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Admissions of structural racism against First Nations Victorians but no timeline for change
On the face of it, it was just another inquiry, well-versed politicians and government officers answering a panel’s questions, but in the context of colonial-First Nations relations since settlement, it was a major historical event.
The highest legal and policing figures in the state of Victoria were called before the Yoorrook Justice Commission to acknowledge almost 200 of years of harmful policies implemented against Traditional Owners and to explain why systemic racism and injustices persist in the structures of government today.
Victoria’s Treaty process delivered the Yoorrook commission, Australia’s first truth-telling inquiry, which has the powers of a royal commission and has seen the majority-First Nations panel demand government documents, haul bureaucrats over the legal coals for not producing evidence in a timely fashion and call the state’s attorney-general, police minister and police commissioner before it.
That the state’s top three law makers and enforcers, excluding the premier, could be legally forced to provide “truthful” evidence to a body representing Traditional Owners would once have been thought fanciful, but there they were.
Attorney-General Jaclyn Symes, also the Member for Northern Victoria, appeared before the commission on Friday, May 5.
In her opening address, Ms Symes acknowledged the hearing was being held on First Nations land that its Traditional Owners had not ceded, and later, under questioning from counsel assisting the commission, Tony McAvoy SC, the attorney-general agreed that racism had been built into the systems of government from the first days of the colony.
“Do you accept that during the colonial period the prevailing way of describing Aboriginal people was to describe them as sub-human, to deny human dignity and status to Aboriginal people?” Mr McAvoy said.
“Yes. That’s the factual reality of the history, yes,” Ms Symes said.
When asked if that racism flows through in the “organisational culture to the present day in government agencies”, Ms Symes said it did.
“There are certainly structural racism that persist today (sic). For me, that is most evident in the outcomes, in the numbers, in the disproportionate impacts of the justice system on Aboriginal people and there are a lot of factors for that, but structural racism is certainly a leading cause,” she said.
Chief Commissioner of Victoria Police Shane Patton, a career police officer of 45 years, opened by “formally and unreservedly” apologising for “police actions that have caused or contributed to the trauma experienced by so many Aboriginal families” in the state of Victoria.
Commissioner Patton leads more than 16,450 police officers and 1470 protective services officers, of whom 95 police, two police recruits and six PSOs are Traditional Owners.
He admitted Victoria Police was “influenced by systemic and structural racism” and that the uniform could be a “symbol of fear” to First Nations people.
“I know Victoria Police has caused harm in the past and unfortunately continues to do so in the present,” he told the commission.
Commissioner Patton said he “couldn’t be more frustrated in the lack of pace or the roll out” of cultural training for staff, and was “staggered” to discover the program’s inadequacies when preparing for his appearance before the commission.
Commissioner Patton was challenged by Yoorrook Commissioner Maggie Walter over his admission that the cultural awareness program involves police staff sharing their own personal experiences with racism, saying she was “horrified” staff of an organisation with a history of racism were asked to repeatedly relive their own traumatic experiences.
“Is absolutely moving, is absolutely impactful, and for those reasons I believe it’s necessary,” Commissioner Patton said.
Yoorrook Commissioner Sue-Anne Hunter criticised the cultural training program for only requiring officers to undertake three and a half hours.
“You’ve apologised for 170 years and yet we get three and a half hours, it’s not good enough,” she said.
Police Minister Anthony Carbines has been in the job since June last year and will have to work with Commissioner Patton to repair Victoria Police’s relationship with the state’s First Nations people.
He accepted that Traditional Owners in Victoria had suffered “harm and trauma” and “that harm and trauma continues today”, declaring it “a shameful fact”.
Mr Carbines was less able to articulate how the issues, many of which were raised in the report of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody in 1991, would be addressed, or how long it would take to see substantive change.
Mr McAvoy variously asked the minister “Do you have in your mind a time frame” or “is it something ... that is going to ... take five years or 10 years, or another 30 years as we’ve seen with the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody?” and “So there’s not a specific period that you have in mind?”. Mr Carbines gave lengthy replies to each question without directly answering any.
“I am not going to say that it will be done tomorrow or the next month, but it has to be embedded in the work that we do every day,” Mr Carbines said.
Commissioner Patton was presented with a shield by Yoorrook Commission chair Professor Eleanor Bourke, who emphasised it was not a gift, but a reminder and symbol of the commission’s expectation of change.
“If actions do not follow your apology, then what hope do we have?” Prof Bourke said.