Three Cases for Truth and Justice

Police force. It related to everything from criminal syndicates involved with the police, to police taking bribes, corruption, money racketeering and money laundering, and a large amount of corruption that involved Queensland Police officers being known as a brotherhood and part of what was then known as the Joke. This startling new information about what occurred back in those days.

As you heard from Phil Dicky early in this podcast, it was a very dangerous thing, even to be a journalist working for the largest media organization in Australia to be investigating the corrupt police in Queensland. At that time. Chris Masters was working for the ABC and most would assume that a journalist working for the ABC would be a protected individual who the police wouldn't threaten nor harass.

But so great was the corruption in Queensland at the time amongst police that new information has been revealed that an Australian Federal police officer named Dave Moore was assigned to watch Chris Masters. He wasn't assigned to watch Chris Masters, a journalist from one of the most important current Affairs programs in Australia. Because Chris Masters was doing anything wrong, he wasn't assigned because the AFP were worried that criminal

elements in Queensland posed a risk to Chris Masters. The AFP were concerned that Chris Masters was at very real threat from corrupt members of the Queensland Police Force. During that time, the Australian Federal Police had a secret role in protecting the former Four Corners reporter, and AFP resources

were spent keeping mister Masters safe. So out of hand did this become, And I should say that it doesn't appear that Chris Masters knew he was being looked after by the AFP at the time, But the Australian Federal Police became so concerned about the behavior of the Queensland Police Force that they were worried that something drastic would happen to Chris Masters, whether that be violence committed against mister Masters, plans to discredit him and the work he

was doing, to show their corruption, and even a plan to frame Chris Masters by corrupt police officers to destroy his reputation and to destroy the work he was doing. To look at everything that was going on in Queensland. Chris Masters uncovered so much and so did Phil Dicky, that it led to the Fitzgerald Inquiry. But largely their efforts of these two outstanding journalists focused on Southeast Queensland. The Fitzgerald Inquiry did look at things that were happening

around the state, but not in any great detail. What we need to know is what did the Fitzgerald Inquiry miss What was going on in Queensland at the time, in places like Rockhampton in Cannes and Townsville in Gladstone, in Mount Isa in Cape York, right across the state

outside of Brisbane and the Gold Coast. Because if so many police officers were corrupt at the time in Queensland that the Australian Federal Police feared for the life of a prominent ABC journalist, surely we can't believe that the problem was confined simply to Brisbane and to the Gold Coast. In fact, as you've heard from this podcast, it wasn't

confined to that area at all. This week marks two years since Four Corners, the same program Chris Masters worked for exposing corruption in Queensland police, exposed the abuse of young children in the Northern Territory at the Dondale Detention Center. From that footage, most of you will know the name Dylan Volla, a young Aboriginal boy who was placed in

Guantanamo Bay style restraints and hoods. We also saw repeated abuse of young Aboriginal boys in the detention center, including violence committed against them, sexual acts, the recording of the young boys in the showers by prison guards, and much more. As you all know, and as we've spoken about on this podcast, there was a royal commission into what happened

at don Dale. The findings have been handed down, and yet despite everything we saw with our own eyes, not a single corrections officer has been charged with any of the abuse that took place. What makes this relevant today and particularly this week, marking two years since we all saw that footage on ABCTV, is the startling new revelation that the second youth detention center in the Northern Territory is now suffering the same levels of chronic abuse against children.

The Alice Springs Detention Center for Youth is now two hundred and seventy times percent its capacity that overcreding has called caused an increase in abuse, an increase of assaults and young children who are from the Alice Springs area being transferred to Darwin without their parents and family being notified and with no way to contact their family. Clearly, after two years, clearly after the nation saw what went on,

that Royal Commission has been a total failure. Clearly again, what it shows is that without charges and criminal action being taken against abusive prison guards and police officers, things simply will not change. Since Federation in nineteen oh one, only four police officers or corrective services officers have been charged with the deaths of Aboriginal people in custody. None

have ever been convicted. Just in the last twenty five years since the Royal Commission into Black Deaths in custody, there's been four hundred deaths and we're meant to believe that none of them were the result of criminal actions by Corrective Services guards or police. And yet we know the stories, We've seen the footage, We've seen and heard what happened to Mulrunji, We've seen the CCTV of what happened to Miss Due. Tragically, we've never seen nor heard

what happened to Miss Marr on the Central Coast. But we're led to believe a young woman simply died in custody of natural causes, having been arrested for no reason whatsoever.

This week in Sydney an inquest into the death of another Aboriginal person, and before I go any further, I do want to warn that some of the information will be distressing and the case I'll be discussing is that of the departed David Dunge and his family members who may be listening might not want to hear some of what we're talking about today, although I should say during the inquest into his death in Sydney, his family have been present every single day and have been sitting there

hearing the horrendous failures of the system that led to the death of their son, their brother, their uncle. Sadly, the tragic death of David Dungae Jor inside Long Bay Jail teaches us much about the debts in custody that continue to take place. The reason we know so much is because it was all court on camera, and yet despite his death, no one has been charged, and even though there's an inquest in the coroner's court going on at the moment, my personal opinion is that it is

unlikely someone will be charged as a result. The family deserve answers as to what happened. But if we have another inquest, another royal commission, where criminal actions appear to take place and nobody is charged or convicted, it appears nothing will change and more lives will be lost for those who aren't aware. I run briefly through what happened to David dunga Jor. He was in Sydney's Long Bay Jail. He had a number of chronic medical conditions, one of

them included diabetes. On the day of his death, David was eating biscuits in his cell. He was told by corrective services to stop eating the biscuits. He refused. Now there's a good explanation why David might have been eating those biscuits. They were sweet biscuits, and he had insulin dependent diabetes. It's quite possible David, having lived with this condition for so long, was self managing his diabetes. Knowing that his glucose levels were dropping, he was eating the

biscuits to raise those levels. He was possibly experiencing a foggy mind, blurred vision, and all the symptoms many diabetics would be familiar with. Either way, the consumption of a tim Tam biscuit in Australian prison cell should be of no concern to prison officers, But when David refused to stop eating the biscuits, Corrective Services decided their course of action was to storm his prison cell, and they did just that. Multiple guards entered David's prison cell and forcibly

removed him, under great duress from his cell. They then placed him face down in a very dangerous position with his face down and his neck bent. This is a position that often leads to what's known as positional asphyxia, where quite simply the person cannot breathe, and David couldn't breathe. In fact, he was yelling out to the prison guards he couldn't breathe. He said this on twelve separate occasions.

As a result, the Corrective Services officers who had wrestled David onto a bed and were pinning him to that bed with knees in his back, hands on the back of his head, kneeling all over him, had a prison

nurse administer a sedative drug. That drug is known as mit asylum and it's regularly used in emergency wards to sedate people who may be distressed who need to be managed by the a medical staff who may be experiencing seizures, but it's done so by trained doctors who were used to dealing with a medical with medical emergencies day in,

day out. But midasoleum also has a more sinister use in the United States since the banning by the European Union of the distribution to the US of pentobarbital for the lethal injection, Mydasolem is used as a three drug cocktail in lethal injections. That is, it's a death penalty drug. What is it doing in our prison system? Mydasoleum is a very strong sedative. David was already saying he couldn't breathe, and yet at no point did the corrective services officers

lift their knees out of his back. At no point did they roll him over and allow him to breathe easier. At no point did they move him from the position that leads to positional asphyxia. David was struggling for breath, and not long after he'd said for the final time he couldn't breathe, his heart stopped. At some point in this period, when his heart stopped, an injection of mitersolum was administered and a second injection was called for now.

It was only at this point that the guards started to believe David's cries that he couldn't breathe, and resuscitation attempt began. But emergency physician Professor Anthony Brown has told the inquest that the heart failure David Dungey suffered was not like a normal heart attack. It's not where the heart continues to beat and yet the person is unconscious.

The type of cardiac arrest or heart attack that David suffered is one where the heart stops completely, and so for someone to be successfully resuscitated requires immediate medical attention, trained staff, and constant fundamental basic life support until paramedics arrive. None of that took place. We don't know for how long exactly David was still restrained despite his heart having stopped.

We do know that although CPR was performed and cardiac massage was performed, those performing it were not properly trained. We also know that at one point they stopped performing the cardiac massage for eight minutes. How is anyone expected to survive? Footage of the resuscitation attempts also shows that a suction device used in keeping a person alive in that process had the cap left on. That cap went into mister Dungey's airwaves and was only retrieved when the

staff discovered that the camp had fallen off. This was gross incompetence, this was criminal negligence. They also put David, despite him his heart no longer beating and not breathing, into the recovery position. Again, the Professor Brown said, this was an incorrect action to take. At no point during the process of trying to keep David alive was anyone

appointed as the team leader. The fact is that most likely David Dunge died of a lack of oxygen, and as mister Professor Brown says, that was due to his restraints, that is, the restraints being applied to him by those prison officers. We may never know what roll the miter zolum played in David's death, but what we do know is that in the hands of those corrective officers, David began alive and he would wind up dead. His death

shouldn't have been inevitable, it was preventable. As Professor Brown said, if you can call out that you can't breathe, that to me says the brain was working the lungs were working, the pulse was working enough to be reversible. Whatever challenge there was to Dungae in terms of the next two minutes and seventeen seconds while they waited for a nurse to get another injection in that time is when Dungae slipped into irreversible cardiac arrest. There was no need to

storm David's cell. It was known to the guards that David had a number of serious medical conditions, life threatening medical conditions, and yet over a biscuit they chose to storm his cell over a timtam that he may well have been eating for his own health because of his diabetes. There was no need for multiple guards to throw him around and place him in a position that would endanger his life in the way they did. There was no need for them to refuse to listen to his cries

for help that he could not breathe. Even to that point, as Professor Brown says, it was preventable and reversible. A nurse came into the room, a medical professional. They should have known that David was in grave danger. But when that nurse left the room in that two minutes and said seventeen seconds until they returned, David died and slipped into irreversible cardiac arrest. His family deserve answers and they deserve justice. David was in prison, but we supposedly don't

have the death penalty in Australia. Placing someone into a position where they cannot breathe, into a point known as positional asphyxia, the cutting off of the airways until hypoxic arrest causes a heart attack, cannot be justified in any way. The fact that a drug was also used in the process that is part of the lethal cocktail used in the United States in the carrying out of the death penalty also should raise questions as to how Australian states

treat prisoner like four hundred others. David Dunga Junior has passed since the Royal Commission into Black Deaths into custody. It's also clear from what's happened in the Northern Territory since the Royal Commission and what we saw at Dondale that nothing has changed. Children in the Hour Springs Detention Center are now in one of the top ten most over crowded prisons on Earth. Royal commissions clearly fix nothing.

Chargers clearly never get laid. We also know that despite the best efforts of journalists to uncover what police are doing in states like Queensland, they risk their own lives when doing so, proven by the fact the AFP had to appoint one of their own officers to protect an ABC journalist from the Queensland Police. What Australia needs is a Truth and Justice Commission with the majority of the commissioners made up of Aboriginal and Torestraight Islander people. The

Truth and Justice Commission needs a mandate. It needs to mandate like that of a Royal commission with all the powers that entails, but it needs to be Aboriginal led. The Commission needs a mandate to make assessments of the consequences of the imprisonment an abuse by police of Aboriginal

and Torestraight Islander people over the last decades. There should be an inquiry into the conduct of all those involved in the prison system, including private prisons and public prisons, Corrective Services and its union, the police and its union, all justice departments or the Attorney General's departments and parole boards. The Commission needs the mandate to gather information and receive evidence from any person. The mandate must also include appropriate

reparative measures to all of those who have suffered. There should also be the Mandate to inquire into complaints those that are currently ongoing, like the case of Kevin Henry and those from the past. The Mandate should then finally be able to prepare a comprehensive report of its activities, its research and its findings, and that report should be presented to the Governor General and the Australian Prime Minister.

They must act on that report and its findings. We already know the names of four hundred Aboriginal and Torrestrate Islander people who will be in that report, people whose lives have been taken by the prison system and the police in this country. But what we need to know is who else and why. We need those who have committed these acts to be held accountable. We need those who are suffering right now, like Kevin Henry, to be

able to tell their story. We need charges to be laid against all those found to have acted criminally, and we need reparations to be paid to all those who have suffered. Any less is unacceptable. As this week shown, deaths of Aboriginal and torres Straight Islander people will continue in prison. The abuse of Aboriginal and Torrestraight Islander children will continue, and the incarceration of Aboriginal and Torrestraight Islander

women is the fastest growing anywhere in the world. If we don't get truth and justice now, there'll be more death and injustice in the future. That was curtin the podcast