Indigenous Incarceration

Mr GARDNER (Morialta) (14:48): My question is to the Minister for Correctional Services. Why does South Australia have the second highest rate of Aboriginal imprisonment in Australia of all states? According to the ABS Corrective Services September quarter statistics released today, more than 2.5 per cent of South Australia's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population are in prison, well above the national average and second only to Western Australia, one of only three states where this rate didn't decrease this year.

The Hon. J.R. RAU (Enfield—Deputy Premier, Attorney-General, Minister for Justice Reform, Minister for Planning, Minister for Housing and Urban Development, Minister for Industrial Relations, Minister for Child Protection Reform) (14:49): The question of Aboriginal incarceration is a very, very serious problem, and it is something that, as a nation, we really need to be very concerned about. It is true that there are very high numbers of Aboriginal people incarcerated. In fact, the chances of a person of Aboriginal extraction being incarcerated is approximately 10 times the chance of anybody else who is an Australian citizen being incarcerated, so that is some indication of how seriously unacceptable that is.

Of course, the question as to why these people are in prison is not so much a question about the corrections system; it's a question about the way our society as a whole for centuries has managed to interact with Aboriginal people. The disadvantage, the deeply entrenched disadvantage, in Aboriginal society, Aboriginal communities, which is becoming a intergenerational problem—and it has been for a long time—where people don't have work, they don't have educational opportunities, they don't have role models, which are being constructively engaged in the community, and of course this causes tremendous misery.

It is true that in South Australia, as indeed I think is the case in Western Australia, things many years ago were perhaps not policed in the way they are now, like, for example, domestic violence. All of us would know there was a time when domestic violence was treated as something that goes on inside the house and it's not really our business. The fact is that when Aboriginal people are involved in domestic violence these days, to the credit of the police force they do actually get involved and they do arrest the offenders, and those offenders are charged, and those people who are charged and convicted wind up often in prison.

There are many factors at work here. I think all of us as South Australians, as Australians generally, need to have a very good look at how we can completely transform the experience of being an Aboriginal in the 21^st century in this country and see if we can't find ways where we can actually give people positive directions, positive role models, and opportunities to have an aspiration in life which is broader than it presently is.

It's a tragedy, but I make the point again. I can tell you this: a couple of years ago, I remember speaking to the then Western Australian attorney-general, Mr Porter, who now, as we know, is a federal minister.

The Hon. J.J. Snelling: A very, very good minister.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: He is very, very good minister and he was a very, very good attorney.

The Hon. J.J. Snelling: You're a particular fan.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: I have a great deal of respect for Mr Porter. Mr Porter made a point at a federal council meeting of attorneys, where he said, 'Before you go around criticising us for the levels of incarceration of Aboriginal people in Western Australia, just bear in mind that many of those people are people who the police previously did not even investigate, offences involving these people because they were in communities. Since we've been policing those communities properly, we have been finding these offenders, we have been prosecuting them.' The other measure that he said we should have regard to is the measure of victimhood and how much safer people feel because these people are not in those communities. It is a very complicated problem.