Australian worker charged after ‘tying up’ Aboriginal children he found swimming in pool

Jacqueline McGowan-Jones, Western Australia’s commissioner for children, said she was appalled at the images.

“It would appear these are very young and small children. They appear to be quite frightened in the circumstances. He is quite a large man. And they appear to be very nervous,” she told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Rod Wilde, an assistant commissioner of the state’s police force, said that while Australians had the right to make a citizen’s arrest in some circumstances, the degree of force allegedly used by the man was disproportionate to whatever the children might have done.

“Whatever force you apply to arrest someone needs to be reasonable, given the age of the person involved, and their vulnerability. In this case, it’s the basis of the charges that it’s disproportionate to what is reasonable in the circumstances.”

He added that children under the age of 10 could not be held criminally responsible.

The children were checked by medics and then returned to their families.

Politicians appealed for calm amid fears the incident could stoke racial tensions in the region.

More than 200 years after colonisation, indigenous Australians are the country’s most disadvantaged ethnic group, suffering from high rates of incarceration, alcoholism and unemployment.

Aboriginal men have a life expectancy of 71 years, which is nearly nine years less than the rest of the population.

Last October, Australians voted in a referendum against a proposal that would have enshrined in the constitution an apparatus that would have allowed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders to advise parliament on issues that affect their lives.

The idea of giving indigenous people a so-called “voice to parliament” was deeply divisive, with the fractious national debate described as “Australia’s Brexit moment”.