Queensland ombudsman finds as many as one in six births are not registered

One in six Indigenous children born in Queensland have no birth certificates, leaving them “largely invisible” and preventing them from fully taking part in society, an investigation by the state’s ombudsman has found.

Phil Clarke found that the Queensland birth registration process had an “unintended, yet potentially discriminatory” effect on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.



Clarke was tasked with investigating why the births of so many Indigenous children in Queensland were not registered. He cited 2014 figures that estimated 15% to 18% of Indigenous births were not registered. The flow-on effect was that children could not enrol in school, and adults could not access government benefits, vote or obtain driver’s licences.

Debbie Kilroy, whose organisation Sisters Inside advocates for women in the criminal justice system, said the flow-on effects could continue. She was aware of several women in prison for driving offences that stemmed from an inability to obtain a licence.

“Obviously those babies [who aren’t registered], when they get older, if they don’t have a birth certificate, how do they then get a learner’s permit or a driver’s licence? You can end up with terms of imprisonment for driving while disqualified. It’s an accumulation of penalties to the point where you start getting sentenced to terms of imprisonment and it stems from not having a birth certificate.”



Kilroy said many people from the stolen generations experienced difficulties because of a lack of documentation but the current rates of under-reporting of Indigenous births was shocking.



“That’s just outrageous,” she said. “We’re in 2018. That shouldn’t be happening.”

Clarke’s report was based on information supplied by government agencies and community organisations. He said he couldn’t interview people whose births were not registered – because they weren’t registered.

“In gathering information, it was apparent that it would be difficult to identify and interview individuals directly impacted by not having their birth registered, as these individuals are in one sense largely invisible to the state,” the report said.



Indigenous groups in north Queensland told Guardian Australia one significant problem was that both parents were required to submit the registration documents.

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Many women from remote communities and the Torres Strait travel alone, without the child’s father, to centres such as Cairns to give birth. This practice means a mother might not be able to register a child until they returned to their community, and then were unable to easily lodge the paperwork.

Clarke’s report identified a lack of coordination between government agencies: “This is undoubtedly having an impact on the accessibility of birth registration and birth certification processes for Indigenous Queenslanders.”



He called for an integrated approach between departments and a review of fees that might include waiving the cost of a birth certificate.

“The impacts on Indigenous Queenslanders as a group are arguably of more concern as the under-registration of Indigenous births is higher than that of non-Indigenous births,” he said.

“It is well established that there is a gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians in outcomes of child mortality, life expectancy, education, literacy, numeracy and employment. The presence of barriers to easily accessing the above services due to a lack of birth registration or birth certification will, at best, perpetuate and, at worst, exacerbate issues faced by a group of people statistically vulnerable to disadvantage in our society.”