Digging Deeper into the Data

crisis surrounding disappeared Aboriginal women. There's currently an inquiry into missing a murdered Indigenous women and Girls underway in the Australian Senate, but through conversations Martin and I have had over the past few months, we're starting to realize that there are a lot of gaps in the conversations around this issue, and we're going to discuss some of those today.

One of the issues comes down to data. Currently, we just do not have a national data set that tells us the numbers of missing a murdered Indigenous women across state and territories. That's part of the terms of reference of the Senate Inquiry, and I just wanted to start by bringing up an article that had to do with the Senate Inquiry, which is published in August on The

Guardian and the Inquiries. The article said the inquiry is expected to hold hearings in every state and territory, and in particular to focus on regional and remote areas where Indigenous people are missing at higher numbers. Now that's an a fact that's included in the terms of reference, but that idea that there will be a focus on regional and remote areas because Indigenous people are going missing at higher numbers in this area is sort of accepted uncritically.

But what we've found as we've researched these issue is that we have to interrogate absolutely everything we know about what is currently happening in Australia around the targeting of Aboriginal women for violence, and Martin, I just wanted to start by asking you that idea that Indigenous people are going missing at higher rates in regional and remote areas, is there any evidential basis for that or what have you found when looking at this issue.

can understand it with what's available. And the AFP keeps the most comprehensive list of missing and potentially murdered people in Australia. What makes it a little bit difficult is they do not have a category for Indigenous people, so you have to go through every single individual to try and get an idea of basically whether the person is Aboriginal or not in the first place, and then start

to look into their circumstances. But basically what I found was that if you remove historic cases we're talking some are back to the nineteen twenties, and if you remove the data from Australians who are missing overseas, you basically find that despite Aboriginal entirestrat island to people making up three point two percent of the population, more than twenty

percent of women missing in Australia are Aboriginal. Then when you start to look at the individual cases, sixty percent of all those Aboriginal women who are missing are missing from an urban area. And the way I categorized an urban area was a town or city larger than twenty five thousand people. So this is not small towns, this is not really certainly not rural and remote, that's for sure.

And that's sixty percent. So this idea, that article makes this statement, it's just it's actually factually incorrect when you start to dig down into the numbers, and I think it points to a bigger issue, which is that we don't have a data set of any kind from which to work. No one has ever taken the time and I think this is a huge failing of the Australian Federal Police, who have the resources and the information to do this, to sit down and work this out, and

it's simply never been done. I mean the fact that they have listed in their database everything from eye color, hair color and things like that, but they don't have it listed whether the woman who is missing or forcibly disappeared is Aboriginal. There's nothing about their ethnicity. In fact, even more disturbing was there is a category for ethnicity,

but it's never used for its Aboriginal people. And it seems to me that that is pure laziness because in a lot of the descriptive text in each individual's case file, they will list that the person is Aboriginal. So they simply just haven't gone and added it to the way they categorize people now. So for anyone whether it's a journalist, a student doing PhD work, the family members trying to raise more information, anyone who might have seen the person and gone and logged on to try and find is

that person missing. It might be healthcare worker, someone in a hospital, someone at a women's refuge. They're actually making it very difficult for them to find who that person is that they may have seen or encountered. So yeah, there's a huge amount of issues in first the assumption, the lack of a data set, and then the way that data is being put together.

one hundred and eighty one cases. And I also wanted to raise the example of this was also the case in the Mexican border city of Sudad Jurez, where they began counting in nine ninety three, and so actually finding the numbers can illustrate the severity of the crisis. And yet we've started a national inquiry where we have no

understanding of the data set. What does that mean for you know, the future of this inquiry mardinal or what sort of stepbacks does it pose for us when we just sort of I really feel we're in the initial stages of really understanding what is happening in this country around the active disappearing of Aboriginal women.

wrong place. Now, sure some benefit will come from it, but if we are not focusing on where the worst part of the problem is and understanding why if the assumption is wrong, what is making that assumption wrong? And also there is a disappearing of these Aboriginal women in

the process. So if we already know that sixty percent are missing from urban areas, but the focus is on rural and remote, once again we are missing them in the work that is being done at a national level, and we are missing they are being forcibly disappeared and going missing the circumstances, and also, I think the commonality of what is going on here and if we miss that,

then we will revisit this issue in a generation. Having watched the figures climb, And again, I think it's really important when we talk about all this that when we talk about facts and figures, we're talking about human beings, and we're talking about Aboriginal women who are missing, most

likely deceased, and their families have absolutely no answers. There's never been any justice, and I don't think it's acceptable that we head down a path where we are potentially getting it so wrong and we are failing these women and we're failing their families because we haven't done the initial work and it's hard work to do, but it has to be done or we're just going to end

up in the same place in thirty years time. And I think one thing we know from looking at a lot of these cases, speaking to the families is where and how they've been failed. And there's a lot of commonalities.

And one of those commonalities starts at the very beginning of this podcast, when a solicitor in Rockhampton over the murder of Linda approached the police and the police officer replied, And this solicitor approached the police because someone had confessed to them, And the police officer replied, we've got a black for a black and that was in a town larger than twenty five thousand people. This is not rural

and remote. This is the cops showing what they always do, no care about the truth, no care about getting justice. And from that we saw a family never get answers, never get justice, and the wrong man spend thirty year in prison for a crime he didn't commit. And that is the risk we take if we don't know what we're looking at when we begin.

And I know you talked about this a lot. What did you find when you looked at that data set? Was that's something else that emerged through numbers?

determinations impossible. But at the minimum, we're talking about eighty percent of women disappearing from a community, a town, a city other than their own, and I think that is something far more illustrative of what's going on than whether they are been missing or forcibly disappeared from a rural and remote area, from a small town, a large town, or a city. Is that the women are away from home,

away from their community. And I think this also goes to a lot of the reporting, and this is where we have to be super critical of the media, which is that the Four Corners report that came out relied very heavily on media reports. Well, that presupposes that the media even bothered to care about reports of a missing or murdered Aboriginal woman in their area now, particularly in anywhere outside of probably Sydney or Melbourne. But even then,

the media ignore these examples all the time. So much of the media is just a copy and paste job of a police press release where the police barely speak to the families. So we're missing a huge amount of what's going on. And the reaction to that report by four corners from and you know, there's no point mincing around the right wing media. A number of well known racists like Andrew Bolt in the media was to shift the focus and start talking about dysfunction in Aboriginal communities. Well,

the facts just don't bear it out. I mean, he was successfully sued over getting facts wrong and he's doing it once again, which is that you can't blame small Aboriginal communities when the facts very clearly show that sixty percent of the women who are missing or forcibly disappeared are going missing from large towns and cities, not Aboriginal communities, and at least eighty percent are going missing from a

place that is not their community or their home. So once again we're seeing this the focus being directed by people with often ulterior motives and or ignorance, and it's shifting us to places where it's not that the facts just don't back it up. And again that means we run the risk of getting this very wrong if we listen to those people.

in understanding this. But already you've shown that where we're going or the common assumptions and how it's being reported is drastically different to what the reality actually is on the ground where you're having Aboriginal women vulnerable, particularly when

they're away from their communities in urban centers. And I also wanted to ask about, you know, this link between criminalization and the victimization of Aboriginal women, like I see a direct continuum and often Aboriginal women are away from their communities because they have been criminalized, they've been incarcerated,

and maybe they've just gotten out. So even though we've got this early data looking at the AFP, we've also got all of these other subsets we have to look at in what's happening, And it feels almost overwhelming because there is nothing at all in which to start interrogating what we're starting to see emerge from inquests and emerge from cases in their mind, and like, there's just you know, to me, it shows that Aberiginal women are incredibly vulnerable

to perpetrators when they're away, you know. But we're just

really at the beginning. And when you talk about four corners, and you know, you talk about the way that this issue is being reported on, focusing on family violence, the way that viting media are looking at it at three prisms of pathologization and dysfunction, it's taking us further and further and further away from actually understanding the core issues and what is making Aboriginal women vulnerable and what are these conditions of impunity and how are the police supporting

those conditions and the state. So it just feels, you know, When you see that and you consider all the other factors that come into play, it feels really overwhelming, doesn't it.

with facts. So this morning, to explain to our listeners, I shared a photo with Amy that was taken from a database of all missing women in the state of Queensland in a ten year period, and all the photos of the non Indigenous women are happy family photos, the sort of photos you would expect to be shared when a person goes missing. The photos shared by the police of the Aboriginal women, all of them in prison uniform. Now, I think immediately that tells you where the police attitude is.

It also tells me, having worked on hundreds of missing persons cases, that they never asked the family for a photo because they didn't care. And so it goes to

the dehumanization. It also shows us something very clear which goes to the fact that we're talking about Aboriginal women going missing from urban centers, which is that these three women, we know their cases quite well, we've spoken to i think between us all their families, that they had been heavily criminalized and not thought we're not talking about any serious crime, and the fact that they are still being criminalized in their disappearance and potential murder is really sick.

And that dehumanization, I think goes into how the media reported how much effort the police go to, but also what it shows to us is how much danger they were put in by the state and by the police. So to give an example is that obviously if you've been in prison, and that's the photo they're going to use. What we also know is that many of these women are going missing relatively soon after they're being released. Because they're being released with no support, they're not able to

return to their community. Many people from regional and remote areas are simply dumped in the city where they were serving their time, and this makes someone incredibly vulnerable. They've just gone through a very traumatic experience having been in prison, been away from their family, are now potentially in a city where they know nobody, They have no access to financial resources, they have no access to any support, and

this is when predators swoop in. And I think this is the other thing that we have to address absolutely immediately that counters the narrative of both the ignorant and much of the right wing, which is that these murders are being carried out by other Aboriginal people. Well, in the three cases we're speaking about in Queensland, prime suspects have been identified. In all three, not a single one

of those prime suspects is Aboriginal. They're all white. So this criminalization, the dehumanizing and then the making the person so vulnerable is putting them right into the clutches of violent criminals, white men. Let's be honest, in the cities of Australia, and that is an issue we're going to have to address and it's a hard one for a lot of people to face up to because suddenly city people are going to have to start taking responsibility for the murder of women that come from the bush and

that sits very uncomfortably with a lot of people. But it also goes to something I think that's much deeper, which is what if these women had never been criminalized in the first place and removed from their families? How much consideration is a judge taking. You know, if we had a data set and as lawyers, we could stand there and say, your honor, are you really going to send an Aboriginal woman a thousand kilometers away from her family and her support because she stole something of value

of less than fifty bucks? I mean, who cares? And not only are you sending them to prison where we know Aboriginal people die and are harmed constantly, but then upon their release into this city where they know nobody and have no support, they are at an enormous risk. And here's the data to show it. Are you willing to make that decision? Are you willing to risk their life both in custody and out over something so trivial.

Maybe that's where the answer is. Maybe it lies with the police who made the charges in the first place over something so ridiculous. When we know the over policing of Aboriginal people ensures that Aboriginal people end up in courts on these stupid charges at percentages much higher than any other community in this country. And that begins the process.

The police make the charge, the judge sends the woman to prison, and from there the data backs up the fact that with every act that the state, the police, and the courts take, that woman is increasingly vulnerable to predators. And this may just be the key fact that we have to begin to look at, and it's one that has been born out overseas, and it's one we might have to be willing to face because simply blaming dysfunctional Aboriginal communities is not going to cut it in twenty

twenty two. You will not get away with it. The data doesn't support it, the facts don't support it, and lives will continue to be lost if that's the narrative that gets pushed.

refusing to. But as you talk about that, I just think of how data is so often used against Aboriginal people, because even in the coronial process, you see that in cases where Aboriginal women have been disappeared, there is a keen focus still on dysfunction, so they will focus in on addiction or they're focusing on the criminalization and not look at in ways that obscure the very idea or presence of a perpetrator. And in all of these cases, no one has been charged as well, which people have

to know. No one has been charged in relation to these disappearances or when Aboriginal women are found murdered, no one has been charged in the cases we've looked at.

So as well as acknowledging that the data SOT hasn't been collected, I also worry about the way data will be collected and is the AFP or the police authorities the right people to do it given that they failed to do it or refuse to do it now, Because when you look at the structure of Australia, like it's all set up on disappearance, you know what I mean, it's all set up on explaining this and fusing to

understand what's actually happening. So I wonder in collecting data how that can be done in a way that doesn't further reperpetrate or further silence what's actually happening, because I see the justices and the way the courts are working with the way the police are working, they don't want this to come out, you know, Like in all of the inquiries I've looked at, you know, when the issue of whether any of the police officers knew about the Canadian Inquiry, for an example, only one knew who was

an expert in search and rescue. None of the police officers are actually known or seemed confused when the issue of specifically racism and sexual racism and how Aboriginal women are target are brought up, you know. So I just wonder how there's a way that data can be collected that actually exposes a lot of what we are seeing right now.

put all their resources into finding that woman. When the Aboriginal woman goes missing, they do absolutely nothing. Just from my experience working with Foreign Prisoner Support Service finding Australians missing overseas, there is an enormous effort you go to in understanding the person that's missing, everything from who they are, their vulnerabilities, perhaps any illnesses they may have, people who might have threatened the been abusive to them in the past.

You spend a huge amount of time with the families and then there is these protocols that you go through with Interpol with local police and it's a very well mapped oubt process and it's quite a successful one, given that a person is often missing in a country where they don't speak the language, where we as those people looking for them, don't speak the language of the local authorities, and yet we are able to overcome a lot of that because there is a genuine care to find this

person that's missing. Well, clearly in Australia that's not the case when it comes to missing and murdered Aboriginal women and tasked with that job is the police, and they've failed and looking at the cases we have and speaking to the families, the police never sit down with the families and ask them the questions that we would ask, because there's things about someone that might tell you where they go, where they would most likely go for help,

where if they'd been assaulted and they were confused and disorientated. What are the sort of questions you could ask that person to properly and positively identify them and immediately get the family to them to get decent photos of someone, not rely on criminalized images. None of that is ever done. In fact, simple things like just checking the local hospitals

is never done. So if police officers don't care enough to even check a hospital to see if a person has been assaulted or had an accident prior in the immediate time after they've gone missing, then I don't think

we can rely on them for anything. And quite frankly, this is where perhaps the Inquiry has to be willing to push them aside and come up with the funding to impanel aboriginal experts who can look at this, because we know the institutions that exist don't care about the humanity of Aboriginal people, and if you don't care about their humanity, you'll never put in the work to find the solutions