Coroners around Australia are frustrated their potentially life-saving recommendations to prevent Indigenous suicide are being routinely ignored by the government, a new national report has found.
It’s got to be frustrating to release findings like this and have nobody take up the cause. If only there was some sort of body that had the ability to talk directly to Parliment and represent matters that directly related to Indigenous Australians. A Voice, as it were.
That’d be neat.
I’m a yes supporter and aboriginal. This same recommendation would get ignored by parliament if recommended by a voice. Inquires and commissions not being listened to by govts will still exist with a voice and will still happen when it’s the voice issuing those recommendations.
We’re talking about a lever more than anything against the government. It’s still up to regular Australians to take up the cause, to protest and to drive change by directly voicing to representatives. The fact we vote in people who don’t care enough to listen to the recommendations of commissioners and coroners is a whole problem as well.
This is the beauty of The Voice: at the moment, nobody is bringing up stuff like this in Parliament. Yes, it’s getting ignored, but it’s not being officially ignored on the parliamentary record.
It’s one thing to do nothing with the recommendations of every state coroner. It’s entirely another thing to say live on TV that you will do nothing about it.
There can never be enough ways to force parliament to respond to an issue, but they could of course let it sit in the gazette and never respond to it. It’s my hope though that the high court will weigh on this and say that response is a requirement to fulfill the spirit of the amendment.
