Speaker 1: Just before nine o'clock last night, the jury returned guilty
Speaker 1: verdicts against all three defendants.
Speaker 2: It was absolute shambles, to tell you the truth, just
Speaker 2: absolutely really coming.
Speaker 1: Blood on his clothing the day after the alleged a
Speaker 1: top on a shallow mud bank and it fits through
Speaker 1: a river.
Speaker 2: Basically, I think most of the people are used to
Speaker 2: me are good people.
Speaker 1: I think a really important question we need to ask
Speaker 1: is how many Indigenous prisoners in Australia are innocent.
Speaker 2: This is Curtain, a podcast where we pull back the
Speaker 2: blinds to shine a light on the darkest parts of
Speaker 2: our justice system and ask who are the victims.
Speaker 1: I'm Amy Maguire and I'm Martin Hodgson, a senior advocate
Speaker 1: for the Foreign Prisoner Support Service. And a warning, this
Speaker 1: series contains the names of deceased peoples and has distressing
Speaker 1: content that might upset some listeners.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Curtain the podcast. In a very early episode,
Speaker 2: we spoke to a journalist Phil Dickie, who won the
Speaker 2: Gold Walkley for exposing police corruption in Queensland in the
Speaker 2: nineteen eighties. Another person who won a Walkley during that
Speaker 2: time for the same sort of work was Chris Masters
Speaker 2: from four Corners on ABC during the time both Phil
Speaker 2: Dicky and Chris Masters were investigating corruption in the Queensland
Speaker 2: Police force. It related to everything from criminal syndicates involved
Speaker 2: with the police, to police taking bribes, corruption, money racketeering
Speaker 2: and money laundering, and a large amount of corruption that
Speaker 2: involved Queensland Police officers being known as a brotherhood and
Speaker 2: part of what was then known as the Joke. This
Speaker 2: startling new information about what occurred back in those days.
Speaker 2: As you heard from Phil Dicky early in this podcast,
Speaker 2: it was a very dangerous thing, even to be a
Speaker 2: journalist working for the largest media organization in Australia to
Speaker 2: be investigating the corrupt police in Queensland. At that time.
Speaker 2: Chris Masters was working for the ABC and most would
Speaker 2: assume that a journalist working for the ABC would be
Speaker 2: a protected individual who the police wouldn't threaten nor harass.
Speaker 2: But so great was the corruption in Queensland at the
Speaker 2: time amongst police that new information has been revealed that
Speaker 2: an Australian Federal police officer named Dave Moore was assigned
Speaker 2: to watch Chris Masters. He wasn't assigned to watch Chris Masters,
Speaker 2: a journalist from one of the most important current Affairs
Speaker 2: programs in Australia. Because Chris Masters was doing anything wrong,
Speaker 2: he wasn't assigned because the AFP were worried that criminal
Speaker 2: elements in Queensland posed a risk to Chris Masters. The
Speaker 2: AFP were concerned that Chris Masters was at very real
Speaker 2: threat from corrupt members of the Queensland Police Force. During
Speaker 2: that time, the Australian Federal Police had a secret role
Speaker 2: in protecting the former Four Corners reporter, and AFP resources
Speaker 2: were spent keeping mister Masters safe. So out of hand
Speaker 2: did this become, And I should say that it doesn't
Speaker 2: appear that Chris Masters knew he was being looked after
Speaker 2: by the AFP at the time, But the Australian Federal
Speaker 2: Police became so concerned about the behavior of the Queensland
Speaker 2: Police Force that they were worried that something drastic would
Speaker 2: happen to Chris Masters, whether that be violence committed against
Speaker 2: mister Masters, plans to discredit him and the work he
Speaker 2: was doing, to show their corruption, and even a plan
Speaker 2: to frame Chris Masters by corrupt police officers to destroy
Speaker 2: his reputation and to destroy the work he was doing.
Speaker 2: To look at everything that was going on in Queensland.
Speaker 2: Chris Masters uncovered so much and so did Phil Dicky,
Speaker 2: that it led to the Fitzgerald Inquiry. But largely their
Speaker 2: efforts of these two outstanding journalists focused on Southeast Queensland.
Speaker 2: The Fitzgerald Inquiry did look at things that were happening
Speaker 2: around the state, but not in any great detail. What
Speaker 2: we need to know is what did the Fitzgerald Inquiry
Speaker 2: miss What was going on in Queensland at the time,
Speaker 2: in places like Rockhampton in Cannes and Townsville in Gladstone,
Speaker 2: in Mount Isa in Cape York, right across the state
Speaker 2: outside of Brisbane and the Gold Coast. Because if so
Speaker 2: many police officers were corrupt at the time in Queensland
Speaker 2: that the Australian Federal Police feared for the life of
Speaker 2: a prominent ABC journalist, surely we can't believe that the
Speaker 2: problem was confined simply to Brisbane and to the Gold Coast.
Speaker 2: In fact, as you've heard from this podcast, it wasn't
Speaker 2: confined to that area at all. This week marks two
Speaker 2: years since Four Corners, the same program Chris Masters worked
Speaker 2: for exposing corruption in Queensland police, exposed the abuse of
Speaker 2: young children in the Northern Territory at the Dondale Detention Center.
Speaker 2: From that footage, most of you will know the name
Speaker 2: Dylan Volla, a young Aboriginal boy who was placed in
Speaker 2: Guantanamo Bay style restraints and hoods. We also saw repeated
Speaker 2: abuse of young Aboriginal boys in the detention center, including
Speaker 2: violence committed against them, sexual acts, the recording of the
Speaker 2: young boys in the showers by prison guards, and much more.
Speaker 2: As you all know, and as we've spoken about on
Speaker 2: this podcast, there was a royal commission into what happened
Speaker 2: at don Dale. The findings have been handed down, and
Speaker 2: yet despite everything we saw with our own eyes, not
Speaker 2: a single corrections officer has been charged with any of
Speaker 2: the abuse that took place. What makes this relevant today
Speaker 2: and particularly this week, marking two years since we all
Speaker 2: saw that footage on ABCTV, is the startling new revelation
Speaker 2: that the second youth detention center in the Northern Territory
Speaker 2: is now suffering the same levels of chronic abuse against children.
Speaker 2: The Alice Springs Detention Center for Youth is now two
Speaker 2: hundred and seventy times percent its capacity that overcreding has
Speaker 2: called caused an increase in abuse, an increase of assaults
Speaker 2: and young children who are from the Alice Springs area
Speaker 2: being transferred to Darwin without their parents and family being
Speaker 2: notified and with no way to contact their family. Clearly,
Speaker 2: after two years, clearly after the nation saw what went on,
Speaker 2: that Royal Commission has been a total failure. Clearly again,
Speaker 2: what it shows is that without charges and criminal action
Speaker 2: being taken against abusive prison guards and police officers, things
Speaker 2: simply will not change. Since Federation in nineteen oh one,
Speaker 2: only four police officers or corrective services officers have been
Speaker 2: charged with the deaths of Aboriginal people in custody. None
Speaker 2: have ever been convicted. Just in the last twenty five
Speaker 2: years since the Royal Commission into Black Deaths in custody,
Speaker 2: there's been four hundred deaths and we're meant to believe
Speaker 2: that none of them were the result of criminal actions
Speaker 2: by Corrective Services guards or police. And yet we know
Speaker 2: the stories, We've seen the footage, We've seen and heard
Speaker 2: what happened to Mulrunji, We've seen the CCTV of what
Speaker 2: happened to Miss Due. Tragically, we've never seen nor heard
Speaker 2: what happened to Miss Marr on the Central Coast. But
Speaker 2: we're led to believe a young woman simply died in
Speaker 2: custody of natural causes, having been arrested for no reason whatsoever.
Speaker 2: This week in Sydney an inquest into the death of
Speaker 2: another Aboriginal person, and before I go any further, I
Speaker 2: do want to warn that some of the information will
Speaker 2: be distressing and the case I'll be discussing is that
Speaker 2: of the departed David Dunge and his family members who
Speaker 2: may be listening might not want to hear some of
Speaker 2: what we're talking about today, although I should say during
Speaker 2: the inquest into his death in Sydney, his family have
Speaker 2: been present every single day and have been sitting there
Speaker 2: hearing the horrendous failures of the system that led to
Speaker 2: the death of their son, their brother, their uncle. Sadly,
Speaker 2: the tragic death of David Dungae Jor inside Long Bay
Speaker 2: Jail teaches us much about the debts in custody that
Speaker 2: continue to take place. The reason we know so much
Speaker 2: is because it was all court on camera, and yet
Speaker 2: despite his death, no one has been charged, and even
Speaker 2: though there's an inquest in the coroner's court going on
Speaker 2: at the moment, my personal opinion is that it is
Speaker 2: unlikely someone will be charged as a result. The family
Speaker 2: deserve answers as to what happened. But if we have
Speaker 2: another inquest, another royal commission, where criminal actions appear to
Speaker 2: take place and nobody is charged or convicted, it appears
Speaker 2: nothing will change and more lives will be lost for
Speaker 2: those who aren't aware. I run briefly through what happened
Speaker 2: to David dunga Jor. He was in Sydney's Long Bay Jail.
Speaker 2: He had a number of chronic medical conditions, one of
Speaker 2: them included diabetes. On the day of his death, David
Speaker 2: was eating biscuits in his cell. He was told by
Speaker 2: corrective services to stop eating the biscuits. He refused. Now
Speaker 2: there's a good explanation why David might have been eating
Speaker 2: those biscuits. They were sweet biscuits, and he had insulin
Speaker 2: dependent diabetes. It's quite possible David, having lived with this
Speaker 2: condition for so long, was self managing his diabetes. Knowing
Speaker 2: that his glucose levels were dropping, he was eating the
Speaker 2: biscuits to raise those levels. He was possibly experiencing a
Speaker 2: foggy mind, blurred vision, and all the symptoms many diabetics
Speaker 2: would be familiar with. Either way, the consumption of a
Speaker 2: tim Tam biscuit in Australian prison cell should be of
Speaker 2: no concern to prison officers, But when David refused to
Speaker 2: stop eating the biscuits, Corrective Services decided their course of
Speaker 2: action was to storm his prison cell, and they did
Speaker 2: just that. Multiple guards entered David's prison cell and forcibly
Speaker 2: removed him, under great duress from his cell. They then
Speaker 2: placed him face down in a very dangerous position with
Speaker 2: his face down and his neck bent. This is a
Speaker 2: position that often leads to what's known as positional asphyxia,
Speaker 2: where quite simply the person cannot breathe, and David couldn't breathe.
Speaker 2: In fact, he was yelling out to the prison guards
Speaker 2: he couldn't breathe. He said this on twelve separate occasions.
Speaker 2: As a result, the Corrective Services officers who had wrestled
Speaker 2: David onto a bed and were pinning him to that
Speaker 2: bed with knees in his back, hands on the back
Speaker 2: of his head, kneeling all over him, had a prison
Speaker 2: nurse administer a sedative drug. That drug is known as
Speaker 2: mit asylum and it's regularly used in emergency wards to
Speaker 2: sedate people who may be distressed who need to be
Speaker 2: managed by the a medical staff who may be experiencing seizures,
Speaker 2: but it's done so by trained doctors who were used
Speaker 2: to dealing with a medical with medical emergencies day in,
Speaker 2: day out. But midasoleum also has a more sinister use
Speaker 2: in the United States since the banning by the European
Speaker 2: Union of the distribution to the US of pentobarbital for
Speaker 2: the lethal injection, Mydasolem is used as a three drug
Speaker 2: cocktail in lethal injections. That is, it's a death penalty drug.
Speaker 2: What is it doing in our prison system? Mydasoleum is
Speaker 2: a very strong sedative. David was already saying he couldn't breathe,
Speaker 2: and yet at no point did the corrective services officers
Speaker 2: lift their knees out of his back. At no point
Speaker 2: did they roll him over and allow him to breathe easier.
Speaker 2: At no point did they move him from the position
Speaker 2: that leads to positional asphyxia. David was struggling for breath,
Speaker 2: and not long after he'd said for the final time
Speaker 2: he couldn't breathe, his heart stopped. At some point in
Speaker 2: this period, when his heart stopped, an injection of mitersolum
Speaker 2: was administered and a second injection was called for now.
Speaker 2: It was only at this point that the guards started
Speaker 2: to believe David's cries that he couldn't breathe, and resuscitation
Speaker 2: attempt began. But emergency physician Professor Anthony Brown has told
Speaker 2: the inquest that the heart failure David Dungey suffered was
Speaker 2: not like a normal heart attack. It's not where the
Speaker 2: heart continues to beat and yet the person is unconscious.
Speaker 2: The type of cardiac arrest or heart attack that David
Speaker 2: suffered is one where the heart stops completely, and so
Speaker 2: for someone to be successfully resuscitated requires immediate medical attention,
Speaker 2: trained staff, and constant fundamental basic life support until paramedics arrive.
Speaker 2: None of that took place. We don't know for how
Speaker 2: long exactly David was still restrained despite his heart having stopped.
Speaker 2: We do know that although CPR was performed and cardiac
Speaker 2: massage was performed, those performing it were not properly trained.
Speaker 2: We also know that at one point they stopped performing
Speaker 2: the cardiac massage for eight minutes. How is anyone expected
Speaker 2: to survive? Footage of the resuscitation attempts also shows that
Speaker 2: a suction device used in keeping a person alive in
Speaker 2: that process had the cap left on. That cap went
Speaker 2: into mister Dungey's airwaves and was only retrieved when the
Speaker 2: staff discovered that the camp had fallen off. This was
Speaker 2: gross incompetence, this was criminal negligence. They also put David,
Speaker 2: despite him his heart no longer beating and not breathing,
Speaker 2: into the recovery position. Again, the Professor Brown said, this
Speaker 2: was an incorrect action to take. At no point during
Speaker 2: the process of trying to keep David alive was anyone
Speaker 2: appointed as the team leader. The fact is that most
Speaker 2: likely David Dunge died of a lack of oxygen, and
Speaker 2: as mister Professor Brown says, that was due to his restraints,
Speaker 2: that is, the restraints being applied to him by those
Speaker 2: prison officers. We may never know what roll the miter
Speaker 2: zolum played in David's death, but what we do know
Speaker 2: is that in the hands of those corrective officers, David
Speaker 2: began alive and he would wind up dead. His death
Speaker 2: shouldn't have been inevitable, it was preventable. As Professor Brown said,
Speaker 2: if you can call out that you can't breathe, that
Speaker 2: to me says the brain was working the lungs were working,
Speaker 2: the pulse was working enough to be reversible. Whatever challenge
Speaker 2: there was to Dungae in terms of the next two
Speaker 2: minutes and seventeen seconds while they waited for a nurse
Speaker 2: to get another injection in that time is when Dungae
Speaker 2: slipped into irreversible cardiac arrest. There was no need to
Speaker 2: storm David's cell. It was known to the guards that
Speaker 2: David had a number of serious medical conditions, life threatening
Speaker 2: medical conditions, and yet over a biscuit they chose to
Speaker 2: storm his cell over a timtam that he may well
Speaker 2: have been eating for his own health because of his diabetes.
Speaker 2: There was no need for multiple guards to throw him
Speaker 2: around and place him in a position that would endanger
Speaker 2: his life in the way they did. There was no
Speaker 2: need for them to refuse to listen to his cries
Speaker 2: for help that he could not breathe. Even to that point,
Speaker 2: as Professor Brown says, it was preventable and reversible. A
Speaker 2: nurse came into the room, a medical professional. They should
Speaker 2: have known that David was in grave danger. But when
Speaker 2: that nurse left the room in that two minutes and
Speaker 2: said seventeen seconds until they returned, David died and slipped
Speaker 2: into irreversible cardiac arrest. His family deserve answers and they
Speaker 2: deserve justice. David was in prison, but we supposedly don't
Speaker 2: have the death penalty in Australia. Placing someone into a
Speaker 2: position where they cannot breathe, into a point known as
Speaker 2: positional asphyxia, the cutting off of the airways until hypoxic
Speaker 2: arrest causes a heart attack, cannot be justified in any way.
Speaker 2: The fact that a drug was also used in the
Speaker 2: process that is part of the lethal cocktail used in
Speaker 2: the United States in the carrying out of the death
Speaker 2: penalty also should raise questions as to how Australian states
Speaker 2: treat prisoner like four hundred others. David Dunga Junior has
Speaker 2: passed since the Royal Commission into Black Deaths into custody.
Speaker 2: It's also clear from what's happened in the Northern Territory
Speaker 2: since the Royal Commission and what we saw at Dondale
Speaker 2: that nothing has changed. Children in the Hour Springs Detention
Speaker 2: Center are now in one of the top ten most
Speaker 2: over crowded prisons on Earth. Royal commissions clearly fix nothing.
Speaker 2: Chargers clearly never get laid. We also know that despite
Speaker 2: the best efforts of journalists to uncover what police are
Speaker 2: doing in states like Queensland, they risk their own lives
Speaker 2: when doing so, proven by the fact the AFP had
Speaker 2: to appoint one of their own officers to protect an
Speaker 2: ABC journalist from the Queensland Police. What Australia needs is
Speaker 2: a Truth and Justice Commission with the majority of the
Speaker 2: commissioners made up of Aboriginal and Torestraight Islander people. The
Speaker 2: Truth and Justice Commission needs a mandate. It needs to
Speaker 2: mandate like that of a Royal commission with all the
Speaker 2: powers that entails, but it needs to be Aboriginal led.
Speaker 2: The Commission needs a mandate to make assessments of the
Speaker 2: consequences of the imprisonment an abuse by police of Aboriginal
Speaker 2: and Torestraight Islander people over the last decades. There should
Speaker 2: be an inquiry into the conduct of all those involved
Speaker 2: in the prison system, including private prisons and public prisons,
Speaker 2: Corrective Services and its union, the police and its union,
Speaker 2: all justice departments or the Attorney General's departments and parole boards.
Speaker 2: The Commission needs the mandate to gather information and receive
Speaker 2: evidence from any person. The mandate must also include appropriate
Speaker 2: reparative measures to all of those who have suffered. There
Speaker 2: should also be the Mandate to inquire into complaints those
Speaker 2: that are currently ongoing, like the case of Kevin Henry
Speaker 2: and those from the past. The Mandate should then finally
Speaker 2: be able to prepare a comprehensive report of its activities,
Speaker 2: its research and its findings, and that report should be
Speaker 2: presented to the Governor General and the Australian Prime Minister.
Speaker 2: They must act on that report and its findings. We
Speaker 2: already know the names of four hundred Aboriginal and Torrestrate
Speaker 2: Islander people who will be in that report, people whose
Speaker 2: lives have been taken by the prison system and the
Speaker 2: police in this country. But what we need to know
Speaker 2: is who else and why. We need those who have
Speaker 2: committed these acts to be held accountable. We need those
Speaker 2: who are suffering right now, like Kevin Henry, to be
Speaker 2: able to tell their story. We need charges to be
Speaker 2: laid against all those found to have acted criminally, and
Speaker 2: we need reparations to be paid to all those who
Speaker 2: have suffered. Any less is unacceptable. As this week shown,
Speaker 2: deaths of Aboriginal and torres Straight Islander people will continue
Speaker 2: in prison. The abuse of Aboriginal and Torrestraight Islander children
Speaker 2: will continue, and the incarceration of Aboriginal and Torrestraight Islander
Speaker 2: women is the fastest growing anywhere in the world. If
Speaker 2: we don't get truth and justice now, there'll be more
Speaker 2: death and injustice in the future. That was curtin the
Speaker 2: podcast