Commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, on 13 April, NITV re-screened Richard Frankland's 1993 documentary Who Killed Malcolm Smith?
Watching it, it became totally clear to me about Manus Island and Nauru.
That's why. That's why our nation, our government can torture with impunity. And why, despite this torture being almost common knowledge, we let it go on. Perhaps as a nation it — this violence, this contempt of the 'other' by mainstream Australian society — is in our DNA.
When Malcolm Smith became an incarcerated youth offender, nothing was allowed in his cell. Hours upon hours with simply nothing to do. Forced only to do nothing. Surely that's a form of torture. During the day, both as a youth offender and later as an adult, there was only hard, useless labour to fill in the hours.
As an 11-year-old Aboriginal boy, Smith and his two younger brothers had taken other children's pushbikes, ridden them for a while and then abandoned them. Surely a childhood prank. Yet the wholehearted punishment was immediate. The welfare system immediately became prosecutor, judge and jury — the three brothers simply taken, their dwelling deemed unsuitable, the father not informed. Smith was sent to the Kinchela Children's Home. So many rules to obey: 'only rules and regulations, no love and affection'.
As a 15-year-old still under government 'care' he was sent to Sydney. Illiterate, despite years of 'schooling' in a government institution, the young country boy was seemingly abandoned in a huge city where he knew no one. How was he meant to survive?
Malcolm Smith didn't survive.
"Only later did I fully understand the rightness of Lillian Crombie's dance to the classic 'Brown Skin Baby', intertwining the two issues: the children of the Stolen Generation becoming many of the adult Black Deaths in Custody."
In one of his 1992 programs, national broadcaster Philip Adams saw Smith's death as 'inevitable — just the product of his life ... I have never seen or heard of a more appalling story.'
In 1984, Charlotte Walker's brother died in custody. A South Australian, he died a violent death in Fremantle prison. Already there had been many calls for a royal commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody. In the Sydney Town Hall I witnessed, at her request, the first night of the national tour of the family members of victims, one of them being Charlotte herself. Following the extraordinary, sorrowful,