Independent mechanisms are needed to deal with Indigenous complaints about police conduct and investigations linked to missing and murdered women and children, an inquiry has found.
After two years of pubic hearings, a Senate committee inquiry into missing and murdered First Nations women and children has made 10 recommendations after handing down its final report on Thursday.
They include a recommendation to review policing practices in each jurisdiction across Australia to ensure interactions with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are “consistent and of a high standard”.
The committee also recommended those state and territory reviews consider what each has learned and aim to “harmonise best police practices” by December 31, 2025.
“For there to be confidence and trust in the justice system, police forces should not be solely responsible for handling complaints about, and conducting reviews into, their own mistakes and alleged misconduct, with no external oversight,” the committee said.
Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus would need to task the nine-member Police Ministers Council from every state and territory to the conduct the reviews.
The committee also recommended federal, state and territory governments co-design a “culturally appropriate and nationally significant” way to recognise and remember First Nations women and children who have been murdered or disappeared, alongside their families and communities.
But Greens senator Dorinda Cox, who introduced the motion that triggered the inquiry by the Legal and Constitutional Affairs References committee, of which she is a member, told parliament the report does not go far enough.
“The recommendations don’t contain any solutions,” she said.
“Where solutions are presented they are presented far too broadly and open to interpretation.
“They are in fact not connected to any outcomes, no performance indicators to make sure that progress can be measured.”
Senator Cox acknowledged the families of women and children who have been murdered or disappeared, saying there should be outrage that people are losing loved ones in this way in Australia.
“People were and are still suffering losses of loved ones without support from the institutions that are supposed to, in fact, help people when they are in need,” she said.
“The situation must not be allowed to continue and there is a moral duty for people in this place who make the laws, who make institutions work for everyone the way they’re actually supposed to.”
The committee also recommended the appointment of a First Nations person at the Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence Commission to advocate on behalf First Nations women and children.
“For many First Nations women and children who have been murdered or disappeared, there has been little, if any, justice,” it said.
