Will the Queensland Premier murder the Voice?

“I think there are police departments that have to do some soul searching. This is not new. It’s been going on for decades”
– Barack Obama on Black Deaths in Custody in 2015.

There have been 540 aboriginal deaths-in-custody since the 1991 Royal Commission released its 339 recommendations. Over 32 years on, those recommendations are yet to be implemented.

Open letter to the Premier of Queensland Anastacia Palaszczuk.

Here are just some questions and concerns about police shooting an aboriginal man in Love Street, Mareeba on Saturday afternoon 25 March 2023.

• 1. Why shoot a man if he is ‘threatening to self-harm’?
  
• 2. Why are the media permitted to publish misinformation about the private life of the deceased extracted from social media?
  
• 3. Why are police allowed to use negative signalling about an aboriginal person they have just shot dead? Senior police have been sprouting contested facts by talking about ‘a knife in the hands‘ of the deceased and that he had ‘threatened domestic violence’.
  
• 4. What is a knife against 15 armed police?
  
• 5. Why say that there is domestic violence when the woman in question says that she was unhurt.
  
• 6. Witnesses independent of police shooters say he was talking on his mobile phone, that he was not holding a knife. If that is the case, where is the phone belonging to the person he was talking to? Time stamps on each phone will establish this as fact.
  
• 7. Why was the army deployed in the area after the man was shot by police?
  
• 8. Police claim they have no footage from the body cameras of the police yet have released audio of a woman screaming without explaining the context. Why?
  
• 9. Why have the police kept the partner of the deceased away from her aboriginal relatives?

• 10. Why have you, Anastacia Palaszczuk, said the matter is in the hands of a coroner from Brisbane when the north Queensland coroner could have done the inquest?
  
• 11. Why have police investigating police? “Circumstances surrounding this incident are being investigated by independent officers from the Ethical Standards Command on behalf of the state coroner.” – Police Superintendent Sonja Smith.
  
• 12. Why did senior police decide to execute an Aboriginal man in this place at this time?
  
• 13. Was it in response to political pressure that the crime statistics were just too high in Mareeba?
  
• 14. Why are you, Anastasia Palaszczuk, the Premier of Queensland, locking up children, many of them indigenous?
  
• 15. According to the Qld coroner’s website: “The coroner has wide powers of investigation, and can request additional reports, statements or information about the death. They may obtain more information from investigators, police, doctors, engineers, workplace health and safety inspectors, mining inspectors, air safety officers, electrical inspectors and other witnesses.” WBT received this comment: “The coroner has the power. Do they have the resources? It may be that the non-local coroner was chosen because he/she had most time available to deal with an important matter. Although this would have to be weighed against the advantages the local coroner would have in local knowledge and relationships and again weighed against the disadvantages there may be in the local coroner’s relationships which may prejudice him/her. I suppose what I am saying is that you can’t immediately assume that there is some sinister motive in appointing an out of town coroner.“

The Voice

According to Newspoll, Queensland is the only state that will vote “NO” on the Voice referendum. I wonder why Queenslanders are going to vote against the voice when it has the highest proportion (1 in 20) of aboriginal people of any state; and, has the second largest number ( >274,000 ) of aboriginal people outright after New South Wales? Has anyone ever asked aboriginal people in Queensland what they want? Black deaths in custody is a separate issue to the voice but what if there is an overlapping in people’s minds? Queensland has had some of the worst experiences of deaths in custody where police have murdered aboriginal people showing any resistance.

The Voice is a Proposed Law: to alter the Constitution to recognise the First Peoples of Australia by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.

How is a referendum carried?
At the referendum the proposed alteration must be approved by a ‘double majority’. That is:
– a national majority of voters in the states and territories
– a majority of voters in a majority of the states (i.e. at least four out of six states).
The  votes of people living in the ACT, the NT and any of Australia’s external territories count towards the national majority only.

Queensland could tip the balance, denying a ‘double majority’ by bringing down the national vote below 50%.

Shame
And some say “Shame” when we’re talkin’ up
And “Shame” for the way we are
And “Shame” cause we ain’t got a big flash house
Or a steady job and a car…
But I reckon the worstest shame is yours
You deny us human rights.
– Kevin Gilbert

Ian Curr
29 March 2023