NAIDOC WEEK IN FOCUS 

Content Sensitivity Warning

This briefing discusses the deaths of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in police custody, including specific cases involving fatal violence. It contains direct examples of racist, dehumanising, and hateful online commentary, reproduced for analytical purposes. 

Readers are advised that names and images of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who have died are used in this briefing, in line with their portrayal in public reporting and existing media coverage of these cases.

If this content raises concerns for your safety or wellbeing, support is available through 13YARN(13 92 76), a crisis support line for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and Lifeline (13 11 14).

As NAIDOC Week comes to a close, OHPI has conducted dedicated analysis focused on the harmful online discourse proliferating around high-profile killings affecting Indigenous Australian communities across the country

In 2019, Kumanjayi Walker was killed by a member of the Northern Territory police, an institution that was later found to bear the hallmarks of institutional racism. A coronial inquest later found the officer held racist views, and was dismissed by police in the midst of a murder trial, from which he was acquitted. There was also the 2022 fatal collision that killed Jai Wright. The case resulted in the first-ever conviction of a NSW Police officer in relation to a death of an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person in custody. Most recently, Kumanjayi White was killed while being apprehended by police in a supermarket in Alice Springs.

Despite their shocking nature, these deaths are nothing new, and are echoes of uncomfortable, unspoken realities about Australia’s past that have been left unaddressed and are now spilling out into the digital realm. This hatred and toxicity has marred Australia since the arrival of the First Fleet and the brutal treatment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples that followed.

The circumstances surrounding each killing discussed in this briefing are unique, and the facts of each case are worth exploring in detail in their own right. Rather than re-litigating the specific facts of these preventable tragedies, this briefing instead explores the drivers and dynamics behind the charged online discourse that surrounds them. In drawing attention to these cases, we believe important lessons can be drawn about how harmful narratives (at times spurred by traditional media) are further exacerbated by the dynamics of the digital arena, where abusive content and their toxic comment sections thrive, and where mis/disinformation spread freely. It is this poorly governed digital public square that makes platforms feel unsafe for users, and which is detrimental to wider society.

The cases above all follow a similar pattern, one where a death at the hands of the state becomes the flashpoint for a recurring cycle of public reaction. This cycle typically unfolds as follows:

1. Avoidable tragedy or atrocity
2. Community outrage
3. Backlash to that outrage (online hate)
   1. steps 2 & 3 repeat in a continuous, self-reinforcing feedback loop, resulting in further toxic online discourse
4. Institutional attempts at accountability and justice
5. Where those institutional steps fail, further social backlash and instability. 

Note on Step 3: This step is sometimes a precursor to 1 and 2, and frequently recurs throughout steps 4 and 5 as well. Online hatred is near-inevitable in the aftermath of atrocities of this nature. As seen with the Bondi Beach attack, online spaces can flood with hatred towards the victimised community almost immediately, often before that community has had any opportunity to express its own grief or outrage. 

These incidents, particularly once they go viral, leave long lasting ripple effects that combine in the digital space to shape the wider landscape of online discourse. While institutional accountability can take years to materialise (Kumanjayi Walker’s coronial inquest findings were released in June 2025, 6 years after his death), these cases fester in the online zeitgeist throughout, fuelling shock-jocks and grifters who monetise culture-war content. 

The ‘digital’ and the ‘real’ world are now one and the same

Online platforms are taking steps away from automated moderation of online hate speech, increasingly leaving the reporting and moderation of harmful online discourse to individuals. In practice, this places the burden onto the people most likely to be the victims of that harmful speech, who are now responsible for reporting it themselves, with these reports often rejected and the harmful content remaining online. Where platforms do rely on AI for content moderation, significant questions remain about its safe implementation.

Research by the AHRC notes that the online world “creates a space of hypervisibility in which the ‘real’ and ‘virtual’ worlds overlap”. In this environment, the distinction between digital hate and real-world consequence is blurred, and hate seeps freely into people’s day-to-day lives.

A survey conducted by Macquarie University showed that 88% of Indigenous people witnessed examples of racism online. Much attention has already been paid to the marked rise in racist online rhetoric in the wake of the failed 2023 Voice referendum. High-profile Indigenous Australians are exposed constantly to racist abuse. Spend any time online and comment sections can be seen to devolve into spaces of unchallenged hostility toward entire groups. Indigenous public figures are subjected to degrading and racist material on a daily basis, posted by faceless accounts that evade accountability behind the veil of online anonymity.

The risks of this ungoverned ‘information superhighway’ are clear: without sensible governance, we are sleepwalking towards disaster. 

Defenders of the social media platforms and the gatekeepers of the online information space point out that they are not the ‘arbiters of truth’, and have no interest in limiting free speech on the basis of political opinion. But when the spaces these platforms control reinforce racist perceptions, the consequence can result in real-world violence.

Addressing these wicked problems facing our First Nations communities requires multi-pronged policy response across several domains, including areas like police accountability, media standards, and a general national commitment to truth telling. The scope of this briefing, however, is narrower. It examines the patterns identified above (particularly on X and Meta), whereby the character of Indigenous victims of violence is put on trial in the court of public opinion, alongside the broader stereotyping, victim-blaming, and hostile commentary that justifies or minimises these atrocities.

It is within this context that this briefing explores a central question: what do social media platforms owe their users? Unimpeded access to a digital space with no limits on what a user encounters? Or a restricted internet, where platforms censor content according to the preferences of individuals and governments?

This is a false binary. Between unrestricted access and heavy-handed censorship lies a middle ground where sensible governance has a role to play – namely, a digital duty of care.

Note: Some examples below do not meet the threshold for hate speech, and are instead illustrative of awful-but-lawful or ignorant content. Still, they reflect the deluge of online abuse that platforms have facilitated in the wake of these events.

Case Study 1 Kumanjayi Walker 

Zachary Rolfe killed Walker at point blank range after Walker stabbed him in the shoulder with a pair of scissors during a failed arrest. Rolfe was later acquitted on the grounds of self-defence. However, Rolfe’s inquest revealed the extent of his pre-existing racist attitudes and beliefs. He shared illegally obtained bodycam footage of physical altercations with Indigenous Australians, distributing it to family and friends as something to be proud of. Rolfe and the subculture that could develop at NT Police are a product of this heightened hateful environment, an embodiment of our collective failure to adequately protect Australia’s most vulnerable minority groups.

Mainstream coverage of the trial that led to Rolfe’s acquittal portrayed Walker as little more than an habitual criminal. The coverage was widely criticised, and described by the political editor at The West Australian as “unethical, insensitive, victim-blaming, irresponsible” and “a national disgrace”.

Digital coverage and online responses were no more forgiving. OHPI’s research has shown that events of this type correlate with distinct spikes in online hate. We can clearly see how the platform mechanics turn social media into a hate production line, exposing entire populations to hate at scale. 

SNAICC – National Voice for our Children, the national peak body for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children (and a regular recipient of online hate on its posts) notes that Meta’s moderation tools are “often insufficient to address the scale and evolving nature of this issue.” Just with other types of online hate, commenters try avoid automatic filtering (via keywords) by deferring to innuendo, coded language or indirect hostility or the under guise of ‘political speech’ (figleafing). SNAICC’s submission to the Parliamentary Inquiry Into Racism, Hate and Violence Directied at Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People also contains, from page 37, a snippet of the deluge of hateful comments. 

As mentioned above, problematic online discourse surrounding the killing of Kumanjayi Walker involved stereotyping, victim-blaming, and hostile commentary that justified or minimised the killing. 

Example Post 1

Context: A post on X framing the deceased as ‘the boy nobody wanted’, claiming that race played no role in his death, contrary to the facts uncovered during his inquest. The account is Australia-based and posts prolifically: at the time of writing, the account has posted 21 tweets in the last 24 hours, about various hot button culture war issues. The divisive, AI slop-laden posts and reposts make sweeping generalisations about large groups of people, and decries the oncoming ‘complete societal breakdown in the UK’. The tweets also contain reposts of diatribes about the ‘monoculture’, and responses like the following.

Example Post 1 Comments

One response to the above tweet stereotypes Indigenous Australians as alcoholics, a trope historically used to dismiss and minimise Indigenous disadvantage, trauma, and the structural harms. By reducing a complex, historically rooted issue to an individual moral failing, the post trivialises the real and ongoing harm faced by Indigenous communities.

Comments from troll accounts, justifying the killing of an individual without any consideration of proportionality or justice: 

An additional comment that praises the actions of Rolfe: 

Case Study 2 Kumanjayi White

Northern Territory police killed 24-year-old Kumanjayi White, a Warlpiri man with cognitive disabilities, during a confrontation in a Coles supermarket. White’s death sparked outrage in Alice Springs, accompanied with a litany of online hatred directed towards White and the wider Indigenous community. 

Example Post 2

This news post from 26 May from the National Indigenous Times attracted comments that delivered ad hominem attacks against White, suggesting he was deserving of his fate. 

Example Post 2 Comments

The ad hominems below, against the victim of an extrajudicial police killing, are reminiscent of the online discourses proliferating after the killing of George Floyd. 

Example Post 2 Comments (cont.)

The next comments echo the same fallacious logic seen in analogous cases overseas, where minorities have been killed while committing trivial crimes. The underlying assumption is that because the victim was allegedly committing a petty crime, proportionality becomes irrelevant, justice has been served, and those responsible for an entirely avoidable extrajudicial killing are exonerated.  

Case Study 3: Jai Wright

A NSW Police officer was convicted over the death of Jai Kalani Wright, a 16-year-old boy killed when his motorbike collided with the unmarked police car. The case represents the first time a NSW Police officer was convicted in relation to a death in custody of an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person.

Example Post 3

This post about the conviction by digital newspaper the National Herald attracted 464 comments. The overwhelming majority are critical of Wright for having “committed a crime”, critical of “Indigenous parenting” (e.g. ‘teach your children to stop for police’), or critical of the reporting itself. The latter example shifts blame onto Wright for his own death, constituting victim-blaming, and it invokes the oft-repeated claim of “fake news” for information that doesn’t align with the commenter’s worldview – which amounts to atrocity denial or minimisation). 

Example Post 3 Comments

Example Post 4 (with Comments)

This reply to a post regarding Wright involves incitement to contempt and endorsement of harm towards First Nations people.  

This response attributes individual conduct to the racial group as a whole, and minimises the validity of the real suffering faced by Indigenous Australians. 

Potential ways forward in Digital Governance

The hope that accountability and positive social change are inevitable for preventable First Nations deaths in custody is undermined by wider social and technological dynamics, particularly around digital governance. While this ongoing inquiry continues, it has been 35 years since the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, and since then, at least 630 people have died in custody.

The submissions that have been tendered to the more recent inquiry give insight into the severity and wickedness of the problem, as well as various informed perspectives and policy proposals to target the problem of online hatred. Some of these proposals could help in the combatting of all online hate, not just that directed towards First Nations communities. 

The AHRC have recommended the introduction of a digital duty of care, requiring social media companies to “identify, assess and mitigate foreseeable risks arising from recommender systems and monetisation practices that incentivise the amplification and normalisation of racist narratives”.The submission by Amy Rust of Jindawayni Consulting echoes this sentiment, suggesting the introduction of ‘duty of care obligations’ for organisations that host public comment platforms that facilitate racial abuse. In her words, ‘Freedom of expression does not require providing a platform for racial abuse’. 

The National Anti Racism Framework of 2024 recommends that the government introduce “effective legal protections against online hate, with particular attention given to regulation and enforcement against, and liability of, digital platforms” to be developed in consultation with First Nations and other “negatively racialised communities”. This could be achieved through the establishment of a “National Indigenous Digital Safety Taskforce”, as suggested by the Australian Multicultural Action Network’s submission. This calls for a mechanism through which governments, digital platforms, indigenous organisations and civil society groups collaborate on combatting online racism towards First Nations peoples. 

ASIO’s submission is frank in its assessment that “The increasing normalisation of, and access to, extremist content online in combination with high levels of intimidating, violent and intolerant rhetoric increases the exposure of extremist ideas and likely serves as a gateway for some individuals to violent extremist beliefs and ideals”… which could inspire individuals to commit violence.

Racism may have played a part in Walker’s death, but it doesn’t have to play a part in his legacy; the ongoing abuse faced by First Nations peoples after these senseless killings must be addressed. Before we can begin to have an honest and constructive national conversation and truth telling about the issues plaguing our First Nations people, we need to fix our feeds and our online public square, and put out the fires that are stoking real world violence. 

If this content raises concerns for your safety or wellbeing, support is available through13YARN(13 92 76), a crisis support line for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and Lifeline (13 11 14).

Media contact:
Online Hate Prevention Institute
Email: joshua@ohpi.org.au
Website: www.ohpi.org.au

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