The Sydney Morning Herald What the Queen won't see Date: 22/03/00 by Alan Ramsey IT REMAINS a sad fact of life that many indigenous Australians face a legacy of economic and social disadvantage. Others, particularly from some rural areas, feel left behind: - The Queen, to a Sydney lunch, Monday. The Northern Territory's mandatory jail sentences for property crimes, no matter how petty, specifically exclude shoplifting. Why? Two Sydney academics, Dr Dianne Johnson and Associate Professor George Zdenkowski, explain that "customers in shops are lawful entrants in public places" and therefore Darwin's legislators felt "the harsh consequences" of an automatic jail sentence "should not apply". While this may seem a complete non sequitur, Johnson and Zdenkowski note in a recent report: "It might also be speculated that offenders convicted of stealing from shops might include tourists, and the NT Government might be embarrassed by the mandatory imprisonment of tourists." Ah, of course. Destitute and/or drunken blacks are one thing. Tourists are something else. Tomorrow, the Territory gets a visit from Australia's premier tourist of the moment. The Queen and her entourage will be in Alice Springs for the day. Given her remarks on Monday, no matter if only a passing reference, it is a pity Elizabeth Windsor will not get to meet Sophie Inkamala, or somebody like her. Maybe then the head of this privileged British family, with its vast wealth, might truly understand what economic and social disadvantage in Australia can mean, and why so many of its indigenous people "feel left behind" in their own country. Johnson and Zdenkowski refer to Inkamala in their 168-page report, Mandatory Injustice: Compulsory Imprisonment in the Northern Territory. Johnson, an anthropologist, and Zdenkowski, with the law school at the University of NSW, submitted their report to the recent Senate inquiry into the mandatory sentencing regimes in Western Australia and the Northern Territory. It reached the relevant Senate committee on March 1. Now, three weeks later, the committee has tabled its findings, the Senate has passed Tasmanian Independent Bob Brown's abortive private member's bill over the Howard Government's objections, and the Prime Minister has scuttled the whole process after a brief insurrection by a handful of his anguished backbench. Regrettably, almost nobody in politics has read the Johnson/Zdenkowski report - some committee members, a few staffers maybe. Yet its contents would make you weep. Somebody ought to shove it up John Howard's nose. Maybe then he might get the message of the legislative atrocities being committed in the name of law and order against black people - and black people only - in Australia's deep north. Sophie Inkamala is just one example. Sixteen months ago, as a 48-year-old mother of three living on unemployment benefits, she pleaded guilty to stealing meat valued at $35 from an Alice Springs supermarket in the very mall the royal visitors will stroll through tomorrow. In 1995, before mandatory sentencing was legislated, Inkamala was convicted of a minor theft and fined $100. On July 7, 1998, after mandatory sentencing, she was convicted of shoplifting goods valued at $20, her second conviction, and fined $250. The supermarket then served a trespass notice, banning her from its premises. And, while shoplifting is excluded from mandatory sentencing, trespass is not. So when, drunk, Inkamala pinched the meat on November 3, 1998, she was automatically jailed for 14 days for trespass. In this way can NT shopkeepers manipulate the law to get around the legislative exemption of shoplifting without risking having tourists caught in the net of mandatory sentencing. Johnson and Zdenkowski commented: "This amounts to 'designer law' without parliamentary scrutiny. The potential for selective enforcement is patent." So is the use of local government bylaws for the purpose of "street sweeping" in Darwin and Alice Springs - that is, clearing unwanted people out of parks and public areas for minor infractions. "This measure, as used in practice, directly targets the Aboriginal community." There are 168 pages of such travesties of justice. And, with the Olympics closing in, some very stupid politicians obviously think no-one will notice and/or care. We deserve all we will surely get. 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