Last September, Queensland’s acting state coroner Christine Clements ruled that Senior Sergeant Christopher Hurley, a police officer working on the Palm Island Aboriginal community, had caused the death of Aboriginal man Mulrunji while in his custody.
When the Queensland Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), Leanne Clare, later refused to lay charges against Hurley, it wasn’t just the state’s Indigenous community who was shocked. Clements’ coronial report was very clear about Hurley’s role, but Clare ruled in her review that Hurley had no case to answer.
Queensland Labor Premier Peter Beattie insisted that he was powerless to overturn the DPP’s decision, but the subsequent outcry forced the state government to ask that Clare seek a second opinion. Clare initially refused, but in the face of a mounting furore, which was creating a crisis for the state government, she relented and offered the government the file on the case.
Why the DPP ruled that Hurley was innocent of any wrongdoing is not open to public scrutiny. However, with the file available, Beattie appointed a former chief judge of the Queensland District Court, Pat Shanahan, to review the case.
Mulrunji’s family, the Queensland Murri community and their supporters insisted that any review of the circumstances of Mulrunji’s death be conducted by someone independent of the Queensland judiciary and police force. Beattie ignored this appeal when he appointed Shanahan. However, soon after his appointment Shanahan had to resign after it was revealed that he had sat on the panel that appointed Clare to the position of DPP.
On January 3, Acting Premier Anna Bligh announced that Sir Laurence Street, a former NSW chief justice, had been appointed instead. Bligh stressed that Street “would not be reviewing the DPP and was simply providing a second opinion on the case based on the evidence”.
Lex Wotton, who is facing charges over his alleged role in the riots on Palm Island in November 2004 that resulted in the burning down of the watch-house and court house, says that the Palm Island community had to push hard to have the review conducted by someone outside of Queensland. “But we won’t be satisfied as a community until this matter actually fronts a judge and jury”, he told Green Left Weekly.
Wotton explained that the four Palm Islanders who have been jailed for their role in the 2004 riot had decided to plead guilty to their charges in order to put the matter behind them. But after their initial court cases, the DPP appealed against the “leniency” of their sentences.
“The community on Palm”, Wotton added, “is a very strong group of people and we are committed to making sure we get a better outcome, and we appreciate the support we’re receiving. In the end it’s about better communities.”
But in Queensland this is still a long way off. On January 9, extra police were flown into Aurukun Aboriginal community on Cape York after 300 people reacted angrily to reports from a local man, Warren Bell, that he had been assaulted by police while in custody. While Aboriginal elders worked with the community to stabilize matters, assertions by the police that no assault took place are being challenged.
As Brisbane-based Murri activist Sam Watson told GLW, “there is substantial forensic material available that supports the Aboriginal man’s claims that he was grievously assaulted whilst in custody”. He added that senior Aboriginal people are now coming forward with other material clearly supporting Bell’s claims.
“Any police officer involved in that unlawful assault needs to be identified and suspended, and charges need to be laid”, Watson said. “We have this extreme situation where a police officer actually fired a privately owned [unlicenced] rifle at the crowd of people who were confronting the police station.”
Bell has been charged with assault. Nine other locals, alleged to be “ringleaders” of the January 9 protests, have also been charged.
“Aboriginal people across Australia have lost all confidence in the capacity of the criminal justice system to address our needs. Mulrunji’s death in custody happened in November 2004 — we have a brother who has been buried long since and we still have the police officer who is responsible for that unlawful killing walking scot-free around Surfers Paradise. And yet Aboriginal people who rose up in justifiable anger have since been charged, convicted and sent to jail for allegedly damaging public property.
“You can always replace bricks and mortar, but we have a man who met his death by an unlawful assault administered by a serving member of the Queensland police force. The deputy coroner found that Hurley bashed Mulrunji to death on the floor of the Palm Island watch-house and we keep asking: Why hasn’t Hurley been charged? Why is he not before the courts?”
Watson concluded that Aboriginal people and their supporters “are going to have to stand squarely behind this line that has been drawn in the sand by the police on Palm Island and that line has been drawn with the blood of Mulrunji. We are going to defend that line and continue to fight for justice because unless we can force the Queensland government and judicial system to place a very real value on the life of our brother, then the life of an Aboriginal person on Australian soil hasn’t any value at all.”