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The Aboriginal Medical Service Redfern Condemns Premier Peter Beattie, the Queensland Director of Public Prosecutions and the Australian Labor Party

26 December 2006 - Media Release - The Aboriginal Medical Service Redfern, Australia’s first community-controlled Aboriginal health service, today issued a strong condemnation of Queensland Premier Peter Beattie and the Queensland Director of Public Prosecutions over the whitewash in relation to the death in Queensland Police custody of  Palm Islander Mulrunji Cameron Doomadgee.

Aboriginal Medical Service Chairperson Sol Bellear said that the Redfern Aboriginal community was as enraged at events in QLD as was every Aboriginal person in Australia.

“When you see very conservative Aboriginal spokesmen such as Noel Pearson, Warren Mundine and senior QLD Police officer Col Dillon condemning the QLD Government, you know that the Doomadgee case is particularly outrageous”, he said.

“Twenty five years ago Australia spent $50 million on the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. That Royal Commission made more than 300 recommendations relating to police and prison administration procedures that, if properly implemented, might have had a significant effect on Aboriginal / police relations. Sadly, the Doomadgee case shows that the Royal Commission was a waste of time and money and that nothing seems to have changed in police culture in the ‘Deep North’ of Australia.”

Mr Bellear pointed out that the irony of Premier Beattie’s stance is that he was intimately acquainted with the brutal methods of the QLD Police force when he was an anti-apartheid demonstrator in the early 1970s.

Mr Bellear said further that the position of all Aboriginal members of the ALP was now untenable and that Warren Mundine had no option but to resign and dissociate himself from a political party that has nationally become more populist and thereby racist ever since the emergence of Hansonism.

 “This issue is not just about Premier Beattie and the QLD Labor Government, it’s about the fact that both major political parties today embrace extremely anti-Aboriginal, discredited assimilation policies of 50 years ago, and that Aboriginal people have historically expected better from Labor. All Aboriginal members of the ALP throughout Australia should either resign or hang their heads in shame.”

He said the Aboriginal Medical Service would support whatever actions the Aboriginal people of Palm Island and Queensland decide to take to force the Beattie Government to give justice to Mulrunji Cameron Doomadgee, and suggested that this case be investigated by the Human Rights Commission.

“The whole world’s watching!” he said.

For further information, contact: Mr Sol Bellear, Chairperson, Aboriginal Medical Service, 0411 481 829

Further information: palm island issues page - includes news index and external links

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