Australian Human Rights Commission Annual Report November 2022 within and between generations. Ongoing efforts to raise awareness of elder abuse in the community has also culminated in the release of a new elder abuse awareness video and the promotion of elder abuse awareness resources in 20 languages. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner continued with efforts to implement the recommendations of the Wiyi Yanu U Thangani (Women’s Voices) report. These efforts will culminate in 2022–23 with an online safety summit to contribute to a variety of national action plans and frameworks on violence against women, and a national summit of Indigenous women and girls to lay out the key elements of a new national approach to advancing the rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and girls. As we look forward, the financial challenges facing the Commission will remain the dominating focus for the foreseeable future. Statutorily appointed Commissioners cannot be expected to ‘fund-raise’ in order to perform their functions. Our complaint handling section needs sufficient staff to address complaints and inquiries in a reasonable timeframe – before complaints become entrenched and too difficult to resolve. And we must have the base resourcing to maintain core corporate functions in support of these important outcomes. There are also many exciting opportunities on the horizon. We will see the rollout of new national child engagement practices to feed into federal policy processes, and the initial stage of a national anti-racism framework, as referred to above. Long term work of the Commission encouraging the establishment of national preventive mechanisms to prevent torture, cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment will also culminate with significant external review of Australia’s progress to achieve this (by the United Nations Sub-Committee on the Prevention of Torture and a periodic review by the United Nations Committee Against Torture), as Australia faces a deadline in January 2023 to have appropriate oversight mechanisms in place. The Human Rights Commissioner will bring together her Commissioner colleagues from the AHRC and state and territory commissions, state, territory and federal governments, oversight bodies and NGOs, to contribute to a pathway to fully implementing appropriate preventive oversight mechanisms in all Australian jurisdictions by 2023. Law reform occurs over a long horizon. Work of the Commission today may not be realised for several years – or may even take decades to come to fruition as, for example, the implementation of a recommendation in the Bringing Them Home report of 1997 to provide financial compensation to members of the stolen generations, which was finally implemented by the federal Government in 2022. 21