As last year’s ‘Aboriginal Voice’ referendum made clear, Australians emphatically reject racial separatism. Especially when it’s enshrined in law. Which is to say, when it’s literal systemic racism, not to say apartheid.
Such as having separate court systems, based solely on race.
The Melbourne-based Koori court marked its 10-year anniversary in 2024, having seen hundreds of people pass through its doors.
For all their blatherskite to the contrary, the ‘progressive left’ just love systemic racism, so long as it’s the sort of racism they approve of. The racism of lowered expectations, for instance. Aboriginal Australians, they seem to think, are too thick to grasp the Common Law every other Australian is expected to. So we have so-called “Koori courts”.
Supporters of the Koori Court say the informal setting and discussions with straight-talking Indigenous elders can have a transformative effect, steering people away from a life of crime.
“Can.” But does it?
Victoria’s first Koori Court opened in 2002 in Shepparton, some two decades after the landmark Royal Commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody. The Koori Court now operates in 17 locations around the state and has been expanded to cover the Children’s and County Court jurisdictions.
With 20 years of operation and dozens of locations, we should expect some solid evidence by now to justify the vainglorious claims about these race courts. Should.
Because, as it happens, there isn’t much evidence at all.
The most recent Sentencing Council data comparing court outcomes in mainstream Victorian magistrates courts against those in the Koori Court was published in 2010. Meanwhile another report which compared sentences for Indigenous and non-Indigenous Victorians was released in 2013.
So, after 20 years, the only published reports are both over a decade old. It’s almost like they’re trying to hide something.
Anecdotally, participants in the Victorian Koori Court system believe it works and reduces recidivism. However, there is a lack of recent, publicly available data to confirm that.
“Anecdotally” and “believe”. In other words, nothing more than their ‘I just reckon’. Which couldn’t possibly be biased opinion.
But what does the scarce available data say?
As of 2023, imprisonment rates for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in Victoria were 15 times the rate of non-Aboriginal people, according to the Sentencing Council.
In a concerning trend, a national a plan to cut Indigenous incarceration rates by 15 per cent is going backwards, as are other key markers, according to the latest Closing the Gap report.
Which is hardly a glowing endorsement. Nor are reports from other states any better.
In NSW, a 2022 government report found that its Youth Koori Court was reducing the amount of Indigenous kids being sent to jail by 40 per cent, but found there was “no statistically significant reduction in re-offending”.
Clearly, then, the race courts aren’t working. If anything, they’re making a bad situation worse.
None of which is a deterrent to ideologically blinded activists.
Currently, Victoria’s Yoorrook Justice Commission has been pushing for an overhaul of how Indigenous people are treated by police and in the legal, child protection and legal systems.
Have they tried suggesting Aboriginal people just try to stop committing crimes at such a disproportionate rate?
[Rosemary Falla, Victoria’s first magistrate of Aboriginal descent] said there was a danger in making “vast generalisations” or “sweeping assumptions” about those before the courts, including Koori people.
Except that we know one thing: they’ve broken the law.
Maybe – now, call me crazy, here – they could try not doing that?
Or do the race activists not believe that Aboriginal Australians are even capable of it? That sounds pretty damn racist to me.
