Dreyfus calls deaths in custody a national shame but fails to back action on royal commission

Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus says incarceration rates and deaths in custody of Indigenous Australians are a national shame but stopped short of backing Aboriginal senator Pat Dodson’s calls for immediate action on 30-year-old royal commission recommendations.

In a powerful intervention, Dodson said national leadership was needed on the issue and urged his government to immediately set up a national Indigenous justice committee, a federal office to oversee state coronial inquests and ensure the provision of Indigenous-tailored health services in jails.

Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus has stopped short of backing calls by his colleague, Aboriginal Senator Pat Dodson, for immediate action on the royal commission recommendations on deaths in custody. Credit: James Brickwood

Calling out the inaction of successive governments, including his own, Dodson said on Sunday that the Albanese government had an obligation to act on the findings and ensure the safety of people taken into custody, saying he would have some “very robust discussions” with Dreyfus about what action needed to occur.

Responding to Dodson’s remarks, Dreyfus pointed to government work already underway on criminal justice reform, including a $99 million First Nations justice package funded in the October budget and working with states and territories on a proposal to raise the minimum age of criminal responsibility.

“I agree with Senator Dodson that 32 years after the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, rates of incarcerated First Nations adults and youth are unacceptable,” Dreyfus said.

“As I have said before, and I will say again, First Nations incarceration rates and deaths in custody are a national shame.”

He said a First Nations taskforce, comprising officials from the attorney-general’s department and the National Indigenous Australians Agency, was leading the rollout of the justice package. He claimed this amounted to an unprecedented investment by the Commonwealth in justice reinvestment initiatives, which will funnel funding and resources from the criminal justice system into local community-based programs aimed at breaking the cycle of offending.

In a speech in the lower house on Monday, Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney said Indigenous Australians were being failed by the justice system, but did not directly address Dodson’s calls for immediate action on the outstanding recommendations, while backing the government’s justice reinvestment commitments.

“Too many of our people are being robbed of their futures by a justice system that has failed them,” Burney said.

“As Senator Dodson said to me this morning, the best way to prevent deaths in custody is to make sure our people aren’t ending up in prison in the first place. And that is why justice reinvestment is so important.”

Opposition spokesman for the Indigenous Australians portfolio, Julian Leeser, said he was concerned by Dodson and Burney’s remarks, saying they were “questioning the speed and focus of their own government’s work in this space. They have the levers in their hand, and it is for the government to act.”

The number of Indigenous people dying in custody each year is much higher now than in the period before the royal commission, with an average of 16.6 deaths per year since 1991 compared to 11 deaths per year between 1980 and 1989. Since the royal commission, on which Dodson served as a commissioner, 527 Indigenous Australians have died in police or prison custody.

A report by 2018 Deloitte Access Economic found that more than two-thirds of the recommendations had been fully or mostly implemented, while six per cent had not been progressed at all. But these findings have been contested, including in a paper by the ANU Aboriginal Economic Policy Research which countered that very few had been implemented and many had been directly contravened by government laws and policies.

While many of the recommendations are directed at state and territory governments and agencies, such as police, prisons, corrections health services, and the courts, other reviews have determined the Commonwealth has a leadership role in pressing the states for implementation.

Aboriginal independent Senator Lidia Thorpe, who has long advocated for action on deaths in custody, says the issue should be prioritised over the Voice to Parliament referendum.

“I’ve been pushing and pushing the recommendations to the royal commission for so long and so have our people. We’ve marched the streets to end deaths in custody,” Thorpe said.

“I know how long this has taken to even get someone in government to acknowledge that these need to be implemented, but, also the fact that Labor have always said it’s state and territory responsibility. We need national leadership. Now we’ve got it. What’s next? We want it before any referendum,” Thorpe said.

Greens First Nations spokeswoman Dorinda Cox, who served as a police officer for close to a decade, said sweeping reforms to state justice systems were needed.

“What I’m looking for is federal leadership in relation to legal reform,” she said.

“I’ve spoken to Pat Dodson about this issue. I’d love to see a report card to refresh where things are at [implementing the recommendations of the 1991 royal commission into Indigenous deaths in custody].”

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