It sounds like we agree - they’re dying more in custody far more than non-indigenous because they are in custody far more than non-indigenous. Sorry if I misunderstood at any point.

While acknowledging the gravity of the deaths and always respecting cultural sensitivities, a successful systemic review should be focused on reducing overrepresentation in custody, not specifically just deaths in custody.

As a bleeding heart leftist, this is a very sound argument. I’m a huge advocate for indigenous rights, and I get worried seeing articles that essentially imply police brutality (specifically towards indigenous people over non-indigenous) is the root cause of problems, when the evidence is that it is much deeper, systemic, and more complicated than that. Perhaps people want the problem to be police brutality because that would be a more tangible problem, something that can be fixed in a reasonable amount of time with the right review or changes to policing.

I get it - it sucks even thinking about issues where there are no “good” solutions. It’s a tragedy that indigenous people are overrepresented in custody, but it’s ultimately poverty that leads to being in custody in the first place. I wish people directed more attention towards addressing indigenous poverty rather than band-aid fixes that won’t really lead to long-term healing.

With that said, any death in custody deserves proper review. There was no reason this arrest had to end this way.

Those middle paragraphs were kinda important though, tbf. It was explaining that as a whole they are more likely to die in custody because they are more likely to be in custody in the first place. When addressing hypotheses specifically about deaths in custody, the first statistic (where indigenous people are not overrepresented) is a lot more meaningful. If they’re in custody, they’re not more likely to die - that’s not ‘misleading’, is it?

We need to do a lot to improve the treatment of indigenous people, that goes without saying. It’s important that we’re barking up the right tree, but I appreciate that it’s a sensitive topic and it’s also important to not just cite cold stats. It’s a big issue - why are they overrepresented in custody? I don’t think there is some magical instant answer, but I think broader history shows that addressing poverty will simultaneously address a lot of these issues.

I’ve seen a lot of analysis and discussion for a very small percentage change in a single election. If I were the Greens, I’d definitely be reviewing policy and protocol because the party should be steadily growing rather than stagnating. But as a single data point I probably wouldn’t make any radical changes unless subsequent elections also produce disappointing results.

A lot of their stagnating performance is probably quite superficial. I’m reasonably fond of the Greens, but I think Bandt (and MCM too tbh) were probably a bit grating to the general public - and I think a lot of us have realised that with Bandt’s mediocre concession speech. I feel like a decade (or more) ago it was a lot ‘cooler’ to like the Greens, when they essentially branded themselves as “the science party”. They still have a lot of these policies, but it feels like their image in 2025 is a lot more… I don’t quite know how to put a finger on it… rage-baitey?

Australian voters emphatically rejected Dutton’s culture war bullshit, but Greens need to not be careful to get caught on the other side of the culture war battle and face similar rejection…

There is definitely that perception of ‘being too oppositional’ unfortunately, even though the stats show they support Labor policy like over 90% of the time. Any reasonably politically engaged person will tell you that it’s not the job of the senate crossbench to pass policy that isn’t within their elected platform, although I empathise Labor is kinda between a rock and a hard place on that front (but that’s the cost of being such a big tent catch-all centre party imo).

A few years ago I had a bit of respect for Labor for their political civility (compared to the coalition) but in the last few years I must say I’ve seen way too many Labor MPs/influencers/rusted-ons spread disinformation (and not just debatable stuff, but stuff you could easily disprove quickly if you bothered to check - mostly about preferential voting and fear mongering about smaller parties). And also just repeating statements from the mining lobby?? Maybe that’s just a WA thing!

Thorpe and now Cox… they really dropped the ball on vetting senators in 2022 it seems.

This is tangential, but it feels kinda weird where the “R word” is atm, seems like we can’t decide if it’s genuinely offensive or not. I have some social circles where saying it would be almost like saying homophobic/racist slurs, but other social circles that throw it around as a synonym of “idiot/lunatic”. I’m almost afraid to ask at this point what the correct answer is/should be, but I think humans will be joking around about mental cognition for many generations to come, R-word or not.