Ms RoseMarie Maughan:

I agree with Ms Joyce and Ms Kelly. I thank the committee and the Chair for the opportunity. I am hopeful from today's session, hearing the commitment of the Chair and other members, that it is time for real action, which means accountability and implementation. A key priority that came across today was the need for a national Traveller accommodation authority, which would ensure that the 32 recommendations needed to save Traveller lives are implemented and that our culturally appropriate accommodation needs are met.

It is no longer good enough to develop policy after policy following decades of forced assimilation attempts. As the Chair stated, Travellers have come with the answers. We have been coming with the answers and solutions for decades but have not had the opportunity to be listened to equally. I hope I am hearing that we are being listened to today and have allies who are willing to push our agenda with us, not for us.

I also remind people about the bypassing of Part 8, an issue which came across strongly today. It is meant to be an element of the State that serves the purpose of democracy but, unfortunately, for Travellers there is no democracy when Traveller-specific accommodation is being blocked decade after decade, and poor Traveller children and families are forced to live without the basics such as water.

I ask for the repeal of the trespass Act, which criminalises travellers for being themselves and for being born into an ethnic minority group. As I mentioned, this Act has resulted in cultural genocide. On the one hand, we are evicted from pillar to post for trying to be ourselves and for being nomadic, while, on the other, local authorities and the State fail to provide transient sites. Instead of investing resources into delivery of transient accommodation, they invest our resources into evictions of vulnerable families. That is not the way a country that prides itself on human rights acts and behaves in a just society.

To sum up, we have to be the generation that ends Traveller oppression and acknowledges 11% of our deaths by suicide are due to institutional racism and the way we have been treated. That is the impact of our lived trauma and not being treated as the equals we are. I look forward to working with the committee to ensure the human rights of Traveller children are no longer breached.