• Professor of Communication and Media Studies, Director, News and Media Research Centre, University of Canberra
Mick Tsikas/AAP

Many Australians do not like the way politics is reported. Here’s how it can improve

Many Australians find political news off-putting, but it’s vital for our democracy that media outlets work towards making their reporting more accessible and relatable.
The facilities were poor and some inmates were subjected to unsuccessful experimentation with a “vaccine” that used arsenic compounds. Hospital Ward Dorre Island/State library of Western Australia

What do the newspapers really tell us about the lock hospital histories?

The lock hospitals inflicted incalculable traumas on Aboriginal people, wrenching them away from families and country.
In the SBS documentary series Who Do You Think You Are?, Peter Garrett traces the history of his grandmother, who worked in the “lock hospitals” as a nurse. Screenshot/Who Do You Think You Are/ SBS

Acknowledge the brutal history of Indigenous health care – for healing

Hundreds of Aboriginal people were incarcerated on Dorre and Bernier islands for “venereal disease” between 1908 and 1919. The lock hospitals were penal rather than therapeutic institutions.

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