Political inaction endorses brute force
Alan Ramsey
Sydney Morning Herald September 30, 2006
CHRISTINE CLEMENTS is a wife and mother. She used to be a legal aid lawyer in Queensland country towns. In December 2000 the Beattie Labor Government appointed her as one of the state's first woman magistrates. Its then chief magistrate, the outspoken Di Fingleton, whose independence would, unspeakably, send her to jail until exonerated by the High Court and her legal career restored, would later make Clements the Brisbane coroner.
In March last year the State Coroner, Michael Barnes, excused himself and stepped down from an inquest into the death, in an isolated island police station, of a man whose fatal crime was to be Aboriginal.
Clements, Barnes's deputy, took over.
Three days ago, in a crowded Townsville courtroom, with 11 lawyers at the bar table, Christine Clements handed down her findings after 17 days of inquest hearings spread across 18 months. The findings run to 23,000 words. They tell a terrible story of brutish attitudes and the further degradation of public life in this country.
You can put it no other way.
The findings begin: "The man known by his tribal name, Mulrunji, was 36 years of age when he died. He was a fit, healthy man. He lived with his partner, Tracey Twaddle, on Palm Island. She was Mulrunji's partner for some 10 years. She described him as having a positive outlook on life, proud to provide for his family and friends by his skills as a fisherman and hunter. He was not a troublemaker and had never been arrested on the island. In her poignant statement to this court she said that she and Mulrunji looked forward to growing old together."
This is the 34 pages' only gentle note.
This, and the coroner's compassion.
It is here you need to know why Barnes, as state coroner, ruled himself out of the inquest after its first day. Police counsel challenged him on the grounds of "perceived bias" involving the inquest's other key figure, Palm Island's senior police officer, Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley.
Hurley is a huge brute of a man standing, as he told the inquest, "six feet seven inches tall" (200.66 centimetres) and "his build proportionate to his height", Clements would find. Mulrunji was 181 centimetres tall and and weighed 74 kilos. In his mid-30s, Hurley spent most of his police career in god-forsaken North Queensland Aboriginal communities such as Thursday Island, Aurukun, Cooktown and Burketon.
Barnes once headed the complaints division of Queensland's Criminal Justice Commission. In the 1990s he was involved, as division head, in signing off on the investigation of "20 to 30" complaints against Hurley's behaviour, none of which was sustained. After legal submissions on these matters Barnes stood down from the inquest. Clements presided when hearings resumed three weeks later.
Eighteen months later and her findings are scathing of police procedure and of Hurley, whom she labels a liar and whose behaviour, she finds, killed an Aborigine who, though drunk, was simply a passerby on a street who did nothing more than mouth off at Hurley and his Aboriginal assistant after they'd arrested another black man for drunkenness.
Hurley hadn't known who Mulrunji Doomadgee was before the incident. He'd not even heard what Mulrunji was supposed to have said. But when the two policemen got into Hurley's police wagon, his assistant told him, under questioning, and Hurley drove after Mulrunji, who was walking. They got out and bundled him, protesting, into the caged back of the wagon.
That was 10.20 in the morning.
By "approximately 11am" Mulrunji was dead.
Forty minutes from a single curse to drowning in his own blood.
We let David Hicks rot for almost five years, without trial, in an American military hellhole in Cuba, and the Howard Government does nothing. A Melbourne court sees videos of an elite Victorian police unit obviously bashing confessions from suspects, yet all the police do is cry foul at their public "humiliation". Now a 90-plus-kilogram policeman in a remote Aboriginal community behaves so brutishly his victim's liver is torn in half and four ribs are broken after a "fall" as he is being taken from the paddy wagon and dragged, on his back, by the arms to a cell.
Clements found, in part: "It is a terrible tragedy that such a minor incident could lead to a man's death in custody. Mulrunji cried out for help from the cell after being fatally injured, and no help came. The images from the cell videotape of Mulrunji, writhing in pain as he lay dying on the cell floor, were shocking and terribly distressing to anyone who sat through that portion of the evidence. The sounds from the cell surveillance tape are unlikely to be forgotten by anyone who was in court and heard the tape played Š "
How do the Queensland police respond?
By its union trashing the judicial finding and the integrity of Christine Clements. At the same time the Police Commissioner, Bob Atkinson, decides there are no grounds for Hurley's suspension. Hurley remains on "office duties" on the Gold Coast, where he was shifted from Palm Island after Mulrunji's death in November 2004, while the Premier, Peter Beattie, with one eye on the voters, supports his commissioner and the Queensland police force.
Why does authority glorify being so ugly?
In March last year, just after the inquest began its hearings, a Palm Island spokesman for Mulrunji's family, Brad Foster, told The Australian newspaper's Tony Koch: "I ask a simple question. Just consider if a policeman and an Aborigine - or your son or father, for that matter - were involved in a scuffle at the entrance to the watch-house and they fell to the ground, and the Aboriginal man got up and walked away, leaving the policeman dead.
"How long do you think it would be before that Aboriginal man was charged? Do you believe he would have been immediately spirited away and protected from the media, given counselling and a safe house on the mainland, and then transferred to a pleasant job on the Gold Coast, constantly comforted by media statements by the Police Minister and the Police Commissioner? Of course not."
No politician has tried answering the question in the 18 months since.
Nor have Queensland police.
Coroner Clements found:
Of the medical evidence - "The right-sided rib cage showed fractures of four ribs. In the peritoneal cavity there was at least 11Ž2 litres of blood and clot. The liver was virtually ruptured, 'cleaved in two' in Dr Lampe's words. The two halves were only connected by some blood vessels. [Two] autopsies [a week apart] concluded [Mulrunji bled to death internally]. The consensus of medical opinion was that severe compressive force applied to the upper abdomen or lower chest, or both together, was required to cause this injury. I accept that evidence, and rely on it in considering the evidence to explain how the injury was caused."
Of the struggle outside the police station, where Mulrunji hit Hurley in the face as he was pulled from the paddy wagon: "[Hurley] did respond to Mulrunji's punch by punching [him]. I reject Senior Sergeant Hurley's denial as untruthful."
Of the fall inside the police station, where an Aboriginal witness, unseen by Hurley, said he saw Hurley "bending over" the prostrate Mulrunji, with Hurley's "elbow going up and down three times", with Hurley saying at the same time, "Have you had enough, Mr Doomadgee? Do you want more, Mr Doomadgee? Do you want more?" - "The description is reminiscent of what is frequently seen in football matches when hot-headed players seemingly grab shirt fronts, but take the opportunity to punch the opposition in doing so."
Clements added: "I find that Senior Sergeant Hurley was angry when he was hit in the jaw by Mulrunji as he came out of the police van. He expressed it himself that he was shocked at the challenge to his authority. I reject [his] account that he simply got up from a heavy fall. I find that he did respond with physical force against Mulrunji while he was still on the floor Š I accept that [Hurley] did say, 'Do you want more, Mr Doomadgee? Do you want more?'
"I am satisfied on the basis of [Aboriginal] Roy Bramwell's account of what he saw and heard, that Senior Sergeant Hurley lost his temper and hit Mulrunji after falling to the floor Š I find that [he] hit Mulrunji a number of times Š After this occurred, I find there was no further resistance, or indeed any speech or response from Mulrunji. I conclude that these actions of Senior Sergeant Hurley caused the fatal injuries."
Queensland law does not allow a coroner to make any finding "that a person is, or may be, guilty of an offence, or is civilly liable for something". Clements concluded, however reluctantly: "I emphasise that any decision to prosecute rests solely with other authorities."
Beattie has flicked that decision to his Director of Public Prosecutions, Leanne Clare. Another woman, of course. So is his Police Minister (Judy Spence) and his Attorney-General (Linda Lavarch). The blokes have bolted, leaving the women to carry the responsibility.
John Howard's Australia.
Peter Beattie's, too. Another entry in the nation's shame file
TWO months ago, Britain's Observer published a 4500-word article in its magazine under the headline "Island of Lost Souls". Written by Melbourne's Chloe Hooper, the article's searing journalism might have made even Queensland's Police Commissioner, Bob Atkinson, flinch. So, too, its Labor Premier, Peter Beattie, who appointed Atkinson six years ago. You wouldn't want to take bets, though.
An excerpt:
"Palm Island's breeze-block shelter is decorated with a collection of the local fourth-graders' projects on safe and unsafe behaviour. 'I feel safe when I'm not being hunted,' one project reads. The island, in the far north-east of Australia, lies between the coast of Queensland and the Great Barrier Reef. No one would want to holiday here. Palm Island (pop 3000) is home to one of the country's largest Aboriginal communities and, according to the Guinness Book of Records, is the most dangerous place on Earth outside a combat zone.
"Two black men in their early 30s are stumbling around, leaning on each other. 'They're brothers,' a local tells me. 'They're blind.' I assume she means blind drunk. One of the brothers then shakes out a white cane and my heart nearly stops. How did they go blind? 'Nobody knows.' The men are connected with string: the man with the cane holds the string, leading his brother by the wrist.
"I am travelling with two lawyers. Two months earlier, a drunk Aboriginal man was arrested for swearing at police. An hour later he was dead with injuries like those of a road-trauma victim. The police claimed he tripped on a step. The community didn't agree and burnt down the police station. The lawyers are here to represent, pro bono, the Palm Island community in the State Government's inquest into the man's death Š
"The island's chairwoman, wearing a hat crocheted with the Aboriginal flag, collects us from the airstrip. In the township there is a jetty, a beer canteen, a hospital, a broken clock tower and one store. Outside the store a child sits in a rubbish bin while another child cools him with a fire hose. Two white women (teachers, or nurses or police) are walking briskly in shorts. They look as out of place as I feel. 'Who are they?' I ask the chairwoman. 'Strangers,' she says.
"In 1916 the island was, to the government-designated chief protector of Aborigines, 'the ideal place for a delightful holiday'. The surrounding shark-infested waters also made it 'suitable for use as a penitentiary'. From 1918 Aborigines were sent to the Palm Island Mission in leg irons. Usually they had made the mistake of asking about their wages or practising traditional ceremonies. In its isolation, the mission became increasingly authoritarian, a kind of tropical gulag with all the arbitrary abuse of power that term implies Š
"It is now a study of dysfunction taken to its ultimate degree: the island has 92 per cent unemployment; more than half the men will die before age 45; 16 young people have committed suicide in eight months. The police, far from saviours, are the focus of great suspicion and often hatred.
"The chairwoman drops the lawyers and me at the community 'motel', a series of spotless rooms with barred windows and no apparent overseer. The motel is next to the locked police compound. Through the high cyclone-wire fence, I can see a group of police in a mess room playing pool with some of the nurses. Two officers drive up and park their van, before heaving an old mattress over the windscreen to protect it from the nightly barrage of rocks.
"November 19, 2004 must have looked like another grindingly banal day Š"
The article goes on for another 4000 words, all as stark. November 19 was the day Mulrunji Doomadgee died. This was a story for the outside world of how we treat our black Australians, and why.
Nothing has changed in 200 years.