Speaker 1: Just before nine o'clock last night, the jury returned guilty
Speaker 1: verdicts against all three defendants. It was absolute shambles, to
Speaker 1: tell you the truth, just absolutely really put his blood
Speaker 1: on who's clothing The day after the alleged a.
Speaker 2: Tip on a shallow mud bank and it fits Roy River.
Speaker 3: Basically, I think most of the people are used to
Speaker 3: me are good people.
Speaker 2: I think a really important question we need to ask
Speaker 2: is how many Indigenous prisoners in Australia are innocent.
Speaker 1: This is Curtain, a podcast where we pull back the
Speaker 1: blinds to shine a light on the darkest parts of
Speaker 1: our justice system and ask who are the victims.
Speaker 2: I'm Amy Maguire and I'm Martin Hodgson, a senior advocate
Speaker 2: for the Foreign Prisoner Support Service. And a warning, this
Speaker 2: series contains the names of deceased peoples and has distressing
Speaker 2: content that might upset some listeners.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Curtain the podcast. This week, we're going to
Speaker 3: focus on the issue of disappeared and murder First Nations,
Speaker 3: women and children. In previous episodes, we've spoken about specific
Speaker 3: cases like that of Monique Club, who went missing in
Speaker 3: Queensland and whose coronial inquest was held last year. But
Speaker 3: this week we want to focus on the inquiry into
Speaker 3: Missing and Murdered First Nations Women and Children that is
Speaker 3: currently before the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Reference Committee in
Speaker 3: the Australian Federal Senate. I want to begin Amy by
Speaker 3: just asking you briefly about what you think of the inquiry,
Speaker 3: and I should mention that, in our professional capacities, both
Speaker 3: Amy and I have submitted submissions to this inquiry.
Speaker 1: I think the first thought is that, obviously this inquiry
Speaker 1: is in part influenced, We're supposed to be influenced by
Speaker 1: the landmark Canadian Inquiry into Missing a Modern Indigenous Women,
Speaker 1: which followed years of concerned advocacy from Aboriginal women and
Speaker 1: families actually trying to break the silence about the huge
Speaker 1: numbers of Aboriginal women over in Canada who were being
Speaker 1: forcibly disappeared and which police were not investigating and the
Speaker 1: state was not even considering a crisis. And yet over
Speaker 1: here in Australia the issue is still shouted in silence,
Speaker 1: even with the formation of the inquiry, and what we're
Speaker 1: seeing is that there is very limited media coverage of
Speaker 1: the inquiry, and even in the processes of an inquiry,
Speaker 1: I don't get the feeling that they understand that it
Speaker 1: is the crisis and that it deserves the attention that
Speaker 1: it needs, which is unusual for a parliamentary inquiry. You know,
Speaker 1: usually you would have details of the hearings. Usually you
Speaker 1: would hear a lot more which is coming from the inquiry.
Speaker 1: And yet here as is the continual debate around or
Speaker 1: not debate, as the continuing conversation around the issue of
Speaker 1: murther than forcibly disappeared Aboriginal woman, there is just silence.
Speaker 1: And recently I looked into, you know, with an inquiry
Speaker 1: in Queensland which we had on going into the racist
Speaker 1: gendered violence of Queensland Police. There were over three hundred
Speaker 1: news reports as that inquiry was ongoing. I counted the
Speaker 1: media coverage of the Missing Amodian Indigenous Women's in Girls Inquiry,
Speaker 1: which is a national federal parliamentary inquiry, and from November
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one till only recently there was just over
Speaker 1: fourteen years reports, which is shocking given what we are
Speaker 1: currently seeing in communities where there are so many families,
Speaker 1: so we're still missing their loved ones. And this is
Speaker 1: the problem, is that the silence shrouding this issue is
Speaker 1: actually allowing an environment in which perpetrators can continue to
Speaker 1: target continue to target Aboriginal women. So it's an inquiry
Speaker 1: of huge significance, and yet we're not seeing that merit
Speaker 1: in the attention or the prominence that they're paying to
Speaker 1: the inquiry. And I think it's really really concerning that
Speaker 1: we're not seeing that focus that you know, we're currently
Speaker 1: having a debate into the Voice to Parliament and yet
Speaker 1: there's nothing on what communities are calling for in relationship.
Speaker 1: We really need to start looking at this issue of
Speaker 1: the numbers of Aboriginal many girls and Aboriginal children and
Speaker 1: Aboriginal people who have been forcibly disappeared in this country.
Speaker 1: There's just this devastating silence which characterizes it, and it's
Speaker 1: a silence that the inquiry should be breaking, and yet
Speaker 1: what we're seeing is that it's business as usual almost
Speaker 1: and it's really distressing to think about that, you know,
Speaker 1: the numbers of families who are out here are wanting answers,
Speaker 1: and that their concerns are not being met with any
Speaker 1: level of public outrage at all. And I think that's
Speaker 1: what the most concerning part of it is. It's almost
Speaker 1: like they don't think it's the crisis that it is,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? And so I think it
Speaker 1: has been really concerning to think that there is just
Speaker 1: so little public attention paid to what is a huge issue.
Speaker 3: I think from my perspective, I began very hopeful that
Speaker 3: this inquiry would, as you say, give a voice to
Speaker 3: families and communities and try and get justice for the
Speaker 3: victims and also work really hard to ensure this doesn't
Speaker 3: keep happening at the rate that it does. But the
Speaker 3: first day of the inquiry we saw nobody who works
Speaker 3: specifically in the area called this is in October twenty
Speaker 3: twenty two, largely we saw academic criminologists talk about data
Speaker 3: and data collection. You know, it's a small, very small
Speaker 3: part of it, But that shouldn't have been the start
Speaker 3: of an inquiry. I would have thought that centering the
Speaker 3: victims and their families would have been the best approach
Speaker 3: to begin. And then secondly we saw the calling of
Speaker 3: the Deputy Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police and their
Speaker 3: colleagues from the AFP various divisions, and again the questions
Speaker 3: from all the senators across the board, from all the
Speaker 3: political parties were around data collection and where that data
Speaker 3: may or may not live up to the standards that
Speaker 3: the AFP Missing Persons Center hopes to have on hand.
Speaker 3: And even more bizarrely was a discussion about recruitment in
Speaker 3: New South Wales with a partnership between Taife and the
Speaker 3: AFP and New South Wales Police. I mean, this has
Speaker 3: absolutely nothing to do with the issue on hand, And
Speaker 3: when you're talking about hundreds of Aboriginal women and children
Speaker 3: who have been forcibly disappeared missing and many who are murdered,
Speaker 3: it clearly showed to me that the people who had
Speaker 3: been called had no idea what they were talking about,
Speaker 3: and reading through many of the submissions, quite frankly, they
Speaker 3: were the same. It was very broad statements and comments
Speaker 3: about black deaths in custody, around policing and the community,
Speaker 3: around representation, but absolutely nothing that really focused in other
Speaker 3: than a handful of submissions on the actual issue at hand.
Speaker 3: The other problem with the inquiry, of course, is that
Speaker 3: not only has there not been a lack of media,
Speaker 3: we haven't seen enough sitting days in Canberra where families
Speaker 3: can address the Senate and address the committee and share
Speaker 3: their experiences and articulate to those committee members, how they've
Speaker 3: been failed and who has failed them. I don't understand
Speaker 3: who you can possibly call the AFP on the first
Speaker 3: day without first having heard from the families to know
Speaker 3: the appropriate questions to ask. So one thing I would
Speaker 3: say very clearly is that the committee needs to reconvene
Speaker 3: in Canberra, which they have We've been told they have
Speaker 3: no plan to do and hear from the families directly
Speaker 3: and those that assist them so that they can learn
Speaker 3: where the failures are. And I think this is something
Speaker 3: aiming you talk about a lot, is the fact that
Speaker 3: victims and their families are all too often completely silenced
Speaker 3: and this committee seems to be perpetrating that silence. Once again,
Speaker 3: I was just wondering if you could talk to the
Speaker 3: audience about the work you do and about that issue
Speaker 3: in particular.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think you brought up such an important
Speaker 1: comment in relation to the inquiry prioritizing the viewpoint of
Speaker 1: the AFP or also, you know some of a lot
Speaker 1: of the submissions from anti police and other police forces
Speaker 1: which I think totally do not address the issue. For example,
Speaker 1: and Police in their submission claim they didn't have any
Speaker 1: currently any missing Aboriginal women in the territory at all,
Speaker 1: which we know is totally false. But I think that's
Speaker 1: part of the problem is that a police version of
Speaker 1: events are being given prominence when we know that often
Speaker 1: it's the police who are failing to investigate the deaths
Speaker 1: and disappearances, and yet they they're shielded by this fake
Speaker 1: benevolence as if they're continually searching, and we know that's
Speaker 1: not true as well, but prioritizing the views of police
Speaker 1: and these sort of authorities who have no understanding and
Speaker 1: no honestly, I don't think they even care about black
Speaker 1: women in order to search for them, because that's what
Speaker 1: I'm seeing currently in a lot of the cases I'm
Speaker 1: looking at. That further silences the voices of families because
Speaker 1: if you have families coming and then speaking again about
Speaker 1: their lived experience, that ultimately is downgraded below the version
Speaker 1: of events put forward by police. So that's all example
Speaker 1: of this the way aberage and women and families are
Speaker 1: being silenced in this country. Because silence is not just
Speaker 1: about an absence of speaking, because we know Aboriginal families
Speaker 1: have never stopped advocating for their loved ones. They're always
Speaker 1: the ones there. They're the ones who go to the
Speaker 1: police first trying to get information. They're the ones in
Speaker 1: the courtroom, they're the ones always contacting the media. They're
Speaker 1: the ones always there. And yet the issue is that
Speaker 1: this overwhelming discourse, or the overwhelming ways that these stories
Speaker 1: are spoken of, effectively silences them and invalidates their version
Speaker 1: of events. And I think that's what we're seeing in
Speaker 1: the inquiry as well, is that I think we've spoken
Speaker 1: about it before. I don't think that they are fully
Speaker 1: understanding the level of the crisis and what the crisis
Speaker 1: actually is, because they're not going to the people who
Speaker 1: can speak to that. They're not going to the families,
Speaker 1: as you say, they're not. It's not an open process.
Speaker 1: It doesn't seem to be. As you said before, we're
Speaker 1: finding it hard to get information about the process, finding
Speaker 1: it hard to get information about any future public hearings,
Speaker 1: which is unconscious conscionable in you know, other inquiries of
Speaker 1: this importance, this level of importance, she wouldn't have that happened,
Speaker 1: and so this is very I think the inquiry as
Speaker 1: a whole is another example of how this issue is
Speaker 1: being silenced. And also the terms of reference are very
Speaker 1: focused towards castoral responses, so they're focused towards police reform.
Speaker 1: And if I can just bring up the example of
Speaker 1: the recent case of Monique Club whose inquest was held
Speaker 1: in late twenty twenty two, and it ended with Minique,
Speaker 1: no answers for m Nique's family, no pressure on police
Speaker 1: to continue to search for her. She has still disappeared,
Speaker 1: but the only recommendations that came out of that coronial
Speaker 1: process was more investment in police technology. So you saw
Speaker 1: how the coronial process was always orientated not towards finding Monique,
Speaker 1: but instead further criminalizing her and claiming she was responsible
Speaker 1: for her own disapearance, but also allowing police to advocate
Speaker 1: for investments in certain technologies that would not have help
Speaker 1: Monique or may not help other cases of Aboriginal women
Speaker 1: who've been disappeared at all. And so that's the problem
Speaker 1: with having hearings based on the word of the AFP
Speaker 1: or the anti police without actually going first to the
Speaker 1: voices of family, because if you don't know what is happening,
Speaker 1: you don't know their experiences, you aren't going to ask
Speaker 1: the right question. But what we're seeing out in QUO
Speaker 1: is it doesn't seem to be any care for those
Speaker 1: questions at all, you know what I mean. There's no
Speaker 1: interrogation of police accounts, and it's you know, these solutions
Speaker 1: that are being brought forward are literally just band aid solutions.
Speaker 1: We're not going to have, you know, investment in police
Speaker 1: resources and investment in things that are ultimately going to
Speaker 1: end up surveiling and overincarcerating, particularly Aboriginal women more are
Speaker 1: not the answer at all, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: So the failure to prioritize the voices of families and
Speaker 1: the failure to prioritize the lived experiences of the Aboriginal
Speaker 1: women who have died or disappeared is a real failure
Speaker 1: and an exother example of this silence, which has stating
Speaker 1: consequences for Aboriginal women across this country. Martin, I know
Speaker 1: that you have also been working on a lot of
Speaker 1: these cases, and you're not seeing those questions replicated in
Speaker 1: the Acquirer or even asked of the inquiry. What do
Speaker 1: you think of the other gaps that are missing in
Speaker 1: the inquiry's focus.
Speaker 3: One of the first things I look at, having worked
Speaker 3: directly on missing persons cases for the past twenty years,
Speaker 3: is that would the inquiry begin by not only calling
Speaker 3: the families and their communities of Aboriginal women and children
Speaker 3: who have been murdered or forcibly disappeared, but would they
Speaker 3: talk to the people who do the work on the ground.
Speaker 3: And again we've seen a focus as I mentioned that
Speaker 3: and as Amy discussed of first listening to the Australian
Speaker 3: Federal Police, then speaking to criminologists who work truly in
Speaker 3: the university space and don't work directly with families. And
Speaker 3: then the third group who were called by the inquiry
Speaker 3: to give evidence was employees, high ranking employees of the
Speaker 3: Department of Social Services, the National Policy Branch, the Deputy
Speaker 3: Secretary of Families and Communities. And immediately my years prick
Speaker 3: up and I didn't have to wait long to see
Speaker 3: the victim blaming. And what you saw in some of
Speaker 3: their testimony was a lot of discussion around Aboriginal communities. Well,
Speaker 3: that's not what we're talking about. There was this real
Speaker 3: seems to be either deliberate or uninformed. It's the old
Speaker 3: stupid or lawyar. It can only be one or the other.
Speaker 3: From one of the witnesses, in particular from the Department
Speaker 3: of Social Services that seemed to be pushing the blame
Speaker 3: back on Aboriginal communities. I mean, this is absolutely absurd.
Speaker 3: We've said it before and I'll say it again that
Speaker 3: the inquest held last year in Queensland into three missing
Speaker 3: Aboriginal women presumed murdered, the suspects, by police's owned admission,
Speaker 3: are all middle aged white men. So none of this
Speaker 3: data that they're supposedly coming up with, none of this
Speaker 3: sort of liaising with Aboriginal communities about safety within the community,
Speaker 3: and it was a particular focus on I think smearing
Speaker 3: young Aboriginal men actually has anything to do with addressing
Speaker 3: where the crisis stems from. And again, I think a
Speaker 3: lot of this goes to the fact that the committee
Speaker 3: has simply not done their research, which is unforgivable, and
Speaker 3: has not spoken to the families and their communities to
Speaker 3: understand where there might be some commonality between many of
Speaker 3: the cases of women and children being murdered or forcibly disappeared,
Speaker 3: and then they could have honed in on these things,
Speaker 3: and there's some very clear areas where this could happen.
Speaker 3: I mean, one thing we know about this approach where
Speaker 3: they were focusing on Aboriginal communities is the potential for
Speaker 3: this to cause and for the committee to hand down
Speaker 3: recommendations that would see further over policing of Aboriginal communities. Now,
Speaker 3: one thing we know for sure, and that the senators
Speaker 3: would have known if they'd listened to those of us
Speaker 3: who do the work or the families, is that many
Speaker 3: of the women, and clearly some of the most vulnerable women,
Speaker 3: are those who are exiting the justice system, who were
Speaker 3: leaving prison, usually for ridiculously small problems they should ever
Speaker 3: have gone to prison for in the first place. So
Speaker 3: that's something I would have liked to addressed, because if
Speaker 3: they want to take on broader issues, then over incarceration
Speaker 3: directly leads into this issue. But you know, when you
Speaker 3: call the police and do what too many in the
Speaker 3: media do, which is take whatever the police say as
Speaker 3: being the uncontested facts of the situation, then you're going
Speaker 3: to walk away with the no answers or the wrong
Speaker 3: answers being suggested. And there was definitely a pattern of
Speaker 3: that in the opening days of the inquiry, and it
Speaker 3: seems to have been formed that The other thing I
Speaker 3: want to go back to is this issue around data collection.
Speaker 3: I mean, for the purposes of the podcast. I'll keep
Speaker 3: my language polite, but it is absolutely ridiculous. Who cares
Speaker 3: whether the number is five hundred and fifty or five
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty one, and the one is being excluded
Speaker 3: because the police can't decide yet whether they categorize that
Speaker 3: woman as missing. Her family doesn't know where she is,
Speaker 3: She's at grave risk. Do your freaking job.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: We see this rush by police when particularly people from
Speaker 3: rich families, young white children go missing, that all resources
Speaker 3: are made available and pushed out into the open and
Speaker 3: the work is done. But what we're seeing when we
Speaker 3: talk about this obsession with data and numbers is not
Speaker 3: any way shifting the focus so that Aboriginal people get
Speaker 3: that same level of care. It's just reducing people to stats.
Speaker 3: And I do not understand why every single senator involved
Speaker 3: spend hours upon hours wasting everybody's time about each state's stats,
Speaker 3: how they collected it. The qualitative and quantitative disaster, I
Speaker 3: mean data, which is a disaster given that you've got
Speaker 3: the Northern Territory Police saying there is not a single
Speaker 3: Aboriginal woman or child missing in the NT. Are they joking?
Speaker 3: I mean, does anyone seriously believe that You only have
Speaker 3: to look at the AFP's Missing Persons Center website to
Speaker 3: see that they categorize a number of Aboriginal women and
Speaker 3: children in the NT as missing presumed murdered. So why
Speaker 3: wasn't that put to the Northern Territory police? How can
Speaker 3: you be so obsessed by data that you call in
Speaker 3: criminologists to discuss all of this and then failed to
Speaker 3: say to the police sitting before you, how can you
Speaker 3: possibly claim that in the Northern Territory there's not a
Speaker 3: single missing or murdered, unsolved Aboriginal woman or child. And
Speaker 3: that is insulting to the families. It is insulting to
Speaker 3: those women and children. And that's partly why this issue
Speaker 3: will continue to occur, because for the communities around the
Speaker 3: country and the families impacted, it is an epidemic. For
Speaker 3: the people in Canberra and the senators in particular, who,
Speaker 3: let's not forget we pay their wages, very damn good wages.
Speaker 3: It's just about going through the process, punching the clock,
Speaker 3: talking about data, data collection and really not annoying anyone.
Speaker 3: I mean, there were comments by some of the senators
Speaker 3: about directly to the AFP Deputy Commissioner about the great
Speaker 3: work the AFP does and could we see that replicated
Speaker 3: across the country. I'm sorry, which case can they possibly
Speaker 3: name where the AFP has done great work in this area.
Speaker 3: All they were referencing was the fact that the AFP
Speaker 3: had slightly prooved their data gathering. Again, it's got nothing
Speaker 3: to do with assisting families, supporting families, getting justice and
Speaker 3: most of all, finding preventative measures so that this doesn't
Speaker 3: happen again and continue to happen. You know, one of
Speaker 3: the things I find infuriating when people are talking about
Speaker 3: looking at reviews of the data in three years time,
Speaker 3: knowing that that number that it currently sits at will
Speaker 3: go up. Well, that's someone's family member, that's a mother,
Speaker 3: that's a daughter, forget any of that. That is an
Speaker 3: Aboriginal woman who is dead, and they worried about whether
Speaker 3: that number will be recorded in a database that they
Speaker 3: can access. Who cares whether you can access the number.
Speaker 3: How about doing the work now to ensure that she
Speaker 3: is safe and she never comes to the harm that
Speaker 3: is going to occur by this lack of inaction. So
Speaker 3: I think one of the problems too, that, as you said, Amy,
Speaker 3: about the silencing is that the silencing leads to this
Speaker 3: problem continuing and ensures that more Aboriginal women and children
Speaker 3: will die at the hands of you know, terrible, bloody
Speaker 3: individuals that the police know all too well who they
Speaker 3: are and are not doing anything about it. And I
Speaker 3: just cannot, for the life of me understand how the
Speaker 3: senators don't care about that, how the mainstream media isn't
Speaker 3: pushing them to care about that, and why the media
Speaker 3: themselves don't care enough to even bother. If this was
Speaker 3: an inquiry as we saw a few weeks ago into
Speaker 3: interest rates, you best believe there would be a lot
Speaker 3: more fuss, a lot more media coverage, and a lot
Speaker 3: more impassioned police from politicians on behalf of their constituents.
Speaker 3: But so far on this issue, we just haven't seen that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think the other point to make, I mean,
Speaker 1: just following on from the issue around data collection, is that,
Speaker 1: as you mentioned before, it is so focused on police categorization,
Speaker 1: and we've seen that needs to be interrogated as well,
Speaker 1: because when a police when they consider a person missing,
Speaker 1: the word missing comes with certain connotations, so it means
Speaker 1: that you know, the police are still searching for them
Speaker 1: when we know in a number of these cases, the
Speaker 1: police have not done anything to search for them, or
Speaker 1: they've closed their investigations far too early. And it also
Speaker 1: suggests that these women may just suddenly turn up, you know,
Speaker 1: it may be their own responsibility. And there's this continual
Speaker 1: myth and I saw it perpetrated even by the Australian
Speaker 1: Crime Commission a report I read where they were speaking
Speaker 1: about the high rates of missing Aboriginal people maybe due
Speaker 1: to transience, and we know that this issue around transience. Sure,
Speaker 1: Aboriginal women travel around the country, but they are always
Speaker 1: connected to someone, They're always connected to their communities, a
Speaker 1: lot of them always have children. Aboriginal families know when
Speaker 1: someone is missing that it is if it's a high
Speaker 1: risk disappearance, and various concerns from Aboriginal witnesses on the
Speaker 1: ground are never taken seriously by police and obscured by
Speaker 1: these police categorizations. And then you have all of these
Speaker 1: deaths where bodies are found when they're not even considered
Speaker 1: soul play or suspicious deaths or murders, which is another
Speaker 1: problem as well. So relying on the police to collect
Speaker 1: that data, relying on police categorization, I think would be
Speaker 1: another example of a second disappearance of a lot of
Speaker 1: these women, and you'll find with the numbers that they'll
Speaker 1: never have a full database because what we're seeing is
Speaker 1: that a lot of averagin and women who have died
Speaker 1: or disappeared are not even counted at all, and so
Speaker 1: there needs to be a lot If they are looking
Speaker 1: at data, they have to interrogate it a lot more
Speaker 1: than they're currently doing, in which they've shown they are
Speaker 1: inable to do, because they can barely start collecting the
Speaker 1: numbers now because they are so focused on the police.
Speaker 1: So I think there's a real problem with that focus
Speaker 1: on data in the way that it's been presented in
Speaker 1: the terms of reference, you know what I mean, and
Speaker 1: the lack of information about what's happening in the majority
Speaker 1: of these cases as well. So I think there's a
Speaker 1: clear example of a failure of the inquiry and as
Speaker 1: you say, a lack of care in actually understanding what
Speaker 1: is actually happening.
Speaker 3: That issue amy rays of transience and also the police
Speaker 3: deciding who is missing, whether the disappearance, whether there's foul
Speaker 3: plays suspected, is such a huge issue. We know from
Speaker 3: so many of the coronial in quests that have taken
Speaker 3: place in recent times that Aboriginal women who have been
Speaker 3: found murdered were reported by their families immediately missing, and
Speaker 3: yet the police barely did anything to conduct an investigation
Speaker 3: and just assumed that they went out of contact with
Speaker 3: their family. And yet the families had presented really clear,
Speaker 3: precise evidence and guidance to the police as to why
Speaker 3: it was so out of character for that Aboriginal woman
Speaker 3: or child to be out of contact, and yet the
Speaker 3: police never follow on. We've also seen right across the
Speaker 3: board that this issue of supposed transience and that the
Speaker 3: person will just show up rarely eventuates. One after another,
Speaker 3: we find that Aboriginal women and children who are reported
Speaker 3: missing and then the search is called off very quickly,
Speaker 3: if it's ever even done, are then later found deceased
Speaker 3: and clearly murdered and no investigation has ever taken place.
Speaker 3: Now it's even more sinister than that. There's also clear
Speaker 3: evidence around this country where pathologists are getting the cause
Speaker 3: of death flat out wrong. Now that might sound like
Speaker 3: a big statement, but you only need to look at
Speaker 3: South Australia where Colin Manner, who wasn't even a proper pathologist,
Speaker 3: was the chief pathologist for the entire state and bungled
Speaker 3: one case after another. We see in Queensland where their
Speaker 3: own DNA lab have made horrendous errors. And just recently
Speaker 3: I was reading about the death of an Aboriginal woman
Speaker 3: many many decades ago, where the wound was considered self inflicted.
Speaker 3: And yet that pathologist was years later struck off because
Speaker 3: they found that a white man had committed suicide when
Speaker 3: clearly he had not. And yet there is no attempt
Speaker 3: to go back and look if this same pathologist got
Speaker 3: it wrong when it came to the Aboriginal woman. Now
Speaker 3: to just give an idea, because I want people to
Speaker 3: understand how bad this is in terms of the white
Speaker 3: man who allegedly committed suicide according to this pathologist. The
Speaker 3: pathologist told the court that he shot himself in the
Speaker 3: chest and that the barrel of the gun, the very
Speaker 3: end of the gun was at least a meter from
Speaker 3: the man's chest and it was a long rifle. Now,
Speaker 3: quick calculation, just looking at the man's height and working
Speaker 3: out roughly even ten centimeters plus or minus the length
Speaker 3: of his arms, the man was a meter off being
Speaker 3: able to pull the trigger. And it took this sort
Speaker 3: of incompetence for a pathologist before that pathologist was pulled
Speaker 3: up and struck off. And yet this same pathologist had
Speaker 3: ruled endless Aboriginal women and children had died at their
Speaker 3: own hand, and I simply do not believe that that
Speaker 3: was ever the case. And again, this is an enormous,
Speaker 3: enormous silencing when that victim is crying out from the
Speaker 3: grave for justice, their family knows and knew they didn't
Speaker 3: take their own life, and yet they are being let down,
Speaker 3: not only by the police, but by forensic scientists who
Speaker 3: really should face the full consequences of the law if
Speaker 3: they are going to treat the lives of Aboriginal women
Speaker 3: and children with such disregard, they can't even be bothered
Speaker 3: to pulling out a measuring tape.
Speaker 1: And Mardin, I just wanted to jump in there because
Speaker 1: what you just said reminded me of, you know, the
Speaker 1: central reason we did this podcast, which was around wrongful
Speaker 1: conviction and the case of Linda in which we saw
Speaker 1: you know, inadequate forensic pathology around her death and her
Speaker 1: cause of death contributed to the wrongful incarceration of an
Speaker 1: Aboriginal man, Kevin Henry. So this is an ongoing issue.
Speaker 1: It's not something that is just happening, you know, one
Speaker 1: case it's an aberration. It's actually something that we're seeing
Speaker 1: as a pattern, and it feeds into a lot of
Speaker 1: what we're seeing in relation to death and custody as well,
Speaker 1: in cases of you know, where we have to really
Speaker 1: question a lot of the pathologists' reports in relation to
Speaker 1: death and custody, but also the cases around the country
Speaker 1: where we see the deaths of Aboriginal women and Aboriginal
Speaker 1: people being seen as suicide and we don't you know,
Speaker 1: families don't have the capacity to ask for independent forensic reports,
Speaker 1: We don't have that infrastructure to properly investigate at the
Speaker 1: very early point when these deaths or disappearances are happening.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a huge issue and it's one of
Speaker 1: the issues that should be brought up in the inquiry.
Speaker 1: And yet it's another example of silence, because it's that
Speaker 1: example of because they don't know enough about the issue,
Speaker 1: or they don't care about enough about the issue, they
Speaker 1: are not asking the right questions. And an inquiry like this,
Speaker 1: the right questions are so important, are so critical, and
Speaker 1: yet we're seeing they're going to go un answered. Because
Speaker 1: there is no care to actually look into what's happening
Speaker 1: in each individual case. And I think that goes back
Speaker 1: to what you say about the data and the overwhelming
Speaker 1: focus on data. Where we're currently at in relation to
Speaker 1: the cases and forcibly disappeared Aboriginal women, is that we're
Speaker 1: so far we have such a lack of information that
Speaker 1: the data is not going to open up any new
Speaker 1: avenue when we don't know what's happening. We actually have
Speaker 1: to look at every individual case and see the patterns
Speaker 1: between the cases, and we see how the police are operating,
Speaker 1: we see how the forensic anding, the health services are operating,
Speaker 1: we see how the media operating. That's where you're going
Speaker 1: to see the real patterns of what is happening, why
Speaker 1: we're seeing such numbers of disappearing disappearance as Aboriginal women,
Speaker 1: and how that's connected as well to the overincarceration of
Speaker 1: our population and issues like long for conviction, Like what
Speaker 1: we were originally interrogating with Kevin Henry, because I think
Speaker 1: our listeners will understand is that you know, we began
Speaker 1: this story looking at Kevin Henry's one for conviction, but
Speaker 1: we've gradually realized or we realized over that course, is
Speaker 1: that this entire story is actually the story of the
Speaker 1: extreme dehumanization of Aboriginal women. How Aboriginal women are targeted
Speaker 1: for violence and a scene as unworthy of mourning and
Speaker 1: unworthy of justice. And that's the central issue of this podcast.
Speaker 1: I think it comes down to the fact that Aboriginal
Speaker 1: women and the lives of Aboriginal women are not valued.
Speaker 1: There are no there's no justice in this country Aboriginal women,
Speaker 1: and that's what we want to change.
Speaker 3: Yeah, look, I completely agree. And to go back to
Speaker 3: part of the podcast that I think people will remember too,
Speaker 3: is that one of the things we learned very early
Speaker 3: on was the death of Queenie Heart and that she
Speaker 3: had been placed in the same river that Linda had.
Speaker 3: And as people might know, we worked with queeny Heart's
Speaker 3: family recently to ensure she was returned and buried properly
Speaker 3: by her family in Sherberg. But one thing that I
Speaker 3: think it goes full circle and reinforces exactly what Amy
Speaker 3: was just saying, is that the man suspected and charged
Speaker 3: with the murder of Queeny Heart, who was then through
Speaker 3: an absurd trial that barely got off the ground, never
Speaker 3: faced consequences that man who in my opinion undoubtedly murdered
Speaker 3: Queenie Heart, would go on to commit horrific crimes around
Speaker 3: the state of Queensland, and only in recent years passed
Speaker 3: away having never done any real time for the murders
Speaker 3: and violence he committed against women and adolescent girls. And
Speaker 3: so this is the very real consequence. This is why
Speaker 3: everyone has to buy in a why everyone has to care.
Speaker 3: Because some of his victims were not just Aboriginal women,
Speaker 3: they were white women too. So you know, you might
Speaker 3: think that you can get away with this because you're
Speaker 3: not Aboriginal, that this won't come and affect you. But
Speaker 3: because the police took this guy's side, because they didn't
Speaker 3: care about Queenie, because they made accusations about Queenie that
Speaker 3: were just not true, because they stuffed up her trial,
Speaker 3: because a judge didn't care. You know, people were not
Speaker 3: supposed to criticize processes, were not allowed to say are
Speaker 3: crooked because they didn't care about getting justice for Queenie.
Speaker 3: This scumbag, this vile human being, was allowed to continue
Speaker 3: continue to monster and harm women and children around Queensland.
Speaker 3: And he went to jail for bits and pieces, but
Speaker 3: never for these serious crimes. And this is what happens.
Speaker 3: You know, people are getting murdered, women and children are
Speaker 3: being murdered, and because they're Aboriginal, nothing is being done.
Speaker 3: And then this inquiry is called largely because of the
Speaker 3: pressure of families and what we've seen the work of
Speaker 3: families like the Barraville families, you know, their extraordinary commitment.
Speaker 3: And again the very first murder in that case, the
Speaker 3: police accused the young girl of going walk about. Where
Speaker 3: have we heard that before? It is just the same
Speaker 3: nonsense over and over again. And yet decades later, senators
Speaker 3: elected to do the job to work for us don't
Speaker 3: even know the basics to put the police on notice
Speaker 3: and ask them the tough questions. So it really comes
Speaker 3: down to whether people are going to care or not.
Speaker 3: And you know, finally prioritize the lives and the humanity
Speaker 3: of Aboriginal women and children and demand that the police
Speaker 3: do the same.
Speaker 1: And Mardin I was just going to add on to that.
Speaker 1: You know, the silence of this shood has been incredibly
Speaker 1: overwhelming as well. You know, we have cases of white
Speaker 1: women who've been murdered or hurt and victims of violence,
Speaker 1: and that creates, you know, national marches for justice. Yet
Speaker 1: we have an inquiry into missing a murdered Indigenous women
Speaker 1: and there's complete silence. So you have to wonder the
Speaker 1: complicity as well through white feminists, the fact that they're
Speaker 1: not there. And I've always thought, you know, central to
Speaker 1: any movement around eradicating gender violence has to be Aboriginal
Speaker 1: women because the very beginning of this colony, sexual violence
Speaker 1: against Aberiginal women, the targeting of Aboriginal women, the targeting
Speaker 1: of Aboriginal bodies, the taking away of children for sterilization,
Speaker 1: that was all gendered and racialized, and it had a
Speaker 1: it was foundational to the birthplace of this colony. And
Speaker 1: I think that's where you see the overwhelming silence towards
Speaker 1: violence against Aboriginal women, because it's not a new phenomenon,
Speaker 1: it's a continuing phenomenon in the Setlar colony. And we
Speaker 1: know that white women on the frontier were complicit in
Speaker 1: the sexual violence, in the rape of Aboriginal women and girls,
Speaker 1: and in forced servitude, the slavery of Aboriginal people, and
Speaker 1: that's where you see this complicity, and that's where you
Speaker 1: see this silence. There's no nationwide visuals for murdered Aboriginal
Speaker 1: women or forcibly disappeared Aboriginal women. There is no waves
Speaker 1: of mourning, there's no waves of protests. There's only silence,
Speaker 1: and we're only included as afterthoughts. And I think that's
Speaker 1: the huge point we have to make as well in
Speaker 1: this current silence that we're seeing around this inquiry, is
Speaker 1: that we're not seeing that same level of the concern
Speaker 1: from what should be this sisterhood around eradicating gender violence,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, unless they only speak of it,
Speaker 1: unless it's this limited framework in which Aboriginal men acing
Speaker 1: as the perpetrators, and it was seen in so many
Speaker 1: inquests in Queensland and around the country. It's white men
Speaker 1: who have been given impunity to target Aboriginal women. And
Speaker 1: I just find it very interesting that it's white men
Speaker 1: who are being questioned in the inquiry but given the
Speaker 1: benefit of doubt. So white men at the AFP, the
Speaker 1: white men and the police, they're given priority to speak,
Speaker 1: you know, at the absence of Aboriginal women who have
Speaker 1: been targeted not just by the violence of you know,
Speaker 1: white men outside the police force, but by the police
Speaker 1: and by prison officers inside these institutions, inside the health
Speaker 1: systems and everything like that. I think people have to
Speaker 1: realize that it's all interconnected. We're not just talking about
Speaker 1: interpersonal violence. We're talking about state sanctioned violence, and that
Speaker 1: that's the underlying reason why it has been silenced. And
Speaker 1: when we see no care, no waves of outrage, no
Speaker 1: large expressions of mourning, it all comes down to that fact,
Speaker 1: is that, you know, the targeting of Abiginal women for
Speaker 1: violence is foundation to this country. You couldn't they couldn't
Speaker 1: have done that without targeting aboritional women as the centers
Speaker 1: of community, as the reproducers of life, as holding important
Speaker 1: responsibilities and roles. And it's the continuation of culture. And
Speaker 1: that's why Aboriginal women in particular are targeted and Aboriginal
Speaker 1: men are in turn seen as the violent ones. When
Speaker 1: you know, I've sat in it on inquests, I've start
Speaker 1: with families. Aboriginal men are the ones they're advocating. Aboriginal
Speaker 1: men are the ones they're sitting down to give voice
Speaker 1: to the elders, the women in their community. It's always
Speaker 1: Aboriginal men who are there as well. Against all of that,
Speaker 1: those those horrendous stereotypes that say they're the violent ones.
Speaker 1: Is that atually a low of aberage on men who
Speaker 1: are always there on the front lines, and he gives
Speaker 1: space to Aboriginal women to speak in cern to them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think just to back up what you've just said,
Speaker 3: is that we've seen just this year, you know, there
Speaker 3: is no doubt a wave of femicide in this country,
Speaker 3: of brutal domestic violence and women and children being murdered
Speaker 3: by their partners. And yet in the counts recorded by
Speaker 3: a number of supporter groups in this area, when Aboriginal
Speaker 3: women have been murdered in cold blood by the police,
Speaker 3: male police officers, those Aboriginal women haven't been included in
Speaker 3: the count Why does their death not matter? You know? Again,
Speaker 3: to reinforce what Amy just said about Aboriginal men, just
Speaker 3: this week we saw Lex Wooden travel to just outside
Speaker 3: of cans to support a family of who have suffered
Speaker 3: a death in custody, a murderer at the hands of police.
Speaker 3: An Aboriginal man who has always stood up for justice
Speaker 3: and supported the community, and he's supporting aunties up there
Speaker 3: to try and get justice.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: Just this week, in my own work trying to assist
Speaker 3: families of missing and murdered Aboriginal women and children. You know,
Speaker 3: the people I'm speaking to, the family members, are Aboriginal
Speaker 3: women who are forty, fifty, sixty, seventy eighty years old.
Speaker 3: They're the ones making the phone calls, getting the information
Speaker 3: from the internet, collecting evidence. You know, we're working together
Speaker 3: with private investigators. We're doing the work, and these Aboriginal
Speaker 3: women in their families are doing the work that the
Speaker 3: police should be doing. And the toll it takes on
Speaker 3: them to be doing this when they're grieving, when they're
Speaker 3: wanting to know where their loved one is, what happened,
Speaker 3: How do we get them home? And we just get
Speaker 3: silence from the police. You get nothing back. And to
Speaker 3: explain just one last detail about the absurdity of all
Speaker 3: of this is that when mon eight Club went missing,
Speaker 3: her mother immediately reported her missing to the Harvey Bay Police. Now,
Speaker 3: despite that being ours outside of Brisbane where she went
Speaker 3: missing and she was last seen in Brisbane, the Harvey
Speaker 3: Bay Police maintained control of that investigation. They don't know
Speaker 3: anything about the South side of Brisbane, it's not their jurisdiction.
Speaker 3: In an even more absurd example of a case I'm
Speaker 3: working on, at the moment is an Aboriginal young man missing,
Speaker 3: presumed murdered on the border of Queensland and New South Wales.
Speaker 3: His case is being run by the police in Broome,
Speaker 3: thousands of kilometers away, because that's where his family had
Speaker 3: to report the missing persons, because that was the nearest
Speaker 3: police station that had a missing person's unit. Now, the
Speaker 3: police in Broom don't care about black people to begin with,
Speaker 3: let alone care about investigating a case that is thousands
Speaker 3: and thousands of kilometers away and outside of their jurisdiction.
Speaker 3: And again, this is something we've said many times and
Speaker 3: it is something we would say if this committee would
Speaker 3: give us a chance to give evidence. We need a
Speaker 3: national body in Canberra that has the power to force
Speaker 3: police around the country, whether it be at the federal
Speaker 3: level through the AFP or state police wherever they may be,
Speaker 3: in metropolitan areas or in the remotest communities, to do
Speaker 3: the work as instructed by that instructed by that national
Speaker 3: body in Canbra that is able to collect evidence, that
Speaker 3: can hear directly from families, that is guided by families,
Speaker 3: and that is evidence based and is not run by
Speaker 3: the same people who have just murdered a young Aboriginal
Speaker 3: man in Queensland. How can you expect Aboriginal families to
Speaker 3: ever think they'll get justice and they don't when the
Speaker 3: same police who are supposedly looking for their loved ones
Speaker 3: and not doing it are the same cops who just
Speaker 3: pulled the trigger and killed one of their own. This
Speaker 3: is the absurdity of this situation. And to then have
Speaker 3: a committee talk about qualitative data and the value of
Speaker 3: it is a joke. And it is on those committee
Speaker 3: members to ensure that this inquiry doesn't simply pass in
Speaker 3: the quiet of the night and slip off and this
Speaker 3: issue just continues for decades on. They've been given the
Speaker 3: responsibility by the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Reference Committee. They're
Speaker 3: being paid very good money to do the work. They
Speaker 3: have the full power that a parliamentarian gets in this
Speaker 3: country with parliamentary privilege, and everything goes along with it.
Speaker 3: It's time they did the work that has far too
Speaker 3: long been done by Aboriginal men, women and children to
Speaker 3: bring their own loved ones home.