The reaction from Queensland’s Police Union Secretary Gary Wilkinson to Queensland’s coroners finding to the death in custody of an Aboriginal man on Palm Island was not unexpected – but nonetheless shocking. Wilkinson’s attitude to Aboriginal people is well known amongst Queensland’s Aboriginal people.

Not long after Palm Islander’s expressed their anger over the death in custody by burning down the police station Wilkinson had plenty to say not just about the incident but about Aboriginal people in general. Yes he is entitled to make his views known publicly, but one would think that some moral code exists for those in public life to measure their words in the spirit of fairness and equity.

The rule of law behoves public officials to accept such findings and the proper and only forum to challenge them is the appeal courts. Despite the Royal Commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody and a growing awareness within the police rank and file over the last 17 years about the need to take adopt better strategic approaches, to be more sensitive to Aboriginal issues in policing and to take note of the 339 recommendations that the Royal Commission delivered.

The attitude of Wilkinson and indeed the Premier of Queensland Peter Beattie appears to have not evolved to a level of sophistication one would expect in these so called modern times.

Atkinson, Spence (Minister for Police) and Beattie cannot pick and choose when to accept a coroner’s findings. There recent public explications suggest that they have.

Why is this so?

Is it because Aboriginal people don’t rate highly in terms of votes in elections (even though they represent a high level of media news coverage proportionally speaking) Is it because both government and police unions have developed a unilateral approach in their public responses to how particular Queensland citizens (namely Aboriginal people) are deemed to warrant paternalistic and benignly racist public views being expressed without fear? If civil society can be measured accurately surely its clearest indicator is how the powerful view the most vulnerable.

Rainier...great topic, but Im afraid noone on this forum seems too interested in topics concerning Indigenous issues..

Part of the cultural indifference by mainstream society to the plight of indigenous suffering and invisibilty in this country.

This indifference feeds right into the crux of the problem Im sad to say.

Well I'm interested enough to create a separate discussion about it.
See Cherbourg.

I totally agree with Ranier. In fact I probably agree much MORE now, having heard from our own young people just back from Cherbourg.

The governments of the past have done despicable sinful things. The present one has a chance to FIX some of them.
While they can't now send the 47 tribes back, they could at LEAST restore the infrastructure they ripped out in 1986, so give them a better start.

I think it would be a worthwhile exercise to actually NAME and SHAME people in Government or business who oppose some measure of restitution toward Indigenous people dispossessed and displaced to places like Cherbourg.