Podcast Unite Our Voices.
This is Curtain, a podcast where we expose the disappearances of Aboriginal people across this country. Shining a light on the darkest parts of our justice system.
We ask who are the victims?
I'm Aiming McQuire and I'm Martin Hodgson, Senior Advocate at the Foreign Prisoner Support Service. And a warning this series contains the names of deceased people and includes distressing content that may upset some listeners. This week we're going to talk about the final report that's come out of the Missing and Murdered First Nations Women and Children Inquiry that was held by the Australian Parliament and that's been running for about the.
Last two years.
But before we get into what the recommendations are, what our views of those recommendations are, and the inquiry pro sense itself, I first wanted to get Amy to comment on what's happened in terms of the reporting of the inquiry. Now that the final report has been handed down, So Amy, can you tell us a little bit about what the media response has been.
Yeah, Martin, and I think it's important to preface this with mentioning that the very reason one of the reasons the inquiry was called was because there was a silence around the issue of disappeared Aboriginal women, which has been called a missing e murdered Indigenous women and girls, and so it was really about in a way, breaking that silence understanding the crisis. Well, that seemed to be the reason behind it. But the report was tabled last Thursday
in the Senate. It was tabled i think after three point thirty and it led to about six or seven media reports.
So this was supposed to be a landmark inquiry.
This was the first inquiry ever held in this country into the crisis of missing a murdered Indigenous women and girls, and yet the media largely ignored it. You know, you look at the scale of what an inquiry like this and how it should be covered, and even despite the facts that Martin and I are going to be really critical of what actually came out of the report, you would expect that there would be way more coverage than there has been, and there just hasn't been any of that.
And you can only conclude that it's because, as usual, the nation doesn't care about what is happening to Aboriginal women and girls. It just doesn't care, and that's what we've been saying throughout this podcast, and it's been shown again and just by way of comparison, the week after around Thursday, the Assurised Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence Commissioner Michayla Cohen then appeared at the National Press Club in Canberra and she was giving the first update into the
National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children. That resulted in way more coverage in the mainstream media just her comments in the National Press Club. I should also note that there were several media outlets that just didn't even mention the tabling of the report into missing emergent Indigenous women and girls, and that was The Australian, the Wanting Herald, in the Age. There was just nothing about it in that coverage and so it's very very disappointing.
It puts the lie to this idea that the report is in any way landmark, because it just seems like the Nations media don't again does not.
Care about the crisis. And I think it leads to our concerns that I didn't even think the Inquiry considered it a crisis.
Martin, Can I ask you what were your thoughts in relation to this when it was released on those day.
In terms of the coverage, I was surprised. You know, I will speak about the report itself, but in terms of the coverage, I was surprised that there was so little, even if the coverage was going to be negative of the inquiry.
Maybe there were media.
Outlets who thought it was some sort of landmark breakthrough because normally these sorts of inquiries are easy fodder for journalists to get articles up and to get column in. So I mean, if you look back ten years ago when there was the inquiry into the construction industry in New South Wales. Again that was a similar two year inquiry. There was an enormous amount of media afterwards. The inquiry was tabled in the Federal Parliament, even though it was
from the New South Wales Parliament. There was debate in the New South Wales and Federal Parliament over the inquiry its recommendations. There was an enormous amount of media finger pointing and it really raised the issue of construction insolvency. But again it goes back to what we've talked about so often and the way this country just does not
care about Aboriginal women and children. That the construction of houses and high rises was deemed far more important than the murder and forced disappearance of Aboriginal women and children. And again, I just don't know how people aren't disgusted, and I don't know what is wrong with the Australian media if they can't see why it's so important that they cover this issue and mardin.
The other thing that really annoys me is that we're literally only talking about and we can only really talk about the fact there was no coverage. I think just the fact that there's such a silence means that we can't even begin talking about how a lot of the way this issue is framed is really problematic, because I found myself in a situation where I was grateful for the media outlets who did report in it, but still concerned at the same time about the reporting of it.
And I think some of it because of the inquiry and how it replicates a lot of the issues with the way this crisis has been looked at. It's replicated in a lot of the media reporting, and so there.
Are two dimensions to the silence.
There's the fact that there is just no coverage at all given the scale of what is happening the fact this is supposed to be landmark inquiry, but then there's the other silencing of the voices of women and families and the actual issues that are foregrounding what is happening in this country.
And I think that's what puts us.
In a really hard position, and it means the inquiry, like I just feel like the inquiry was meaningless, Like I feel like it hasn't delivered anything. In fact, in some ways it takes us steps backwards because people will refer to the inquiry as if that's what's happening when we can see the problems of the inquiry itself.
Yeah, I mean, I think that's the real problem here. Is a bad inquiry is one thing, but a it wasted two years of vital time when work needed to be done on this issue and be as you say, people are into the future now will refer to this inquiry as if the recommendations of the inquiry are the answers, when we know they're not, and they when they can't even frame the issue correctly, and the senators involved clearly didn't understand the issue, then that is a terrible way to go forward.
The other issue that come out of the inquiry that was quite shocking is that it only delivered ten recommendations. And for our listeners like this inquiry was influenced by what was a landmark inquiry in Canada, which still didn't
come without its issues. But there was an inquiry in twenty nineteen into the crisis of Missing aout Diesian is ruining girls in Canada and it led to two hundred and fifty carps of actions and one of the one of the central findings of that inquiry was that what was happening in relation to Aboriginal women being targeted for violence and disappeared was at the root cause it was genocide and it was part of the genocide and how it operates in set of colonial societies.
Madam, when you look at these recommendations.
What are your initial goals and what were your initial thoughts and what are you thinking now.
Well, yeah, let's run through those recommendations. But as you said, I've been involved in a number of inquiries at the federal level over the years to do with all sorts of issues, and normally the number of recommendations exceeds one hundred and if it doesn't, it might be I mean, just looking at the most recent one I was involved in,
there was eighty seven very detailed recommendations. So for this inquiry to have sat for more than two years and come back with ten, it's just another slap in the face. And I think it's worse when people hear what those recommendations are, the first of which is that the federal, state and territory governments co design a culturally appropriate way to remember First Nations women and children who have been murdered and disappeared. I don't really think that is a
recommendation that an inquiry should come up with. It should just be the jumping off point for why this is so important. And it also I found that offensive in the sense it suggests that that hasn't been done, when the reality is families have been finding ways to honor their loved ones for decades and decades and decades and still do in their fight for justice for them. So I thought that was an appalling way to get off to a start with these recommendations.
Mardin, I just couldn't believe that was the first recommendation rather than a recommendation to stop the violence being inflicted upon First Nations women and girls. I thought it was so interesting that rather it's just an expectation that First Nations women and girls are going to continue to be targeted, and so instead we must think of ways to remember them. It's almost like that continual logic that you know, of course black women are going to.
Be continually killed.
And I feel that so much in the way that you know, even I was reading because there's a supposed rapid review which had no.
Aboriginal women on. This review was being released on Friday, and.
I'm just reading these continual statistics about Aboriginal women being thirty three more likely to be hospitalized.
And I read that statistic all the time, all the time, and it's never about well, let's look into that statistic, or let's look at ways that we can prevent violence, let's look at who is targeting Aboriginal women, or what are the conditions in which this is being allowed to happen.
Instead, it's just a Caul statistic.
And I felt that in the first recommendation, recognize and remember rather than stop what is being happened. And also there's no word on the first recommendation on justice and what justice will look like.
No and nothing on justice, nothing on the suffering that has taken place. Nothing on the fact that there was this almost acceptance that this is going to continue, and consigning Aboriginal women and children to their death before they've
even died. I just thought it was disgusting. And Recommendation two starts to give us an idea about why there are so many failures, and it's the largest recommendation from the inquiry, and it really comes down to having the Attorney General tasking police ministers with reviewing existing police practices and for them to aim to implement best police practices
by the end of twenty twenty five. And when they say that, they make the recommendations for cultural awareness training, trauma informed practices, recruiting and promotion, promoting Aboriginal women and men into more senior positions in the police forces, and
setting out appropriate guidelines for reviewing past cases. Again, nothing about being proactive, nothing about addressing the racism of the police, and absolutely zero about the fact that in so many of these cases the police are directly involved in the murder and disappearance of Aboriginal women and children.
I think that's exactly it, Martin, and I think it goes back to another thing, like we've continually. I think we've done like three episodes on the inquiry as it's been going on, and all of the episodes have been prefaced with this ongoing concern that they won't recognize what you just said, that the police are actively involved in creating these conditions in which Aboriginal women can be targeted
for violence. And we've made that case very clearly through a lot of the stories that we've talked about and a lot of the work that we both do, and we were always concerned that this is what was going to happen, and it was a concern that was our colleagues. Debbie Kiroy at Sisters Inside basically said to the inquiry when she gave evidence, she said, if this if your recommendations are just going to be cast or responses, then we're not going to accept the inquiry.
And that's all they've done.
And I felt like they could have made these recommendations at the very beginning, rather than take the families and everyone involved in this issue through two years in which
they were going to just deliver these issues. And I saw, this is the other thing I have with the media framing is that so much of the media accepted this recommendation uncritically as if this is a substantial and concrete recommendation, when we know instead it's actually going to harm black women, because we've seen how more policing actually over criminalizes Aboriginal women.
Again, and we've made.
The case several times that criminalization leads to further violence against black women. And you only have to look at the experiences of Aboriginal women who are incarcerated.
At horrific rates. They're all victims of violence.
And then we've made the case continually that when they're taken away from their communities and they leave jail, they become even more vulnerable for ongoing violence. And so cultural awareness training that's not going to do anything. Training courses aren't going to do anything more. Black cops aren't going to do anything appropriate guidelines to the review past cases
police again investigating their own failures. I just don't see, Like, how is I didn't even know what to say to this recommendation.
Well, I mean, I must say that it goes directly against what I spoke to the inquiry about, which is the criminalization of Aboriginal women and children and the targeting of Aboriginal women and children by the police. And the
way that would women in particular at risk. And we don't have time to go over it now, but I went through a number of cases of Aboriginal women who have been murdered and who were murdered as a direct result of their criminalization, and so clearly there was just no listening going on, care, no concern, and one of their key recommendations, their largest recommendation, goes against all the
evidence and will lead to further murders and disappearance. I just think it shows how little the committee cares, and recommendations three and four really were just that Recommendation three is that the committee monitors the progress of Recommendation two, so monitors the progress of the police a joke. I mean, they have shown the committee that they don't understand the issue.
So how they will monitor the police, especially as a federal committee monitoring state police, they have no authority, so again complete lack of understanding. And Recommendation four was that first Nations person be impaneled as some sort of commissioner, and it wasn't clear in the recommendation what that level would be, whether the person would be a deputy commissioner, what powers they would have, but that they would sit
within the Domestic Family and Sexual Violence Commission. And again as we've gone to great links to point out that so many of the Aboriginal women who have been murdered and the children who have been murdered were not in domestic partnerships with the men that killed them, and so that won't address any of that issue.
I think you.
Raised that point really well, Mardin, and it comes back to I don't think from the very outset the inquiry has understood what it was supposed to be investigating.
So it could have.
Done an inquiry into family violence, but it was an inquiry I'm missing a murdered Indigenous women and girls. And what we're seeing is that in a lot of these cases, Aboriginal women have been in the were lasting with white men and they didn't have as you said, they don't have they're not in family violence relationship.
It's not a family violence case, you know.
And I think that's where everything is being complicated as well. But I don't think they even understood the issue, the very specific issue that we're talking about around forcibly disappeared Aboriginal women, and they're conflating it with issues of family violence, which is a really really important issue where there is expertise from Aboriginal women in relation to that sector, who should be listened to in relation to that very.
Specific violence, you know what I mean.
And yet all of these recommendations and even the inquiry is really confused about how we're talking about these two two different forms of violences, both violences affecting Indigenous women and which I both considered feminini aside or femicide, Indigenous femicide. But they're different acts, and they're different ways to understand it, and they need different responses.
Yeah. Absolutely, And recommendation five compounds the problem because what it recommends is increased geographic spread and capacity for family violence prevention legal services. Again, that is important, but not necessarily And as we've explained in this issue again, in the case of the Barraville children murdered by a single white male serial killer, what the hell has family violence got to do with that? Mona, Lisa and Cindy Aboriginal
teenage girls murdered by a single white male. You know, we've seen the same thing in Queensland, Aboriginal women murdered by white men who they weren't in domestic partnerships with what the hell would a family violence prevention legal service do to assist Aboriginal women and children who are being systematically killed by white serial killers. And we've got to name it for what it is, and we gave that information to this in and nowhere does it appear in
their recommendations. Again, they talk about dysfunctional Aboriginal communities without actually saying the word. And yet, as I told the Inquiry, eighty five percent of Aboriginal women in Victoria who are in domestic partnerships are in those relationships with non Aboriginal men. So it seems that they want to fund and increase the capacity of family violence prevention legal services. That's a good thing, but in relation to this issue, it does nothing to address it.
And going through the other recommendations as well, Martin, I mean we've gone through the five, it seems that this is the continual message that is being sent that it's actually not the inquiry is not actually addressing the issue that it was actually set out to address. One of the things, I mean the absence of recommendations is also around data, and one of the there's a chapter two, the second chapter of the report is all focused on data, and that was part of the terms of reference to
determine the number. And I think data can be very problematic, as we've discussed many times, but it doesn't even come up in the recommendations to understand the crisis. And the reason I bring up the data issues that because I read some commentary where someone actually said a small number of horror stories perpetrated by non Indigenous men, And I'm sitting there going, how do you even know any of that?
You know, like, how can you say it's a small number, and how can you say a small number doesn't mean it's deserving of a wider examination, Because what I see with a lot of the cases we've looked at is
that it is the most extreme form femininis side. So I see it as a spectrum of all of these different violences that apperpetrate against Aboriginal women, and disappearing is most extreme active that And so to see it almost downgraded as if it's not worthy of concerted attention and proper, concrete recommendations and actual action makes me really annoyed and upset and not even it's almost just like they're going to you know, there was a focus at the start about, oh,
we need to count which I found problematic as well. But now they've just abandoned that all together. You know, they're just going to continue to conceal what we know as a crisis.
Yeah. Absolutely, And as I told the inquiry, fifty percent of Aboriginal women who are currently listed as missing with the federal database have gone missing away from their communities and families. And yet recommendation seeks again seeks to support services for First Nations people, including women and children expering domestic, family and sexual violence. Again a very important thing to focus on, but in relation to this issue specifically completely
misses the point. And I think the reason it misses the point is what Amy just stated about data. Because they didn't take into account the facts and figures of what is actually going on and the huge percentage of Aboriginal women and children who are targeted by people outside of their family and community, they've ended up handing down
recommendations that make no sense whatsoever. And as Amy said, there's nothing in the recommendations that would do anything really to focus on gaining an insight in collecting the data in the first place properly and then understanding what that data actually tells us. And recommendation seven again is just looking at implementation of services and supports that address violence in communities. Once again, very important in the area of family violence that is a crisis across this country, with
women being murdered every week, that is very important. But when it comes to this issue, it completely misses the mark once again. And I have to say very plainly that for the white men around Australia who have murdered Aboriginal women and children and who have got away with it, and we know who many of those men are, and we know they're victims, if they have read this report
from this inquiry, they must be over the moon. Not once was the finger pointed at them for their crimes, not once were they identified for what they've done, and nothing here suggests even any follow up or any action to be taken against them.
Yeah, I totally agree, Mar, and I think that's the really horrific message that this report sends and the really just toothless recommendations which are going to do nothing.
It sends that issue that we know.
Is a real issue, like this is the main issue why these disappearances continue to happen is because of impunity. Like we're seeing how the systems, particularly the coronial process, but also the police and then the state are actively allowing this violence to continue because they refuse to sanction it, and they refuse to even recognize a lot of these white men as perpetrators of violence.
And what happens is.
The message comes back, particularly to the Coronial process, is that it's the Aboriginal women who are responsible, so no
violence has actually even been done to them. And this is like as a whole, what this inquiry is sending, because it's not actually making you know, there's all of these there's all of these appeals to say that it is a crisis, but they're not actually making a case that it's a crisis, because if they made that case, their recommendations would have been a lot more robust, and they wouldn't have tabled it, or they wouldn't have done it in such a way in which the news of
the inquiry has been totally concealed, you know what I mean. And so I think that's the really disturbing message that it continues to send. And I think just going into Recommendation at nine, you know, we started with the way the media has reported it.
The recommended nation.
Recommendation nine was the committee recommends that the Australian Press Council considers and reflects on the evidence given in this inquiry in regard to how the media portrays cases of murdered and disappeared Avery, First Nations, women and children, and talks about concerns how it can be positively addressed through advisory guidelines, which makes no sense to me because the Australian Press Council doesn't do it anything, particularly in relation
to racial violence, and so that is another meaningless recommendation that doesn't understand as well in the same way as recommendation too. It doesn't understand the police and their complicity, but it doesn't understand the media and their complicity for the exact reason that you just identified, because it sends messages to perpetrators.
That they have this impunity, and part of that is the media silence.
Like the media is part of the reason why this crisis still exists.
Yeah, I mean, there is absolutely no doubt about that. And one thing I find particularly appalling is the way that the Australian media, and we've spoken about this before, will jump all over the case of anyone who's not Aboriginal being murdered and put pressure on police, support family maintain that rage so that there is some sense of justice and something occurs. And yet when it comes to
Aboriginal women and children there's nothing. So that you know, the idea that the Australian press is going to change in any way is just a joke. And finally, you know, recommendation ten was barely a recommendation and this is the final one that the Australian government systematically considers. The many recommendations and suggestions made to this inquiry, the many recommendations, there was only ten and this is number ten. And
that those recommendations include trauma informed healing. Well again, that's going to post fact. Why aren't we trying to stop these murders and disappearances taking place? Again, it seeks to address violence prevention, development of Aboriginal community based support programs for men. This sounds like the Northern Territory Intervention all over again, when the blame is being placed on the
very wrong people. And then it speaks about initiatives which promote a sense of individual and community responsibility for the issue of male violence against Aboriginal women. Well with that, I concur except that this inquiry had no sense of responsibility and took no sense of responsibility for the male violence committed against Aboriginal women. They didn't seek to use parliamentary privilege to name Constance Wachau's killers, to name the
murderer who took the lives of the Bauerville children. They didn't seek to raise the issue of endless police failures when Aboriginal women and children go missing or it disappeared. They didn't raise the issue that in cases like one in Western Australia, when it did end up in a coroner's court, the police excuse as to why they didn't have a brief of evidence was that it got wet.
We're talking about an Aboriginal woman who was murdered, the primary suspect was named by endless witnesses, and the police's excuse was the brief of evidence got wet and destroyed. And yet this inquiry would suggest that the real problem is in Aboriginal communities and that what the police need is a little cultural training. I mean, how anyone can see this as anything but a joke is beyond me.
And quite frankly, the enormous amount of money that has been spent by this inquiry should have been given to the families who have suffered so tragically because this issue has not been addressed for generations. This episode was brought to you by black Cast and produced by Clint Curtis. For more, you can visit us at www dot curtin thepodcast dot com, follow us on Twitter at Curtain Podcast, and help to support our work at Patreon dot com backslash Curtain Podcast