Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Hansard source

The government won't be supporting this motion. We accept that the rates of incarcerated First Nations people and deaths in custody are unacceptable. In 2023 the government established a national real-time death in custody dashboard available on the Australian Institute of Criminology website. The dashboard provides information on all deaths occurring in police and prison custody as well as in youth detention. This important transparency measure is already in place.

States and territories, not the Commonwealth, hold the information that Senator Thorpe is calling for in this motion. In addition, it is not a reasonable request nor is it possible for the Attorney-General to table information about ongoing coronial inquests. I urge the Senate to reject this motion.