The New Protection: Indigenous Women and the Contemporary Australian State

Abstract

Thursday 21 June 2007 is a date indelibly etched in my mind. It had not been a good week for lndigenous Aushalians. Two days earlier a Townsville jury acquitted the police officer charged with the manslaughter of a young Aboriginal man, Mulrunji. Mulrunji had lived on Palm Island, an Aboriginal community in north Queensland with a tragic history. In 1918, the Queensland Government tumed Palm Island into a penal settlement for Indigenous people who dared to question their oppression (Waters 2008: 28). In the years to follow, Palm Island would become notorious for superintendents who administered sadistic punishments and enforced apartheid (Watson 1995:- 149).