By Cathy Pereira
BRISBANE — Aboriginal elders spoke out passionately against mandatory sentencing at a rally here on March 5, branding the laws an abuse of human rights. One hundred and fifty people had gathered in heavy rain to call for an end to mandatory sentencing in the Northern Territory and Western Australia.
Protesters displayed the Aboriginal flag upside down as a symbol of protest and mourned the deaths of indigenous people in custody as they marched silently to Brisbane's Botanic Gardens.
Karen Fletcher from Brisbane's Prisoners' Legal Service pointed out that the majority of prisoners in Queensland are under 25 years old and one-third are indigenous. Up to 80% of inmates in some prisons in the north of the state are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, she said.
Fletcher criticised the "imprisonment frenzy" of Coalition and Labor state governments and called for a move away from punitive approaches to criminal justice and imprisonment issues.
John Tracey from 4ZZZ's prisoners' program called on the government to address the root causes of crime, including poverty, the loss of contact with family, and social injustice.
Kevin Smith, the chairperson of Brisbane's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Service, said that the failure to reduce the over-representation of Aborigines in prisons in the past 20 years reflected the racist laws and policing and sentencing practices. He pointed to Canadian studies that have found that, as a crime prevention strategy, spending on social welfare and education is far more cost-effective than spending on imprisonment.
From Sydney, Jenny Long reports that Winsome Matthews told a rally of 200 people in Town Hall Square on March 5, "Sentences have a long lasting effect on our people. We have had our land stolen, our children ripped away and our culture belittled. Mandatory sentencing amounts to the further dispossession of our people." Matthews is chairperson of the NSW Aboriginal Justice Advisory Council.
The rally was called by a newly formed coalition to support Australian Greens senator Bob Brown's private member's bill to ban mandatory sentencing for juveniles. Brown explained to those present that the campaign must not just overturn mandatory sentencing for juveniles but must "build a campaign to end mandatory sentencing for all petty crimes so that the cycle of detention can be ended".
Also speaking in support of the bill were ALP shadow attorney-general Robert McClelland, Democrat senator Brian Greig, actor Tina Bursill and Sister Libby Robertson from the NSW Ecumenical Council. Messages of support were read from former prime ministers Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser.
Robertson's speech was particularly stirring. Mandatory sentencing, she said, was part of a general government shift towards massively increasing the number of prisoners in Australia. Meanwhile, resources going to rehabilitation and the underlying social causes of crime are declining.
The next evening, 50 people came to a forum sponsored by Green Left Weekly in the Resistance Centre to hear Ray Jackson from Indigenous Social Justice, Justice Action's Kilty O'Gorman and Green Left Weekly journalist Sean Healy speak on the issue.