This is last week’s news, but here’s a story about a dodgy old vehicle that actually deserves some attention. In an old prison van with faulty air conditioning, an aboriginal man was transported 350 kilometres from Laverton to Kalgoorlie on a 42 degree day. By the time he arrived, his heart had stopped beating, and was probably already dead from heatstroke.
His alleged crime? Drink-driving.
These events are appalling on many levels, but, worst of all, the previous (Labor) state government had known about problems with the vans since October 2006, and didn’t do anything about it.
How are we supposed to achieve reconciliation with Australia’s indigenous people if we continue to treat them in ways that would result in a prison sentence if done to a dog? 20 years after the deaths in custody Royal Commission, no less?
I want to know why these “guards” were not charged with criminal negligence causing death, or similar.
On the face of it, this incident appears to demonstrate systemic cruelty and indifference.
My sympathies to the man’s family.
If the van cooling was faulty they could have transported the “prisoner” at night.
This man was baked in a moderate oven for 4 hours. Seriously. He had 3rd degree burns where his skin was touching the floor after he collapsed.
They cooked him alive. The only reason I can see that they shouldn’t be charged with murder is that I doubt they actually planned to kill him. The ouctome, nevertheless, was the same.
agreed.
In a sad and tragic way, this demonstrates why the selection processes for parliamentary parties should be related at least in small part to merit and ability.
The relevant Minister, Margaret Quirke, basically revealed herself to be completely incompetent in dealing with both Cabinet and her Department. Resultantly, the vans and procedures were left in place, despite numerous warnings as to the dangers and the possibility of just this scenario occuring.
And a man died.
Quirke should resign from the Parliament immediately, but also those who promoted and supported her purely because she was from the ‘correct’ faction have a lot of explaining to do.
Thanks for bringing this up, Robert. This is disgusting on so many levels that it is barely believable that it could happen in a so-called civilised society.
Those who saw Quirke’s performance on 4 Corners would agree with Luke’s call for her resignation from parliament.
I think there is a criminal investigation about to take place into the conduct of the drivers. Also, perhaps, some of the security company’s mid-level honchos. Isn’t that what 4 Corners said?
From National Indigenous Times
Mr Hope apportioned blame for Mr Ward’s death between Ms Stokoe and Mr Powell, the private company Global Solutions Ltd (GSL), which has since been acquired by G4S, and the WA Department of Corrective Services.
G4S Public affairs director Tim Hall said Ms Stokoe and Mr Powell had disregarded orders to check on prisoners at least once every two hours.
But he said their dismissal was a result of the Department of Corrective Services withdrawing their work permits on Monday.
“The withdrawal of their work permits effectively made any other considerations unnecessary,” Mr Hall said.
Mr Hope has asked the Director of Public Prosecutions to consider whether charges should be laid over the incident. – AAP
Sorry hit the Submit Button prematurely re #7 (gosh – just like Malcolm…)
Mr Hope is the WA State Coroner, but Mr Ward’s death raises two key issues:
1. the use of private contractors within prison & policing services & the failure to adequately supervise these services by the government departments & authorities
2. The appalling high rates of custodial processes involving Indigenous Australians; Mr Ward was refused bail for a minor offense that you or I as white Australians would have reasonably expected to be bailed for. I am not aware of Mr Ward’s previous driving history, but the question really isn’t about the specifics but about the manner in which Indigenous Australians are treated by the courts – bail refusal is common, often on recommendation of police prosecutors and so people are pushed into the prison system for minor infringements. The usual reasons stated are likelyhood of infringement of bail conditions and/or failure to pay imposed fines. This might appear noble and just work by the Law, but blind justice is blind to the costs to the individual, the costs to their community & blind also to the costs to the broader community both in terms of the monies spent punitively transporting people hundreds of kilometres, subsequent imprisonment & the consequences of high levels of Indigenous engagement with the prison system, so often initially for minor misdemeanours.
There was a rally, but turnout disappointing.
http://theworstofperth.com/2009/06/21/worst-of-all/
Big contrast to the police bashing rally recently with celebrities trying to jump on the bandwagon.
Seems Global solutions is part of that messy stew of corporations trading in prisons, corrections and (ironically) “safety”, of which our old friend Wackenhut was one – remember Baxter and the other detention centres?
Great post Robert, thanks.
As I write this there are 356 comments in the ute threads. Will this post about an horrific incident receive as many as those ones about two men’s egos? I somehow think not.
But what is there to say ?
Disgusting, criminal, racist all the labels apply.
What other comment is possible but to convey abhorrence for the individuals and system which fostered this bastardry.?
If there is criminal prosecutions directed at the men driving this tin hearst, you would have to conclude by the evidence of the Crikey article of last Tuesday (16th) detailing the vastly different treatment of a government employee in charge of indigenous people in custody (which resulted in that previous outrageous death in custody on Palm Island some 5 years ago), that these men would have got away with a pay out, time of to recover and a promotion – if only they’d been government employees.
After all these years we still have not learnt how to treat the indigenous people of this country as if they were people, with citizenship rights, or – frankly – as if they even mattered.
The treatment of Mr Ward was a tragedy of criminal neglect no matter what he had or had not done.
But I am disturbed by suggestions here there is some connection between his alleged offence and the degree of awfulness of his death: there are implications in this thread that (a) it would somehow have been less bad if his crime had been something more ‘serious’, and that (b) drink driving is somehow not ‘serious’. I know that SA has a deeply entrenched cowboy culture of driving and a fine disregard for such things and WA probably does as well, but the truth is that drink driving kills far more people than substandard prison vans. Please don’t trivialise it, in this context or any other.
It certainly adds to the culpability of the guards IMO; any idiot would know that a drunk person would soon be suffering from dehydration, if not already.
PC – re drink driving being serious. I think the underlying implied point is not one of how trivial or serious dd is (i.e. in justifying transport in custody), but whether Mr Ward continued being a danger to others. If he was, then incarceration under high security would be justified. Just as he may have been dangerous when in the car, when removed from it, he was most probably not.
In the big smoke, most people get charged under summons. What was it about him, do you think, got him into the van?
“What was it about him, do you think, got him into the van?”
As I remember from the 4 Corners programme, it was given as the likelihood that he would reoffend.
I would say the fact that he was the “wrong” colour had a fair bit to do with it too.
PC: I suppose my point is that I do not see why it was necessary for him to be remanded in custody, and carted 350 km to court in the first place, for such an offence.
I agree that drink driving is a serious offence, and one that should not be taken lightly, but as Roger said, once removed from the wheel of his car Mr Ward no longer constituted a risk to anyone.
That’s what I didn’t understand when I saw the Four Corners programme.
From watching the programme I think if the JP was more experienced and given more information from the police then he probably wouldn’t have been remanded in custody. But that’s really just a distraction to the real problem – in that kind of weather the guards should have been checking on their prisoner more regularly and the there were obvious problems with the transport van. Even a simple temperature alarm or an alarm that indicated that the air conditioning was not working in the back would probably have prevented his death.
This one is a shocker.
Regradless of whether he should have been remanded (and I’m with Dpahon on that score), those Gtwo guards as well as the security company contracted to do the job apparently failed to take even basic steps to see to the bloke’s safety.
Theres more than a whiff of manslaugther about this, IMHO.
Why do other media stories get so much more exposure than this incident? A man is cooked alive and why is there so very little to say? Two things I have read come to mind:
I suggest that the all too brief remembering and then forgetting of these episodes has much to do with our continual tussle with our traumatic history of violence, and the double vision we have been regularly offered as a defence against the painful truths of history, – signified quite famously by Howard – and fictionalised quite powerfully as a psychological pathology by Gail Jones in her book Sorry in 2007.
There would be so much to say. If only we could come to terms with how our culture and history is implicated in it. But until then these violent incidents are doomed to join the other revenants of our unexamined past. Would that they might arrive at last, so there could be no more silent rooms where violence on the basis of race is supressed and forgotten.
“Why do other media stories get so much more exposure than this incident? A man is cooked alive and why is there so very little to say?”
Because he was just a drunken, old blackfella, don’t you know, Casey?
It sounds like these guards should be up on manslaughter charges, but history tells us how difficult it is to get a conviction when it’s an indigenous person killed by white authorities.
Verbosity is over-rated.
Since when does the number of posts on a blog relate to the relevance and importance of a topic.
Sometimes [often] words fail.
This disgraceful death highlights the problems inherent in a privatised prison service. (The same company also ran Baxter. I’ve seen it close up. Like Auschwitz, the misery was a design feature.) That’s not to say the same thing couldn’t have happened if the drivers were govt employees, but if it were a govt service, it’s more likely that the van’s air conditioner would have been maintained.
Still, as you’ve pointed out, Fine, the victim was black. It hardly rates, compared to Utegate.
I hope the drivers are prosecuted for at least manslaughter, and that the dead man’s relatives feel up to suiong the company who employed them.
When the coroner’s report was released I read it and, well, everyone should read it. Then I looked for comment on all the usual blogs and websites and didn’t find much, didn’t know about the demo, which I would have gone to, and now the whole case will be forgotten. So thanks to Robert for this post at least.
I’m not sure that Margaret Quirk is quite the right target – she took the request for money to replace the clapped-out vans to cabinet and they refused. This was at a time when the Premier was obssessed with a new billion dollar sports stadium, the Indigenous affairs minister was absorbed in her new half a billion dollar museum etc That whole cabinet has blood on its hands – the dangerous state of the vans was known and reported on. I think they didn’t care because there are no votes in indigenous affairs. And that’s because voters don’t make them care.
Australians can’t or won’t do much about the sorry state of indigenous affairs in places like W.A. Perhaps it will take sanctions against us from the rest of the world to make people wake up.
When I first heard about this appalling incident on PM the company representative, when asked why the two guards were still working, replied to the effect that they had done nothing wrong because they had obeyed company procedures. When the shit hit the fan after the four corners program they had done a complete 360 and suspended them.I can’t help but feel that the entrenched racism that abounds in this country is to blame, if the passenger had been a white fella we would all have heard about this long before it went to the coroner.
This was one of the most disturbing incidents I can remember and I sincerely offer my deepest sympathy to Mr. Wards family.
Nobody deserves to die like that. Everyone responsible should face appropriate criminal sanction.
GSL is the same company that was invited to tender to run the NSW govt’s soon-to-be privatised Parklea Prison.
http://www.smh.com.au/national/fatalvan-firm-listed-for-work-at-parklea-20090615-cat6.html
“if the passenger had been a white fella we would all have heard about this long before it went to the coroner.”
Counterfactual – ur doin it rong!
“if the passenger had been a white fella
we would all have heard about this long before it went to the coronerthis would simply never have happened.”The overwhelming tenor of these posts shows that the racism (as per the atrocity and its gut wrenching crawl so far), is way out of step with the readers of LP. And for me it is very reassuring – I’ve always lived believing most people are fair and honourable.
Is this indicative of the great divide in Oz? Between the “Hansonite” ethos that erupts through the calm at odd and unpredictable times? That ethos that gets the veneer of respectability – with John Howard being the recent past master of the wink and nudge (without letting himself being nailed too securely to the bed) of Australian racism.
And we must all grieve and continue to work for a change – so evident in the majority of these posts.
All involved should be punished – the officers (who, regardless of “company policy”, were functioning human beings who should have realised what they were doing), the company, whose negligent attitude to prisoner care is arguably criminal, and the Minister who had warnings of what was happening and did nothing.
It’s a national scandal and it’s unbelievable that nothing more has happened – that it’s just as likely to happen again.
Oh come on Jeremy.
The private contractors have clearly failed to deliver their cargo intact. Their client would surely have expressed dissatisfaction and refused to pay the invoice. So naturally, the contractors will now correct the problem, for fear of losing their contract.
Why do you hate the market?
How are we supposed to achieve reconciliation with Australia’s indigenous people if we continue to treat them in ways that would result in a prison sentence if done to a dog?
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Look mate we apologized okay. Now my mate in Queensland, Anna Maaaate. She’s doing her bit for the environment. And if that means we have to shaft a coupla b… I mean indigenous persons well so be it. We’ve got to
be seen to bedo something about the environment and these b… um indigenous persons don’t have any bloody coal..
The way reconcilliation works in this country mate is once in a blue moon somethin’ gets on the Teev that shows ‘Straya that we treat the aboriginies like shit and then we all get outraged for five minutes and blame the right or the left depending on what side we’re on mate. And then we do something
purely cosmeticdeep and profound in front of a lot of cameras mate. We say: strewth that ain’t no good mate. And then get back to out plasma screens ’cause The Footy Show is on in five minutes. Mate..
That’s the way it works. The Greens should be howlin’ for blood at the denial of indigenous property rights but then they’d have to choose between that a wild river or too and that would be complicated and difficult and we don’t want that. Start thinkin’ like that we might end up in government or somethin’. Bugger that. Mate.
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Now, mate, I gotta get back on the environment track mate. Peter maaate. I mean Mr Coates sir.
Mervyn Langford – “The overwhelming tenor of these posts shows that the racism (as per the atrocity and its gut wrenching crawl so far), is way out of step with the readers of LP. And for me it is very reassuring – I’ve always lived believing most people are fair and honourable.”
Which is what I’d always believed as well..until about 8 years ago…where I tried, many times, to raise the issue of the injustice experienced by Aboriginal people amongst my urban friends, who could all be described as slightly left of liberal, it seems to me that without an horrific situation to hang their outrage on most people are unsympathetic, or even bored by the repeated inference that there is a problem at all. It doesn’t give me great hope for there ever being a more just outcome. We need to get comfortable with our discomfort [maybe that's what Casey was suggesting earlier?] so that we can get to a point where an honest conversation can happen without the standard ‘damage control’ response of governments. If I said we needed a truth and reconciliation commission right now, I guess it’s be admonished as too symbolic, when we need practical solutions?
Well said Robert
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It’s really hard to pick whether yet another all too believable debasement (cooking in truth) of an Aboriginal persons rights and life in custody, or the fatuous bleating of parliament on the basis of ego and bullsh*t, is most indicative of what a disgusting, ignorant and pathetic culture this place sometimes seems to be infected by. Together it’s a certainty.
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It beggars belief that Mr Ward was recognised as a human being by those responsible to me eyes and ears.
Adrien,
I hardly think this is an occasion to criticise the Greens. I was lucky enough to be able to vote the ALP out of it’s ‘iconic’ Fremantle stronghold and vote in the Green’s Adele Carles. Here’s a paragraph from her inaugural speech, 9th June, 2009:
“Therefore, it is with great personal significance that tonight, on behalf of the Greens, I acknowledge that the first Australians never ceded or sold their land to the white occupiers who came. Their land was stolen and their people were forcibly dispossessed, removed from their families and in some cases massacred. We know that this dispossession and cruelty cannot be removed with words. However, until we all fully acknowledge the reality of our history, we cannot move forward as a reconciled society. On behalf of the Greens, I apologise to the Aboriginal people of this state for their loss of country and for the injustices imposed on them and acknowledge their sovereignty to the land known as the state of Western Australia.”
God knows what any of us can do to change this awful history, but not voting for the ALP or Liberals, and letting them know why, is perhaps one small thing.
Robert
No argument from me about how tragic this is and the culpability of the drivers, but how certain are you that “race” was decisive? I know nothing about the territory, but are you saying it would never have happened had the man been Maori, Asian, Anglo, Mediterranean?
Cliff, I would be absolutely astonished if this had happened to a Maori, Asian, Anglo or Mediterranean man. It’s almost certain that a Maori, Asian, Anglo or Mediterranean man would have been given bail rather than remanded into custody (which was the reason that transport to Kalgoorlie was required) for a similar drink-driving offence. It’s almost certain that the only reason that this man was not given bail was because of assumptions made based upon his race.
I’d also be very surprised if the guards would have just ignored the distressed bangings of a Maori, Asian, Anglo or Mediterranean man, or forgotten to stop and give him water regularly. Harder to establish of course, unlike the typical legal outcome described above which the dead man did not receive.
Yes, Cliff, I’m almost certain it wouldn’t have happened to a white person, both for the reasons tigtog mentioned and the likelihood that the vans would have been taken out of service years ago if they weren’t primarily being used to transport Aboriginal people.
Russel #37 – Well thanks for those lovely words of heartening sentiment. A hearty sentiment I’m sure is to be preferred to a hearty soup for a good night’s sleep.
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The Greens are a political party. Certain things obtain. There are no saints in parliament and all shall be criticized. You say: God knows what any of us can do to change this awful history.
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The answer is nothing. You can’t change history. What you can do is make amends in the future. In Qld the property rights of Aboriginal people have been suspended (yet again) this time for reasons of environment. Now as a conservationist I’d understand that there would be a conflict here. On the one hand you have the rights of indigenous people on the other hand the desire to preserve wilderness.
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It is a difficult choice. But ignoring it? In my opinion deciding to (yet again) simply write off the property rights of indigenous people at this time, when the Apology should be made good, is the wrong thing to do.
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Even if someone on the Greens respectfully disagrees – okay. But pretending it doesn’t exist is disgraceful. Ms Carles’ words are all very well, and as a WA Green, she can’t be held accountable. But if such as her are truly serious they’d be making a huge song and dance about the fact that Qld govt is (yet again) saying that Aborigines don’t enjoy the same property rights as the rest of us.
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They are not. And that is cause for criticism.
DivvyVanGate should go well up the line from the two dills who drove that van.