Attorney-General George Brandis has announced the Australian Law Reform Commission will investigate the leading factors in Indigenous Australians' soaring incarceration rates.
Indigenous Australians have gone from making up 14 per cent of the prison population to 27 per cent in the 25 years since the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody.
Senator Brandis says an inquiry is needed.
"I've decided to make a new reference to the Australian Law Reform Commission, to ask it to examine the incarceration of Indigenous Australians and to consider what law-reform measures can be put in place to help to ameliorate this national tragedy. The terms of reference for the inquiry will be subject to significant consultation, particularly, of course, with Indigenous people."
But the head of the Prime Minister's Indigenous Advisory Council, Warren Mundine, says an inquiry into the incarceration rates is a waste of money.
Mr Mundine has told Sky News an inquiry is totally unnecessary.
"It's just a total waste of taxation money. It's going to have no end. I actually could tell them what they need to do, what the inquiry needs to do. I've got a whole council out there that needs to do it. I just find this a joke, and I'm getting sick and tired of the crap that is coming out of this Government in regard to the Indigenous affairs, concerning incarceration rates in regard to, you know, the juvenile-detention area."
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten says the Government does not need to conduct another inquiry.
"We do support having an inquiry, but the Government doesn't need to have another inquiry to get to the bottom of this. Go and talk to the lawyers, go and talk to communities. We need to have a lot more non-custodial sentences to help deal with a range of the issues. The answer can't be, when you're an 18-year-old Aboriginal man in Australia, that you're more likely to go to jail than university. We need to be better than that. The problem's well-identified. What Mr Turnbull and Attorney-General Brandis need to do is actually create a justice target."
Statistics show Indigenous Australians are 24 times more likely to be incarcerated than their peers.
A newly released report called The Australia We Want, compiled by the independent, not-for-profit Community Council for Australia, addresses a series of societal issues.
They include the rising rates of incarceration and suicide.
The report has found the incarceration rate of adult Indigenous people is 15 times the imprisonment rate of non-Indigenous Australians.
Tim Costello is chairman of the Community Council for Australia and chief executive officer for World Vision Australia.
Mr Costello has told the National Press Club the number of Indigenous people behind bars is a problem with many factors to consider.
"Indigenous people, those with poor literacy, from poor socio-economic families, often people with disability, with mental-health issues, are grossly over-represented in the Australian prison population."
He says the Northern Territory, Western Australia and Queensland are responsible for the highest Indigenous incarceration rates.
"Imprisonment rates in the Northern Territory are four times the national average and are higher percentage-wise than incarceration rates in the US, which is the worst. Western Australia imprisonment rates are almost 50 per cent higher than the national average. They're high, also, in Queensland. Those two states and territories have large Indigenous populations."
New South Wales and South Australia are slightly above the national average.
