the people of palm island remain losers in the jus

The people of Palm Island remain losers in the justice game
Graham Ring from The National Indigenous Times writes:



Mulrunji Doomadgee, a fit, healthy, 36-year-old man, died in police custody on Palm Island on 19 November 2004 following his arrest by Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley on a charge of "public nuisance". Yet Queensland DPP Leanne Clare has described the death as "a terrible accident’ caused by a ‘complicated fall’.

A coronial inquest conducted by Queensland’s Acting State Coroner, Christine Clements, found that that Mulrunji died due to ‘blood loss caused by rupture of the liver consequent upon blunt compressive force to the upper abdomen.’ Clements found that the initial arrest was ‘not an appropriate exercise of police discretion’.

Forensic pathologist Dr Guy Lampe performed an autopsy on Mulrunji’s body at Cairns' Base Hospital mortuary on 23 November 2004 and found that the deceased’s liver was "almost cleaved in two". The right side of his rib-cage showed fractures of four ribs "from the sixth to the ninth inclusively".


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"You want more Mr Doomadgee, you want more? Have you had enough Mr Doomadgee?" Sergeant Hurley had asked his prisoner, according to Mr Roy Bramwell, a witness who testified at the coronial inquiry.

Palm Island began life as a place of punishment and the stigma still lingers.

The Brisbane-based Faira Aboriginal Corporation’s website records that in 1918, JW Bleakley, the Queensland Protector of Aborigines decided that Palm Island, 65 kilometres north-east of Townsville, would make an ideal site to confine Aboriginal and Islander people who were "problem cases" and "uncontrollables".

The next two decades saw over 1,600 people from 40 different Aboriginal groups across Queensland confined to the Island. In those days "removal to Palm" was the heaviest punishment a Departmental officer could administer. Residents were not permitted to leave the island without the Superintendent’s permission and all outgoing mail was subject to his censorship.

The people of the island took strike action in 1957 and again in 1974 seeking fairer conditions and a degree of autonomy. In 1985 title to the island was passed to the Community Council as a Deed of Grant in Trust (DOGIT). Faira reports that shortly afterwards, houses, shops, a timber mill and farming equipment were disassembled and returned to the mainland on barges.

Premier Beattie’s bland assertion in the wake of the Mulrunji inquiry that it is time for the community of Palm Island to "move on", will not mollify a people who have been denied justice for too long.