Message Stick – Koori Court

Clip 1: Overrepresentation

Taken from the TV program Message Stick – Koori Court (2005)

Original title classification not known – this clip chosen to be G

Please be aware that this clip may contain the names, images and voices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who may now be deceased.

Curator’s clip description

A background to the Koori Court system is given over a montage of Indigenous inmates in prison. Rob Hulls recites the incident that inspired him to have discussions with the Koori community once he became Attorney-General of Victoria.

Curator’s notes

The attempt to reduce Indigenous overrepresentation in the prison system is the motivation behind the establishment of the Koori Court. This initiative came out of the report generated by the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. It is the result of efforts of both non-Indigenous and Indigenous peoples to deal with the problem of high Indigenous incarceration rates.

Romaine Moreton, curator

Teachers’ notes

provided by The Le@rning Federation

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This clip gives the background to the establishment in 2002 of the Koori court in Victoria. A narrator describes the origins of the court over footage of a Koori community viewed from a car. This is followed by scenes of Indigenous prison inmates, the cover of the Victorian Aboriginal Justice Agreement and the interior of the Koori courtroom. A series of quick shots of key players in the operation of the court are included, followed by an interview with Victorian Attorney-General Rob Hulls, in which Hulls explains his motivation for setting up a series of Koori courts.

Educational value points

The primary reason for the Koori court initiative is the overrepresentation of Indigenous people in jails in Australia. In 2006, although the proportion of Indigenous Australians was 2.5 per cent of the total population, they represented 24 per cent of the total Australian prison population. In Victoria, Indigenous prisoners make up 6 per cent of the prison population.

The Koori court is an outcome of the Ministerial Summit on Indigenous Deaths in Custody (1997). The participants agreed that the ways in which Indigenous people experienced justice needed to be improved and each minister was asked to design new justice strategies. Various measures have since been taken to redress the overrepresentation of Indigenous people in the justice system, but statistics suggest that they have done little to change the overall scenario.

Reasons for the alienation of Aboriginal people from the justice system, an illustration of which is given in the clip by Victorian Attorney-General Rob Hulls (1957–), are many and, as the Deaths in Custody Report (1991) acknowledged, include the lack of recognition of Indigenous customary law from the time of colonisation and its replacement with a European-based legal system. Other causes include dislocation, racial discrimination and economic disadvantage.

The Victorian Aboriginal Justice Agreement referred to in the clip is a joint initiative of the Victorian Government, the Victorian Aboriginal Justice Advisory Committee, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) and the Koori community to maximise Aboriginal participation in the development of policies and programs in all areas of the justice system. Its initiatives were reviewed in 2004 and the second four-year phase was launched in 2006.

Increasing Indigenous ownership of and knowledge in the administration of law was the keystone of the Victorian Aboriginal Justice Agreement and went far beyond the implementation of Koori courts. Six Aboriginal Justice Advisory Committees were set up throughout Victoria to work with and provide advice to people in corrections and to police and magistrates. Until 2000 there were no Koori people occupying positions of authority in the justice system in Victoria.

The clip shows how imaginative filmmaking can create interest and drama out of a fairly static story – the development of a new criminal justice initiative. A dominant and beat-driven music track and the sound of sirens are used over the first scenes – outside, in prison and in the courtroom. The prisoners are obscured, the film is in slow motion and the ‘characters’ in the story are introduced in a series of quick head and shoulder fades.