In Reconciliation Week, Queensland Law Society reaffirms our commitment to reconciliation – formal, symbolic and actual – with Australia’s First Nations People.
We acknowledge the historical and ongoing effects of racism and dispossession on Australia’s First Peoples. We acknowledge the disproportionate disadvantage experienced by the First Nations of Australia within the justice system and the shameful overrepresentation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island children and adults in detention and jails. We mourn the loss of First Nations’ lives in custody.
We endorse the comments of her Honour Chief Justice MacCallum of the ACT Supreme Court at her 2022 swearing in that “No longer can we suffer the administration of justice to be the instrument of injustice”.
In an election year, but more importantly, in this Reconciliation Week, Queensland Law Society calls on all elected members of parliament to urgently commit to an evidence-based, apolitical, multi-disciplinary and non-carceral response to Closing the Gap.