Thirty years on from the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody

DARREN BRADY: Auntie Sherry was an energetic woman. She was always on the go. Growing up, she was just an auntie but it was in the later life that I appreciated her ability just to do her own thing, live life, and enjoy it.

MAKAYLA REYNOLDS: Nathan was the best big brother anyone could have – best son, best grandson and best father.

He was counting down to his release. He said, “I’ll see you guys in two weeks,” and that two weeks never did come.

It’s hard for anyone to lose anyone unexpectedly but it’s harder when they’re alone – and he was alone.

DARREN BRADY: She died in custody and then that roll-on effect of what we were about to face. That was the most scariest part for me.

ELLA ARCHIBALD-BINGE, REPORTER: Across the country, First Nations families are united by grief.

DARREN BRADY: It was hard to really acknowledge her death as a human because it was already forced into that black deaths in custody scenario.

BLACK LIVES MATTER PROTESTOR: Let’s get the message out there. Enough is enough! Australia will not tolerate any more.

ELLA ARCHIBALD-BINGE: Six months after his auntie died in a Brisbane police cell, Darren Brady finds himself on the frontline of a protest movement.

DARREN BRADY: Growing up, I remember as a family we would always be a part of those spaces, those protests. We were always there but always in the back and then it was interesting to see how we were literally forced, you could feel it, we were forced to be right there at the front.

BLACK LIVES MATTER PROTESTOR: Five aboriginal people in the last four weeks, four weeks!

PROTESTORS: Justice. Justice. Justice.

ELLA ARCHIBALD-BINGE: Nationwide, people are taking to the streets. It’s a new generation with a decade’s old message. In the ’80s a similar movement was gaining traction.

REPORTER (Archival): About 200 people took part in the march which started in the inner-city suburb of Redfern.

PAT DODSON, WA LABOR SENATOR: There was a whole lot of anger across Australia in Aboriginal communities.

Many of the leaders were obviously frustrated and perplexed because the number of deaths that were occurring seemed to all be occurring in police custody.

People were starting to believe that police were killing people.

BOB HAWKE (Archival): Any inquiry which did not have the status of a royal commission would be unacceptable.

ELLA ARCHIBALD-BINGE: When Bob Hawke announced a royal commission in 1987 it was supposed to be a turning point.

Labor Senator Pat Dodson was one of the commissioners.

PAT DODSON: What is the obligation of a prison officer, police officer or a nurse or a doctor or someone who takes, if you’re in care, if you’re in custody, what are the obligations you have to that person in custody? Because that was not understood.

ELLA ARCHIBALD-BINGE: More than 450 First Nations people have died in custody since the inquiry delivered its findings – five since the start of last month. These are just some of their faces.

The inquiry made more than 300 recommendations. A review found around two-thirds have since been implemented but many of the recommendations remain overlooked, including hanging points in some prison cells, arrests for minor offences like swearing, and the granting of bail.

PAT DODSON: If the political leadership at the top doesn’t get itself into gear very shortly, we’re going to have a real crisis on our hands, similar to what we had back at the time of the calling of the royal commission.

KEN WYATT, MINISTER FOR INDIGENOUS AUSTRALIANS: We’re not in a national crisis in the sense of people dying because of the actions of a prison guard or a police officer. Where we do have the crisis is the underlying issues that impact, the rates of incarceration.

PROF. CHRIS CUNNEEN, CRIMINOLOGIST, UTS: First Nations people made up around 14 per cent of the prison population in 1991. Today it is 29 per cent. So we’re getting up towards one in three of all prisoners in Australia are Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people.

ELLA ARCHIBALD-BINGE: Some people might hear those statistics and say if you don’t want to go to prison, don’t commit the crime. How would you respond to that argument?

CHRIS CUNNEEN: It is not about the rate of crime. It is about governments relying on punitive approaches to law and order, relying on the prison and the result of that is that the poor and marginalised and racialised groups like First Nations people are the fodder there and end up behind prison bars.

APRYL DAY: We will never, ever be the same. It’s changed the path that we’re on completely. It’s been nearly four years in December and it feels like yesterday.

ELLA ARCHIBALD-BINGE: Tanya Day was arrested after falling asleep on a train while intoxicated. She hit her head in a police cell and later died in hospital.

APRYL DAY: I’m furious that we still need to be having these discussions and that, you know, while we’re trying to advocate for Mum and for other mob and trying to grieve, we have another death in custody and it’s strikingly similar.

ELLA ARCHIBALD-BINGE: The coroner found Tanya’s death could have been prevented if she hadn’t been arrested. After a family-led campaign, Victoria decriminalised public drunkenness this year.

APRYL DAY: The rest of Australia has got this blindfold on that they just don’t want to see it, the governments don’t see it, the police don’t.

It’s not like I want to wake up every day and be doing this sort of work, but I don’t actually have a choice.

ELLA ARCHIBALD-BINGE: The country’s track record on Indigenous incarceration is now attracting global attention.

AGNES CALLAMARD: The economic etiquette, the social etiquette, the etiquette regarding death in custody for Indigenous people, all of those are painting such a dismal picture of the situation of Indigenous people.

No-one should be prepared to just turn away from it, turn their eyes away from it because it has been there forever. No! We now need to make it a priority and tackle it forcefully with all the resources that are required.

PAT DODSON: Thirty years on, there’s not much changed.

ELLA ARCHIBALD-BINGE: Pat Dodson wants a national plan to drive change, led by the Minister for Indigenous Australians, Ken Wyatt, and peak First Nations groups.

PAT DODSON: You would think that this would be a trigger for those entities to be brought together by someone and say, “We’ve got a crisis on our hands. How do we deal with this?”

KEN WYATT: Well, we do that through the 51 peak organisations already. They helped co-design the targets for the Closing the Gap Target 10 which looks at adult incarceration rates and Target 11 which is juvenile incarceration rates.

PAT DODSON: Black lives don’t matter, that’s what the marches were about. They’re expendable. We have to realise this is happening to human beings.

MAKAYLA REYNOLDS: I would love Nathan to be remembered as the person he was. I feel like he’s still with us and around us and I feel like I’m doing it for him, and I don’t want to let him down.

DARREN BRADY: I believe in the space enough that Australia can do this, to now move forward positively and successfully to achieve no deaths in custody.

It just sucks that we have to fight and not just be somebody who can enjoy life more.