Kevin Rudd Heiner Affair Hush Hush
She was a 14 year old Aboriginal in Queensland and she had had a run in with authorities over schooling and adolescent behaviours. She was placed in detention at the John Oxley Youth Detention centre circa 1989. At the time, mass media was crucifying conservative government over the issue of Aboriginal deaths in custody. Statistics showing Aboriginals were disproportionately safer in custody were ignored and the issue was pinned on conservatives regardless of cause. Even suicides were something that conservatives were blamed. While she was in detention, she came across a group of boys, many of whom were also Aboriginal and they gang raped her.

The Queensland state ALP government was led by Premier Wayne Goss and his former diplomat chief of staff, Kevin Rudd. The Goss government was the first ALP government in Queensland for some 37 years and they had a strong mandate for change which they would squander. By 1996, Goss’s government would collapse, gaff prone, blaming the previous government. However, it was Kevin Rudd’s 1990 decision which would haunt the administration.

The gang rape of an Aboriginal girl at John Oxley was not the sole issue the ALP administration faced, but it was counter to the preferred media narrative that conservatives were bad for Aboriginal peoples. Former magistrate Noel Heiner began an investigation. A submission was given the Goss government and Rudd took legal advice. If Rudd shredded the evidence, then there would be no embarrassing investigation and bad headlines would be avoided. So Rudd ordered the documents shredded.

It is illegal to shred evidence but as the ALP were in government in Queensland and it had not been a sitting member who ordered it but a chief of staff, the Premier, Wayne Goss was immunised from claims of corruption.

The Aboriginal community has been fractured, and prior to John Howard’s intervention in the top end of Australia, some communities had over 95% of Aboriginal babies with sexually transmitted infections. Another tragic case in Queensland involved a seven year old girl who had been used to having sex with many boys, some of whom were cousins. The girl was discovered by authorities and removed from her single mother and extended family. She was placed in the care of a loving family, whose father took on full time care, moving her to another city and giving her counselling. Only a welfare worker decided as she was Aboriginal and the adopted family was not, she was removed from the adopted family and returned to her extended family, where at age 10 she would have sex with lots of boys. Some boys found to have had sex with her were brought before a judge who suspended any sentence and verbally instructed the boys not to have under age sex.

The government then placed the girl in specialised care. She had no one her own age, but a team of psychologists, counsellors and psychiatrists until she reached her majority (about 15 years of age).

Meanwhile Kevin Rudd would become Prime Minister in 2007. Questions were asked regarding the legality of his shredding the Heiner documents. Finally, Queensland Premier Campbell Newman circa 2014 ordered an investigation into the shredding. He was told by legal advisers that the case could not be opened because of the parliamentary principle that the government could not investigate itself. Meanwhile the girl had fallen further off the rails, involving herself in drugs and alcohol until she tried to get redress in her thirties. But because the evidence had been shredded she could not. A Labour government gave her a small lump sum on condition she remained silent.