Labor’s Indigenous senators Pat Dodson and Malarndirri McCarthy have launched a scathing attack on the Morrison government for “passing the buck” on Aboriginal deaths in custody, saying its lack of leadership was “immoral” when the issue was a national crisis.
“We’ve gotten to the chronic stage now where instead of learning from the royal commission and its recommendations 30 years ago, we’re standing on the brink potentially of another royal commission to inquire into the same sorts of things,” Dodson told reporters in Canberra.
“The fundamentals have just not been taken seriously, and certainly the federal government is not taking a leadership role where it should be taking a leadership role,” Dodson said.
There have been four Aboriginal deaths in custody in the past three weeks. A 37-year-old Barkindji man, Anzac Sullivan, died during a police pursuit in Broken Hill on Thursday 18 March. A man in his 30s and a woman in her 50s died in prison custody in New South Wales a fortnight ago, and an Aboriginal man died in Victoria’s Ravenhall correctional centre on Sunday 7 March.
Under questioning, the National Indigenous Australians Agency (NIAA) admitted it does not keep data on Aboriginal deaths in custody, and information and responsibility is spread across several departments.
NIAA officials said they rely on data from the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) as well as “monitoring media reports”. They said tracking and reporting on deaths was the responsibility of the home affairs department led by Peter Dutton.
Outside the hearings, Dodson said that wasn’t good enough.
“This is a national disaster. The taxpayer put $50m into the royal commission into deaths in custody and just to simply rely on media reports, whilst they’re good to see, isn’t good enough. It’s not how you run a professional outfit, and the government knows full well the consequences. It just means that they don’t care about these people dying, or their families,” Dodson said.
Earlier, there was a tense exchange after McCarthy asked what the federal minister for Indigenous Australians, Ken Wyatt, was doing “to pull together this government” to deal with the issue, which is “terrorising” First Nations people.
Senator Amanda Stoker, representing Wyatt, said she understood the outrage “because the lives of every person in our justice system are important, no matter what the colour of their skin is. They are living human beings, they are Australians, and they all matter.”
Stoker said the responsibility for policing and prisons were matters for state and territory governments.
But McCarthy said that was a sign “everyone keeps passing the buck”.
“No one is taking responsibility, and that’s the fundamental problem with this government, that no one is taking responsibility for this massive problem that we have in our country of First Nations people dying unnecessarily.
“If you can pull together a national cabinet to deal with this major pandemic, or Covid-19, you can pull together a national cabinet on how to stop deaths in custody,” McCarthy said.
Officials also faced questioning about the progress of a voice to parliament and whether not not the federal government had a role to play in truth-telling and treaty-making, processes called for in the Uluru statement from the heart.
Stoker said that this was best left at a local level among states, territories and local governments.
“These things are not always best foisted upon Indigenous people by a government far away. It’s far better that it be done locally, according to local customs with local interest,” she said. “And the idea that a faraway government has to be giving it a stamp, in order for it to be useful is often contrary to the feedback I get about it.”
Questions were asked about the so-called legislated voice to government, a plan for which has been reached through a lengthy co-design process, which is now open to feedback from all Australians.
Eighty-five per cent of submissions to the advisory panel on a voice to government support the Indigenous advisory body being enshrined in the constitution, which was the key message of the Uluru statement from the heart.
But Stoker said it was the prime minister’s view that “we need to be focused on outcomes rather than structures”.
“That is a perfectly valid point of view. He is absolutely entitled, and I indeed commend the view, that he should be focused laser-like on improving the ability of Indigenous people to achieve the things they want for their lives, rather than on symbolic structures,” she said.
“It is, I think, an oversimplification to say that there is a consensus of any kind, behind constitutional entrenchment of a voice.”
NIAA officials also confirmed there was no official response forthcoming to the Australian Law Reform Commission’s Pathways to Justice Report on Indigenous incarceration, tabled three years ago.
The ALRC report was commissioned by the former Liberal attorney general George Brandis in 2016 after he said deaths in custody were a “national disgrace”.
The report made several recommendations including changing bail laws and raising the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 14.
NIAA’s Blair Exell said “there was no formal requirement” for the government to respond to the ALRC report, but it was “being factored in” to their decision-making.
