Government’s chief Indigenous adviser says government ‘didn’t speak to me at all before announcement’ and declares Aboriginal people want action, not reviews

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

The Turnbull government’s chief Indigenous adviser, Warren Mundine, has said he was not told about a new review into Aboriginal incarceration rates before it was announced last week.

“They didn’t speak to me at all before this announcement,” Mundine told Sky News on Sunday.

“This is one of the issues we need to deal with. Look, the attorney general, the prime minister, they’re both lawyers and they’re very comfortable with being lawyers … [but] I’m coming from a 60-year lifetime experience and research in this space, where we know exactly what the issues are [and] exactly how to resolve these issues,” he said.

Mundine was outraged last week when the attorney general, George Brandis, announced plans to hold another inquiry into Indigenous incarceration rates.

Indigenous prison rates: Mundine says plan for fresh inquiry is a joke Read more

Brandis had said the Turnbull government would ask the Australian Law Reform Commission to look at the overrepresentation of Indigenous people in the justice system and consider what reforms could be made to reverse that trend.

Mundine called the plan a “joke” and a waste of money when he heard about it, criticising the plan as a “total waste of taxation money.”

“I don’t know who the dickhead is who actually thought up this incredibly brilliant idea,” he told Sky News last week.

But Mundine said on Sunday that he did not think the government had insulted him by not consulting with him, even though he is head of the prime minister’s Indigenous Advisory Council.

“I don’t take that as an insult,” he said. “Now’s the time for us to sit down, have this conversation and get real, meet on the ground and start doing things.”

He said he had received many phone calls from Aboriginal people since the announcement and they were “a bit sick and tired of reviews, reports, and that”.

“They actually want to see action, they want to see recommendations that have been out there put in place, and dealt with.”

Mundine said that since the black deaths in custody report 25 years ago there had been hundreds of reviews, inquiries, investigations and royal commissions into Indigenous affairs.

He said Aboriginal people were sick of them and wanted to see the recommendations that had already been made dealt with.

“It’s a no-brainer,” Mundine said last week.

Additional reporting by Australian Associated Press