Page 488 - Week 02 - Thursday, 14 May 1992
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ABORIGINAL DEATHS IN CUSTODY
Ministerial Statement and Papers
Debate resumed from 8 April 1992, on motion by Ms Follett:
That the Assembly takes note of the papers.
MR HUMPHRIES (4.12): First of all, I congratulate the Chief Minister. On my calculations, she becomes today the Territory's longest-serving Chief Minister.
Mr Kaine: She had to wait a long time.
MR HUMPHRIES: She had to wait a long time. I congratulated her predecessor, so I congratulate her today as well.
Mr Wood: You are probably no longer the longest-serving Health Minister.
MR HUMPHRIES: That is probably right. I had to get it in while I still could. I am still the longest-serving Education Minister.
Mr Lamont: At the rate you were closing down the schools you would not stay that way for long.
MR HUMPHRIES: I do not know about that.
Madam Speaker, this statement is a very important one in dealing with a national problem. The problem is not just the question or position of Aborigines who are incarcerated and who might, in those circumstances, die in incarceration, as has been clearly stated before. Rather, it is a question about the position of Aborigines generally in Australian society which causes them to be so often in incarceration and in a position where apparently death is a real possibility. In 1975 the National Population Inquiry said:
In every conceivable comparison, the Aborigines and Islanders ... stand in stark contrast to the general Australian society ... They probably have the highest death rate, the worst health and housing, and the lowest educational, occupational, economic, social and legal status of any identifiable section of the Australian population.
In 1992, 17 years later, the joint ministerial statement included as a foreword in the response by governments to the royal commission's report contains the following words:
The Royal Commission investigated the deaths of 99 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in custody. In doing so it established a vivid profile of the lives of those who died - young people for the most part who had experienced unemployment, inadequate education, separation from their natural families, early contact with the criminal justice system, poor health, problems with alcohol, economic and social disadvantage.
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