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Article in the National Times, weekend of 2 December 1978:
Demonstration through Redfern and Sydney City about Aboriginal Deaths in Custody and Land Rights Issues - Photos by Mannie De Saxe
The march through Redfern and into the City ended with a sit-in outside Sydney Town Hall, closing George Street for about an hour.
Federal Treasurer Peter Costello, 4 Treasury Place, Melbourne Vic. 3002.
Friday, 11 May 2007.From: Kendall Lovett, 2/12 Murphy Grove, Preston; Postal address: PO Box 1675, Preston South Vic. 3072.
Treasurer,
This week you handed down the Budget for the 12th time and again the funding for Aboriginal health measures announced was way below what is needed for equality with other Australians. After 40 years since the referendum, Australian governments are still dragging the chain on closing the indigenous life expectancy gap.
It really is imperative that you read the photocopy enclosed (SMH 27.4.07) in which Ian Ring from the Centre for Health Service Development, University of Wollongong, calculates that the real funding required is in the range of $350 million to $450 million annually not around $121 million (approx) for health measures over the next 5 years that you have allocated in the Budget.
There is still a generous surplus available after the Budget I am led to believe so what better way to use a good portion of that surplus than in the manner suggested by the Centre for Health Service Development.
Sincerely,
Kendall Lovett.
Federal Health Minister Tony Abbott, PO Box 450, Manly, NSW 2095.
Friday, 11 May 2007.From: Kendall Lovett, 2/12 Murphy Grove, Preston; Postal address: PO Box 1675, Preston South, Vic. 3072.
Health Minister,
This week the Treasurer handed down his budget for the 12th time and again the funding for Aboriginal health measures announced was way below what is needed for equality with other Australians. After 40 years since the referendum, Australia’s governments are still dragging the chain on closing the indigenous life expectancy gap.
It really is imperative that you read the photocopy enclosed (SMH 27.4.07) in which Ian Ring from the Centre for Health Service Development, University of Wollongong, calculates that the real funding required is in the range of $350 million to $450 million annually not around $121 million (approx) for health measures over the next five years that the Treasurer has allocated in the Budget.
There is still a generous surplus available after the Budget I am led to believe so what better way to use a good portion of that surplus than in the manner suggested by the Centre for Health Service Development. Perhaps it’s up to you to bend the Treasurer’s ear and the PM’s ear in that direction.
Sincerely,
Kendall Lovett.
The response (below) to the above letter to the Treasurer on 11 May 2007 was received from the Department of Health and Ageing on 8 August 2007:
Ms Nicola Roxon MP, Federal Shadow Health Minister, 204 Nicholson Street, Footscray Vic. 3011.
Friday, 11 May 2007.From: Kendall Lovett, 2/12 Murphy Grove, Preston; Postal address: PO Box 1675, Preston South, Vic. 3072.
Shadow Health Minister,
This week the Federal treasurer handed down his Budget for the 12th time and again the funding for Aboriginal health measures announced was way below what is needed for equality with other Australians. After 40 years since the referendum, Australian governments are still dragging the chain on closing the indigenous life expectancy gap.
It is really imperative that you read the photocopy enclosed (SMH 27.4.07) in which Ian Ring from the Centre for Health Service Development, University of Wollongong, calculates that the real funding required is in the range of $350 million to $450 million annually not $121 million (approx) for indigenous health measures over the next five years that the Treasurer has allocated in the Budget.
Would you or your colleague, Jennie George, ask the Treasurer in the House why he has allocated such a paltry amount in a time when he is able to live up to the expectations of the referendum of 1967?
There is still a generous surplus available after the Budget I’m led to believe so what better way to use a good portion of that surplus than in the manner suggested by the Centre for Health Service Development at the University of Wollongong.
Sincerely,
Kendall Lovett.
This item from the Sydney Morning Herald is the enclosure with the above three letters.
Nicola Roxon, Federal Shadow Health Minister, responded to the above letter as follows:
Below is the text of an article by Jennifer Martiniello which will be
forwarded to major newspapers in Australia. Please pass on to your
networks. Jennifer Martiniello is a writer and academic of Arrernte,
Chinese and Anglo descent. She is a former Deputy Chair of the
Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander Arts Board of the Australia
Council for the Arts, and a current member of the Advisory Board of
the Australian Centre for Indigenous History at the ANU.
Howard's new Tampa children overboard are our Aboriginal children. The Little Children are Sacred report does not advocate physically and psychologically invasive examinations of Aboriginal children, which could only be carried out anally and vaginally. It does not recommend scrapping the permit system to enter Aboriginal lands, nor does it recommend taking over Aboriginal 'towns' by enforced leases. These latter two points in the Howard scheme hide the true reason for the Federal Government's use of the latest report for blatant political opportunism.
It has been an openly stated agenda that Howard wants to move Aboriginal people off their lands, and has made recent attempts to buy off Aboriginal people by offering them millions for agreeing to lease their lands to the Federal Government, e.g. Tiwi Islands and Tangentyere in Alice Springs. There was also the statement by the Federal Government that it could not continue (?!) to provide essential services to remote communities, which raised an uproar of responses in the press. The focus on the sexual abuse of children is guaranteed to evoke the most emotive responses, and therefore command attention, just like the manipulation of the Tampa situation. But while the attention of the media and the public is being emotionally coerced, what is being sneaked in under the covers?
Two issues specifically - mining companies have applied for more exploration permits in the Northern Territory, the Jabiluka uranium mining operations at Kakadu have already hit the media because of the mining company's applications to the Government to significantly expand its operations, including establishing new mines at Coronation Hill, and another critical issue - nuclear waste. The Howard Government has already mooted that nuclear waste should be dumped in the Northern Territory, on Aboriginal lands. Aboriginal traditional owners are absolutely opposed to this. We have a long history of deaths and illness from radiation, from the atomic tests at Woomera in the 1950s to the current high incidences of carcinomas in the community at Kakadu near the Jabiluka site. The main obstacle to the Federal Government's desired expansion of mining operations in the Northern Territory and nuclear waste dumping is, of course, the Aboriginal people who have occupancy of, and rights under the common law to, their traditional lands.
Following the stages of the Howard Government's usual modus operandi (defund, blame, eliminate), defunding of critical programs for remote Aboriginal community projects began in July 2004, with coerced changes to funding contracts, and monies for critically needed youth and health programs in remote areas being the first dollars to go. Take Mutitjulu for example, which was notoriously profiled by the ABC's Nightline program. I say notorious because one of Senator Mal Brough's personal staffers was the so-called ex-youth worker interviewed on that program, and the content of that interview was laden with myths and mistruths. The staffer in question failed to appear when summoned before a Senate inquiry to explain and the Senator's office is yet to issue a statement. When the community lodged a formal protest to Government, it was raided and their computers seized. But the program did show the effects of the Howard Government defunding of essential programs on that community, in particular the youth centre and health centre. The people at Mutitjulu also just happen to be the traditional owners of Uluru, one of this country's most lucrative tourist attractions. The Howard Government would not like us to ask who benefits by the people of Mutitjulu being forced off their community. Under the amendments to Native Title made by the Howard Government, once Aboriginal people have left their traditional lands, forcibly or otherwise, their rights under the common law that every other Australian enjoys over their land are significantly impaired.
Progressive defunding of Aboriginal art centres has also begun, with a range of community art centres not having their funding renewed by DCITA in July 2005 and 2006 in the Northern Territory, from communities in Arnhemland to mid and southern Territory communities. The art production facilitated by those Aboriginal art centres are the only means through which members of those communities can actually earn a living, as opposed to being on welfare. But then, dependent people are easier to control by means of that dependency. The Howard Government's failed Shared Responsibility Agreements (SRAs) have also been the catalyst for further blame shifting and progressive defunding, take Wadeye for example.
Our Aboriginal communities are being squeezed further into dysfunction and disenfranchisement by carefully targeted political engineering, the systemic and ruthless roll-out of a planned agenda. It is no accident that Howard's scheme to address what he calls the urgency of the Little Children are Sacred report's 97 recommendations was trotted out so very quickly, and addresses so very few of those recommendations. It is sheer political opportunism to advance an already in motion agenda, and to score points in an election year. After all, The Little Children are Sacred report is not the first of such reports, nor are its findings and recommendations new. The Federal Government has had the 1989, 1991, 1993, 1997 and 2002 reports gathering dust and deliberate inaction on its shelves. Perhaps Mr Howard has been saving them up for a rainy election year? And of course Mr Howard's scheme targets only Aboriginal communities, despite the fact that the findings specifically state that non- Aboriginal men, that is, white men, are a significant proportion of the offenders, who are black-marketeering in petrol and alcohol to gain access to Aboriginal children. What measures is the Howard Government going to take about non-Aboriginal sex offenders, pornographers, substance traffickers and the like? Nothing according to the measures announced, but then, they're not Aboriginal and they don't live on the Aboriginal communities where their victims live.
So who are the real victims here, the silenced victims of John Howard's scheme? Aboriginal children, of course, who will be subject to physically and psychologically invasive medical examinations, irrespective of their home and family circumstances, and who will deal with the mental and emotional fall-out from that? Aboriginal men, too, who become the silenced scapegoats, painted by default by John Howard as all being drunken, child-raping monsters. Perhaps the fact that almost every picture shown of Aboriginal men in the media these days shows them drunk, with a slab, cask or bottle under their arms leads Mr Howard to expect that one to pass unchallenged, irrespective of the fact that statistics show that only 15% of Aboriginal people drink alcohol, socially or otherwise, compared to around 87% of non-Aboriginal Australians. The greater majority of Aboriginal men are good, decent people. Perhaps the media would like to rethink its portrayals of Aboriginal men? How about some photos of the other alcoholics, you know, the white ones. There's more of them.
And what of our communities? The Howard Government also hasn't mentioned that the majority of Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory are already dry communities, decided and enforced by those communities. But then that would spoil the picture Mr Howard wants to paint of our Aboriginal communities. Other large communities, such as Daly River, have controlled the situation by only having alcohol available from the community's club and enforce a strict four can limit. Also forgotten in the current politically opportunistic furore is the fact that Aboriginal communities around Tennant Creek and Katherine have been lobbying Governments and town councils for decades to restrict the sale of alcohol on Thursdays, when Aboriginal community people come to town for supplies. So far their pleas have been rejected. Nothing in Mr Howard's plan to facilitate that, either. Or about the control of alcohol when those people, once forced off the communities into the towns, bring their problems with them, child abuse or alcoholism and all the rest. Of course that would make access to Aboriginal children a lot easier for white offenders, they won't have to go so far to find a victim.
One last word on focus of attention. In the famous Redfern Address, the then Prime Minister, Paul Keating asked perhaps the most important question for all Australians to consider. He said 'We failed to ask the most basic of questions. We failed to ask - What if this were done to us?' What if this were done to us - to Mr and Mrs Average Australian, to our schools, youth centres, health centres, access to medical care, communities, homes, children, grandchildren? After all, current national health reports from a wide range of health organisations name sexual abuse of non-Indigenous Australian children as a crisis area in need of urgent attention. And the numbers of victims are higher. National reports into mainstream domestic violence, alcohol and substance abuse also call for urgent action, again the issues are at crisis level, and the numbers of victims and abusers are far higher than in the Little Children are Sacred report. None of the recommendations in all of those hundreds of national health reports recommend compulsory sexual health tests for every Australian child under sixteen. Not one of them recommends that a viable solution is closing down youth and health programs, in fact they all advocate that more are needed. None recommend that the victims' or the offenders' communities and homes should be surrendered to the Federal Government and put under compulsory lease agreements, and none advocate processes which would lead to either the victims or the abusers losing their rights under common law to their property as measure to control or remedy the occurrence of abuse. Would the Howard Government even dare to contemplate such as that? I think not. It would be un-Australian, and the Government it would expect immediate legal repercussions on the grounds of impairment of human rights, extinguishment of rights under common law, discrimination, and a raft of other constitutional issues. Besides, Mr and Mrs Average Australian don't, for the most part, live on top of uranium and mineral deposits or future nuclear waste dumps.
But seriously, the most critical question for all Australians to ask themselves in the lead up to this year's Federal Election is just that - What if it were done to us? With full acknowledgment of what has already been done to workers, trade unions, student unions, public primary, secondary and tertiary education, elderly care, palliative care, medicare, crisis health care, nurses, teachers, multicultural affairs, migrant groups, women, child care, small businesses and artsworkers, among the many, through the exercise of policies of social engineering and fear, your answer at the polling booth may just determine whether it will be done to you, or continue to be done to you.
As reported in the Sydney Morning Herald 25th June, the Howard Government last week used the military to seize control of 60 Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory, which are now under military occupation. This is not Israel and Palestine. The Northern Territory is not Gaza or the West Bank. This is Australia - but is it the Australia you thought you lived in? Walk in our shoes, Aboriginal Australia's, and ask yourselves, what would it be like to have this done to us? And then, walk with us.
Jennifer Martiniello
The following letter by Noel Tovey appeared in ACT Gay on 14 January 2009 and is reproduced here in full:
Dear Prime Minister,
I write to you as an elder Indigenous man about a matter of grave concern to me.
Our old people suffered great hardship and trauma in the past and you moved to apologise for this and acknowledge that pain. You demonstrated a deep understanding of the significance of respecting elders, acknowledging mistreatment and minimising harm. We will always treasure your respectful treatment of our elders on that day of apology, and in years to come.
I am an Indigenous artist and writer and am myself 75 years of age. As an older Indigenous man who is also gay, I am deeply concerned at the suffering of gay elderly people, who, like me, have experienced severe trauma in the past due to the ignorance of those around us. I was taken away from my family in 1940. In 1951, while living on the streets in Melbourne I was charged with ‘The Abominable Crime of Buggery’. I was vilified by the Melbourne press and spent time in Pentridge Jail waiting to be sentenced. Several of my friends have committed suicide rather than live a life of fear and shame.
I have grave concerns about the ‘same sex equal treatment’ reforms and the way in which these may compound the suffering of elderly gay people, including Indigenous people. Elderly gay people are from a generation that preceded civil rights and they were subjected to shock treatment, lobotomy and other horrors. They hid from view and remain mostly hidden today. Nevertheless, they are elders of our gay community who deserve protection.
I implore you to protect these elderly people from the harm of being forced to reveal their identities, even in confidence, to officers from Centrelink. For this generation, there was no safe confidential context in which to ‘come out’. The thought of having to do so now is causing them extreme anxiety and consequent physical harm.
Please give your urgent consideration to enacting grandfathering arrangements in relation to age pensioners to protect gay elders from harm. I am mindful that had my own life story not become a fortunate one, I would more than likely be a hidden gay age pensioner myself today. I know you to be a man of compassion and I appeal to your sense of justice, which was so visible to a proud nation on the day of the apology.
I would be very happy to talk with you further about this serious matter.
Yours Sincerely
This item is from Socialist Alternative:
A house being built at a protest camp against the NT Intervention will be publicly opened on Sunday 14 February at Honeymoon Bore, near Ampilatwatja.
Alyawarr people from Ampilatwatja walked off their community in July 2009, to get away from the discriminatory controls of the NT Intervention and the raw sewage that was flowing on their streets.
Trade unions from around the country have come in behind the walk-off. Representatives from the CFMEU, AMWU, AWU, LHMU and Unions NT have sent volunteers to help build the house, with donated materials.
Work started on February 3. While in two-and-a-half years the $680 million Intervention housing budget has produced just two houses (and only after the people at Wadeye signed over their land), unionists and local Alyawarr workers have built one in two weeks.
“Through this Intervention and the new ‘hub towns policy’ the government is leaving us to rot. This opening will send a strong message we are here to stay”, said Alyawarr spokesperson Richard Downs.
“Support is really coming in from around the country now. At the launch we will have Aboriginal leaders like Larissa Behrendt, union leaders like Dave Noonan, national secretary of the CFMEU, Anangu Elders coming up from the APY Lands and people from all around this region.
“We must unite, draw a line and say the racism and discrimination must stop. And we are demanding from all the Aboriginal leaders, all our organisations – which side are you on? Will you stand with your people?” he concluded.
This is not the first time such a call for support and solidarity has been made by Aboriginal activists and answered by the union movement. The Gurindji equal pay strikers extended their struggle to get back control of their land by setting up camp at Daguragu in the late 1960s.
The “union mob”, as they were universally known, helped build houses and toilet blocks, dug gardens, planted trees, and raised money and solidarity from their members in the south.
The Ampilatwatja protest house is a symbol of solidarity with the fight against racism and shows that Aboriginal people, not racist governments or bosses, should control their own lives.
Richard Downs and his uncle discuss the house at the protest camp at the walk-off’s blog: http://interventionwalkoff.wordpress.com/video/The deceased died on 27 January 2008 as a result of heatstroke which he suffered while in custody, being transported in the rear pod of a Mazda prisoner transport van.
The air-conditioning in the van was not working at the time of the deceased´s death. He was being transported from Laverton to Kalgoorlie a distance of approximately 360kms which took almost 3¾ hours.
Inquest into the death of Ian Ward page 112.
The failure of the air-conditioning was not some sudden, unforeseeable event. The air-conditioning in the vehicle for the pod in which the deceased was placed had been inadequate for use on such trips from the time of its first use and there had been a number of ongoing problems with it. The fact that failure of the air-conditioning in conditions of extreme heat would result in a dangerous situation for prisoners must have been obvious to all concerned.
At some stage in the trip the deceased fell or collapsed against the hard metal surfaces of the prisoner pod in which he was contained and suffered a laceration to his head.
Prior to his death the deceased collapsed onto the floor of the van where he suffered thermal injury on the side surface of his abdomen. The thermal injury was a contact burn, which appeared to be a full thickness burn. The area of the burn was irregular in shape and in the order of 9cm vertically and 6.5cm transversally at its lower aspect and 10cm transversally at its upper aspect. This was a large burn injury. It is clear that the surface temperature of the van was extremely great at the time when the deceased collapsed onto it.
The deceased´s body temperature recorded at the hospital was 41.7oC; an extremely high temperature as the normal temperature is 36-37oC.
Subsequent testing of the Inquest into the death of Ian Ward page 113. vehicle revealed that the temperature within the pod increased relatively slowly and in my view it is clear that for the temperature in the pod to have reached temperatures sufficient to cause the death of the deceased and the burn injury inflicted to his abdomen, the air-conditioning was not working in the rear pod for the entirety of the journey.
The deceased died from heatstroke.
For the reasons outlined earlier I have concluded that the Department, GSL, Mr Powell and Ms Stokoe all contributed to the death.
The deceased was conveyed in the pod of a vehicle which at the time of its constructions was not suitable for transportation of prisoners over lengthy journeys. Over the course of eight years of use the vehicle and all of its parts, including its air-conditioning system, which had been inadequate at the outset, deteriorated with use and wear.
I am precluded by section 25(5) of the Coroners Act 1996 from making a finding which would appear to suggest that any person is guilty of an offence and so I am not able to determine whether the death arose by way of unlawful homicide or misadventure. It is in that context I make an open finding as to how the death arose.
I do not agree with the contention by ALSWA that an open finding should be a finding of last resort; this argument confuses the ultimate verdict with identification of the direct cause of death which has been done in this case.
I sent the following letter to the Freedom Socialist Party (FSP)(Australian) Bulletin, and they published it as shown above under the September 2009 entry on this page. I am reprinting the letter here because I am still outraged by the murder of Mr Ward in Western Australia in 2008 by boiling him in the back of a police van and the murder of Steve Biko in South Africa in 1977 (he had already been virtually bashed to death) in the back of a police van, naked and practically freezing to death.
The only difference between boiling to death in the back of a police van and freezing to death in the back of a police van is that the second one occurred in apartheid South Africa in 1977 and the first one 30 years later in 2008 happened because indigenous people in Australia continue to be treated as non-people at a time when human rights are a major issue in so many countries around the world..
Not only should it never have been allowed to happen in 2008, but the criminality of refusing to lay charges only makes the offence so much worse. Australia's ongoing disgraceful treatment of its minority indigenous communities is a stain on all governments in this country and one wonders when there will be politicians elected to the country's local, state and federal governments who will manage to stop the horrors of abject poverty, child deaths, malnutrition, lack of education, poor health, lack of employment opportunities - the list is endless!
Steve Biko was murdered by the South African government by being first bashed to near death on 6 September 1977, then transported naked in the back of a police van from Port Elizabeth to Pretoria, a distance of 1200km. He died 6 days later.
He had been taken on 6 September 1977 by South African Security Police to the 6th floor of a building in Port Elizabeth (a large southern port city) hand-cuffed, then put into leg -irons, chained to a grille and subjected to 22 hours of interrogation, torture and beating. He received between 2 and 4 blows to the head, fatally damaging his brain. He died on 12 September 1977.
South Africa in 1977, and now still in Australia in 2009, to quote from the report you (FSP) sent:
* The West Australian coroner will ask the Director of Public Prosecutions to consider laying charges over the death of a man who effectively baked to death in the back of a prison van.It would seem that the savagery of the South African government continues in Australia, courtesy of the Rudd and state and territory governments, and that deaths in custody, far from diminishing since the Royal Commission continue in an upward spiral which will not be stopped until there is such a huge national and international outcry that the governments in this country will be forced to take notice.
Unfortunately no country with indigenous people subjected to the control of the ruling classes have their hands clean, and it is difficult to ascertain which countries are worse than each other.
The stain of Steve Biko's execution will long live on in the memory of those of us South Africans who were aware of what the apartheid government was doing but felt powerless to do anything about it. Living in a police state was a very intimidating place to be a political activist, and I fled to Australia in 1978 with my family, escaping from the worst excesses of the police state which were still to come in the aftermath of the 1976 Soweto riots.
To know that we live in a country where the excesses of our governments continue in the face of Royal Commissions and their recommendations is to be aware that we await our revolution but know it will still be a while arriving while capitalism goes from crisis to crisis taking us all along for the ride.
I personally feel horror when I think of the case which is now before the public gaze, and remember Steve Biko. How can one ever forget??
Mannie De SaxePERTH, Australia - A state prosecutor on Monday ruled out criminal charges in the death of an indigenous elder in a prison van with no air conditioning on a scorching summer day in Australia's Outback — a decision that angered Aborigines.
Western Australia Director of Public Prosecutions Joe McGrath said there was no reasonable prospect of a jury convicting the two prison guards who transported the 46-year-old prisoner on the fatal four-hour journey in 2008.
"I'm acutely aware that the death was tragic, avoidable and rightly creates outrage in the wider Australian community," McGrath told reporters.
The prisoner, now known only by his family name Ward because of a cultural prohibition on using the given name of a dead Aborigine, died of heat stroke in the back of the van where the temperature soared to 122 degrees Fahrenheit (50 degrees Celsius).
The two prison officers, who were in a separate front compartment of the van, did not check on Ward and were unaware that the air conditioner in the rear compartment was broken.
Ward suffered a third-degree burn to his stomach after collapsing on the van's metal floor.
A state coroner who investigated the tragedy last year found that the two guards had contributed to the "terrible death" and recommended that prosecutors consider bringing criminal charges.
Aboriginal elder Ben Taylor criticized McGrath's refusal to lay charges and warned that protests would continue until Ward received justice.
"They are killing our people off," Taylor said. "The poor man was cooked alive."
Aboriginal lawyer Dennis Eggington blamed the outcome on a flawed police investigation that deserved further scrutiny.
Aborigines are an impoverished minority of 500,000 in Australia's 22 million population who are imprisoned far more frequently than other Australians.
Ward was being taken from his desert home town of Laverton to the larger Outback centre of Kalgoorlie to face court on a drunk driving charge when he died.
The state government responded to the tragedy with plans to roll out a new fleet of 40 prison vans.
A DECISION not to charge two security guards over the heat-stroke death of a West Australian Aboriginal elder in a prison van has been greeted with anger and disbelief.
Mr Ward, an elder whose full name cannot be used for cultural reasons, died of heat stroke in the back of the van on a four-hour trip from Laverton to Kalgoorlie in Western Australia's Goldfields region in January 2008.
WA Director of Public Prosecutions Joe McGrath visited Mr Ward's widow Nancy at Warburton in the Central Desert at the weekend to tell her charges would not be laid.
He told her there was no reasonable prospect of conviction against the two security guards employed by the security firm GSL, now known as G4S.
Mr Ward's family were said to be distraught over the decision.
A broken air conditioner in the back of the van meant Mr Ward endured temperatures of more than 50 degrees during the non-stop journey.
He was being driven to Kalgoorlie to face a drink-driving charge.
Last year, WA Coroner Alastair Hope found the Department of Corrective Services and security officers Graham Powell and Nina Stokoe and their employer, had all contributed to Mr Ward's death.
Mr Hope referred the case to the DPP because he believed a criminal offence had been committed, he said.
Mr McGrath defended his decision not to prosecute yesterday, saying a thorough investigation had found nobody criminally negligent. He said Sydney lawyer John Agius had endorsed his decision.
The WA Deaths in Custody Watch Committee is seeking an independent review of the case.
WA shadow attorney-general John Quigley said it was inconceivable no one would face charges.
The WA government is finalising an ex-gratia payment to Mr Ward's family.
AAPConvincing Ground - Learning to fall in love with your country - by Bruce Pascoe, published by Aboriginal Studies Press, 2007
"Pascoe draws on the past through a critical examination of major historical works and witness accounts and finds uncanny parallels between the techniques and language used there to today's national political stage. He has written Convincing Ground for all Australians, as an antidote to the great Australian inability to deal respectfully with the nation's constructed indigenous past.
For Pascoe, the Australian character was not forged at Gallipoli, Eureka and the back of Bourke, but in the furnace of Murderous Flat, Convincing Ground and Werribee. He knows we can't reverse the past, but believes we can bring in our soul from the fog of delusion. Pascoe proposes a way forward, beyond shady intellectual argument and immature nationalism, with our strengths enhanced and our weaknesses acknowledged and addressed." (from the back cover of the book)
Bruce Pascoe is a widely published and award-winning writer, editor and anthologist, whose books include Shark, Ruby-eyed Coucal, Earth and Nightjar.
North of Capricorn - The Untold Story of Australia's North by Henry Reynolds, published by Allen and Unwin, 2003
The Wik Case - Issues and Implications edited by Graham Hiley, Published by Butterworths, 1997
MannieBlog (from 1 August 2003 to 31 December 2005)
ACTIVIST KICKS BACKS - AKB (from December 2005 onwards)
RED JOS BLOGSPOT (from January 2009 onwards)
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