A former junior counsel involved in the Mabo case and a longstanding figure renowned for his diplomatic approach to fighting for Indigenous rights have been appointed by the attorney general, George Brandis, to lead the royal commission into Northern Territory juvenile detention.
But questions have already been raised over whether Mick Gooda, who stepped down from his role as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice commissioner to serve as a royal commissioner, would have been aware of abuses at Darwin’s Don Dale detention centre through his role at the Australian Human Rights Commission.
Gooda, who last week called for the Northern Territory government to be sacked over abuses at Don Dale, said on Thursday he’d “heard of incidences but didn’t understand the extent of them”.
He was appointed as co-commissioner alongside former judge Margaret White in response to criticism, some of which came from Gooda himself, that it needed to involve Indigenous people in the process.
White, 73, was the first woman to become a supreme court judge in Queensland and is lauded as a longstanding “champion” of Indigenous communities through her legal career.
Appointed to the supreme court in 1992, White rose to the court of appeal in 2010 before retiring in 2013, running the Queensland government’s commission of inquiry into the Queensland racing commission that same year.
Colleague Alan Wilson, the retired supreme court justice, described her as a “wonderful judge and a very impressive person” who had “forged a lot of respect within Indigenous communities for herself and always manifested a lot of interest in and support for those communities”.
This began with White’s time acting as junior counsel for the Queensland government – the opposing party – in the landmark Mabo high court case, which was the turning point in legal recognition of traditional ownership in Australia.
White is due to give a public lecture next month on the case, informed by her role during 10 years of its litigation.
White was one of an array of proactive appointments of women to the Queensland bench during the time of reforming former state Labor attorney general Matt Foley. Wilson said White was a “shining star” of the era, rising to the state’s highest court through “her own considerable ability”.
“I can’t speak highly-enough of her. She is good natured, intelligent, calm and she wrote superb judgments”.
Bill Potts, the president of the Queensland Law Society, said White was an “extremely highly regarded jurist” with an “extraordinarily fine and enquiring mind and has been a champion of Indigenous issues in this state”.
“For the royal commission to have both credibility and standing for Indigenous people in the Northern Territory and Australia then the appointment of Margaret White together with Mick Gooda is an excellent step,” Potts said.
But confining the commission to the Northern Territory was “akin to treating one diseased limb in a diseased body”, Potts said, arguing for its extension to juvenile and Indigenous detention in all states.
“Unless the government is prepared to address the causes of the appalling rate of Indigenous incarceration rather than just what happens after they are incarcerated, it is going only one small step to dealing with one of the significant ills of our society.”
White’s few public speeches to date have included an address on preventative detention orders and counter-terrorism.
White has written scholarly articles on the relationship between the political executive and the military, and the recognition of equity as a general principle of law by “civilised nations”.
White has served since 2008 as deputy president of the defence force discipline appeals tribunal.
Gooda was named the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social justice commissioner by the Rudd government in 2009, after five years working in the NT as the head of the Cooperative Research Centre for Aboriginal Health.
His tenure was extended for another five-year term under the Abbott government in 2014.
The post was created 25 years ago, in response to both the 1989-1991 royal commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody and a human rights and equal opportunity commission inquiry into racism.
A Gangulu man from central Queensland, Gooda began working in Indigenous affairs in the early 1980s with jobs in the Department of Social Security and Aboriginal Affairs, West Australian government, and WA Aboriginal Legal Service, before becoming the WA state manager of the now-defunct Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (Atsic).
When Atsic was dissolved in 2005, Gooda was chief executive. “I think I have the dubious distinction of being the last employee of Atsic, and I haven’t decided whether this would be an advantage or disadvantage to include on my CV,” he said in a speech in 2005.
He used the same speech to take aim at the federal government for shunting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to the side of government processes, saying Indigenous peoples must be included in decisions made for and about them. It’s a theme he has pushed throughout his 40-year career.
In the 2015 Charles Perkins oration in Sydney, Gooda described himself as “a well-known optimist, a glass half full fella”.
He is known for being conciliatory and constructive in his dealings with government, a “diplomat first, activist second”, as Fairfax Media described him in 2009.
His response the the Four Corners report into the “torture” of children in detention at Don Dale detention centre was less measured. “The federal government has to intervene and sack the NT government,” he said on twitter on Tuesday.
He also criticised the involvement of the territory government in setting the terms of reference.
The Federal Government has to intervene and sack the NT Government
— Mick Gooda (@MickGooda) July 25, 2016
Elfernick sacked Prisons Minister but still the AG, are they seriously telling us he will be negotiating the ToRs for the Royal Commission?
— Mick Gooda (@MickGooda) July 26, 2016
Asked if he stood by that comment now that he had been appointed a royal commissioner, Gooda said: “We’ll wait and see.”
“I said that on the Tuesday, you know … it was a day of emotions and people had all sorts of emotional responses and in the clear light of day, I probably wouldn’t think that,” he said. “But at the moment I’ve got a job to do.”
Reflecting on what was then former judge Brian Ross Martin’s duty, Gooda told Radio National on Thursday the inquiry could not echo the experience of the royal commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody, which produced 339 recommendations, most of which have not been enacted.
“The last thing we need is another inquiry describing what the problems are,” he said. “We already know what the problems are, we want some solutions.”
He said the inquiry would have to involve Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, but did not nominate himself. That was done, according to the attorney-general George Brandis, by most of the organisations consulted by the Indigenous affairs minister, Nigel Scullion, once the government decided to appoint an Indigenous co-commissioner.
“We have so many stakes in this game it’s not funny,” Gooda told Radio National “It’s our kids being over-incarcerated, it’s our communities where crimes are happening, and I’m going to be really up front and say some kids probably need to be put away for a time … [but] unless there’s a fundamental change to the approach of government here, I think you’ll find Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people walking away saying it’s just another inquiry.”
