Gunnai Gunditjmara and Djab Wurrung independent Senator Lidia Thorpe has joined growing calls from medical experts for incarcerated people to receive equal access to healthcare. Josh Adams reports.
The deaths in custody of two more First Nations people over the past week bringing the total deaths to seven over the last two months is nothing less than a national emergency, writes Isaac Nellist.
Speakers expressed outrage that the 339 recommendations handed down had largely been ignored by successive governments.
These recommendations, which focussed on preventing First Nations peoples from being in prison in the first place, could have saved the lives of many if they had been implemented.
Despite a number of inquests and reports, the incarceration rate of First Nations peoples has continued to increase largely because the criminal justice system is increasing the severity of its treatment of Indigenous people.
There were 12,344 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in prisons last December, up from 12,322 the previous year and 7619 in 2011. First Nations peoples make up just 3% of the population but account for 30% of the prison population.