the 1970's and 80's families with children became the group most vulnerable to poverty. I will refer to government action on child poverty later, but for our part, concern about large numbers of children growing up in poverty has prompted the Brotherhood of St. Laurence and Councils of Social Service to run a national awareness and action campaign: Promise the Children.