Blumer, Noor --- "President's page: Time for a better way" [2018] PrecedentAULA 39; (2018) 147 Precedent 3

---

TIME FOR A BETTER WAY

By Noor Blumer

It is 6:15am and I am in Bali as I start to write my first president’s page: by the time this issue goes to press I will be trying to fill the fabulous shoes of Laura Neil, and others before her, as president of the ALA.

I was also in Bali in May three years ago just after the executions of Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan. I went to Kerobokan prison, sat outside and meditated on their lives and untimely deaths.

Despite the tragedy of so many aspects of their trials and ultimate executions, there was one part of their story that shone with hope. We have now heard many stories of Kerobokan and other Indonesian prisons and it is notable how the prison culture in this ‘developing’ country differs from Australia’s ‘first world’ prisons and detention centres. Sukumaran, in particular, was able to develop as an artist and become a spiritual leader and mentor to the other prisoners. We have few such Australian stories.

How different to the stories of abuse suffered by young boys at the Don Dale Youth Detention Centre in Darwin, or the abuse suffered by those seeking asylum on Manus Island, Nauru and Christmas Island. More than 2 per cent of the Australian adult Indigenous population are in prison, higher than the rate for African Americans, Indigenous Americans, Maoris, and Canadian Aboriginals. That percentage is increasing rather than decreasing.

In July, the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services (NATSILS) alarmingly reported that 100 per cent of young people in custody in the Northern Territory were Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander. In Western Australia the figure is 73 per cent. In Queensland it is 71 per cent. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are 25 times more likely to be locked up than non-Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children.

This is a national tragedy where a whole generation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are having their lives seriously damaged as a result of Australia’s punitive approach to law and order.

Given that the law has for so long been an instrument of oppression for Indigenous Australians, it was appropriate that the ALA recently indicated its endorsement and wholehearted support for the Uluru Statement from the Heart. The Uluru Statement powerfully expressed how the Australian legal system has disempowered and marginalised Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people:

‘Proportionally, we are the most incarcerated people on the planet. We are not an innately criminal people. Our children are alienated from their families at unprecedented rates. This cannot be because we have no love for them. And our youth languish in detention in obscene numbers. They should be our hope for the future. These dimensions of our crisis tell plainly the structural nature of our problem. This is the torment of our powerlessness.’

Several of the articles in this edition illustrate how our response to crime and punishment has resulted in devastating effects for many socially and economically disadvantaged people in Australia, particularly Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. They also enlighten us as to alternative, more therapeutic responses which will have a greater, lasting benefit for the individuals concerned and society as a whole.

I will leave our eminent contributors to help us understand the true situation in our land of plenty.

The ALA has a proud tradition of defending the preservation of human rights and the rule of law, protecting and maintaining the common law and is a constant, loud and respected voice of reason on many vital legal subjects.

The public wants to hear about the law from lawyers, not journalists, and that is what the ALA has been able to provide, more so than any other legal organisation, with spokespeople of the calibre of Andrew Morrison SC, Andrew Stone SC, Greg Barns and a succession of eminent and able presidents.

My thanks to all of our members whose continued support and contributions allow the ALA to be heard and fight to uphold the rights of Australians. I look forward to meeting as many of you as possible in the coming year.

Noor Blumer is a Director at Blumers Personal Injury Lawyers. PHONE [phone] EMAIL [e-mail].