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

Last week the coronial inquest into the death in custody of my first cousin Josh Kerr finished. On the weekend, Donnis Kerr, Josh's mum, published a powerful and heartbreaking piece about Josh in the Saturday Paper. I want to share some of her words with you, and I encourage you to go and read the full piece:

The last time I saw my son, Josh, he was in shackles. He'd been let out of prison on leave to attend his Uncle Bruce's funeral. After the service, as I walked him back to the police van, he stopped to cuddle everyone, and I thought, Is he gonna say goodbye to me or what?

Before he got in the van, he turned to me. "I love you, Mum," he said.

"I love you, too, son," I said. "I'll see you when you come out."

"Yeah, Mum, I'll come home."

We had the biggest cuddle. Those were our last words.

…   …   …

Everybody Josh met, he touched. He and his sisters—

Maggie and Pat—

had a strong bond; they would sit down for hours, just yarning. He adored and doted on his children. He was a social butterfly made for life. He loved his art.

…   …   …

When Josh was born, I was young and living in crisis accommodation at Margaret Tucker Hostel. I kept him for eight months—as long as I could—and then he went into the out-of-home care system. It ripped out my heart.

…   …   …

When he was older he came to me one day hurting and angry that I wasn't there to raise him. I told him the reason: "I wasn't brought up with a mum and dad, Josh. I was part of the Stolen Generation."

Like Josh, I was brought up in the system. I was taken at the age of two and raised by 100 staff. … So I never knew a mother's love or what love was; I was never shown how to be a mother. Because of that, I couldn't take care of my son.

…   …   …

The day I told Josh about all this, at first he didn't comprehend it. He came back a week later and said, "Mum, I don't blame you anymore." The both of us broke down crying. He said, "Now I understand."

Josh entered the system as a baby. Thirty-two years later that system took him from me forever.

His children will now grow up without their father. Their trauma will be that their dad died crying out for help as prison staff ignored him. This is the trauma the system creates, that flows through families, from generation to generation.

…   …   …

… the chain reaction that starts when our kids are taken from us and ends with more Black deaths in custody, more kids without parents set on the same path …

…   …   …

… with nearly 600 Black lives taken since the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody …

…   …   …

Governments—

including this one—

still refuse to implement the recommendations of the 1991 royal commission, or the recommendations of the 1997 Bringing Them Home report.

Yet you still have Sorry Day and have your morning tea. The article goes on:

… not one person has ever been held responsible or accountable for a Black death in custody. Not one person.

…   …   …

When does it end?

Ninety-seven per cent of us you wiped out. Are you trying to wipe the rest of us out? The article goes on:

How many more babies do we have to lose in the system for things to change?

…   …   …

Josh loved his family. Every time he got out of custody, he'd come straight home to sit down with us and have a yarn. Now, whether we get justice or not, my son is never coming home—that's the raw reality.

It says further:

If we get justice for Josh, it will make history and hopefully change history's course.

But we can't have a government like we have today which continues to wave the Aboriginal flag—you wear your Aboriginal flag on your T-shirts and your Aboriginal flag earrings and all your designs when you don't care about the amount of children in the system. You don't care about deaths in custody. Your own Attorney-General said to me during the referendum, 'Just be happy I gave you one recommendation of counting the bodies coming out of these prisons.' He wanted us to be grateful for counting in real time deaths in custody. Shame on you, Labor, and shame on the native police. (Time expired)