Systemic racism underpins Aboriginal deaths in custody and authorities are not doing enough to address it, the Northern Territory’s Australian of the Year says.

Leanne Liddle called out a range of failings she says contributed to more than 500 deaths since a 1991 royal commission into the issue.

A law graduate and former police officer who is Aboriginal justice director at the NT Department of Justice, Ms Liddle made the remarks in a speech at Flinders University in Melbourne.

Recommendations from the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody had never been discussed during her long career at South Australia Police, she said.

“The two most critical recommendations of the royal commission – of arrest and imprisonment as a last resort for Aboriginal people – were not spoken about in any training or deliverable or arrest in my decade plus time in SAPOL,” Ms Liddle said while delivering the Elliott Johnston Oration.

“How does one ignore such an important and integral human right with an ad hoc dismissal when we knew what was at stake?”

Ms Liddle said too much money had been directed towards infrastructure used by all prisoners and law enforcement staff.

“I saw huge investments and substantial efforts placed into mitigating risks for government.

“Yes, there was new police cells … yes, there were cultural awareness sessions for new police.

“But I knew that this was all just veneer – because I also knew that little had changed for Aboriginal people.”

Aboriginal communities and representatives were not involved in high-level discussions about how to implement the findings, Ms Liddle said.

“They were just not around the tables. We were invisible,” she said.

More than one in five people who died in custody in Australia in 2022 were Indigenous, according to the Australian Institute of Criminology.

Ms Liddle said every major anniversary of the commission’s final report had seen an increase in the rate of Aboriginal people in detention.

“This is the result of sordid party-political competitions to be ‘tough on crime’ and the overall increase in imprisonment rates.”

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