Labor senator Patrick Dodson has criticised the Turnbull government for offering a “pathetic response” to the latest report on reducing Indigenous incarceration and urged the prime minister to show political leadership.



The social services minister, Dan Tehan, provided a two-line response to the release on Wednesday of the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) report on Indigenous affairs, saying the government welcomed the report, thanked the commission, and “will consider the report’s relevant recommendations and respond in due course.”

The final report has been sitting with the federal government since 22 December, three days after a cabinet reshuffle in which Christian Porter was appointed to replace the former attorney general George Brandis, who ordered the report in 2016.

It was tabled in both the Senate and the House of Representatives on Wednesday as part of a job lot.

Dodson said the response, after the government had the report for three months, was “absolutely not” good enough.

“It’s a pathetic response,” he told Guardian Australia. “This is a time for leadership. The prime minister needs to step up, the attorney general has to step up, the minister for justice has to step up and take a leadership role with the states so that we can get the outcomes that have been detailed so thoroughly in this report.”

The ALRC report made 35 recommendations, many of which have been made before, including abolishing the practice of jailing people for unpaid fines — a law that disproportionately affects Aboriginal women — and introducing national targets to reducing Indigenous incarceration rates and rates of violence against Indigenous peoples.

It also recommended Australia commit to a justice reinvestment approach, which would direct funding to local Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander-led diversionary programs, and said the federal government should commission a second inquiry looking at the growing rates of Indigenous child removal.

It is the seventh report on Indigenous incarceration commissioned by the federal government in the past decade.

“It has been highlighted over and over with reports after reports, but this is a particularly significant report,” Dodson said. “There’s no dodging this … this is a crisis in the system and the federal government just can’t sit back and say this is a matter for the states.”

In 2016 Indigenous men were jailed at 14.7 times the rate of non-Indigenous men, and Indigenous women at 21.2 times the rate of non-Indigenous women.

Change the Record has called on the federal government to commit to a national strategy to reduce Indigenous over-incarceration.

The campaign’s co-chair Damian Griffiths, called on Porter to take “decisive action” that will “leave a legacy for this government.”

Griffiths said the report was a “landmark opportunity” to commit to legislative change to reduce systemic racial inequality in the legal system. The report recommends changes like abolishing mandatory sentencing, requiring that Aboriginality be considered as a factor in sentencing, and changing the way police enforce bail laws to ensure Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are not hit with procedural breaches of bail.

“Aboriginal communities around the country have the knowledge, skills and experience to address this issue but lack meaningful resources to be able to do it,” Griffiths said. “The next critical step needs to be setting national targets to reduce violence and over-imprisonment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.”

The Law Council of Australia said the government needed to respond “urgently” to the report, saying its recommendations “must not be shelved” like the 1991 royal commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody report.

“The ALRC report must not go the way of the past royal commission report, where most of the recommendations are still gathering dust,” the council’s president, Morry Bailes, said. “The ALRC’s recommendations offer a renewed roadmap to end disproportionate numbers of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in incarceration.”