The Project host Tony Armstrong slams ‘racist’ Australia

After airing a segment about the high incarceration rates of Indigenous Australians, Tony Armstrong slams the nation for still being ‘racist’.

In a confronting segment on The Project, the panellists looked into why so many indigenous Australians are locked behind bars.

A new documentary called Incarceration Nation tackles this head on, showing the oppression of Aboriginal people that started from the time of the settlers, and is still going on today.

“First Nations people are 3.3 per cent of our total population, but 29 per cent of male prisoners are indigenous. Indigenous women account for just over a third. With more mothers than ever behind bars, a record number of children are being placed in child protection,” the documentary claims.

Footage from 'Incarceration Nation' had The Project hosts feeling outraged. Picture: Supplied

One case showed a child jailed for 90 days for merely stealing some coins from a car.

Horrificly, the footage also shows a 14-year-old boy, Dylan Voller, assaulted, hooded, and bound to a chair.

Inspector Jeff Regan, recounted his days as a young policeman when he wasn’t allowed to shared a fridge with his co-workers.

Explaining the event, he said the officer told him, “‘You’re not putting it in our fridge’. I said ‘What do you mean?’ He said, ‘You cook differently. You’re not putting your food in there. Go and get another fridge and clean it out and you can put your food in there.’ They make you feel subhuman.”

After the segment, indigenous panellist Tony Armstrong weighed in on the issue.

Tony Armstrong slammed the nation for being racist. Picture: Channel 10

“That’s hard to watch. My heart is going a million miles an hour. There’s so many points to pick up on. We talk about incarceration rates, you’re not seeing white kids getting jailed for stealing a bottle of water. You’re trying to find a way to rehabilitate them, you’re asking what are the reasons why they ended up stealing that bottle of water? You’re not just throwing the long arm of the law at them. You saw the footage of the young fella, bound up like Guantanamo Bay. That’s not on. But that happens in our country. And we talk about a sense of truth telling, we talk about, you know, needing to accept where we’ve come from to be able to move forward. This country still can’t accept it’s a racist country. You still can’t accept it’s built off the back of slavery, it’s built off the back of dispossession, it’s built off the back of rape and pillage of indigenous people. It’s just – it’s really hard to watch and really hard to reconcile with. And we’ve just got to be better.”

Lisa Wilkinson agreed. “It’s hard to watch, Tony, but really important to watch.”

Incarceration Nation will air this Sunday, 29th August at 8.30pm on NITV, before airing on SBS at a later date, and will be available to watch on SBS On Demand.