PRESS RELEASE - Foundation for Aboriginal and Islander Research Action

PRESS RELEASE - Foundation for Aboriginal and Islander Research Action (FAIRA)

10 October 2009

Spokesperson: Les Malezer, Chairperson

‘Victorian sanctions Aboriginal killing’

The Victorian Government should be held accountable for its recent decision to award a five-year contract to G4S to transport prisoners in Victoria. FAIRA demands the government release the criteria under which the tender for the transport contract was offered.

The awarded company, G4S, should be banned from holding any contract in Australia for at least three years, because of its implicit involvement in the death of an important Aboriginal elder last year in Western Australia.

G4S International Structuring

G4S is a globalised company with some of the worst traits of globalised business. It is openly denying any responsibility in the outrageous killing of an Aboriginal leader. G4S is a security firm for hire by governments, almost a global mercenary army convinced it is engaged in the fighting of terrorists and marauders.

It has no human rights core belief at all and is culturally incapable of delivering services in Australia which impact upon the indigenous community. Something has to be completely wrong if G4S wins a tender under supposedly fair and objective criteria applied by the Victorian Government just one year after the WA killing.

The Victorian Government obviously does not read the newspapers and remains oblivious to the huge outcry in Western Australia by the Aboriginal community against this company.

To its greatest shame the government apparently remains oblivious to the findings and recommendations of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody.

The concept of 'duty of care' springs to mind; a concept rejected by G4S if it chooses to isolate its own culpability and to claim the two employees involved in the WA death were not following 'the rules'.

The WA Coroner's report has sufficient information to reveal the employees were not only untrained, and negligent in their official duty, but that they were allowed to be completely incompetent and unquestioning in their actions by the company.

Racism was a major factor in the death of the Aboriginal leader; it can be assumed that a white person transported by the company on that day would still be alive.

Non-discrimination by staff is a corporate responsibility, and the condition of the actual transport vehicle has be regarded as evidence of the corporation's poor standards.

 Yet this company claims in its 2008 Corporate Responsibility Report to have ethical responsibilities to local communities, and to take care to employ the best people and develop their competence.

Victorian Government is Responsible

The Victorian Government chooses to outsource the transport of prisoners to private contractors. This practice does not absolve the government from its full responsibility to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, as it is only the government which can ensure the winner of such contracts are compelled to apply human rights standards, particularly against racism, and ensure the duty of care is entrenched in corporate structuring.

The award of a contract under this particular tender should have included direct involvement by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community.

FAIRA calls upon the Victorian Government to rescind the contract to G4S and calls upon all governments of Australia to institute a three-year ban against G4S, for its liability in the WA death in custody.

FAIRA also calls upon the Victorian Government to engage with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community to review the criteria and select a suitable tender.

ENDS