Queensland police service sacks First Nations advisory group after members refuse to sign gag clause

Queensland police commissioner Steve Gollschewski. Photograph: Russell Freeman/AAP

The Queensland Police Service has sacked a formal advisory group of First Nations community leaders and elders, six weeks after they refused to sign a gag clause that they say could have silenced ongoing criticism.

Members of the QPS First Nations Advisory group have publicly and privately raised concerns that the police leadership had stalled on cultural reform promised in the aftermath of a 2022 inquiry.

The group led calls for the resignation of the police union president, Ian Leavers, over a widely criticised October opinion piece on the state’s proposed path to treaty that they condemned as “racialised and divisive”, containing “factually inaccurate” comments, including that a state treaty would result in the justice system favouring First Nations people”.

In 2022 members of the group accused Steve Gollschewski – now the Queensland police commissioner – of becoming angry and aggressive during a meeting with them, pointing his finger at a senior elder and saying “you people” don’t run the organisation.

The group was notified of their sacking on 29 February – the day of former commissioner Katarina Carroll’s farewell – after Gollschewski had been named as the acting commissioner.

In a detailed statement, the group says that on 16 January, members were given contracts to sign containing confidentiality clauses. These causes “would prevent us from speaking publicly about the work of the [group]” and were contrary to the group’s terms of reference, the statement says.

Two weeks later, the group met the new director of the police First Nations Division and raised concern about a number of matters, including stalled progress on implementing the inquiry’s recommendations and “concerns our work is not being valued by the QPS”.

They have released a statement after attempting to raise concerns with the premier, Steven Miles. They say these efforts were “met with silence”.

“We are obliged to act with open transparency about the workings of the First Nations Advisory Group and we are obliged to advocate in the interests of justice for our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities,” the statement read.

“The actions of the QPS have left us with little faith in the newly established First Nations division to be effective, or the senior leadership of the QPS to work in partnership with … our First Nations communities.

“We are concerned that the QPS will now actively seek to recruit a token advisory group who will be bound by an approved narrative handed to them.

“Until drastic action is taken to address the culture that exists within the QPS, we hold great concern that any action taken by QPS will be tokenistic, performative, and for the purposes of optics to mislead our communities”.

After taking concerns about Leavers’s comments to Carroll, the group says the former commissioner agreed to undertake a “racism audit” of the QPS. Asked on Monday whether it had begun any racism audit, or if it intended to honour the commitment, the QPS did not address the question.

In a statement, the QPS said it had conducted an “internal assessment” of the advisory group, beginning in December, that “identified that the group, in its previous iteration, was not meeting the purpose and original intent of the group”.

“With that advice in mind, the executive director of the QPS’s First Nation Division decided to release the group members at the time and encouraged those members to apply through a transparent recruitment process.”

“The QPS aims to recruit members with the view of reflecting the diverse groups that make up our First Nations community.”

Reference group members reject suggestions they were not fulfilling their objectives, under the co-designed terms of reference. They say they were not included in any review.

Similar suggestions that the group was not representative – made by senior police during the inquiry in 2022 – were rejected at the time by members as a smokescreen for attempts to silence them.

A former member of the group, academic Marlene Longbottom, raised concerns in 2022 that the QPS wanted to replace members agitating for reform with “more palatable blacks”.

“They want blackfellas who are not going to push the envelope, who are not going to call out the violence,” she said.

Longbottom resigned last year, saying meetings were “hostile” and that she has “no interest in working with [police] ever again”.