Three decades on, officials still under fire over Aboriginal deaths in custody
We’re sorry, this service is currently unavailable. Please try again later.
Dismiss
Normal text size
Advertisement
Why was a sober, harmless man who had caused no injury to anyone locked up at all?
It was a question posed by the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody when the inquiry examined the death of Yorta Yorta man Harrison Day, locked up in a police cell in Echuca in 1982. Left unchecked for three hours, he suffered an epileptic fit that killed him.
The same question posed by Commissioner Hal Wootten 30 years ago could be asked again in 2017. Tanya Day, Mr Day’s niece, hit her head in a police cell at Castlemaine and died in hospital. She had been arrested for public drunkenness after she was found intoxicated and sleeping peacefully on a V-Line train to Melbourne.
Forrest then made one of five reports received by the AFP last year about section 121 breaches.
Forrest told the court his previous referrals included one that resulted in the prosecution of a media company, but another was not pursued because it was considered to not be in the public interest.
âI see a clear and blatant contravention ⦠and consider it to be entirely appropriate to refer the matter to the prosecutorial authorities for their consideration,â he said.
âHow they decide to deal with it will be a matter for them.â
The AFP is understood to generally only prosecute the most egregious branches of section 121.
On 5 July 2018, Olga came home from work to find John had killed their teenage children.
This week, state coroner Teresa OâSullivan found that a series of critical âerrors and omissionsâ made by police, firearms registry staff and a family court lawyer in New South Wales allowed Edwards, a man with a decades-long history of domestic violence, to murder his children.
OâSullivan again raised questions about how the family law system operates, only months before it is set to undergo its most significant transformation since the family court was established in 1975.
But the Morrison governmentâs plan to establish a single point of entry to the court system â which currently shuffles cases between the federal circuit court and family court based on their complexity, often causing delays and subsequent increases in costs â will not address the family law systemâs many serious deficiencies, according to multiple people spoken to by Guardian Austral
The powers given to two law enforcement bodies within three new computer warrants need further work, representatives from the Human Rights Law Centre and the Law Council of Australia say.