Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Surprise award of a Griffith Electorate Australia Day Award for service

22nd March 2011

I was suprised and delighted when I realised that I had been nominated for a community service award in my electorate, Griffith and had been chosen to receive one of the awards.

Due to the Brisbane floods, the actual giving of the awards was postponed to 19 March. It was a great opportunity to give Kevin Rudd a personal letter asking him to get the Northern Territory Intervention changed. I asked him to reinstate the complete Racial Discrimination Act, make income management completely voluntary, and to change the whole thing from top down to a genuine partnership with local communities.

It was a good day and I was very impressed with many fellow recipients. I wanted to add a photo here but can't find how to do it.

We are still working on the police accountability issue which is a major issue in the overimprisonment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. The two deaths I know most about happened after the people in question had been arrested when other options were available.

The struggle for accountability re Mulrunji's death, the subsequent inquiry and other incidences of unacceptable behaviour continues.

Monique

Police are not accountable - we should all feel less safe

Media Release: Australians for Native Title & Reconciliation (ANTaR) Qld
14 March 2011

Police are not accountable – we should all feel less safe.
“Queenslanders are shocked that those responsible for the botched investigation into the death of Cameron Doomadgee have not been held accountable and will not be appropriately disciplined” Kitty Carra, President of ANTaR Qld said today.

"It is a stain on Queensland’s reputation and is a very serious issue of accountability," She said.
"The fact that a perfectly healthy man died within two hours of arriving at the police station’ is shocking.”

"We all have the right to expect that the police would have carried out a thorough, impartial and rigorous inquiry. The same level of inquiry which they would have carried out if it had been the police officer who died of massive injuries, not the arrested Aboriginal man."

She said events this week had demonstrated very clearly why everyone should be concerned about what happened seven years ago on a remote island to a man we did not know.

"We should care because a lack of accountability undermines any institution and makes it difficult for those who do the right thing, the ethical thing, to act against those few people who don’t.”

ANTaR Qld member Monique Bond said Palm Island Mayor Alf Lacey spoke yesterday about the right of every Queensland person to receive justice and fair treatment, especially from the Queensland Police Service.
"He said the decision not to discipline the six police officers mentioned by the CMC is wrong and Commissioner Atkinson must act immediately to hold them accountable," said Ms Bond

For more information contact
Monique Bond on 0417 764 653