So what is the purpose of mandatory sentencing?
PARIAH explored the historical impact (both alien and inimical to Aboriginal people) of European laws in the Northern Territory in our first submission on Mandatory Sentencing.
"The NT Judiciary had plenty of say over sentencing - without government cramping their style - in the 1870's, when land theft, abduction, rape, violence and the punitive killings of Aboriginal people, by the Northern Territory Police, were out of control."
"There may have been some moral justification for mandatory sentencing then, when normal laws were inadequate to protect Aboriginal people, in a climate of conquest and "frontier attitudes". To introduce mandatory sentencing now, over a century later, when the descendants of the original "victims of crime" - the Aboriginal people - comprise 80% of the NT prison population is blatantly racist."
There is no line between the past and the present - in relation to this racism - which is used to great electoral and political effect, by the ruling NT Country Liberal Party. Mandatory sentencing is a cynical political exercise by a racist government.
For the Senate to continue
refusing to acknowledge the tradracism of the CLP in regard to mandatory
sentencing and its electoral popularity here, is also political cynicism.
Extracts
In a stinging letter to the Herald, the former royal commissioner into police corruption, the NSW Appeal Court judge Justice James Wood, was joined by three colleagues on the appeal Bench, Justices Tony Fitzgerald, Margaret Beazley and Paul Stein, in accusing some politicians of "exploiting popular prejudice to trample powerless minorities."
"Racism and injustice are evil particularly when they have popular support. It is unjust to imprison offenders without regard to their personal circumstances, life experience, prospects of rehabilitation or other, more suitable, sentences."
"It is racist (and cowardly) to enact and implement laws which apply most harshly to a disempowered minority. It might be thought to be clever politics but it is not leadership to pander to ignorance and prejudice."
The term "race card" to describe the predictable pre-election racist beat-ups by the CLP, is one firmly entrenched in the Territory's social, media and political lexicons.
New laws (NT Public Order and Anti-Social Conduct) are also aimed at exploiting the historic and continued racism of the aptly named Territorians.
"A belief that the racist injustice of mandatory sentencing will somehow solve the problems caused by racist injustice cannot be argued seriously. Mandatory sentencing will only benefit a government intent on further controlling Aboriginal people."
(from original submission.)
Sue Carter (CLP member for Port Darwin) has recently committed the unforgivable political sin of revealing party policy and exposing as liars, her colleagues who claim their laws (in this instance the Anti-Social Conduct Act) are not directed at Aboriginal people.
Ms Carter stated the law was directed towards "people coming into this area from their communities out bush." (Hansard)
This was quoted in a letter to the Editor of the NT News, 12 July, 2001. The (NT News) title of this letter and also a term used within the letter was "race card."
This
is a clear indication of a law being enacted on the basis of race.