Natalie Lewis1
1Queensland Family and Child Commission
Biography:
Natalie Lewis is a Gamilaraay woman and the Commissioner of the Queensland Family and Child Commission.
Natalie is fiercely committed to progressing a transformational reform agenda to strengthen Queensland’s focus on children’s rights. Her passion for children’s rights is inspired by the experiences of children and young people disadvantaged by the systems designed to protect them, especially those in statutory child and youth justice systems.
Natalie has dedicated her career to improving life outcomes for First Nations Peoples across Australia and is deeply committed to addressing the systemic and structural issues that disproportionately affect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and families. She has led significant national reform across Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander child protection and family services sectors, playing an instrumental role in the implementation of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Child Placement Principle in Australian child protection legislation. She is a strong advocate for protecting the right of First Nations People to exercise self-determination and to remain meaningfully connected to kin, culture and Country.
Natalie has held senior executive roles in the Queensland Government, the advocacy sector and been appointed to numerous national boards and councils.
Abstract:
The Commissioner will deliver a keynote address exploring the impact of the politicisation of young people in conflict with the law, the power of fear as a driver of reform and the criminalisation of vulnerability. The Commissioner will discuss the consequential impact of systemic dysfunction and policy failure that has led to the normalisation of harmful practices such as the isolation of children and detention of children in police watch houses. Reform requiring overrides of Queensland’s Human Rights Act, justified in the interest of community safety. Practices used under the guise of behaviour management or operational necessity, represents a profound breach of human rights of children and a wilful disregard of evidence, national reform commitments and our obligations at international law. The keynote will draw on the lived experiences of the children most impacted and urge congress participants to take a collective and decisive stand, to denounce the use of isolation and to actively support rights based legislative and policy reform to ensure no child is punished for the failures of the systems meant to protect them.
This keynote will confront the ongoing erosion of children’s rights within Queensland’s youth justice and child protection systems, exposing how the politicisation of young people in conflict with the law has normalised cruelty, isolation, and systemic neglect. The Commissioner will argue that these practices are not operational necessities but deliberate policy choices that contravene Queensland’s Human Rights Act 2019, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and our obligations under international law.
Framed as measures to preserve “community safety,” the use of isolation, prolonged detention, and legislative overrides of fundamental rights reveal a deeper truth, that our systems have come to equate control with care, and punishment with protection. These are structural decisions that reflect a government’s willingness to suspend the rights of children for political convenience. The result is the continued criminalisation of vulnerability, overwhelmingly affecting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, and children with disability, in direct breach of Articles 2, 7, and 37 of the UNCRC, and Articles 2 and 22 of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Drawing on the lived experiences of children and young people who have endured isolation and confinement in watch houses, the Commissioner will illustrate how these violations compound trauma, disconnect children from family and community, and entrench cycles of disadvantage that extend far beyond detention walls. Their testimonies are not anecdotes, they are evidence. They call us to witness, to accountability, and to courage.
True community safety is not achieved by diminishing the rights of a few, but by realising the rights of all. Community safety and children’s rights are not competing ideas; they are the same promise, that every person’s dignity is protected, and every child grows up free from fear.
A rights-affirming system would not ask how long a child can safely be confined, but how quickly we can restore their connection, their hope, and their future. This keynote will draw a line in the sand, urging all professionals and policymakers to denounce the use of isolation and the systemic practice of penalising children for structural disadvantage. The Commissioner will challenge delegates to act as witnesses and reformers, ensuring that no child is ever punished for the failures of the systems meant to protect them.