The Unanswered

forcibly disappeared Aboriginal women. In the meantime, I've also been investigating one of these cases further as the inquest filed to provide the family with any justice or answers. So this week we're going to discuss some of these issues.

As Coroner Stephanie Gallagher said at the end of the hearings of the inquest of Constance, what show and I quote the evidence is very much full of conflict and there is very little new or useful information in there to inform this court and the family of what actually happened and to her. Immediately outside the court, close family friend Arita Fisher said she was wild, angry and crying for the family who just wanted answers. We can't live without knowing what happened to her. We've had it. You

just need to tell us. Let her rest in peace now. Amy, you were there for this inquest and I just want to start by asking what it was like to observe and how it seemed speaking with the family how it was for them.

it was like. Often it would be, you know, waiting outside the court, waiting, you know, in the long lawn between like the magistrates court and the coronial court, and knowing that well, Constance has died, but this is a coronial court, shouldn't it be in the other court, you know, the magistrates the Supreme Court. And I think it's just the inherent re traumatization of families through the failure to

actually see the gravity of the situation. You know, sitting in there, it just felt like they were going through they were ticking the boxes, you know, the coronial processes, ticking the boxes. The focus is not actually finding out what happened to Constance. May watch you and who had

perpetrated the accagans constants may watch you. So I just felt again, and this is the feeling I felt sitting in a lot of coronial in quests, that it's just just general apathy towards families who were there fighting for their for their for their loved ones, and there's always the absence of their personhood even in this process, and so it's really important for the families to sit there

and resist that. But you're also taking on all of those waves of violence, you know, hearing horrendous and traumatic things that have happened. Yeah, so it's just that continual process of revictimization, the long periods of waiting with no answers, and just that general feeling of apathy that they're not there to actually provide justice and in that what does

justice even mean? You know? So I just I really felt for the families through those five days, and and the other thing is, you know, like five days isn't long enough at all, and the inquest has been will continue in December. But yeah, just seeing them have to go through that again and again and still to come out with no answers was really hard, I think, gone everyone to witness it's.

they really felt like she was there. And at the beginning they gave this beautiful sort of letter to their mother and they read it so powerfully to the court. You know, so they were there to contest a lot of what happens in the coronial process. But I think the significance of that is lost by many who were very conditioned at what this process means, you know what I mean, and just do not see how important it is to do that and to make sure that Constance

is always presenced. But that their presence, and it wasn't just the children, but like Constance's brothers, you know, her extended family just filled the chairs of the courtroom as well, and it just made me think, you know, you had this court room full of black fellows and on the other side it's just all white people pretty much, you know what I mean. So it's just that and a

lot of police officers and everything like that. But they were just really strong in their presence for their mum and really ensuring that she was not lost in this process. So I think that's part of it, you know, like how they fight for justice even though we don't know what justice means.

You know, as you describe, the family have done so much to presence, constance, to show up through something I think most of us couldn't sit through to hear about what has been done to our own loved one. And then the moment the family are no longer able to speak and the process begins, it seems like all of that is lost and we go into this weird formal legal process that's not about anything but just rubber stamping

and moving on. As you sit there, do you feel like it's a process that's getting closer to justice or does it feel like we need to be doing this whole thing in a completely different way.

justice is about white people feeling better about themselves. State narratives are justice, are processes that are actually about injustice for us. I think that's what we're seeing, whether it's in the coronial court, whether it's in the criminal court, where's any sort of structure in this country, is that justice is predicated not onnustice for black fellows, but on this idea of justice which is about denying accountability for

white perpetrators. Because that's what we're seeing, you know, like in the coronial process and in the justice system, it seems there's so many, so much leniency given to white perpetrators if the victims are Aboriginal women particularly, and it just seems like the structures are supporting that in so many ways, even just the way they deny direct interrogation of the police officers for their failure to search and

their failure to prosecute and their failure to conduct appropriate investigations. And I've seen this many times, like police make this big claims of benevolency and that they've done everything to find, you know, a missing person, or they do everything, but the evidence just wasn't there to further it, but it's always just been aboult. Well, actually, what is the like, what that's your job. You're supposed to gather the evidence,

you know what I mean? For like, the state structures of justice are always set up against black followers, whether particularly when you're victims, and they can only see us as perpetrators and as criminals. So they're very they're very efficient in criminalizing Aboriginal women. But when Aboriginal women are missing, or when Aboriginal women have died at the hands of

other perpetrators, they become very inefficient. But they cover up that inefficiency through this rhetoric of benevolence or you know, the evidence just wasn't there. You know, it's just and that's pretty much accepted through the process, Like there's no

adequate questioning of just how screwed up that is. And that's what I felt, like, just that's why I took about that apathy, Like the questioning just felt at times like ticket books exercises, you know, like not about finding justice or finding truth even though the gravity of what

had happened. Yeah, So I don't think that these coronial processes, just like the courts, you know, are there for victims at all, because they're not predicated on that at all, and they're not victims centered, you know.

court's police, are beyond flawed. I think one of the infuriating things for me reading through transcripts watching inquests and court cases take place, is that you see officials of the state, usually police, but sometimes they're police prosecutors and the DPP and everyone else will be presented with a piece of evidence that, in a case that involved a non indigenous person, probably in a wealthy suburb, would instantly

have everyone screaming, well, it's clear what's going on. And yet in these cases where the victim is an Aboriginal woman, the point is raised and then immediately glossed over, like so long as it's on the record, then that's all they had to do. When there is no holding of accountability, no one stops and says to a police officer, hang on, why didn't you follow up on this lead? Why didn't you follow up on this information. So often families go out of their way to look into what's gone on

themselves and provide the police with further information. I mean, it's no secret that in a lot of the cases we're talking about, the men who were with the women immediately before they disappeared as suspects, and there is a lot of evidence pointing to them. But throughout all of this, not once have they had to feel uncomfortable. The whole process has protected them, even though they're sitting in a courtroom clearly with knowledge at the least of what's gone on,

if not directly responsible for a person's death. And not once do they feel even a shred of the uncomfort that the family is forced to feel. And it just seems like this is all about a way to move a case, as the police would put it in inverted commas, from unsolved into resolved and move along and no more than that. And I guess, from a personal standpoint, as an Aboriginal woman sitting through these processes, what does that make you feel?

of people in this process. That's a form of you know, almost like a form of terror, because they're basically making a statement in an indirect way that your lives don't matter enough to pursue justice, Your lives don't matter to take what is a clear threat away from you in these spaces, you know what I mean. And so it's

just that continuation of that terror. And I always think of Professor Marcia Langton wrote this piece in relation to let Daily, and she said something along the lines of, you know, the failure to prosecute, the failure to do anything about these cases suggests that, you know, I think it's about like the license to kill. And that's what is actually happening, you know what I mean, because otherwise

we would see a different response, you know. And the thing to the real what else heurin constance may watch those cases is that at every single stage there was a failure from police. There were only ever two police officers actually called to give evidence the coronial process. But for those who don't know the case, Constance was found literally two minutes walk from where she was last seen and it was her family who actually made the missing

person's report. It was her family who first began investigating, went back to the era was asking everyone where is Constance? Then they put in the missing person's report. At no stage was any search and rescue attempt ever made. And if they had searched for her at the time that she had disappeared, the time she was last seen, they would have likely found her and that would have led

to differences in the investigation. You know, there would have been more forensic evidence, there would be more evidence together, but they fundamentally didn't search. She was found two minutes walk away from where she was last scene and there was no explanation in the cronia process given for that missing persons unit. There was no one from missing persons unit to speak to what role they played, What were they doing as an over why didn't they take a

more proactive role in this case? It was always at the local CIB Dudham Park, which was also criminalizing Constance, which knew Constance only when she was alive, by claiming she was a criminal, you know, which she wasn't. You know, she was a loving mother of ten who was deeply loved by her family. And also there was no explanation from homicide when Constance was found as to why they had left, what role they had in the investigation, but also why they were not involved all the way through.

So I think they stopped being involved about a year afterwards, So there was no explanation from homicide, and the lead investigator at Dudham Park was on the stand and he

still considered her death a suspicious death. It was almost unbelievable, you know, like just they the explanations or the lengths they go to to deny that violence, extreme forms of violence, which is like the direct continuation from the frontier to the present, has been perpetrated against the body of an Aboriginal woman, even when a body has been found, you know.

So it's just yeah, I think it's just that bringing back to your question, seeing that they refuse to search, and they refuse to deliver justice for Constance, and they still, you know, the media is reporting of her in really dehumanizing terms that you had never seen in other cases. It sends messages to Aboriginal women that we know to be true that society has not cared about us, you know what I mean. And so that's a huge thing to think about when you're sitting there in this process.

And that's another level of the violence endemic in the process and in Australian society, which is a sellt colonial society. It's showing that, you know, Aboriginal women are still targeted for violence, and we know that, but we're continually reminded of that, and there's a violence in how we are reminded of that continually.

police to murder and he kept murdering. And these processes by allowing perpetrators not only to go off scot free, but to never be interrogated, to never feel like they're under any risk of being prosecuted for what they do. Not only gives them a green light to continue to abuse and potentially murder Aboriginal women, but it sends to all men in our society that same message, this green light, that you can literally do the worst imaginable things to

an Aboriginal woman and you will face no consequences. And that message then to Aboriginal women, I think it is as you say, it's a message of terror and terrorism and that this is the state in which you are being forced to live. And it made me think too about Melissa Caddick and the reporting that has gone on

about her disappearance. For those who don't know, she is alleged to have swindled an enormous amount of money before taking her own life and her remains being found, and more than one hundred police have been involved in that process and it has resulted in four corners reports, endless media coverage. The story has been number one on the news from the time she was first being looked at for swindling the money to the time of her disappearance, the recovery of some of her remains, and on and

on it goes. And yet that same level, and it's been handled with kid gloves. I mean, despite all the controversy around what has gone on there, the media's handling of it has been very sympathetic. And we've also seen this enormous amount of police resources. And as I was watching the Four Corners the other night about Melissa Caddick,

I realized it wasn't so much about her. What the police really were there to do, and we're talking about one hundred police officers involved in this case, was find out where the money was. That's what the focus, and that's what all the resources and all the care and all the hard work went into was finding some bloody money.

That Constance and every other Aboriginal woman we've talked about, and those who's lost lives we've never heard about and whose families search for answers don't get anything when some missing money gets everything. And again, the message that sends is just horrific, and that message is delivered by the media.

And so as a journalist, amy and someone who investigates the role the media plays in this and looks at the way the media reports on issues impacting Aboriginal women, What can you tell us about the way it's done and the impact that it has.

know not to be true. But the way that the media report on it is often just through really dehumanizing representations, which, like a very key example, is constant. But it's largely their refusal to report, I find because in a lot

of these cases, you will never know about them. Like I've looked in a few cases and a few stories where when Aboriginal women have gone missing, it'll be like a couple of stories in like the eight long years they've been missing, and it'll be always based on police versions of events, so they're never actually going to families and giving them the right to speak back to these real dehumanizing, dehumanizing representations of their loved ones and they

also validate police versions of events, and they believe police, and they believe police when they say that they're doing everything to search for them. So the fact that there is absolutely no pressure applied on police to continue searching and continuing to find them, but at the same time blaming, constantly blaming aboritional communities for this, you know, long colonial history of target taring our communities are savage and violent.

It all leads to what we're seeing today, which is that, you know, there is a continual issue around Aboriginal people being Aboriginal women being targeted for violence and being actively disappeared, and the media directly complicit in that in their failure to report, and when they do report, it is always based on these really deep, dehumanizing sort of accounts of them that are so far removed from who they actually are.

And the other thing that I've noticed is that often the police will use mug shots for missing persons alerts when Aboriginal women go missing, so that those mug shots make them seem as if they're wanted persons and not

missing persons. And that comes back to the criminalization of Aboriginal women as well, even when they're victims, and how they're only visible when they're there to be criminalized, and that leads you to all of the connections with the disappearing of Aboriginal women into the justice system, you know what I mean. So, I think the media is totally complicit, but particularly in holding up this apparatus of disappearance in this country, which always targets Aboriginal women, you know what

I mean. So, and to failing to actually ensure that the lives and the worth of Aboriginal women are front and center, and Aboriginal families having the right to speak to their memories first and foremost. That's something that the media continually fails. But sorry, just to pick up at that point. They're providing conditions for what we are seeing in the court process and by the police for impunity.

And that's what's happening, is there's this general impunity that we're seeing, and the media are complicit in that through their normalization of this violence and through blaming Aboriginal communities.

And one thing I really want to add for context, because not everyone will have had the time to look at these cases we're speaking about, is that, as Amy said, a lot of it is framed around the violence of Aboriginal communities. Well, one thing I can tell you for a fact, the cases we've spoken about today and the cases we've spoken about in previous episodes in regards to missing and murdered Aboriginal women, not a single one of

the suspects is a black man. So I think the media needs to start taking a long, hard look at themselves as to why they even introduce that narrative in the first place in cases where not a single suspect is an Aboriginal man in the death of these Aboriginal women. So all the bringing in of the other issues about dysfunction and all these other lives that they like to tell, they're not even relevant to the case. So all you're doing is journalists when you write that is exposing your

own racism and prejudices. And then the investigating power to give context in what we've discussed today is the Queensland Police who are currently being exposed for endemic domestic violence, endemic racism, recruits being taught to be racist, and high ranking Queensland police involved indespicable and criminal behavior. And these are the people who are being put in charge of

finding out and bringing truth and justice. They don't live truth and justice in their own lives or their own work, and then definitely not going to bring that to people they admit to despising. And I think as we pose the question at the very start about whether this is an appropriate process to discovering the truth of what has happened, you've had your answer and to me, it's really clear.

Queensland Native Mounted Police, to the Queensland Police Service. And I'm just quoting my colleague Elizabeth Stradshock. This is not a history that's been disavowed by the contemporary Queensland Police. In nineteen sixty four, at the centenary of the establishment of the QPS, a senior police officer said Walker, who was the original lieutenant of the Mounted Police and his force soon established themselves. He tamed the Natives, saved the

whites and made the country comparatively safe. And that's exactly what the Queensland Police Service is still predicated upon. It hasn't changed at all, and that's what we're seeing currently with the inquiry. And there's all this shock and outrage that's coming as a reporting as if this is nothing new.

But this is something that Aboriginal women particularly were talking about from the very beginning when they were looking into criminalize and coercives and control, the impact that it would have particularly on average women, and the continual criminalization of Aboriginal women and the failure to keep them safe. But that last line, he tamed the native, saved the whites, and made the country comparatively safe to make a white Australian safe, that that relies on the disappearance of Aboriginal

people from this land. And that's exactly what's happened from invasion but to the present. And that's why we're seeing a failure to understand what is currently happening. The Aboriginal women is targeted for violence because this whole settler colony is founded on our inevitable erasure and by our presence still here and our presence contesting that that's where the threat is. And that's why you're not hearing this spoken about, and that's why you're not hearing about the inherent violence

of policing only you know, in short cyclical waves. You know. I was watching ABC News last night and they included the reporting from the inquiry and then every every every story afterwards quoted police and it was all based on crime reporting. So there connecting what is happening in the and quiry at the moment from their own practices and

their own reliance on Queensland Police as a source. So I just wanted to include that, to include the historical context of Queensland Police, their failure to investigate the destined disappearances of Aboriginal women and the reason why they're failing to investigate.

five or more episodes, and it just occurred to me as you were saying that that every single act of violence that we've spoken about in this podcast, which must now run into more than fifty hours, has involved either a police officer, a Queensland Police officer, or a Queensland Police officer covering up that violence every single case. And as I say, this is a realization I am making now.

Obviously I'm very aware that and the part of the reason we started this is because of the violence of the Queensland Police, but you don't expect over a five year period that every crime you discuss will either have been perpetrated by the Queensland Police or deliberately covered up. And as Amy was just saying about the existence and the peace of this place being predicated on the disappearance out of sight, out of mind, and into the ground

of Aboriginal women. It should come then as no surprise that we're seeing in quest after inques coming up about the murder of Aboriginal women and the fact that Aboriginal women are the fastest growing cohort being imprisoned in this country. So the raw truth of it is that not only is it still going, this is not something that we're not talking about the eighteen hundreds, this is twenty twenty two and it's happening right now and nothing's changed and

nothing's being done, and no one's angry. And that leads into the National Inquiry into Missing murdered and Murdered Aboriginal Women and Children. And in a few weeks we'll take the time out to discuss that inquiry, hopefully give a little background and explain what it hopes to achieve and our views on some potential solutions and what can be done going forward.