Albanese fails to act as deaths in custody and imprisonment surge

On 27 May, Kumanjayi White, a 24-year-old Warlpiri man, was killed by off-duty police in Coles in Alice Springs.

At least 598 Aboriginal people have died in custody since the 1991 Royal Commission and there were more tragic deaths in June.

At Darwin airport on 7 June, racist police took an Elder from Wadeye in the NT into “protective custody”, claiming he was drunk. He obviously required care and was finally taken to hospital where he died.

In Parklea prison in Sydney, inmates staged protests on 28 June after the death of Wayne Green, a 41-year-old Aboriginal man. Cellmates report he had been unwell for days prior but was also refused care, before being taken to Westmead hospital.

The protest led to a lock-down in the facility and negotiations between prisoner delegates and management.

Law and order crackdown

Around two-thirds of the prisoners in Parklea are on remand—denied bail and awaiting trial.

New, harsh laws expanding the “presumption against bail” are a key part of a racist “law and order” crack down by state and territory governments driving an explosion in Aboriginal prison numbers.

In the NT, the number of unsentenced prisoners is up 33 per cent since the Country Liberal Party (CLP) took power in August last year. Prisoners are often kept in police watch-houses in conditions an Alice Springs Supreme Court Justice Judith Kelly described in April as “inhuman”.

Kelly said women on remand were being held almost 20 to a cell, with only two toilets “and a water bubbler filled with vomit”.

If the NT was a country, its incarceration rate would be the second highest in the world, behind only El Salvador. Eight-eight per cent of adults and 100 per cent of juveniles in prison are Aboriginal.

In Queensland, Liberal Premier David Crisafulli’s “adult crime, adult time” laws have been criticised by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture as “incompatible with basic child rights”. Crisaffuli’s reply was to tell the UN, “You don’t control me, and I don’t answer to you”.

Both NSW Labor Premier Chris Minns and NT Country Liberal Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro have fronted press conferences bragging about big increases in prison numbers—both adults and children—and promised more.

In June, the NT government launched further shocking attacks, announcing a plan to give guns to “public safety officers” in public housing and on buses, at the same time as new signs go up on public transport banning travel in “dirty or stained clothes”.

Fightback

Despite the media bravado, Finocchiaro is under fire.

Strong calls for justice from Kumanjayi White’s family have been a lightning rod for opposition to the CLP’s punitive agenda. Thousands of people across the country have joined protests for justice, supporting family demands for an independent investigation and immediate release of CCTV footage.

The Human Rights Commission, Land Councils, trade unions, legal services and many other organisations are also supporting the family, demanding an end to police investigating police.

Even Labor’s Indigenous Affairs Minister Malarndirri McCarthy has said an independent investigation is warranted, citing lack of trust between Aboriginal communities and the police.

Albanese is under increasing pressure to act—both in the White case and the broader crises of incarceration and deaths in custody. There has been a 32 per cent increase in Indigenous prison numbers since Albanese took power—from 12,820 in May 2022 to 16,876 in June this year.

When pushed on this crisis, he says the justice system “is run by states and territories”.

This cuts no ice with Aboriginal people who have suffered under attacks from the Federal government.

Ned Jampijinpa Hargraves, the grandfather of Kumanjayi White, released an open letter to Albanese to mark the anniversary of NT Intervention, launched by the Howard government on 21 June 2007 with the support of Labor:

“Canberra used its power to take away all our rights, our jobs and our assets with the NT Intervention 18 years ago today. Our communities were devastated and we have not recovered.

“Now we demand action from Canberra to see that our rights are restored and we are protected from the racist CLP government”.

The Central Land Council is demanding Albanese withhold funding from the NT government until the NT sets up an independent body to investigate police.

Albanese could make funding conditional on reforms in all states that would free Aboriginal people. He could support rights to land and culture and urgently fund the housing, employment and social services required to address underlying causes of incarceration.

The momentum built up around the campaign for justice for Kumanjayi White needs to escalate into a fight that can push back the law and order offensive and put Aboriginal rights back on the agenda.

By Angus Dermody

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