12

Exclusive: Leadership needs to act with urgency to address ‘culture of racism’ instead of focusing on ‘performative’ elements, says adviser

top 2 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[-] Whirlybird@aussie.zone 4 points 2 years ago

Thomas’s comments following the resignation of advisory group member Assoc Prof Marlene Longbottom, who claimed she would not work with police again. Indigenous activist Gracelyn Smallwood also quit in protest in March, saying she no longer believed her work would lead to “necessary changes”.

An indigenous advisory board that the indigenous people on it are quitting because they feel nothing is being done. Pretty relevant at the moment.

[-] autotldr@lemmings.world 2 points 2 years ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


A key adviser to the Queensland police on First Nations issues says more urgency is required to fix racism in the ranks, amid concerns the service has failed to address widespread cultural problems exposed by a commission of inquiry.

“We need to stop approaching this as business as usual and [start] acting with a sense of urgency,” Thomas said, pointing to an “alarming number” of deaths in Queensland police custody this year.

The QPS responded to questions from Guardian Australia last week, including to suggestions by Longbottom that senior officers had been “hostile” towards dealing with real issues.

When asked about the response, Thomas said it exposed a major part of the problem: that police view engagement with Indigenous people as “performative” rather than seeking to collaborate or co-design reform, or address serious issues.

“The QPS needs to act with integrity and transparency and be highly visible in moving beyond performative gestures to taking real and substantial action to address these issues.

“The commissioner has always been candid that these relationships will take time to build meaningful trust and respect, however, the QPS is committed to the journey and is very proud of its ongoing work with the [advisory group].”


The original article contains 807 words, the summary contains 200 words. Saved 75%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2023
12 points (100.0% liked)

Australia

4435 readers
95 users here now

A place to discuss Australia and important Australian issues.

Before you post:

If you're posting anything related to:

If you're posting Australian News (not opinion or discussion pieces) post it to Australian News

Rules

This community is run under the rules of aussie.zone. In addition to those rules:

Banner Photo

Congratulations to @Tau@aussie.zone who had the most upvoted submission to our banner photo competition

Recommended and Related Communities

Be sure to check out and subscribe to our related communities on aussie.zone:

Plus other communities for sport and major cities.

https://aussie.zone/communities

Moderation

Since Kbin doesn't show Lemmy Moderators, I'll list them here. Also note that Kbin does not distinguish moderator comments.

Additionally, we have our instance admins: @lodion@aussie.zone and @Nath@aussie.zone

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS