My personal look at the Tent Embassy protests

My personal look at the Tent Embassy protests

(Editor, National Indigenous Times) Gerry Georgatos is a journalist, from Western Australia, and he was in Canberra with the rest of our team (The National Indigenous Times) reporting on Aboriginal Tent Embassy. He attended every day of the Embassy and was one of the first people on site during the Lobby restaurant incident. His witness on the front line is invaluable. Gerry is a researcher in Australian Deaths in Custody and has been campaigning for new protocols that include independent inspectorates for Police and Prisons. Gerry's research includes the conclusions that people come out of prisons worse than when they went in and that post-release there are more deaths and acute trauma than even pre-release and Gerry argues that Australia has one of the world's worst deaths in custody records. He has a number of qualifications, including a BA in Aboriginal Studies, a BA in Philosophy, a BA in Media, a Masters in Social Justice Advocacy, a Masters in Human Rights Education. He was recognised by the WA government, in 2008, for his work in Aboriginal education, health, and for his work with the homeless, and who is a long time human rights campaigner, and who during 2011 campaigned for the release of near 100 of the world's most impoverished children, Indonesian youth, from Australian adult prisons. He was a witness to events at Tent Embassy, and during the Lobby restaurant incident imposed himself between police and Aboriginal Tent Embassy supporters so innocent people would not be arrested. The National Indigenous Times has asked Gerry to contribute his reflections, insights and personal experience – and for our readers to get to know him a little bit more.

By Gerry Georgatos

On January 27, 1972 I was shy of ten years of age when I saw the first images of Aboriginal Tent Embassy on the family black and white television. I did not understand what gave rise to four young men wanting to pitch a beach umbrella on the lawns of parliament. I didn't realise they were Aboriginal and exactly what it meant to be an Aboriginal person in Australia. I knew what it meant to be the child of migrants. It meant we were different and judged. I knew that my swarthy colour made me different, and it was pointed out to me all too often. I was a 'black bastard, a wog, a dago, a greaseball' and I was 10 years old. However, my consciousness was ingrained with the image of four young Aboriginal men and that they had something to say that appeared was not welcome by our government. It was this event and my father's teachings that first opened my eyes to Aboriginal Australia and the horrific atrocities, historical and contemporaneous. Three phenomena, inextricably linked by the longing social justice – for the right to be - shaped my form and content.

Aboriginal Tent Embassy mesmerised me to the news channels every single evening. I turned the dial from channel to channel to listen to what the other news stations had to say and show. I saw more and more people coming to Tent Embassy and their demand was merely a right to exist as equals among others. The Vietnam War was forever part of my news, and I followed the evening broadcasts as the Vietcong inched to Saigon. A million Vietcong lives lost so others like them could live free and speak in their own language. They were prepared to die for this – it was a paradox to my young mind. As the first born of working class migrants I found myself, as a twelve year old speaking for one migrant after another who were overwhelmed by the language barrier - advocating for their rights and for a sliver of justice from their employers – I found myself begging various authorities to lend a hand – it was migrant mesothelioma victims all wired up, gasping for breath who singed my soul – whom as a child, naive of the machinations of the world-at-large I hopelessly tussled with, that I contemplated people should not have to live like this and that they should not be treated piecemeal by other more fortunate folk. I saw more injustice than I saw justice. With injustice came anger, and sadness.

The names Michael Anderson, Bill Craigie, Tony Coorey and Bertie Williams became legendary to me and for everything they represented. It was a privilege to be at the 40th Tent Embassy listening and watching Michael Anderson however it was with sadness I witnessed him pushed by police as they wedged around the Prime Minister in that idiotic race from the Lobby restaurant. What the hell was that wedge all about? I remember many names from 1972 Aboriginal Tent Embassy, and some of the folk I have since come to know, however all of them are ingrained in my consciousness – including Paul Coe, Isabell Coe, Chicka Dixon, Tiga Bayles, Bobbi Sykes, Pat Eatock, Gary Foley, Shirley Smith, Savannah Doolan, Alana Doolan, and the many others.

My editor, Stephen Hagan, asked me to write the BIG READ for this edition, and reflect upon my time at Aboriginal Tent Embassy and the unfolding events. I was at the Lobby restaurant, one of the first there, only minutes behind the first trickle of humanity guided there by the Office of the Prime Minister. I came to Canberra, from Western Australia, eager to stand alongside the spirit and objectives of Aboriginal Tent Embassy and to meet in person all my colleagues at The National Indigenous Times. I joined the reporting team of the newspaper near the end of August after Stephen called me to discuss reporting and writing for the newspaper. From the very first moment he put the proposition to me I wanted it, I knew I would say yes, there was no way I would bypass the opportunity to contribute to the longings of our humanity in the ways that matter most to me – and well I hope readers of the newspaper feel that I do make a positive contribution.

It was important for me to come to Canberra, where the headquarters of The National Indigenous Times are located, and in close proximity of the highest mainstream offices in the land, Federal Parliament, and gain invaluable knowledge from my colleagues. However, I could not miss the opportunity to come face to face with the people who shaped my form and content way back in 1972 via my family's ageing black and white television. In the eyes of many, in the midst of various human rights campaigns that have obliged my life, I have not always fitted in everywhere I have gone and everywhere I have lived and everywhere I have worked however at Aboriginal Tent Embassy I felt some sense of belonging in that I was welcomed by everyone – from the hug that Tiga Bayles gave me, finally meeting face to face after one radio interview after another during the last couple of years, from the hug his daughter Kaiyu gave me, from the lengthy yarns with Paul Coe, from all the camaraderie from so many people, people of all colours and creeds, who had coalesced from all parts of the continent. I felt at ease, and a sense of being in the right place with people that have their hearts in a place that my heart understands, who despite the uphill struggles they have not given up on the fight for what is right.

For me, Aboriginal Tent Embassy flickered hope for all the issues and people I have either been writing about in the National Indigenous Times and campaigning long and hard for on various stages and on the front lines – Rex Bellotti Jr, John Pat, Elder Mr Ward, Mulrunji Doomadgee, T.J. Hickey, the list is tragically long – I came to the Embassy for them. I came to Tent Embassy because of Kalgoorlie's Ninga Mia, where children sleep under cardboard and corrugated iron. I came to Tent Embassy because of the homeless families at Elcho Island, because of the youth suicide rates in communities such as Balgo. I came to Tent Embassy because my father taught me to put nothing between myself and what is right.

I came because far too often sadly we do not have enough people remembering the sacrifices that others made for them, people now long gone however whose narrative we take for granted, and you need people so there is change, so the narrative changes – when enough rise, change happens. If people turn up we get the cultural wave, when they don't and when we count on small numbers only then the call for social justice languishes in a marathon instead of a sprint.

I have written about the Yindjibarndi's peoples plight in their struggles against the powerful Fortescue Metals Group. I quote 106 year old Elder Ned Cheedy, "This is our culture. We are here. There's my brother, my aunty, dancing. This is our spirit. We staying strong." I came to Tent Embassy for Elder Ned Cheedy.

In the August 4, 2011 edition of The National Indigenous Times' BIG READ I wrote a 6,000 words feature, "Police investigating police again... they've got each others' backs", and I wrote, "On March 6, 2009, the Bellotti family's eldest son, Rex Jr, aged 15, was involved in a police-related-incident. It was not of his making, he was an Aboriginal person at a place that police were converging upon. Since March 6, 2009 the Bellotti family has endured the severest forms of unrelenting grief and for the most part had been abandoned in their grief – without any form of adequate support, in a bleak vacuum of inhumanity. Since this police-related-incident Rex Sr, Liz and Rex Jr and his five siblings have not only had to deal with the trauma of grievous injuries sustained by Rex Jr however they have had to cope with the culture of brutal silence surrounding the Albany Police and the Western Australian Police and with the contemptible minimalist fodder that we have all long learned to expect from various government authorities, ministerial portfolio holders and from the agencies which argue various demarcation and claim to be independent auditors and investigators."

This feature length article that only The National Indigenous Times was prepared to publish, thanks to editor Stephen Hagan and the paper's chief John Rowesthorpe, raised such a high level of awareness of the injustices blighting Rex Jr that a far reaching campaign has since emanated, and which has sparked a flicker of hope for that a sliver of justice being achieved. I wrote another 6,000 words feature for the September 1 BIG READ on Rex Jr, "There are many and varied layers of racism we all live within this country" and for our readers we brought to light more facts and disclosures which inspired other various news media lending a hand in highlighting the predicament of injustices the Bellotti family are mired in. I wrote, "For myself the worst act of unbelievable racism was the Albany police officers several days later (after running down Rex Jr) in the local newspaper, the Albany Advertiser, claiming that Rex Bellotti Jr intentionally jumped in front of the police-four-wheel-drive vehicle and that he tried to commit suicide. How dare they? Would they have pulled that conclusion out of the bag if he was not an Aboriginal youth? I believe to save their skins from the various limited liability and culpability they dug deep into the various stereotypes that are shoved down the throats of non-Aboriginal Australians, and that are underwritten by the high incarceration and mortality rates of young Aboriginal Australians, and by the endemic induced poverty that underwrites Aboriginal peoples who languish in such suffering and torment."

A third 6,000 words BIG READ feature ensured more avenues opened up in the quest for this precious sliver of justice for the Bellotti family. In the September 28 feature, "You lying dog, I seen what you did with my own eyes" I wrote, "I'll never forget Liz's (Rex Jr's mother) words, 'Often I feel we can't go on anymore, that all this grief is too much but we hang in there for our son, who did nothing wrong, and for our children who are hurting."

Then there is the young man I never met however of whom I have written tens of thousands of words about and everything his unnecessary death represents – 16 year old John Pat. As a researcher in Australian Deaths in Custody I have studied many deaths prison- and police-custodial related, and all of them have left scars in my consciousness – for John Pat I've shed many tears. In the October 25 BIG READ feature, "JOHN PAT – a death in custody – 'We'll get you, you black cunt!'" I wrote, "His death must be remembered with the same despair that the Roebourne community greeted the shocking news – when four off-duty police officers and an off-duty police aide, inebriated by the effects of alcohol and by the bitter tasting wash of their prejudices, and by generations of cruel and nescient stereotypes shoved down their throats, vilified the life out of this boy."

"Prejudices with their origins-of-thinking generations old, and generations removed, fired their synapses, flushing morbidly their thinking. 1983 was not 1933 and the excuses of the police officers and the police aide run thin. John Pat died of head injuries, a torn aorta and his bruised and battered body finished up a thornbush of broken ribs. One witness was straightforward with the testimony to the Supreme Court in 1984, of the unconscious and likely lifeless John Pat – that he was 'thrown like a dead kangaroo' into the back of a police van.'"

"Roebourne, in the heart of Yindjibarndi, is known Australia-wide for the death of John Pat, and not for its red earth, its vast landscapes, or for the warm seas nearby that wash it – there are few people who bring on the mention of Roebourne without thinking of the vile racism that killed John Pat – Roebourne's history for Western Australia is what Birmingham is to Alabama."

While I was working in the tertiary sector, as a general manager of a university student guild, and as a board member of the University Senate and as a member of the peak university academic planning bodies, I came across surprising racisms, and realised that the veils and layers of racism are many. In the December 7 BIG READ I wrote a 5,000 word feature, "What do these blacks want? An education? Send them back to the bush where they belong." - This is what a university officer once said to me and the campaign to secure remedy nearly destroyed me as a hostile denial of racism was smashed back at me. However, putting nothing between 'myself and what is right' I fought with no regard for myself.

I wrote, "My father, struggling in his 82nd year of life, never went to school, and who first left home at the age of 13 because of abject and acute poverty, and the effects of war before migrating to Australia near sixty years ago, taught me, the eldest of his six children, to put nothing between myself and what is right."

"When I was a young child growing up in the western suburbs of Sydney my father said to me that as I grew older I would better understand what he described as the many layers of racism that veil Australian society, and the prejudices and stereotypes that are stitches on those veils – prejudices and stereotypes shoved down our throats in order to justify racism. I have never forgotten the first time that he mentioned to me our Aboriginal brothers and sisters – I was 8 years old – and he tried to let me understand that Australia, and its governments, in the fullness of time would face an indictment of their maltreatment of our brothers and sisters – worse had been done to Aboriginal peoples, he said, than to any migrants to this great continent."

A couple of years ago I left a senior management background and downsized my life so I could give more to what mattered most to my form and content - to the form and content contributed to by Michael Anderson, Bill Craigie, Tony Coorey and Bertie Williams, and in light of my approach to 50 years of age - to the causes I care about, to that which I understand as meaningful; for the last year I have gone down the road of journalism, disseminating for the objective of awareness-raising. During the last year I have often reflected on what was said to me by that university officer, "What do these blacks want?.." and for me it is not any different to what an inebriated off duty Roebourne police officer, in 1983, said to a young Yindjibarndi boy, Ashley James, "We'll get you, you black cunt!" – and then with four other off-duty coppers thrashed into Aboriginal youth and killed 16 year old John Pat. A university officer and these coppers should have known better.

Recently, Federal Opposition leader Mr Abbott said much has changed for Aboriginal peoples and that it is time to move on in another ways from Aboriginal Tent Embassy.

What's changed?

Much and nothing – that's the tension, we've still got a long way to go.

Ten months ago when I broke story after story on the plight of the Indonesian children one of Australia's biggest news programs said, "Gerry, Australians don't care about impoverished Indonesian children even if they are in adult prisons. They hate them anyway because government has fuelled the thought they're people smugglers. We can't do a story on this, it'll hurt our ratings!"

This is racism.

I didn't give up, and now many of them have been released with some surety of changes to eventuate – both the Australian Human Rights Commission and the Australian Senate underway with inquiries and submissions to amend legislation.

The same origins of thinking that led to Australians dismissing Indonesian children as not mattering as would their own children are the same origins of thinking that underwrite the racism towards Aboriginal peoples. My way is to speak up, and my experience is that my father was correct in what he taught me, that I should not put anything between myself and what is right – it's what I would want of others for me or my children in the event that we are subsumed by inequalities and by the wrong-doing of others. We need to be 'full on' in the pursuit of justice for far too many languish, suffer, lose their lives, and we our dignity, our nobleness.

Warren Mundine's aggressive negative commentary about Aboriginal Tent Embassy was appalling – he is no longer on the front line in the legitimate call for justice – those on the front line, raising awareness, leveraging change for those cheats who stay well behind are who coerce cultural waves – and at some point in time to appease the cultural waves the cheats mitigate something into 'policy', and then claim credit – for something that should have been done long ago. The real heroes are the folk of Aboriginal Tent Embassy, they are the Michael Andersons and the Paul Coes. Without the real heroes leading so far out from the front, giving years of their lives to the cause, very little would change. It is not the Warren Mundines who change the world it is the Pankhursts, the Mandelas, Aung San, Michael Anderson and every last drop of blood that is Aboriginal Tent Embassy.

Millions of printed words later by me, 100,000 words for The National Indigenous Times, 40 years removed from that little boy, however who still flames myriad bright inside me, relentlessly having moved around our world, and after one human rights campaign after another, I finally found myself at Aboriginal Tent Embassy, alongside and in the midst of my heroes.

In Western Australia, Premier Colin Barnett sacked one of his parliamentary media advisers for allegedly going rogue – supposedly without running past his superiors something that got him into hot water with the news media – sending an inappropriate email to news media with the home details of the Opposition leader, Mark McGowan, and therefore presumably impinging on his right to privacy. State Labor members of parliament, including Mr McGowan, are calling for an official investigation and they have stated, publicly, that no one goes rogue in the Office of the Premier. Accusations are flying thick and fast that the Premier's $358,000 Chief of Staff may have been involved. Premier Barnett has refused the call for an inquiry and he is demanding of everyone, including the news media, that he is to be arbitrarily believed, digging deep into the investiture of faith and goodwill that we are supposed to have for the highest office-bearer of our state – however this investiture of faith has long been eroded. He wants us to believe his $100,000 a year media adviser acted alone.

The timing of this sacking is ironically unbelievable in light of the Prime Ministerial junior parliamentary secretary, Mr Tony Hodges, sacked by Prime Minister Gillard for allegedly going rogue – allegedly without authorisation – in his phone calls allegedly to ACT union official Kim Sattler and allegedly to another individual , and another phone call was made in pursuit of Michael Anderson who was not able to take it because he was giving a radio interview at the time. The rest is history, done and dusted. Or is it?

The Prime Minister has told Australia that Mr Hodges did not act alone, and that he did not secure 'authorisation', and that she did not know about Mr Hodges' alleged actions till the next morning however her Chief of Staff knew on the day! It is alleged that her Chief of Staff learned what Mr Hodges had done not long after the phone call(s). The Australian Liberal Party and Mr Abbott have been calling for an investigation, and this call is being supported by Independent Andrew Wilkie, and like Mr McGowan in Western Australia, they claim it is inconceivable that someone in the highest office in the land would go rogue.

In last week's edition of The National Indigenous Times we published that a source within Federal Government has claimed a number of people within the Prime Minister's department knew beforehand that a staff member intended to leak information that the Opposition leader, Tony Abbott was at the Lobby restaurant.

The source, who is reliable and holds a senior position within government bureaucracy, said the Prime Minister's press secretary, Tony Hodges did not act alone. The source said the intention of Mr Hodges' call was to get a reaction from people attending the Tent Embassy celebrations by going to the Lobby restaurant to embarrass Mr Abbott. The National Indigenous Times published that the source said Mr Hodges did not act alone, colleagues were aware of what was planned and the intention behind the call and those who were aware may have included the Prime Minister herself.

I was deeply disturbed by the contrivances and the frenetic news media and how reports were misused to poorly portray and disparage Aboriginal peoples – the only innocent party. I was deeply disturbed by the Prime Minister's Office - albeit whose rigorously inducted, protocol driven and well paid employee, Mr Hodges, has at least admitted to some of the extent of his role – however there has been no apology by the Office of the Prime Minister to Aboriginal Tent Embassy, to Aboriginal peoples Australia-wide, and to all Australians – only scapegoats and blame, the sure things we can count on from our parliamentarians on a daily basis.

If our source is factually correct there are serious and far reaching questions as to the integrity of the individuals in the Office of the Prime Minister, and whether the Prime Minister herself knew or not, or by when she knew. If the Prime Minister knew and she is not admitting it, not leading at long last from the front, then her position as Prime Minister may become untenable. If the Prime Minister is covering up for others this too is a grievous insult to Aboriginal peoples.

I was at the Lobby restaurant within minutes of the first trickle of humanity guided there by the calls from the Office of the Prime Minister. Many more people followed. It is fact that the ceremonial award giving of the function was over – done with. It is fact that the Aboriginal folk, including veterans from 1972, and their supporters were civil. It is fact I spoke to the minder, the same person who later toppled the Prime Minister in that ridiculous and unwarranted sprint, and who should be brought to some account for his actions. I am captured in television footage with him at the main entrance doors. I asked him not to transform the civil outrage into a confrontational predicament where in turn people may get arrested. As someone who has written about the harsh environments that are our Australia's prisons, and as a researcher in Australian deaths in custody, knowing full well Australia's horrific deaths in custody rates, and of prisoner abuses, I was praying that no-one would be arrested. It is fact he described something altogether different to police while on radio – I was listening. I said to him, "What are you doing?"

It is fact that there was no threat of physical violence to the Prime Minister or to Mr Abbott. It is fact police perambulated swinging arms and theatrics in that ridiculous wedge that rammed its way into the national consciousness and at first grab the various news media used for cheap judgments on the protestors. The Australian news media condemned Aboriginal folk however most of the international news media asked the questions we were all asking – why did the Prime Minister hold a function within distance of Aboriginal Tent Embassy? Who relayed information about the presence of Mr Abbott at the Lobby restaurant to Aboriginal Tent Embassy? Why did the security detail not ensure the Prime Minister's dignity and leave by the secure back entrance? Why did security impose the never before seen debacle of the wedge of police officers around the Prime Minister and Mr Abbott? Why were police called in such confrontationally high numbers?

It is fact that some of us threw ourselves between police and protestors, long after the Prime Minister and her counterpart left, to stop the violence from some police officers and to mediate, to turn innocent and well meaning folk back and save them from being arrested. Prisons are not where good people should be sent. If you want to know the heart and soul of a nation, if you want to know the minds and attitudes of our parliamentarians and legislators, day and night look into our prisons. Australia's prison population has doubled from 15,000 in 1991 to 31,000 in 2012, and the brunt of this surge in prisoners has been borne by Aboriginal peoples – 26% of our nation's prisoners are Aboriginal peoples – in the Northern Territory it is 84% and Northern Territory Aboriginals are the world's most incarcerated peoples – and in Western Australia it is 40% with one in twenty West Australian Aboriginal adult males in prison, and proportion to population the worst in the country. This is racism. This is why I lunged in between police and protestors, and why I locked arms with Aboriginal Tent Embassy committee stalwarts to stop folk from a confrontation with zero-tolerance adrenalin pumped young police officers. It is fact some police over reacted.

It is tragic that sharp aspersions were cast on Aboriginal Tent Embassy and upon many good folk. It is tragic that the Prime Minister's Office has not owned its responsibility for its obvious role, and even if what transpired was not what they had planned for, and that it went haywire, well they still had confessions to make and responsibility to own. It's one rule for them when things go wrong and another set of judgments for society's most downtrodden when they are brought before the criminal justice system when things 'go haywire' for them. It is fact that the call went out from the Prime Minister's office to people at Aboriginal Tent Embassy to bring some of the folk to the Lobby restaurant to confront Mr Abbott. This is not an uncommon practice by parliamentarians.

Mr Hodges did not go rogue, and most folk realise this – people are not stupid. There are rigorous inductions for ministerial media advisers and bureaucrats, and they are not allowed to go rogue. Our source has confirmed this, so have parliamentarians publicly and for goodness sake most of us know this. Can the Prime Minister step up to the questions and to our source's claims rather than skirt around the facts? Without navigating around the key points can the Prime Minister unequivocally state to the Australian people, to the nation, that Mr Hodges did not 'run anything past anyone at all'? I accept that Mr Hodges actions and those alleged of the Prime Minister's office may not be criminal nor that any of their actions were intended to urge on a large-scale protest, and that they may have intended for a contained target-specific embarrassment of Mr Abbott, and this is why the source says calls to people at Tent Embassy were made when the award giving component was concluding so as not as not to directly interrupt the object of the proceedings. It is ironic that the Prime Minister said to Australia that 'she was angry' that the 'fireys' had their ceremony disrupted and she said to Australia that one lady was distraught that her spouse had the medal pinning or award giving disrupted – this is not true – I was at the doors early on, and the award ceremony appeared long concluded and people were at the post-awards drinks phase. These comments by the Prime Minister are disturbing and answers would be kind. Let us return to the assumption that a large-scale protest was not intended and only something less sinister contrived - there still remain questions-at-large. Aspersions have been cast upon innocent folk and hence it all goes to the heart of the integrity of the Office of the Prime Minister and indeed to the Prime Minister herself. Is this Australia's Watergate? Is this Lobbygate? It will only take one rebuked or frustrated staffer within the Office of the Prime Minister, or who has confided in another person, a trusted friend or perceived confidante, or one troubled conscience to bring down the Prime Minister and her colleagues in the event there are hidden lies or a cover-up. Aboriginal peoples have gone through enough in this country for far too long and if it had been a cover up involving almost any other demographic well maybe it would not be as grievous. Silence by the Prime Minister, at the expense of Aboriginal peoples, is a slur, and a racist one of the worst order, upon Aboriginal Australia. I am upset that anyone would let long suffering Aboriginal folk, the majority who put out their hand again and again to one government after another in conciliatory trust, that anyone would thump them with the brunt of the fall-out for something not of their making because of piss weak consciences and cowardly rationales from people who are guilty as sin and who for f-ing sake should know better. This includes colleagues and people who learned after the event of the extent of those in the know and of the preparation alleged in the Office of the Prime Minister. Anyone who is keeping quiet is complicit.

Aboriginal folk and their supporters were well within their moral and legal propriety and rights to have done as they did, to rock up to the Lobby restaurant - they have not been duplicitous and have owned their actions and their responsibility - however has the Prime Minister's Office?

Our source alleges that the Office of the Prime Minister is unlikely to directly and adequately deny the claims published in The National Indigenous Times as it could 'huddle them into a corner', and rather they will persist with a minimalist line of 'the Prime Minister has already responded to the news media's questions about this incident and you should refer to the transcripts.'

Our source said that it is inconceivable that the Prime Minister's Chief-of-Staff would have known of Mr Hodges' alleged call(s) on the one day but with the Prime Minister finding out the next morning. Our source said that this is the most laughable claim of all, keystone, and that her Chief-of-Staff is in the ear of the Prime Minster at all times. If the Chief-of-Staff had held back this information till the next day from the Prime Minister then the Chief-of-Staff failed in his duty to the Prime Minister.

We consider the source credible because this source has a track record of four out of four – why then not five out of five? The source is the same person who told me the day before that Prime Minister Kevin Rudd would be toppled by his deputy prime minister. The next morning, I had a 10am coffee with WA state Labor President, Simon Mead. I put this to him – he laughed it off and said, "Gerry, whatever any issues with Kevin, the ALP would never dump a first term Prime Minister, it will never happen." That evening the Australian political landscape took a twist that Simon did not expect, and the next morning Kevin Rudd was no longer Prime Minister.

Last year, I dedicated a good part of my life campaigning for the release of some nearly 100 impoverished Indonesian children unbelievably languishing in Australian adult prisons. I spoke briefly to the Prime Minister about this horrific predicament on July 20 – she did the typical silence thing. The campaign to free them has led to a Senate Committee inquiry, a Bill has been proposed to the Committee to amend an Act, and the Australian Human Rights Commission has launched a national inquiry – our source provided me with important information, which turned out to be correct, and which was crucial to the campaign – many of the children have been freed and returned home.

The source was proven correct in two other pieces of information I passed on to other news media however we are all best served if I do not explain these as it could contribute to the imparting of the source's identity – this would not serve the nation's best interests.

On February 3, I contacted the Office of the Prime of Minister, and I spoke to one of her media advisers, and I requested an interview with the Prime Minister. I would very much appreciate interviewing our Prime Minister in relation to our source's claims and other information yet unpublished that the source put to us. In addition, I requested an interview with the Prime Minister for The National Indigenous Times for a feature length opportunity on a myriad of questions that Aboriginal readers and those who walk alongside them would be keenly interested in. If the request for the interview on the source's claims is denied, as both the source and my colleagues at The National Indigenous Times say will be the case, it would nevertheless be a positive gesture, and one that befits a Prime Minister, to reach out to the readers of The National Indigenous Times of whom many do not read other newspapers – and we will publish the interview verbatim, demarcated from the other matters at hand.

If the Office of the Prime Minister owes an unfettered apology to Australia, this apology should be given and any flak copped should be taken on the chin, so be it – what must be done in the first instance is the right thing, what my old man father still says is the go in his 83rd year of life. Nothing should stand in the way of a Prime Minister and in doing what is right – at all times. A lie is not the end of the world, however perpetuating it is a whole different story – tragedy. Replacing a lie with the truth is an example one can be proud of, and people should always be respected for this – because redemption is a big thing, it is society's great hope, the truth must always be welcome, and people forgiven.

Everyone in the Office of the Prime Minister, and the Prime Minister, cannot look at themselves in the mirror each morning if they have lied or have covered up a lie, or have put themselves first and what is right last, and instead let folk who suffered the worst forms of racism, apartheid-like conditions, abominable eugenics, who were disenfranchised of everything that every other Australian was not, who were looked down and treated like shit by so many for so long, cop the blame. This is schoolyard-type cowardice.

I was proud to be at Aboriginal Tent Embassy. I arrived on the 25th and spent every minute soaking it in, walking in the midst of legends, of heroes, of warriors of peace, and I felt honoured in the opening march from Canberra city to Tent Embassy, where I was one among the thousands, and where I saw great journalists like Jeff McMullen, with his daughter, walk with the Andersons, Morgans, Coes, Swans, Briscoes, Bayles – and similarly again on the march to Federal Parliament the day after the Lobby restaurant incident – however every moment for me at Tent Embassy, the ceremonies, the smoke, the yarns, the kindness, the spirit of progress are equal in my contemplations. I did not come alone to Canberra, to Tent Embassy – my 11 year old daughter came with me and saw up close and personal what I as a 10 year old saw only from the family black and white television however which reached deep into the pockets of my heart and the crevices in my mind.

My 11 year old daughter understands that 26% of the Australian prison population is Aboriginal, that there is a Military Intervention of a racial nature in the Northern Territory, and that the majority of Aboriginal peoples languish in poverty – acute, abject and inter-generational. She wants to do something about it.