Indigenous woman shackled to hospital bed while in labour in Queensland

An incarcerated Indigenous woman was shackled to a hospital bed in Queensland while she was in labour last weekend, an advocacy group has said.

The birth happened just days before Labor and the Coalition blocked a bill to ban the “barbaric practice” of shackling incarcerated women during childbirth.

Debbie Kilroy, the chief executive officer of advocacy group Sisters Inside, said an Aboriginal woman who gave birth via caesarean section to a premature baby on the weekend and was still in hospital had been “shackled on and off since she came into the hospital”.

Hospital staff rang Sisters Inside after trying everything they could to get the shackles removed, she said.

“They were even crying because prison staff wouldn’t remove the shackles.”

A Queensland corrective services spokesperson said the incident would be reviewed.

“This incident will be subject to an internal review as restraints are only ever to be used as a last resort on pregnant prisoners where necessary to maintain public safety,” the spokesperson said.

Lidia Thorpe, a Gunnai, Gunditjmara and Djab Wurrung woman and independent senator for Victoria, introduced bills to the Senate this week to ban shackling and to stop children being strip-searched.

“[The] people sitting in this room have the power to end these barbaric, inhumane, traumatic and totally unnecessary practices,” Thorpe said.

As part of the UN, Australia has signed on to the Bangkok rules on the treatment of female prisoners, which state that prison should be a last resort for pregnant women and that “instruments of restraint shall never be used on women during labour, during birth and immediately after birth”.

But the government said this week the criminal justice system was a matter for the states and territories while the Coalition said it understood the intent of the bill but would not support its passage.

The Queensland Liberal senator Paul Scarr broke ranks to say he was “deeply concerned” about the practice and would raise it with the Queensland attorney general.

Kilroy said the woman in the Queensland hospital had been “spiralling” before the shackles were removed on Friday.

“As soon as she was shackled her health was deteriorating,” she said.

“Mum wasn’t running anywhere, mum wasn’t being violent.”

An inquiry into Thorpe’s bill heard about women having one leg and one arm shackled, with only one arm available to hold their newborn.

Thorpe said on Friday that “the Albanese government had the opportunity to take a stand against this barbaric practice”.

“Instead, they voted to allow it to continue. Not a day later, we hear of another harrowing case,” she said.

Thorpe said it was “a joke” for the commonwealth to leave it to states and territories because they “have the constitutional power to establish a national standard and they are choosing not to use it”.

“Instead they continue to handball this issue to jurisdictions that have repeatedly failed to stop it,” she said.

“How many more women and their babies have to go through this horrific experience before the Albanese government acts?”