Public discussion enters the age of the uninformed

Jonathan Green | The Drum | 10 May 2012

Can somebody tell me what happened? Can someone explain how in the space of just a decade our public discussion has been hijacked by the ignorant and the bigoted and their boosters in the mass media?

And there's a more important question, how did the once authoritative political class let it happen?

You may or may not have watched Four Corners on Monday: a gripping report that recalled the High Court's Mabo finding in 1992 and Paul Keating's subsequent political quest to put legislation round the court's repudiation of terra nullius and enshrining of native title. The history of our Commonwealth has had few more significant - or challenging - turning points.

Like all documentaries of this type, the Four Corners report did more than simply shed light on its central subject. There was much else to see besides, little snippets that also illuminated the political and media culture of the time. This exchange between Paul Keating and a talkback caller on John Laws' 2UE morning program in 1993 was stunning, an absolute show stopper.

Caller: Good morning.

John Laws: Okay, the Prime Minister is here.

Caller: Yes, good morning. Just a very broad question, Mr Keating, is: why does your government see the Aboriginal people as a much more equal people than the average white Australian?

Paul Keating: We don't. We see them as equal.

Caller: Well, you might say that, but all the indications are that you don't.

Paul Keating: But what's implied in your question is that you don't; you think that non-Aboriginal Australians, there ought to be discrimination in their favour against blacks.

Caller: Not... whatsoever. I... I don't say that at all. But my... myself and every person I talk to - and I'm not racist - but every person I talk to...

Paul Keating: But that's what they all say, don't they? They put these questions - they always say, "I'm not racist, but, you know, I don't believe that Aboriginal Australians ought to have a basis in equality with non-Aboriginal Australians. Well, of course, that's part of the problem.

Caller: Aren't they more equal than us at the moment, with the preferences they get?

Paul Keating: More equal? They were... I mean, it's not for me to be giving you a history lesson - they were largely dispossessed of the land they held.

Caller: There's a question over that. I think a lot of people will tell you that. You're telling us one thing...

Paul Keating: Well, if you're sitting on the title of any block of land in NSW, you can bet an Aboriginal person at some stage was dispossessed of it.

Caller: You know that for sure, do you?

Paul Keating: Of course we know it for sure!

Caller: Yeah, [inaudible].

Paul Keating: You're challenging the High Court decision, are you? You're saying the High Court got this all wrong.

Caller: No, I'm not saying that at all! I wouldn't know who was on the High Court.

Paul Keating: Well, why don't you sign off, if you don't know anything about it and you're not interested. Good bye!

Caller: Yeah, well, that's your ...

Paul Keating: No, I mean, you can't challenge these things and then say, "I don't know about them".

John Laws: Oh well, he's gone.

It really sets you back in your chair. From a contemporary perspective this seems an extraordinary act of political courage, of reckless honesty. A politician on talkback radio telling someone with no real knowledge of the issue beyond a gut feel that it rankles their deepest prejudices, that they are not entitled, under those terms, to enter the discussion.

You just know that today, the caller would be indulged; their opinion flattered with undue attention. So it is that today we see a political discussion that rather than excluding or marginalising the voices of the uninformed, angry and blindly polemical, is in fact conditioned, directed and dominated by them.

Look at our endless to and fro over asylum seekers... a debate in which the national government happily sets aside its obligations under international law and convention, never mind any reasonable notion of what is moral, in order to placate a vocal core of constituents whose shallow xenophobia and nebulous economic anxieties are amplified by talk back radio and the tabloids of TV and print.

Same for climate change. Five years ago we had something near to a national consensus based on unambiguous science, a consensus cynically talked down often through shorthand distortions and misrepresentations pitched at the uninformed.

Today few politicians dare confront these tides or take a stand against it. The tail has wagged the dog.

Where Paul Keating thought nothing of speaking his mind, Julia Gillard sits in the same studio as Alan Jones, is called a liar to her face and brushes off the insult. This is not an audience the modern politician dare offend and the result is to diminish the authority of our leaders. Team it with the reflex anxiety over every nuance of polling and we end up with a discussion that is easily mired in misconception and the darker sub currents of the national psyche.

To be reminded of Keating's boldness and certainty is to recall that we have lost more than his trademark arrogant pugnaciousness in the intervening decade. We've also lost political leadership, surrendering it to belligerent ignorance at high volume. You get the feeling that the modern politician, seeing that Keating talkback video would be schooled: "see that's the arrogance that cost him''. And that's cost us.

Jonathan Green hosts Sunday Extra on Radio National and is the former editor of The Drum. View his full profile here.

Prevention the only hope for young offenders, because cure is failing

Gino Vumbaca | SMH | May 02, 2012

In the aftermath of the Kings Cross police shooting of Aboriginal teenagers driving a stolen vehicle, the Herald has published an investigation into juvenile justice and how we deal with children that get into serious trouble.

It's sometimes too easy to look for someone to blame for youth crime - be it parents, government departments or others. What is harder to find are effective solutions, especially when they challenge the prevailing political and media orthodoxy.

Tonight, however, in what may be the start of some long overdue reform in NSW, the Governor, Marie Bashir, will launch a campaign to reduce the staggeringly high rate of young indigenous people in detention centres. It is led by the Aboriginal Legal Service and includes Michael Kirby, Mick Dodson, Bob Debus, Adam Goodes, Mick Gooda, Marcia Ella Duncan, Naomi Mayers, Nick Cowdery and other prominent Australians who want to make ''justice reinvestment'' the new norm.

If the current trajectory continues we are in real danger of losing a generation of young indigenous people. In NSW, they make up more than half of the detention population yet just 2.2 per cent of the general population. An Aboriginal youth facing the court system is 28 times more likely to be placed in juvenile detention than their non-indigenous counterparts. This is a shameful indictment of our current approach, which routinely consigns young Aboriginal people to detention. It cries out for a new approach that includes early intervention, prevention and diversion with incarceration as a last resort only - in short, what is becoming known around the world as ''justice reinvestment''.

Justice reinvestment is not about spending more of our taxes; it is about redirecting the current ineffective investments we are making in the justice system into areas and programs that can provide better, safer and healthier communities. It also reduces the extraordinary costs each time we put a juvenile in a detention centre or an adult in prison.

In NSW, the Auditor-General has revealed that the average annual cost of supervising and caring for juvenile offenders last year was $237,980 a person - a quarter of a million dollars a year for each young person locked up, and what do we get in return? The Australian Institute of Criminology has estimated that more than 30 per cent of adult prisoners were actually first incarcerated within the juvenile detention system. Given there are about 30,000 adult prisoners in the country and fewer than 1,000 juveniles in detention in any given year, that is a lot of juveniles going from detention to adult prison. It is also a system in which just under 60 per cent of NSW prisoners have previously served a sentence. In effect, our juvenile detention centres have become the learning centres for a cycle of offending and imprisonment.

The choices facing NSW today as the jurisdiction with the largest prison and juvenile detainee population are quite stark. We can continue on what is called the tough-on-crime path and replicate what is now known as the American disease. The US is home to 5 per cent of the world's people and 25 per cent of the world's prisoners. The prominent New York-based public health physician Ernie Drucker's recent book describes in epidemiological terms how this prisons ''plague'' has led to more than 2 million people being incarcerated, 800,000 on parole, and more than 4 million on probation. The ancillary effect of this type of justice means millions of children and family members of those incarcerated also come into regular and potentially damaging contact with the justice system.

The US, Russia and China lead the world in imprisonment. They show us the inevitable outcome of such tough policies. Enormous resources are being sucked out of other budget priorities, such as education and health, and they have high re-offending rates as people are churned through a brutal penal system and returned to the community.

NSW has not reached this point but finds itself on a similar path. I am not sure when developing policy based on evidence became synonymous with being soft rather than smart, but I think we should ask the next journalist, commentator or politician who portrays options other than prison as being ''soft'' what their view would be if their family member were facing incarceration. I would bet London to the proverbial brick they would stop at nothing to have them spared. This is because deep down they know, as does anyone who works or has been in prison, that it is an intimidating and violent system, and the last place where we can expect rehabilitation.

In contrast, justice reinvestment is about prevention rather than cure - about creating alternative pathways for young people who may otherwise be destined to lifelong offending, drug and alcohol misuse and suicide. When young people offend, there are likely to be other issues at play that are contributing. Justice reinvestment is our best option to target these causes and factors.

A think tank called Australia 21 recently called for a rethink on drug policy based on a review of the evidence and current approaches. One can only wonder how we can keep ignoring the evidence of our law and order policies. Just as a war on drugs can descend into a war against its citizens, a tough on crime approach can degenerate into a war against its most disadvantaged.

Gino Vumbaca is the executive director of the Australian National Council on Drugs and a member of the Campaign Committee. www.justicereinvestmentnow.net.au

Understanding kinship: indigenous people and law - 13 March 2012

University of Sydney | Sydney Law School Events

Register online

To register and make your secure online payment, please click here_

Please note: places are strictly limited and filling fast.

_________________________

About the event

Join the Institute of Criminology for Lynette Riley's 'Kinship' presentation. Lynette Riley, Academic Coordinator of the Koori Centre, University of Sydney, will take participants through a kinship system demonstrating the components of moiety, totem, skin names, language and traditional affiliations, and individual identity. Through Lynette's presentation participants will begin to see why Aboriginal people face particular problems when interacting with the mainstream Australian legal system.

The Law Reform Commission of Western Australia Report Aboriginal Customary Laws (Final Report, The interaction of WA law with Aboriginal law and culture, Project 94, September 2006, p. 66) highlighted the importance of Kinship to Aboriginal people:

"Kinship is at the heart of Aboriginal society and underpins the customary law rules and norms... Importantly, kinship governs all aspects of a person's social behaviour...

It is important to note...that while the kinship system was an undeniable part of traditional Aboriginal society...it is also strongly instilled in contemporary Aboriginal society, including urban Aboriginals...certain kinship obligations, such as the duty to accommodate kin, are taken very seriously regardless of urban or remote location."

Although the kinship systems throughout Australia are extremely varied and it is not possible in this forum to examine the differences between them, participants in the workshop will gain a new and deeper understanding of how a kinship system operates.

By the end of the workshop participants will have gained insight into:

• The social structure of Aboriginal society
• How this social structure and world view differs from the western liberal world view
• How this difference impacts upon Aboriginal people in the Criminal Justice System and the legal system more broadly

This workshop will be of interest to:

• Legal practitioners in Criminal Law, Family Law and Care and Protection, intellectual property, Native Title, and any areas that involve Indigenous Australians.
• Government personnel who interact with Indigenous Australians (especially DOCS, Juvenile Justice and Corrective services)
• The Magistracy and Judiciary
• Police
• Students

The workshop will be facilitated by Tanya Mitchell, Lecturer in Criminal Law and Indigenous People and the Law at Sydney Law School. Tanya was a senior solicitor-advocate with the Aboriginal Legal Service in NSW and also with the North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency in the Northern Territory before joining Sydney Law School as a full-time academic in 2010.

Numbers are limited to 80 so be sure to register early.

Group discounts are available. Please contact the Institute of Criminology for details. Email:law.criminology@sydney.edu.au

Light refreshments provided.

Lawyers/barristers: attendance at thisworkshop is equal to 2 MCLE/CPD units. For a full program of current MCLE/CPD eligible events, please click here.

Time: 6-8pm (registration from 5.30pm)

Location: Sydney Law School, New Law Building, Eastern Ave, University of Sydney

Cost: Full fee $27.50; SLS Alumni $22; F/T students $16.50 (all inc GST)

Contact: Event Coordinator

Phone: 9351 0238

Email: law.events@sydney.edy.au

Despair grips the children of the Dreaming

Russell Skelton | The Age | February 11, 2012

IT WAS a seemingly routine day in a thriving Arnhem Land township located on a bay facing the sparkling Arafura Sea. Northern Territory MP Marion Scrymgour had flown to the unnamed Aboriginal and islander community of 2000 to meet constituents, listen to grievances, and relay them to the powers that be in Darwin. ''I was walking from the council office to the health clinic when I saw all these people running, screaming and calling out.''

She stopped a panicked passer-by to ask what had happened and was answered by a swift gesture: a hand passing across the neck. ''It did not dawn on me at first what that gesture meant. Then somebody from the clinic said a girl had hanged herself. When I heard that she was 11, I thought, what is happening to our people and families? What is it that leads a young person to give up all hope and see no alternative in life but to leave?''

Flown by air ambulance to Darwin, the girl died in hospital after life support was turned off.

The circumstances of her death remain a mystery for most. Police requested that details not be publicised and the Coroner is yet to publish a finding - he may never do so, because not all suicides in the territory are subject to coronial investigation. Police reports are often accepted at face value and passed onto grieving families.

Scrymgour, who says she was told that the girl's desperate final act had had something to do with bullying, believes there is an urgent need for much more research into the territory's horrendous number of indigenous suicides. ''There had been a lot of bullying at school, but there is nothing cultural about a kid being bullied. That is an issue that can and should be dealt with.''

The shocking fact remains that more young girls are killing themselves than ever before in the Northern Territory. It is almost impossible to put an accurate figure on the precise number suiciding because of a time lag in reporting the deaths, but no one disputes figures complied in the NT Child Death and Prevention Committee annual report, showing that territory Aboriginal children are 3.5 times more likely to die during childhood than non-Aboriginal children.

Malabar police station named Aboriginal land in LEC

Vanessa Watson | The Southern Courier | 27 January 2012



The former Malabar Police Station at 1234 Anzac Pde is now Aboriginal land after the Land and Environment Court upheld the La Perouse Local Aboriginal Land Council. Photo: Alex Wisser.

MALABAR Police Station is now Aboriginal land and police must vacate within 60 days after the Land and Environment Court upheld an appeal against an earlier decision to knock back a land claim on the site by the La Perouse Local Aboriginal Land Council.

Following Justice T.W. Sheahan’s decision in the Land and Environment Court, the former Malabar police station at 1234 Azac Pde is now “claimable Crown land” under the Aboriginal Land Rights Act of 1983.

La Perouse Local Aboriginal Land Council CEO Chris Ingrey told the Courier the building’s future use would be determined by the council’s board and members.

“Some of the board members that I’ve been in contact with are quite excited about the outcome,” Mr Ingrey said.

“This legislation is the only form of compensation for the dispossession of land.”

Former police minister, Maroubra MP Michael Daley, called on Premier Barry O’Farrell to appeal the court’s decision and to “honour the Liberal Party’s commitment to a continuing police station at Malabar”.

“In the state election in March last year, the Liberal candidate for Maroubra promised that a Liberal Government would open a fully functioning police station at Malabar,” Mr Daley said.

Mr Daley said he was “very disappointed” by the decision and that the court had “rejected evidence from local police that police were still using the station”.

“That’s why, as police minister, I spent $300,000 upgrading the station, so it could continue to be used by police in our local area.”

Eastern Beaches Police commander Superintendent Gavin Dengate, who provided evidence during the proceedings, said the decision meant the local area command could have a reduced capacity for conducting operations.

“From a local area command perspective, having a reduced capacity to conduct operations is disappointing,” Supt Dengate said.

“It certainly doesn’t mean the La Perouse Aboriginal Land Council can’t do something in support of local police.”

During the proceedings, the court rejected the police minister’s earlier refusal against the land claim on the grounds the building was “lawfully used and occupied” for the purposes of policing.

Under the Aboriginal Land Rights Act, Aboriginal land councils in NSW are able to claim unused Crown land on behalf of their members as compensation for their historical dispossession.

Under the Act, “claimable Crown lands” can mean land not lawfully used or occupied, or lands that are not needed, nor likely to be needed, for an essential public purpose.

Youth bail laws to be eased in NSW

Imre Salusinsky | The Australian | February 7, 2012 

BAIL laws in NSW will be reformed in a push by the state government to reduce the number of young people in jail.

NSW Attorney-General Greg Smith has confirmed to The Australian the changes are likely to include exempting accused juveniles from tough provisions introduced to the bail act in 2007, which limited the right of accused offenders to make repeated applications for bail once an initial bid was refused.

At about 400, the number of juveniles in detention in NSW is the highest in the country.

About half are on remand -- a proportion that spiked following the new provisions.

"Once they get into detention, their prospects of returning to a normal life are diminished," Mr Smith said said of accused offenders aged under 18.

"There are currently more juveniles on remand than are serving detention. They're being exposed to more serious young criminals while they are there."

He said the 2007 changes "did seem to impact in a more prejudicial way on juveniles than it did on adult prisoners".

A Human Rights Agenda for the new Attorney-General, continued

Human Rights Law Centre | December 2011

Australia’s new Attorney-General, Nicola Roxon, was sworn in on 14 December 2011.

We asked some of Australia’s leading human rights advocates, activists and academics to tell us, in less than 100 words, what the Attorney’s top human rights priority or initiative for 2012 should be. We’ll be sharing more of them with you in the coming days and weeks.



John Tobin is an Associate Professor at Melbourne Law School and a member of the HRLC Advisory Committee

The prioritisation of efforts to address human rights considerations is always fraught with danger. But the reality of limited resources means that prioritisation is a fact of political life. Given this reality, the top priority for the new Attorney General in 2012 must be ensuring the successful implementation of the Human Rights (Parliamentary Scrutiny) Act 2011. The requirement to scrutinize all new legislation in light of international human rights standards must not be reduced to a shallow process of compliance. Instead, the Attorney General must lead from the front and demonstrate that substantive engagement with international human rights standards leads to more effective and equitable legislative outcomes.

Lucy McKernan is Manager of Strategic Projects with the Public Interest Law Clearing House (Vic)

That a five year old girl can be lawfully refused admission to a government funded kindergarten on the basis of her parents’ same-sex relationship, is a disgrace. Even the Acting Bishop for the relevant Catholic diocese was ‘appalled’ by the discriminatory decision, yet Australian laws allow this form of discrimination by religious organisations.

Attorney-General Roxon should remove the blanket exceptions for religious organisations permitting them to discriminate on the grounds of sex and age. At the very least, the Attorney should prohibit discrimination by religious organisations in respect of their government funded functions and require greater transparency from organisations seeking to rely on the exceptions. Importantly, the Attorney should also show leadership by encouraging her State counterparts to follow suit.

Les Malezer is Co-Chair of the National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples

The priority for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples is to gain recognition and respect as first peoples, and acknowledgement and protection of Indigenous rights.

In 2012, the Attorney General must make the Human Rights Framework effective, leading cultural change across government. For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples this includes giving the recommendations and reports of the Australian Human Rights Commission, including the ATSI Social Justice Commissioner, real authority, not just political lip service. The Government must implement and be accountable to reports on human rights by national and international authorities. There should also be a focus on judicial and legal education, to ensure legal professionals understand Indigenous rights and can properly and impartially resolve cases regarding those rights.

Lucy Adams is a Senior Lawyer with the PILCH Homeless Persons’ Legal Clinic

On census night in 2006, approximately 105,000 Australians were homeless, including approximately 7,480 families. Australia needs a human rights-based framework for addressing homelessness.
InVictoria, we have seen how legislative protection of human rights can work in practice through the Victorian Charter of Human Rights. The HPLC has relied on the Charter’s binding obligations on public bodies – to give proper consideration to human rights in decision-making and to act compatibly with human rights – to avoid the eviction of 42 people, including 21 children, from social housing into homelessness.

Enforceable human rights obligations, including national homelessness legislation that enshrines the right to adequate housing, are critical to Australia’s ability to effectively prevent and address homelessness.

Aboriginal crime and punishment: spending on jails but not outcomes

Inga Ting | Crikey | 16 December 2011

The rise of a punitive "law and order" culture in Australia has had a profoundly racial dimension, manifested in soaring rates of indigenous incarceration. The number of indigenous adults held in the nation's jails has increased for the 11th year in a row -- as Crikey revealed in part one yesterday -- while over the past decade the indigenous imprisonment rate has outstripped the non-indigenous rate by a factor of 11, ballooning more than 47%. The non-indigenous rate grew 4% in the same period.

This shift towards the use of crime and punishment as a tool of social control -- known as "governing through crime" -- has led to the rise of a "risk agenda" that concentrates on the risk of crime occurring, not just actual crime. In this society of heightened fear and increased surveillance, punishment is increasingly targeted at those on the periphery. And no group lies more at the periphery than indigenous Australians.

That outcomes for Aboriginal Australians are deteriorating in all but a select few areas has been confirmed by virtually every government report released this year. Here is an extract from just one -- the Productivity Commissions latest Closing the Gap report, Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage: Key Indicators, released in August:

"Nine years after this series was commissioned, there is still a considerable way to go ... Wide gaps in average outcomes remain across most indicators. Of the 45 quantitative indicators in the report, for example, available data show improvement in outcomes for only 13 indicators ... For 10 there has been no real improvement, while for another seven, including social indicators such as criminal justice, outcomes have actually deteriorated."

Some of the most shocking indicators are in the area of health, where hospitalisation rates are vastly higher for indigenous men and women than for other Australians.

Ratio of indigenous to non-indigenous rates of hospitalisation

Reason for hospitalisation                                            Women               Men

Injuries caused by assault                                             31                        7

(i.e. hospitalisation rate for indigenous women 

31 times higher than the rate for 

non-indigenous women) 

Injuries caused by non-fatal family violence assault      31                        25

Mental and behavioural disorders                                  1.5                      2.2

Chronic disease:

End-stage renal disease                                                 15                        8
Diabetes                                                                        5                         3.5
Circulatory                                                                    2                         1.5

According to the same report, indigenous adults indicate having a disability that profoundly or severely restricts core activity at around twice the rate for non-indigenous people. They are also twice as likely to be recent users of illicit substances as other Australians and four times as likely to be homeless.

David Woodroffe, managing solicitor in criminal law at the North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency in the NT, says the Northern Territory intervention has invested heavily in institutions focused on punishing criminal behaviour, while providing minimal services to help those who turn to crime in the first place.

"There’s more policing in communities -- more police stations and police posts -- so more people will come to the attention of police, will be charged, get into the [criminal justice] process. But there’s no corresponding in relation to other services ... there’s no youth diversion programs, there’s no rehabilitation services, etc. So basically, government’s providing an impetus for detecting crime and prosecuting crime but there’s not the services there for reducing crime or turning people away from it. And that’s why we see, with the lack of services like that, people becoming entrenched in the criminal justice system."

Aboriginal crime and punishment: incarceration rates rise under neoliberalism

Inga Ting | Crikey | 15 December 2011

The number of indigenous adults held in the nation’s jails has increased for the 11th year in a row, despite the nation’s prisoner population falling for the first time in a decade.

According to the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics data, the indigenous prisoner population increased by 1% in the year to June 2011 while the total prisoner population dropped by 2%. The gap between indigenous and non-indigenous imprisonment rates grew by 0.1%, with indigenous Australians now 14.3 times more likely to be incarcerated than non-indigenous Australians. Today, about one in four prisoners are indigenous even though indigenous Australians make up just 2.5% of the general population.

While the reduction in the national prisoner population makes a welcome change, the fact remains that it has expanded by 30% over the past decade despite falling crime rates across the nation. At first glance, this doesn’t make sense: crime rates have decreased dramatically in the past decade (see the complete data) while incarceration rates — especially indigenous incarceration rates — have continued to climb.

The problem lies in the common assumption that punishment is a direct outcome to criminal behaviour, says Chris Cunneen, Professor of Justice and Social Inclusion at James Cook University and a criminologist with more than 20 years’ experience in indigenous criminal justice. “Sentencing and imprisonment is not related to crime. It’s a function of government policy,” he told Crikey. “The fact that we’re locking up more people is … really about changes to law and practice.”

Director's jailhouse shock

Andrew Taylor | SMH | May 8, 2011

FILMING inside the Adelaide Women's Prison was ''a really big coup'' for director Beck Cole.

But she said: ''To be honest, I didn't realise how affected I'd be by it.''

Indeed, walking into the prison on the first day of shooting Here I Am was a sobering moment for Cole and her Aboriginal cast. ''It was a big wake-up call for the crew and Shai [Pittman] to be locked up in a cell,'' she said.

Here I Am will open this year's Message Sticks indigenous film festival, which premieres at the Sydney Opera House on Thursday before touring around Australia.

The festival, programmed by Bran Nue Dae director Rachel Perkins, includes films, documentaries and shorts about indigenous people in Australia and overseas, performances by Ursula Yovich and the children's stage show I See.

Written and directed by Cole, Here I Am tells the story of Karen, played by Pittman, a young Aboriginal woman who leaves prison determined to turn her life around. But she is estranged from her daughter and mother Lois, played by Marcia Langton, who refuses to trust her.

Cinema audiences are increasingly receptive towards indigenous storytelling, Cole said. ''They get it. It's not ooga-booga and freaky.''

Cole described the disproportionately high numbers of indigenous people in custody as ''a really negative part of the Aboriginal experience in this country''.

Here I Am looked at ''the reasons why as an individual you end up in prison'', she said. ''The reasons you've neglected your children, taken drugs, done all this shit and f---ed up your life.

''Also you have to take a look at yourself. You can't point a finger at other people. It's not the government that didn't feed your children or make you do drugs or break into houses. Subtly, it's about taking responsibility for your own life.''

Cole lives in Alice Springs with partner Warwick Thornton, the director of Samson & Delilah and the director of photography on Here I Am.

She said it was an exaggeration to say levels of violence in the Alice were increasing: ''We've always been exposed to what you're reading about in newspapers now.''

Perkins said Message Sticks did not have a theme. ''We just show the best work.'' The festival also features Ivan Sen's Shifting Shelter 4, the latest in a series that has followed four young Aboriginal people living in rural NSW since 1995.

Perkins said several films, including Sen's documentary and an Alaskan drama about Inuit teenagers, On the Ice, were about ''young people growing up hard and coming from dysfunctional families''.

But Perkins said she disagreed with Here I Am producer Kath Shelper's assertion that it is the first feature to focus on urban Aboriginal women in a modern setting.

''I don't agree. I've made a film about Aboriginal women,'' said Perkins, who directed 1998's award-winning Radiance, about three indigenous sisters who reunite for their mother's funeral.

The faces behind the statistics

By Ramahn Allam | Living Black | 15 April 2011 

Ramahn Allam met the people behind the juvenile justice statistics.

“On an average day in 2008–09, an Indigenous young person aged 10–17 years was almost 14 times as likely to be under community-based supervision as a non-Indigenous young person of the same age. The level of over-representation was even higher for detention. On an average day, an Indigenous young person aged 10–17 years was 24 times as likely to be detained as a non-Indigenous 10–17 year old. Although only 5% of young Australians are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, half of those in detention on an average day were Indigenous.” 

Source: AIHW 2011. Juvenile justice in Australia, 2008-09. Juvenile justice series. Cat. no. JUV 7. Canberra: AIHW. 

When did you stop reading? 

My guess is by the time you got to the third set of numbers in that quote from the above report, your eyes glazed over, you started thinking about talking cats on Youtube and got up from your armchair to make a cup of tea. 

Maybe not exactly all that detail, but the point is, almost 60 per cent of all prisoners in New South Wales detention centres are Aboriginal. 

When our legal team was checking this weekend’s story on the Youth Corroboree, seasoned lawyers were surprised at the statistic. But when presented with the human face of these statistics in the form of Aboriginal youth who have been through the juvenile justice system, statistics and numbers are almost irrelevant as it becomes apparent any of the young people that have been in the system from a very young age began life ‘behind the eight ball’. 

Sixteen-year-old Roderick Doolan’s story features in this package. It is depressingly far from unique.

Reducing Indigenous Contact with the Court System

The Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research released a paper in December 2010, entitled "Reducing Indigenous Contact with the Court System".

Highlights from the BOCSAR media release:

• In 2009, Indigenous Australians constituted less than 2 per cent of the NSW population but accounted for 13 per cent of all persons charged with a criminal offence. The Bureau estimates that more than 80 per cent of Indigenous defendants currently appearing in court will at some stage return, most within less than two years. 

• A 10 per cent reduction in the return rate would reduce the number of Indigenous court appearances by 2,558 per annum or approximately 32 per cent. A 20 per cent reduction in the rate of return would virtually halve the number of Indigenous people turning up in court, reducing the ratio of Indigenous to non-Indigenous court appearances from 1 in every 9.6 cases to 1 in every 18.6 cases. 

• According to the Director of the Bureau, Dr Don Weatherburn, the best way to reduce the rate of Indigenous re-offending is through effective rehabilitation programs. 

“Programs that combine intensive supervision with treatment have been found to produce an average 16 per cent reduction in reoffending. Given the strong influence that drug and alcohol abuse have on the risk of Indigenous arrest, it would also seem prudent to increase Indigenous access to drug and alcohol treatment."

In the Illawarra Mercury on Monday 24/1/11, Michelle Webster reports reaction to the BOCSAR paper on the South Coast. Veteran Aboriginal Legal Service solicitor Gary Pudney told the Mercury that indigenous reoffending could be cut through improved access to rehabilitation programs, but said many offenders were missing out on effective treatments because of a lack of available places.

"The best way to get people out of the criminal justice system is to get them employed and the best way to get them employed is to get them off drugs and alcohol.

"But there is a lack of places in these programs. We can spend days or weeks calling trying to get someone in," Mr Pudney said.

According to the the article, a spokesman for the Attorney-General, John Hatzistergos, said that the government was trying to reduce the over-representation of indigenous people in the court system through a number of court-based and rehabilitative programs.

Recently, Barry O'Farrell pledged an additional $10 million to expand rehabilitation places.