** Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains mentions of someone who has died***
Introduction by Croakey: Western Australian Senator Dorinda Cox, a Yamatji-Noongar woman, former police officer and family violence researcher, has said she joined the Senate in 2021 with “one pressing priority”: to initiate an inquiry into missing and murdered Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and children.
Today she stood in anger and frustration in the Senate, saying she had been silenced as the only black woman on the two-year inquiry, and been further horrified by “radio silence” from the Federal Government and mainstream media since the inquiry’s report and findings came down.
Leading Indigenous women’s advocate Antoinette Braybrook has written that the Senate inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls was “a long-overdue and desperately needed opportunity to find justice and push for change in the names of so many lost to family and community”.
But its work and final report have angered and disappointed key Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women who had worked for its establishment, including Cox who slammed its 10 recommendations as “weak” and “toothless”.
Cox said the Senate’s Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee’s failure to adopt recommendations that could create accountability, cultural safety and, critically, capture the right data was “absolutely devastating and shameful” and in disregard to people who had shared with it their courageous stories and the pain and trauma they live with every day.
Today she unsuccessfully sought for leave in the Senate to introduce the Greens’s recommendations. It fell to Minister for Indigenous Australians Malarndirri McCarthy, a Yanyuwa woman, to reject the motion on process grounds, saying “more than a week is needed to look at this report and look at it respectfully and thoroughly”.
Our feature article below was published originally at The Conversation under the heading ‘The report on murdered and missing Indigenous women and children fails to hold anyone to account. It’s not enough’.
It also critiques the findings: “Missing from the narrative is the focus on the users of violence and the state systems that have caused harm and repeatedly failed to support First Nations women and children”, it says.
Its authors include Shirleen Campbell and Connie Shaw from the Tangentyere Women’s Family Safety Group (TWFSG) in Mparntwe/Alice Springs, who, after a violent attack on an Aboriginal woman at the Todd River in 2017 was ignored by local press, led a 300-strong, anti-violence march through the streets of Alice Springs.
Having contributed to the inquiry, the authors write that they each know First Nations women and children who have been murdered and disappeared. “We think about them every single day.”
See also this article by Debbie Kilroy and Tabitha Lean from the National Network of Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls. Beneath the article below are further responses to the report from Cox, Senator Lidia Thorpe, Indigenous journalist Dr Amy McQuire, Antoinette Braybrook, and the Australian Human Rights Commission.
Chay Brown, Connie Shaw, Kayla Gilynn-Braun and Shirleen Campbell write:
After two years and 16 hearings, the Senate Inquiry into Missing and Murdered First Nations women handed down its report last week.
While important, it was not the moment of reckoning many of us had hoped for.
The Senate inquiry was introduced and spearheaded by Dorinda Cox, the West Australian Greens Senator, who has called the report’s recommendations “weak” and “toothless”.
The inquiry came after other nations, such as Canada and the United States, held their own inquiries into missing and murdered Indigenous women.
Australia’s own report about the appalling rates of violence against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women was comparatively benign.
No one’s counting
The inquiry’s terms of reference focused on missing and murdered First Nations women and children. It sought to examine the extent of the problem, comparing investigation practices between First Nations and non-First Nations cases, examining systemic causes, the effectiveness of existing policies, and exploring actions to reduce violence and improve safety.
Additionally, they consider how to honour and commemorate the victims and survivors. By their own reports, the committee was deeply affected and disturbed by the stories they heard.
What the inquiry found is precisely what First Nations women have been saying for decades: that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and children are disproportionately impacted by men’s use of violence.
That their stories and lives are ignored by mainstream media.
That police often fail to adequately investigate, search for, or respond to calls for help from First Nations women and children.
And that the data is shockingly incomplete and inadequate. No one is accurately keeping count.
As Janet Hunt from the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research submitted to the inquiry, there is a gender bias in public policy:
Despite the fact that a comparable number of First Nations women have died as a result of violence against them, as First Nations men have died in custody, it is the latter issue that attracted far more public policy attention, including through an early Royal Commission […]
There is now data on deaths in custody. There is still no data on national deaths of First Nations women by violence.”
Extreme rates of violence
Despite the flawed data, those that were captured show the extreme and disproportionate rate of violence against First Nations women.
National Homicide Monitoring Program data on murdered First Nations women and children from 1989–1990 to 2022–2023 show 476 women were recorded as victims of homicide (murder and manslaughter). One hundred and fifty-eight children were recorded as victims of homicide (murder, manslaughter and infanticide).
First Nations women represented 16 percent of all Australian women homicide victims, despite comprising between two to three percent of the adult female population.
First Nations children represented 13 percent of all child homicide victims.
Counting missing First Nations women and children was equally problematic, somewhat owing to some jurisdictions not recording Indigenous status in their figures.
Despite the flawed data, the Senate inquiry heard 20 percent of missing women in Australia are Aboriginal women.
The report found First Nations children and youth are over-represented in the out-of-home care system (approximately one in 18) and are markedly overrepresented in reports of missing children. These children make up 53 percent of missing children reports.
Not only are First Nations women and children more likely to go missing, they are less likely to be found.
The inquiry also heard the problematic nature of the language of “missing” as being passive, and somehow suggestive that people go deliberately missing. We agree with Amy McQuire’s argument that these First Nations women and children are not missing – but disappeared.
Consistent legal failings
The Senate committee also heard these missing and disappeared First Nations women and children, and their families and communities, were regularly and routinely failed by policing and legal systems.
These systems were often regarded as another harm or threat by First Nations women and children, who were at times over-policed, and at other times, under-policed.
First Nations women are also disproportionately misidentified as the perpetrator, instead of the victim, criminalising First Nations women and creating yet another barrier to getting help.
These issues are intertwined with the dehumanisation of First Nations women and children that manifests in them not being searched for adequately or mourned in the media. There is insufficient accountability for their murders.
What is truly missing in this report is exactly that: accountability. Missing from the narrative is the focus on the users of violence and the state systems that have caused harm and repeatedly failed to support First Nations women and children.
It is this lack of accountability that has prompted Cox to say the report is simply “not enough”.
Falling well short
The report makes ten recommendations. One is co-designing a culturally appropriate way to recognise murdered or disappeared First Nations women and children.
Another is the appointment of a First Nations person with the specific responsibility for advocating for, and addressing violence against, these women and children. This role would be within the Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence Commission.
It also recommends policing practices be harmonised across the country to help close data gaps and create guidelines for the review of past cases. These would then be monitored for progress.
A sustainable funding mechanism for work in this area was also recommended, alongside a request for the media to reflect on the findings of the report, namely the portrayal of these cases in the news.
Guidelines for reporting already exist.
The Senate inquiry was an important step. And these recommendations are welcome. But they do not go far enough.
Some of the authors of this piece gave evidence to this inquiry. And all of us have lost loved ones. Each one of us know First Nations women and children who have been murdered and disappeared. We think about them every single day.
We remember R. Rubuntja, our sister and friend, whose life was stolen and who we spoke about in loving memory to this Senate inquiry.
It is not enough.
If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call the Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander crisis support line 13YARN (13 92 76) or 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732).
About the authors:
Chay Brown is Managing Director, Her Story Consulting & Postdoctoral fellow, Australian National University
Connie Shaw, is co-coordinator of the Tangentyere Youth Safety Group, and Northern Territory Aboriginal Domestic, Family, and Sexual Violence Advisory Group, Indigenous Knowledge
Kayla Glynn-Braun, is Director of Her Story, project coordinator at The Equality Institute, lead on U Right Sis? project, Indigenous Knowledge
Shirleen Campbell is Co-coordinator of Tangentyere Women’s Family Safety Group, Indigenous Knowledge
Responses must be Indigenous-led
The Australian Human Rights Commission said the inquiry, which published 87 submissions and held multiple hearings, had provided more evidence of how to address violence against women and girls in First Nations communities.
But that response must be led by First Nations communities, said Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner Katie Kiss.
“Violence against First Nations women and children is a major problem, and we need to be clear-eyed not only about the nature and extent of this violence, but also about the root causes of this violence, and that’s prejudice, gender inequality and discrimination against women, lack of opportunity, personal trauma, intergenerational trauma and systemic racism,” she said.
“Systemic failures not only drive the violence but also affect the provision and quality of care and support for women experiencing violence, and this includes failures by police, healthcare workers and other service providers.”
The Commission provided a brief summary of the inquiry’s 10 recommendations:
- New and sustainable funding for evidence-based community support and violence prevention programs led by First Nations women and tailored to community needs.
- Increasing the geographic spread and capacity of Family Violence Prevention Legal Services.
- National best practice domestic violence and cultural safety training for police and other relevant service providers.
- Increasing police recruitment of First Nations people, including for senior management positions.
- Better guidelines for reviewing past cases involving disappeared and murdered First Nations women and children.
- A dedicated First Nations advocate in the national Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence Commission.
- Significant improvements to data collection and research about violence against First Nations women and girls.
- Independent annual audits of relevant national strategic plans to measure and evaluate progress on advancing the health, safety and rights of First Nations people.
- Improved standards for media reporting on murdered and disappeared First Nations women and children.
National emergency
Cox told the Senate today it was time to declare a “national emergency” for missing, disappeared and murdered Indigenous women, who amid systemic and structural violence are both over policed and under-supported, afraid to seek help lest they lose their children, and often wrongly identified as perpetrators.
In a passionate speech, she said the committee had published the report late last Friday, after MPs and media had looked away, compounding the “silencing” that she had experienced in the shaping of its recommendations. “Radio silence” had followed since, she said, describing lack of mainstream media reporting on the issue as also “disgraceful”.
Cox said every member of the committee had said how affected and moved they were by the harrowing stories told to them. “Well guess what? You’ve got the power in this country to make change, and you’re doing nothing about it. The outrage should be there, but it’s not.”
In separate comments to the report, Cox laid out reforms she had urged, including more accountability (with targets and goals) from police and the justice system and sufficient funding for community-led services to assist women to report incidents and threats of violence to police “in a way they will be both respected and heard”.
She also called for a focus on deaths of First Nations women in custody and for international oversight over Australia’s progress on keeping First Nations women and children safe.
“We heard and know that our women and children are disappearing and dying at unacceptable alarming rates. This is an issue that should be above politics. Yet these recommendations fall below expectations and do not reflect the evidence heard.”
More silencing
Leading Indigenous journalist, author and campaigner Amy McQuire, had already criticised the conduct of the inquiry, saying it was shrouded in “silence”, as are disappeared Indigenous women in media reports, police investigations and coronial inquiries that position them as responsible for the violence they experience.
Instead of ‘uncovering’ the truth of the crisis, the inquiry “demonstrates again how the state will refuse accountability for its own complicity in the forcible disappearances of Indigenous women”, wrote McQuire, a Darumbal and South Sea Islander woman who has just published a book, Black Witness, on media failures in reporting Indigenous affairs.
“Instead of breaking a silence, it reproduces the silencing processes that I have witnessed time and time again in coronial inquests in which First Nations women have been forcibly disappeared,” she said.
No more funding for police
Antoinette Braybrook, who is CEO of Djirra, a national Aboriginal-led violence prevention and legal services organisation, said the recommendations fail to address “massive gaps in data” that policy and law makers use to make decisions that directly affect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women’s and children’s safety.
Closing the Gap data, which is intended to show progress in reducing violence against women and children, is now over six years out of date, she said. “This is unacceptable. You cannot manage what you don’t measure”.
Braybrook welcomed the inquiry’s recommendations for the Federal Government to act on the many recommendations of the Independent Review of the National Legal Assistance Partnership and allocate more funding for frontline family violence and legal services.
She also welcomed a recommendation for ongoing and sustainable funding for frontline Aboriginal-led domestic, family and sexual violence support services and for highlighting the lack of services especially in regional and remote areas.
But she said Djirra does not support any recommendation on more funding for police, instead calling for governments to establish an independent mechanism, led by First Nations women, to ensure police treat every report of violence against a First Nations woman or child seriously, and properly investigate.
“This must include apparent suicides, accidents and deaths by overdose where there is a history of family violence,” she said. “Pouring more and more public resources into policing and unfair, punitive and racist systems is not the answer.”
Health system also missing in report
The recommendations make no direct mention of health services, despite the role of health professionals and systems in high profile deaths in custody. Croakey has not been able to date to track any comment on the findings from mainstream health organisations.
A number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander-led health and justice organisations made submissions to the inquiry, including: the Queensland Aboriginal and Islander Health Council (QAIHC), Partnership for Justice in Health, The Healing Foundation, and Central Australian Aboriginal Congress. See here for more.
Further reading
Justice overdue: a missed opportunity to address the crisis of disappeared and murdered Indigenous women and children: Debbie Kilroy and Tabitha Lean, Croakey
Separate comments to the inquiry from Gunnai, Gunditjmara and Djab Wurring Senator Lidia Thorpe.
The inquiry into missing and murdered Aboriginal women gave victims’ families hope. How much longer can they wait for justice? Bridget Brennan, ABC News. Brennan, a Dja Dja Wurrung, Yorta Yorta woman, also led a 2022 ABC TV Four Corners investigation into Australia’s murdered and missing Indigenous women.
Truth telling and self-determination are critical for addressing violence against First Nations women and children: Jade Bradford, Croakey.
See Croakey’s archive of articles on Indigenous health
