Sue Lines (WA, Deputy-President) Share this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to speak about a colleague of mine in Western Australia, Donna. I recently received an email from Donna. She works really hard in her community and has done an amazing job in establishing a basketball league for young people which has really taken off right across Australia and she's been very grateful for the funding she's received to continue to run that program.

On the recent long weekend in WA, Donna went home to visit family in country Western Australia. The family returned to Perth together in a convoy of three cars. Donna was following her 21-year-old daughter, the daughter's boyfriend, Donna's 11-year-old grandson and another friend. The convoy passed a police car travelling in the opposite direction when Donna noticed the car do a U-turn and begin to follow them. Eventually the police flagged Donna's daughter's car down. Donna thought perhaps they'd been speeding because what other reason could there have been for pulling them over?

Donna stopped and parked behind her daughter's car. The first thing she noticed as the officers approached her daughter's car was that one officer immediately placed his right hand on his handgun, and it looked as if he was releasing the clip. The second officer placed his left hand on his pepper spray, again releasing the clip in preparation for use. Imagine how Donna felt watching this from her car, watching her daughter and her grandson being apprehended in this way and being fully aware of what the two police officers had just done.

I believe, and so does Donna, that this is highly unusual; this is not normal practice. It's not part of police procedure. Donna's daughter hadn't been speeding and had not committed any obvious offence. However—and here's the 'but'—Donna and her family are Noongar people of Western Australia. What happened here was not that a crime had been committed but that the two police officers for whatever reason—and they do have a legal right to stop people; I'm not contesting that—once they stopped the car and saw those Noongar faces, and the face of their friend who's from Somalia looking back at them, simply went into racial-profiling mode. And they made that decision then and there to pull over Donna's family and her friends.

Donna has made an official complaint to the Western Australia Police Force, and I hope that it's investigated in a speedy manner and that a conclusion is reached which satisfies Donna. The sad thing about what happened to Donna's daughter, Donna's family and Donna's 11-year-old grandson is that this is not an unusual occurrence. During Reconciliation Week we saw that horrific media report of that young girl who was grabbed by a Big W security officer, grabbed by her hoodie because the officer believed that the young girl had stolen something—again, racial profiling fully in action.

Relationships between police and First Nations peoples are at an all-time low. As we've heard today, deaths in custody are rising. Young people are being incarcerated at alarming rates, and the sadness is that most of those young people are held in custody and then receive sentences that are not custodial. Yet it happens over and over again to First Nations people. We are creating a second stolen generation with the number of young kids and babies that are put into out-of-home care. No wonder people are up in arms and protesting. It is way overdue for us to stop, to reflect and to implement the sorts of solutions that First Nations people in this country want to see. It's not too hard. It is not too complex. We need to stop and listen and take the advice of First Nations people. We're in this together.