Aboriginal jail rates ‘a stain on our reputation’, says former minister

Former indigenous affairs minister Robert Tickner says overhauling the justice system will fail to address the ‘national shame’ of high Aboriginal jail rates.

Former indigenous affairs minister Robert Tickner: ‘What had to happen was the ­empowerment of Aboriginal people to have greater control over their own lives.’ Picture: James Croucher

Australia’s longest-serving indigenous affairs minister Robert Tickner — who oversaw the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody — has ­declared overhauling the justice system will fail to address the ­“absolute national shame” of high indigenous jail rates.

The minister in the Hawke and Keating governments, who was in the portfolio from 1990 to 1996, said there instead needed to be a substantial increase in funding for Aboriginal programs to improve Closing the Gap outcomes in health, education, housing and economic development.

Mr Tickner, who implemented the Native Title Act, said it was an “absolute myth” that the federal indigenous affairs department was awash with money.

“We know conclusively that Aboriginal people are not dying disproportionately to their numbers in custody. The absolute outrage — the absolute national shame, the stain on our reputation, the failure of our governments — is that they have failed to turn around those incarceration numbers. And, in fact, they have got worse,” Mr Tickner told The Australian.

The number of indigenous Australians in the nation’s prison system has increased from 19 per cent in 2000 to nearly 30 per cent in March this year.

“How do you turn around those numbers? Well, I’ll tell you what the royal commission said: it is about addressing the under­lying issues. It was about health. It was about employment. It was about housing. It was about tackling substance abuse. It was about family breakdown.

“It wasn’t just a matter of ­governments spending money. What had to happen was the ­empowerment of Aboriginal people to have greater control over their own lives. They were described by the royal commission … as being ­totally disempowered.”

A report by the Productivity Commission estimated that state and federal governments spent $33.4bn on services for indigenous Australians in the 2016 financial year, up from $27bn (in 2016 dollars) in fiscal 2009.

The direct government expenditure per Aboriginal Australian was $44,886 in 2016, compared with $22,356 on non-indigenous Australians.

As minister, Mr Tickner ­accepted 338 of the 339 recommendations handed down by the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody in 1991.

He said that, while there was bipartisan support from the states to carry out the recommendations, there was a lack of political will to see them through. “They failed to act and kept building more and more prisons,” he said.

A 2018 review by Deloitte for the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet found 78 per cent of the 339 recommendations had been fully or mostly implemented.

The Australian revealed on Monday the Morrison government has backed more ambitious targets to reduce the number of Aboriginal Australians in jail, as part of an overhaul of the Closing the Gap program to reduce in­digenous disadvantage. Sources said it would scrap a draft agreement to reduce the rate of young Aboriginal and Torres Strait ­Islanders in prisons by up to 19 per cent by 2028 and would now take a higher target to the states.

On Tuesday, the Indigenous Australians Minister, Ken Wyatt, stressed the need to address the under­­lying issues that led to crime, including “health, education and employment”.