The fickle finger of fate !

Bad things happen to some people - but you have a higher chance of being one of those people if your skin is black instead of white !

A black man died in Western Australia when he was transported from the town of Laverton to Kalgoorlie.

This Aboriginal man started life living in an outback tribal family. He learned to speak excellent English, gained an education and travelled overseas on several cultural missions.

He lived in a " dry " village, and like many others stopped to enjoy a few beers when he made a business visit to Laverton. The police picked him up driving home well over the limit, using rough stock tracks rather than the road system.

He was locked up for the night in the Laverton police station and the next day refused bail and scheduled to be transferred to gaol in Kalgoorlie.

And that's where things fell apart !

The transport was a clapped out Mazda prison van manned by two prison contractors. It had a " prisoner cell " which had little natural ventilation and was supposedly cooled by an air conditioning unit. Air conditioning worked fine for the drivers compartment, but had a history of failure in the prisoner cell.

Laverton to Kalgoorlie is a four hundred kilometre stretch and the day in question was over forty degrees. The temperature in the prisoner cell would have neared fifty degrees - and this prisoner was given a frozen meat pie and a litre of water for the journey.

No attempt was made to check his welfare and no break stops were made. When the van reached Kalgoorlie this prisoner was unconscious - and later died of heat stroke.

It is unlikely that a white prisoner would have been transported in this manner - and so far nobody has been charged with any offence. It seems that the reason is that no rules were broken despite it being an unreasonable ordeal that led to a death.

We are never going to achieve peace with our indigenous people while this disparity in treatment is allowed to happen - and change is ignored.

The difference between life and death can rest on the colour of your skin !