Dodson says Indigenous deaths in custody ‘a national disgrace’ – as it happened

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Independent senator Lidia Thorpe has said the federal government needs to do more to address Indigenous deaths in custody and stop handballing" to states and territories after a damning report found more Indigenous people died in custody last year than any year since 1980.

Thorpe spoke to ABC News this morning, saying the recommendations from a royal commission completed in 1991 have still not been implemented. She said:

There's no appetite at the federal level to do anything about it. They continue to handball to states and territories but we need national oversight, we need a whole unit ... to look at these recommendations and start implementing them.

States and territories are using us to score political points coming up to elections and scraping the bottom of the barrel when it comes to so-called being tough on crime'.