Outrage after Aborigine dumped at airstrip dies

Peter Limbunya

SYDNEY - The death of an elderly Aboriginal man beside a remote airstrip after being dumped there following hospital treatment has sparked demands by Australian doctors for a royal commission into the state of indigenous health.

Peter Limbunya, 78, was flown to the settlement of Kalkaringi, in the Northern Territory, after receiving treatment at a hospital in the town of Katherine.

Shoeless and wearing a cowboy hat, he had no escort on the August 21 flight and no-one to meet him.

Almost blind, barely able to walk and with limited English, he apparently wandered off into the bush, disoriented and confused.

A police search involving quad bikes, a helicopter with thermal imaging equipment, officers on foot and Aboriginal trackers failed to locate him.

Eight days later locals found his body in long grass a few hundred metres from the airstrip.

The Northern Territory's health department has launched an internal inquiry into his death, but the Australian Medical Association has called for a much broader inquiry.

"We say there are pockets of deeply entrenched racism within the bureaucracy, across several departments," Paul Bauert, the president of the AMA in the Northern Territory, said yesterday.

"It's manifested by the bureaucracy's acceptance of repeated failures. This man's death is a tragedy but it's the tip of the iceberg in terms of mishaps in moving Aboriginal people across long distances."

A royal commission would allow the entire Aboriginal welfare system to be subjected to scrutiny.

Mr Limbunya's niece, Josie Crawshaw-Guy, also accused health officials of chronic neglect. "It is hard-core, systemic racism," she said. "I can't begin to imagine how terrifying it must have been for him."

Each year about 8000 patients, many of them Aboriginal, are flown from hospitals in the Northern Territory to remote Outback settlements.

The health department says the vast majority are successfully returned home.

"I've worked for many years in the health industry in the Northern Territory and have never seen evidence of institutionalised racism," Health Minister Chris Burns said.

"Unfortunately, there have been a couple of cases where the system has failed but that is not the basis for a royal commission."

Aborigines, who make up about 2.5 per cent of Australia's population of 20 million, live nearly 20 years less than mainstream society. One in three indigenous Australian men can expect to die before the age of 55.