User:Alec mcc/Palm

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The below headings are broad themes to the material in the paras, they are not proposed headings for the Palm Island article, the content only is intended for integration into the current article.

Contents 1 Overview 2 History 3 Parliamentary Select Committee 4 Law and order 5 Guinness Book of Records 6 Qld Government apology and compensation for underpaid wages 7 Surf Life Saving Club 8 Sly Grogging 9 penal settlement 1920s-60s 10 References

[edit] Overview

There are a number of brumbies on the island which are considered to be community-owned.^[1]

[edit] History

In 26 October 1986 ownership of the island was transfered to the Palm Island community council under a Deed of Grant in Trust from the Queensland government.^[2]

In 1957 seven families were banished from the island for taking part in a strike organised to protest against working conditions, which were discribed as Dickensian, imposed by the Queensland Government under the reserve system. Included in those banished from the Island was Cathy Freeman's mother, Cecelia Barber. ^[3]

A local doctor in the 1930s, highlighting malnutrition on the island, demanded that the Government triple rations for the islanders and that children be provided with fruit juice, the request was denied. ^[4]

Being "disruptive", falling pregnant to a white man or being born with "mixed blood" were included in infringements which could lead to the penalty of being sent to Palm Island in the first half of the 20th Century.^[3] All children were separated from their parents and siblings of a different gender^[5]

[edit] Parliamentary Select Committee

In April 2005, Premier Beattie established the Palm Island Select Committee to investigate issues leading to the riot and other problems. Their report was tabled on 25 August 2005. It detailed 65 recommendations which seek to reduce violence and overcrowding, and improve standards of eductaion and health. In achieving these objectives, issues such as drug and alcohol abuse and unemployment would also be addressed. ^[6]

[edit] Law and order

The Palm Island Community Justice Group was established in 1992, it is a committee of elders on the island who, it is said, have far more influence over young offenders on the island than the police or courts have. The Justice group is funded by the Queensland Government as a way of trying to keep indigenous children on Palm out of the criminal justice system, the program was created in response to the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. In the three years after the Community Justice Group was established Palm Island juveniles appearing before magistrates courts fell by a third. under the program the Palm Island community is encouraged to devise their own systems for dealing with offenders. Police and the courts often refer offenders to this elders' justice group.^[7]

"These older ones have the wisdom and knowledge, and they can sit around the table and talk, and bring feuding parties together... When they come before us they can't bluff us, because it's black on black." Peena Geia, chairwoman of the Community Justice Group^[8]

In December 2001 the Community Justice Group assisted a five day investigation by a team of Queensland police and Department of Families officers who discretely collected information from Islanders about suspected child sexual abuse in the community^[9] resulting in a number of arrests.^[10] The investigation was accompanied by a serious of allegations suggesting that almost 100% of girls between 13 and 16 years old had contracted sexually transmitted diseases. It was also alleged that girls as young as 12 had been trading sex for cigarettes and alcohol and that children as young as five were being molested.^[9]

The Coolgaree nippers club is the first indigenous club in Surf Lifesaving Queensland, Coolgaree is affiliated to Arcadian surf lifesaving club in the first year of the nippers club operating (1999) juvenile crime rates on Palm Island dropped from 186 offences to 99 ^[11]

The Palm Island community council used a $40 000 State Government in 2000 to establish a community-run punishment program for youths to help reduce youth crime and suicide, by re-locating wayward youths to a new youth/cultural camp where they would be taught their culture, language and art on neighbouring Fantome Island a former leprosarium.^[2]

1 in 20 Palm Island residents recieved criminal compensation in 2002, a total of $1.5M with an averate of $30 000 per payout, leading to fears that with such a rate of payment perpertrators (such as violent de factos) and their tribal group or family were benifiting from or stealing compensation payments to the victims of their crimes. Law firms also take their fee from the payments, sometimes over half the payment.^[12]

[edit] Guinness Book of Records

Text from current article: In 1999, the Guinness Book of Records listed Palm Island as the most violent place on earth outside a combat zone.^[13]

The 1999 edition of the Guinness Book of Records brought Palm Island international attention when it named the island the most violent place on earth outside a combat zone. To support this claim it stated statistics such as a murder rate 15 times higher than that of the entire state of Queensland, a life expectancy of 40 years, the highest rate of youth suicide per capita in the world, a total of 40 suicide fatalities over a period of only 5 years.^[14] These figures were strongly disputed by the Queensland Government, Police Commissioner and the Palm Island Community Council.^[15] It was concede however by the Queensland Aboriginal Policy Minister Judy Spence that Palm Island "can be violent at times", particularly for women and children, but that the situation was being improved.^[14]

The Australian newspaper indicated that the Guinness Book of Records statement seemed to be based on a report in The Sunday Times, London.^[14] The article in The Sunday Times stated that Palm Island had one of the highest crime rates in the world. "Boys ride bareback on horses through the near-derelict civic centre as infants ambush passing cars with slingshots". It also makes several statements about violence statistics on Palm Island and states that "the white overseers" left the island in 1985 removing most of the island's assets and resources, only allowing a pub as the only public asset. The Sunday Times also claimed that as many as 30 people live each house, without sufficient drinking water.^[16]

[edit] Qld Government apology and compensation for underpaid wages

In 1999 the Queensland Government gave $7 000 to each Palm Island claimant to compensate for underpaid wages between 1975 and 1986. The Government also said sorry to the former government Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island employees.^[17] The payment was ordered by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission in a case first brought to the Commission by seven Palm Islanders in 1986.^[18]

[edit] Surf Life Saving Club

[edit] Sly Grogging

[edit] penal settlement 1920s-60s

In 1914 a government Aboriginal settlement was established on the Hull River near Mission Beach. On 10 March 1918, the structures were destroyed by a cyclone and never rebuilt. Subsequently, the settlement relocated to Palm Island with the new population referred to as the Bwgcolman people.

Since the early 1920s Palm Island has been the largest of the government Aboriginal settlements. Administrators found its location particularly attractive as Aboriginal people could be isolated there. Palm Island quickly gained a reputation amongst Aborigines as a penal settlement.^[19] They were removed from all parts of the state as punishment; being "disruptive", falling pregnant to a white man or being born with "mixed blood" were included in infringements which could lead to the penalty of being sent to Palm Island.^[20] When they moved to Palm Island, all children were separated from their parents and then segregated by gender.^[21] These removals continued until the late 1960s.

A local doctor in the 1930s, highlighting malnutrition on the island, demanded that the Government triple rations for the islanders and that children be provided with fruit juice. However, the request was denied. ^[22]

In 1927 a hospital was built at nearby Fantome Island and many Aborigines were sent there, mainly for treatment of sexually transmitted diseases. In 1936 Fantome Island became a medical clearing station where all people sent to Palm Island were examined and treated if necessary. In 1939 a leprosarium was established. After the war the hospital was closed and by 1965 only the leprosarium remained to be administered by a Roman Catholic nursing order until 1973 when the inhabitants were moved to Palm Island.

In 1957 seven families were banished from the Palm Island for taking part in a strike organised to protest against working conditions, which were discribed as Dickensian, imposed by the Queensland Government under the reserve system. Included in those banished from the Island was Cathy Freeman's mother, Cecelia Barber. ^[20]

The administrators had complete and unaccountable control over the lives of residents. For example on an official visit in the late 1960s Senator Jim Keeffe and academic Henry Reynolds on a surprise inspection of the Palm Island Prison came across two 12-13 year old schoolgirls incarcerated by the superintendent because "they swore at the teacher.".^[23]

[edit] References