Speaker 1: Podcast Unite Our Voices.
Speaker 2: This is Curtain, a podcast where we expose the disappearances
Speaker 2: of Aboriginal people across this country, shining a light on
Speaker 2: the darkest parts of our justice system.
Speaker 1: We ask who are the victims?
Speaker 3: I'm aiming Macquire and I'm Martin Hodgson, Senior advocate at
Speaker 3: the Foreign Prisoner Support Service. And a warning. This series
Speaker 3: contains the names of deceased people and includes distressing content
Speaker 3: that may upset some listeners.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to season two, episode ten of Curtin
Speaker 2: the Podcast. Last week you may have noticed that it
Speaker 2: was Missing Persons Week. There are several news reports across
Speaker 2: different mastheads about the need and the necessity for public
Speaker 2: support to help locate missing persons, and of course on
Speaker 2: this podcast, we've had a lot running focus this season
Speaker 2: on specifically the disappearances of Aboriginal women. Often, when these
Speaker 2: stories are spoken of and in Missing Persons Week, the
Speaker 2: racialized nature of these disappearances are not drawn out or
Speaker 2: are not the focus. And so last week my co
Speaker 2: host Martin Hodgson spent a lot of time during this
Speaker 2: week actually going back into the data that he's previously
Speaker 2: looked at before and looking specifically at the questions that
Speaker 2: are not often posed, and so we're going to have
Speaker 2: a discussion this week about some of his results that
Speaker 2: he found.
Speaker 1: Martin.
Speaker 2: I first wanted to ask you, why did you want
Speaker 2: to go back into the data, because I know that
Speaker 2: you've looked at it before and maybe you can provide
Speaker 2: our listeners with context about what that data is and
Speaker 2: what it can actually reveal to us. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Absolutely so. Obviously, being Missing Persons Week, we saw a
Speaker 3: lot of information coming out from right across the media spectrum,
Speaker 3: as you mentioned, But the thing I've found really missing
Speaker 3: was the presence of Aboriginal women and children, despite them
Speaker 3: being the cohort that is most likely to go missing
Speaker 3: due to foul play in particular, and so to me
Speaker 3: that was obviously very troubling. But worse than that, in
Speaker 3: a way, was that the only mentioning of Aboriginal women
Speaker 3: and children I saw was being done by the families themselves.
Speaker 3: And once again we see Aboriginal families having all that
Speaker 3: onus placed on them to ensure that their loved ones
Speaker 3: are not forgotten and doing the work themselves that really,
Speaker 3: we pay enormous sums of money to police, search and
Speaker 3: rescue the Australian Federal Police Missing Persons Units to be
Speaker 3: doing and it just isn't done. And like so many
Speaker 3: of the social justice issues that Aboriginal and Terrestraate Island
Speaker 3: people face, too often, we see this huge burden of
Speaker 3: labor placed on Aboriginal families themselves to be doing the work.
Speaker 3: And it's so stark when you have a whole week
Speaker 3: dedicated to this issue and yet you just don't see
Speaker 3: the faces of the Aboriginal people who are missing. And
Speaker 3: to me, what really stood out was the Aboriginal women
Speaker 3: who are known to be missing, who are listed in
Speaker 3: the Missing Person's Register and the Australian Federal Police data,
Speaker 3: and yet there was nothing about them. And so part
Speaker 3: of what I wanted to do was to look at
Speaker 3: every single case in Australia that is listed with the
Speaker 3: police of a missing Aboriginal woman. We've done this before,
Speaker 3: but start to see again what really stands out in
Speaker 3: the data.
Speaker 2: And I think you raised a number of important points,
Speaker 2: particularly around the erasure of Aboriginal women, and I think
Speaker 2: it's important to note that these stories are driven by
Speaker 2: the police, and so it's I feel there are certain
Speaker 2: reasons why Aboriginal women aren't spoken about as often a
Speaker 2: missing person's week. But I was just wondering, Martin, what
Speaker 2: were the first things that stood out to you when
Speaker 2: you went back into the data, particularly because I know
Speaker 2: you've looked at it before, what things stood out for
Speaker 2: you compared to the last time that you actually looked
Speaker 2: at it. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So, I mean, some of the common factors still remain,
Speaker 3: and one of them is the enormous problem of missing
Speaker 3: Aboriginal women in Western Australia. So thirty nine percent of
Speaker 3: all missing Aboriginal women come from Western Australia, and the
Speaker 3: vast bulk of those are from the Broom Kimberly region.
Speaker 3: And there's a few things that hits you on the
Speaker 3: eat immediately about that, and one of them is actually
Speaker 3: in relation to another case we've spoken about, that of
Speaker 3: Jo Rivers, because despite the fact that Jo, a young
Speaker 3: Aboriginal man, went missing in Queensland, because of the way
Speaker 3: the system works, the missing person's command is run from
Speaker 3: whichever police station that person is reported missing to, and
Speaker 3: his family, being from the Kimberley somewher in the NT,
Speaker 3: reported him missing to the Broom Police And so immediately
Speaker 3: what I knew is a the Broom police, having worked
Speaker 3: with Jo's family, have done nothing whatsoever to help them.
Speaker 3: And now I see this enormous number of Aboriginal women
Speaker 3: still going missing from that area. So clearly the police
Speaker 3: in Broom, not only are they not doing their job
Speaker 3: in terms of looking for Aboriginal women, looking for any
Speaker 3: Aboriginal people, using their social media platforms, using the media itself,
Speaker 3: especially during things like missing persons weak to raise awareness,
Speaker 3: but they're clearly not also aware of the fact, or
Speaker 3: maybe they are. I mean, they're either incompetent or lazy
Speaker 3: beyond belief. And that's being nice about it, that the
Speaker 3: real hotspot is in their jurisdiction and they're doing absolutely
Speaker 3: nothing about it. And so a few things stand out
Speaker 3: there that how can you have in such an enormous country,
Speaker 3: this one area where nearly forty percent of all Aboriginal
Speaker 3: women are missing are coming from. And the fact that
Speaker 3: none of those women have been found. And then again,
Speaker 3: as we know, the second major hot spot was the
Speaker 3: Northern Territory, largely around Alice Springs, and that stood out
Speaker 3: again because we see so much about tough on crime
Speaker 3: around Alice and all this nonsense rehtric that gets whipped
Speaker 3: up and targets Aboriginal people with extra police being sent
Speaker 3: to the community. And again, none of the women who
Speaker 3: are missing from that area were featured in any of
Speaker 3: the police press releases during Missing Persons Week, so you know,
Speaker 3: they seem more than comfortable to go into communities and
Speaker 3: claim they're doing it for law and order and all
Speaker 3: of this nonsense that's really just driven around electoral politics
Speaker 3: and winning votes. It's not about helping people. And yet
Speaker 3: all the missing women, Aboriginal women from that community are
Speaker 3: given no assistance and nora of their families, and very
Speaker 3: little effort was put into any of these cases in
Speaker 3: the beginning, let alone now when the police have all
Speaker 3: the information they need and just can't be bothered. And
Speaker 3: then the third hotspot is of course Queensland, and there's
Speaker 3: a number of cases we've spoken about so in terms
Speaker 3: of the areas that Aboriginal women are going missing from,
Speaker 3: rural and remote Western Australia and the Northern Territory just
Speaker 3: amount for more than fifty percent in total. And then
Speaker 3: Queensland has quite a unique issue that continues to stand out,
Speaker 3: which is Aboriginal women who are going missing and many
Speaker 3: of whom have been murdered and that appears to be
Speaker 3: quite a unique issue to Queensland, and again the police
Speaker 3: are doing nothing about it whatsoever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was just going to say that, Martin.
Speaker 2: One of the things that constantly, you know, particularly around
Speaker 2: this week, is just seeing the pictures and the missing
Speaker 2: person's lots, and that they're the alerts that I've kept
Speaker 2: seeing for years now that come up on social media,
Speaker 2: but the words.
Speaker 1: Never really change.
Speaker 2: And when I see these images and I've become so
Speaker 2: like it's like I recognize these women because I recognize
Speaker 2: their photos because I see them so often in certain
Speaker 2: times of the year, usually around Missing Persons Week, where
Speaker 2: people on social media are sharing it.
Speaker 1: But I keep thinking, because we just see the same.
Speaker 2: Lines and the police aren't doing anything, I keep thinking
Speaker 2: it's entrenching that disappearance of the woman.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean.
Speaker 2: And I feel that with a lot of the women
Speaker 2: that I know have been disappeared from Queensland. And I
Speaker 2: think you're right in bringing out that there are these
Speaker 2: geographical areas that are particularly hot spots and there are
Speaker 2: very specific circumstances that are affecting each women and I
Speaker 2: think it falls back on that history. But it also
Speaker 2: falls back on the police, and I think that's where
Speaker 2: we see the erasure of these stories because in every
Speaker 2: single story, at every single case of disappearance that I've
Speaker 2: looked at, the police are behind the reason the disappearance.
Speaker 2: The women have not been found. You know, there are
Speaker 2: reasons that they have not been found. And so I
Speaker 2: was wondering whether the data says anything about the police
Speaker 2: complicity or their failure to actually adequately search or actually
Speaker 2: do everything they can to find the women, because I
Speaker 2: think that's what's also you know, to use the word missing,
Speaker 2: that's what's also missing in a lot of this coverage
Speaker 2: Missing person's week.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so something really big jumps out when you analyze
Speaker 3: the data and compare it to the over five hundred
Speaker 3: long term missing people in Australia. So when you look
Speaker 3: at that cohort of everyone across the board in Australia
Speaker 3: who is missing, the vast majority are missing either after
Speaker 3: leaving their workplace, leaving school, or leaving their home. And
Speaker 3: so one thing police often look for is what did
Speaker 3: the person either leave behind in their home or what
Speaker 3: did they take with them, And so one of the
Speaker 3: things we know is that if someone leaves their home,
Speaker 3: leaves behind their wallet and their mobile phone. Then there's
Speaker 3: really sort of two possibilities, which is that they were
Speaker 3: taken against their will or they've left and left tragically,
Speaker 3: usually as a result of a mental health episode, which
Speaker 3: means that finding them is immediately is very important. But again,
Speaker 3: so what we're seeing is that a huge number of
Speaker 3: the entire missing person's population leaves from places known to
Speaker 3: them and someone has seen them not long before they leave,
Speaker 3: and that information and data can be very localized and
Speaker 3: put out very quickly across the board, both to police circles,
Speaker 3: local medical centers and hospitals. But in the case of
Speaker 3: Aboriginal women, of all the Aboriginal women who are missing
Speaker 3: around Australia, fifty percent have gone missing outside of their
Speaker 3: own community and a considerable distance outside of their own
Speaker 3: community and away from their family. Firstly, this shows something
Speaker 3: quite disturbing to me, which is that Aboriginal women, when
Speaker 3: they're away from their family and their community, become very
Speaker 3: vulnerable and become targets. And that's something this nation has
Speaker 3: got to grapple with that Aboriginal women away from the
Speaker 3: protection of their family and community become very vulnerable and
Speaker 3: at fifty percent. This is such an outlier and I
Speaker 3: can't believe that police aren't focusing on it. It becomes
Speaker 3: an even bigger issue in that the police do almost
Speaker 3: nothing to search for them because they are away from
Speaker 3: their family. As I spoke about before, so much of
Speaker 3: what we see during Missing Persons Week is families advocating
Speaker 3: for their own loved ones, Aboriginal families. And yet when
Speaker 3: someone goes missing outside of their own community, in the
Speaker 3: large part, their own community and family doesn't necessarily know
Speaker 3: a lot about the town or city where that Aboriginal
Speaker 3: woman has gone missing from, and it becomes so much
Speaker 3: harder for them to do that advocacy work. And here
Speaker 3: we see the police completely fail. And what happens, as
Speaker 3: I explained, is that, for example, if an Aboriginal woman
Speaker 3: is from Brisbane and goes missing in Sydney, she's away
Speaker 3: from her community. Her family will normally report her missing
Speaker 3: in Brisbane and say we have not heard from her,
Speaker 3: We're worried she didn't arrive at where she was going,
Speaker 3: we haven't received any phone calls. And now you have
Speaker 3: this issue of Brisbane police are supposed to be working
Speaker 3: with the police in Sydney and it simply doesn't happen,
Speaker 3: and so there's delays to searchers, there's searches that simply
Speaker 3: never take place, there is a huge lack of support
Speaker 3: for the family. There's the fact that there are no
Speaker 3: broadcasts done to medical services, hospitals, Aboriginal medical centers, to
Speaker 3: police patrols to be on the lookout in those first
Speaker 3: twenty four to forty eight hours. And as we know
Speaker 3: all too often, the fact is that Aboriginal women end
Speaker 3: up disappear into this system that simply doesn't care about
Speaker 3: their welfare, let alone locating them. And that just becomes
Speaker 3: so much harder when they're away from their community and
Speaker 3: from their family.
Speaker 2: And I think when we look at this Martin, when
Speaker 2: we're looking at all of the reasons in which disappearance
Speaker 2: is entrenched, or the conditions that allow for Aboriginal women
Speaker 2: to be disappeared, the most easiest explanation that the police
Speaker 2: can use or almost like an excuse for their own failures,
Speaker 2: is to claim this myth of transience or walk about
Speaker 2: which is specifically connected to what you're talking about. Around
Speaker 2: the phenomena of Aboriginal women being disappeared away from their community.
Speaker 1: It becomes a very very easy.
Speaker 2: Way of excusing their own failures and even being able
Speaker 2: to talk about these cases in ways that they can
Speaker 2: say that they're always searching for the women. They never
Speaker 2: stop searching missing persons investigations and never closed. For example,
Speaker 2: they're always going to talk about transients, but in a
Speaker 2: way it's framed around walk about, which is seen as
Speaker 2: this biological trait of Aboriginal women, specifically that they're just
Speaker 2: going to go walk about. Did that come out in
Speaker 2: your data as well when you were looking at it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely so. One of the things I was looking
Speaker 3: at was how quickly is a search commenced? And the
Speaker 3: longest it took for one search to commence after an
Speaker 3: Aboriginal woman was reported missing was fourteen months. Over a year.
Speaker 3: We talk about the first forty eight hours, and really
Speaker 3: those first few hours being critical. I mean, fourteen months
Speaker 3: is criminal in its negligence and failure. And again all
Speaker 3: the excuse making was down to the fact that the
Speaker 3: police claimed later they couldn't explain really why it took
Speaker 3: so long, but largely they relied on this myth, as
Speaker 3: you explain, of this average woman in particular being transient,
Speaker 3: potentially being in other towns with family members when it
Speaker 3: simply was not the case. And something that really strikes
Speaker 3: me when you read these police reports and you look
Speaker 3: at missing people across the board. When the average Australian
Speaker 3: goes missing, especially in a rural or regional community, there
Speaker 3: is this sort of parochial thing from the police where
Speaker 3: it's almost like they feel an obligation to find an
Speaker 3: outsider who has either gone missing, is lost, or to
Speaker 3: some harm inside what they consider their community. And yet
Speaker 3: when it comes to Aboriginal women, it's total opposite. All
Speaker 3: of that sort of country hospitality goes out the window
Speaker 3: and there is a zero lack of care and so
Speaker 3: just a language from police around that where police speaking
Speaker 3: about non Indigenous people talking about how important it is
Speaker 3: to them to find that person because they've gone missing
Speaker 3: in their community, the police officer's community, and it's a
Speaker 3: community they know, they know the local geography, they know
Speaker 3: the issues of that community. And yet and so they
Speaker 3: commit large amounts of resources. And yet when Aboriginal women
Speaker 3: go missing, it's almost like they claim they were never
Speaker 3: in their town to begin with. And there we have
Speaker 3: another form of disappearance, which is almost to pretend like
Speaker 3: they were a ghosts who never passed through, and you
Speaker 3: can begin to understand very quickly why there are so
Speaker 3: many Aboriginal women and children who are missing. And something
Speaker 3: that is hard to bring out from the data, but
Speaker 3: is something that we do know, is that so many
Speaker 3: of the cases where we've worked with the families we've
Speaker 3: looked much more deeply into the background, is that Aboriginal
Speaker 3: women who do go missing outside of their communities and
Speaker 3: away from their families are much more likely to be murdered.
Speaker 3: And the police have to know this. And we've seen
Speaker 3: this with Miss Watchow and Miss Bernard in Queensland just recently,
Speaker 3: both Aboriginal women who were murdered and where the police
Speaker 3: have bungled beyond belief investigations. There is now charges in
Speaker 3: the case of Miss Bernard, but the time it took
Speaker 3: to get there is completely unacceptable and would never have
Speaker 3: happened if it wasn't for the pressure that the family
Speaker 3: and the family supporters applied throughout a coronial process. So again,
Speaker 3: you know, that's this extra layer of disappearance when it
Speaker 3: comes to how long a search takes to commence and
Speaker 3: whether a search is done at all or in a
Speaker 3: meaningful way.
Speaker 1: Madern.
Speaker 2: Just in closing, you know we're talking about we just
Speaker 2: had Missing Persons Week last week, but we're coming up
Speaker 2: to I think next week the Senate inquiry into Missing
Speaker 2: a Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls is due to be
Speaker 2: handed down, and that's.
Speaker 1: Been continually delayed.
Speaker 2: I think it's even been delayed a month since it
Speaker 2: was last delayed, so it's been a process of continual delay.
Speaker 2: I've spoken to the enquiry a couple of times, and
Speaker 2: I know you spoke to it in Melbourne. You know,
Speaker 2: this is something that we've been looking at for a
Speaker 2: long time. We're both intensely passionate about this issue gaining prominence.
Speaker 2: What do you think could come from this inquiry?
Speaker 3: Well, I hope there is a lot that comes from it.
Speaker 3: One of the calls I made was for there to
Speaker 3: be a national body that assists families and works with
Speaker 3: families to help them navigate these hurdles, whether it be
Speaker 3: when their loved one goes missing in a community outside
Speaker 3: of their own, whether it be navigating the issue of
Speaker 3: someone going missing into state where you're having to deal
Speaker 3: with two, potentially three different state police services as well
Speaker 3: as the AFP. But you know something that this data
Speaker 3: reaffirmed to me was the fact that some of the
Speaker 3: committee members do not understand this issue. So I just
Speaker 3: don't hold out high hopes. You know, the fact that
Speaker 3: fifty percent of Aboriginal women go missing outside of their community,
Speaker 3: and yet when I gave evidence there was an enormous
Speaker 3: amount of pushback to that, Well, the data just doesn't lie.
Speaker 3: And the fact there was so much emphasis on what
Speaker 3: can local Aboriginal communities do again it's a victim blaming
Speaker 3: of what about the services that are funded to do it?
Speaker 3: And the other thing I raised, and again it was
Speaker 3: brought out in the data that we've looked at in
Speaker 3: the past and that came up this week, and that
Speaker 3: is the most current data, is that twenty five percent
Speaker 3: of Aboriginal women who are currently missing had access to
Speaker 3: medical service just before their disappearance. And so this goes
Speaker 3: to some of the racism and negligence in the healthcare system.
Speaker 3: And again, the committee was loath to tackle this issue,
Speaker 3: let alone sort of accept any written or verbal submission
Speaker 3: on these grounds. You know, a quarter of Aboriginal women
Speaker 3: who go missing have just accessed a medical service. You know,
Speaker 3: they're away from their communities, they're sick, they've tried to
Speaker 3: seek help, and they are being failed at every level
Speaker 3: that government is supposed to resource and provide assistance. And
Speaker 3: so I just don't hold out high hopes. I hope
Speaker 3: it's good, but I just worry that everything we've been
Speaker 3: concerned about won't be addressed. So, just in closing, Amy,
Speaker 3: what do you think might be the outcome or how
Speaker 3: do you see it coming down?
Speaker 1: I think I'm similar to you, and I really hope
Speaker 1: we're I really hope we're both wrong.
Speaker 2: I've always felt that this inquiry has just been a
Speaker 2: bit of box ticking because when I've appeared before it,
Speaker 2: I feel like the questions have not been that in depth.
Speaker 2: When I read the transcripts of the hearings, I don't see,
Speaker 2: you know, what we're actually looking at and what we're
Speaker 2: researching and what we're seeing through sitting with families or
Speaker 2: sitting through in quests. I just don't get a sense
Speaker 2: that that is coming through. And so I really hope
Speaker 2: we're both wrong. But yeah, I think what we can
Speaker 2: take from it as at least it is just one
Speaker 2: document that we can keep, you know, building to push
Speaker 2: awareness in some way. I think that's what we can
Speaker 2: hope for it and keeping in mind that, you know,
Speaker 2: even the inquiry over in Canada, which was very landmark
Speaker 2: in so many ways, very historic and came from decades
Speaker 2: of advocacy from Aboriginal women and families over there, even
Speaker 2: now that has not led to any changes. I think
Speaker 2: there's been two recommendations that have been put in place
Speaker 2: since that landmark inquiry, which came down in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2: And so even as you were talking about their refusal
Speaker 2: to you know, or their disinterest in a lot of
Speaker 2: the things that you were raising, I kept thinking of,
Speaker 2: you know, this is box sticking in the sense that
Speaker 2: they look for recommendations that they can recommend that aren't
Speaker 2: going to rock the boat too much, and they know
Speaker 2: that will probably not be ever honored.
Speaker 1: By government in any way.
Speaker 2: Yet. Hold, I mean, especially when you look at funding,
Speaker 2: like we know that all of these sectors around community
Speaker 2: control sectors are always underfunded and in fact money gets
Speaker 2: taken away so often, and so I feel that you know,
Speaker 2: these state processes, these reports.
Speaker 1: They're not the answer in any way.
Speaker 2: And that's almost like a general comment, but it's also
Speaker 2: a comment directly related to this inquiry. But It's something
Speaker 2: that's not unique to Australia because we've seen it happen
Speaker 2: in a much more historic and far reaching inquiry over
Speaker 2: in Canada, which has still led to no outcome as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think that goes to why we are
Speaker 3: doing this work, why we need to continue to do
Speaker 3: this work, and why we want to and will continue
Speaker 3: to support all the families that we can whose loved
Speaker 3: ones Aboriginal women and children are missing and have been
Speaker 3: disappeared and are not getting the help they deserve. So
Speaker 3: join us on the next episode where we will dissect
Speaker 3: that inquiry. This episode was brought to you by black
Speaker 3: Cast and produced by Clint Curtis. For more you can
Speaker 3: visit us at www dot Curtain Thepodcast dot com, follow
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