Lidia Thorpe (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry and Minister for Emergency Management (Senator Watt) to a question without notice I asked today relating to Aboriginal deaths in custody.

As you know, our people have never stopped calling on the government to fully implement the recommendations of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. I do thank Senator Dodson for echoing our calls for action in this space. We will keep the pressure on, day by day, until we finally see action.

You don't need to go out looking for new solutions. The solutions have been there for over 30 years. They've been sitting on the government's shelf, collecting dust, whilst our people still continue to die at the hands of the system.

Today I asked a simple question requiring a yes or no answer—will the government implement the recommendations in full?—and Senator Watt failed to answer. He also failed to answer how the government are going to respond to their own special envoy's request for action. I appreciate that some steps are being taken on deaths in custody by this government, but in many other areas we have seen the federal government continually palm off responsibility for deaths in custody to the states and territories.

The federal government needs to finally lead the way in this space to make sure all recommendations are implemented in full. We need urgent action today. Every death in custody is one too many. Deaths in custody are preventable. Families and communities are always in a state of mourning from this ongoing torture against First Nations people in the Australian prison system.

One simple action for this government to take is to get Medicare and the PBS into the prison systems in this country. You wonder why people are dying in custody. They don't get medical attention in the way that they need. They don't have Medicare in prisons. This will benefit everybody. This will allow better healthcare services and make medications more widely available to those incarcerated. This will also allow for early detection of diseases and allow their prevention. For imprisoned First Nations people it would mean access to culturally safe community health services and Aboriginal health checks. It would also mean that a continuation of care is possible after the release from prison, which would prevent a lot of health challenges that our people will have experienced during that time. It would also mean access to much needed mental health services. Medicare in prisons is theoretically a Labor policy, but we have never seen any effort to actually make it happen. Well, it's time to do so.

Another obvious step to take is to review the implementation of the 339 recommendations that are all dusty from sitting on someone's shelf for 32 years. The last review was handed down in 2018 by Deloitte and has been widely dismissed by experts due to the dodgy desktop analysis that they did. They didn't even talk to the people! They sat at their computer and did an analysis. They said: 'Oh, yes, this recommendation looks like it's okay. We'll just say that one has been implemented.' It was a dodgy desktop review. We need our people to be part of this solution.

This government needs to conduct a real, independent review of where the implementation of the recommendations is at and take urgent action to save black lives in this country. You once again have blood on your hands, Labor. You had the opportunity, the last time you were in government, to implement these recommendations. Now, 10 years later, you're back, but we're sick of the rhetoric, we're sick of 'all talk and no action'. Even your own special envoy, your voice in your party, is asking you to implement the recommendations—because he was one of the commissioners at the time! So at least listen to your own voice if you want us to listen to this other one. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.