Yanner nearly jailed for an attack on a woman in 1997

Aboriginal activist Murrandoo Yanner yesterday verbally abused One Nation leader Pauline Hanson accusing her of being a racist and telling her she was not welcome at the indigenous art show she visited in Cairns.

Yanner, whose Christian name is Jason, comes from the Gulf community of Doomagee near Burketown and like Hanson is no stranger to controversy.

Indigenous industry sources have told Cairns News Yanner converted to Islam about 10 years ago which explains his vile attack. https://www.facebook.com/PaulineHansonAu/videos/492107537660230/

Hanson laughed it off, later releasing a Facebook clip asking Yanner to stand with her against the corruption in various land councils and in government.

Yanner is regarded as a thug among some of his own people and his outburst will win him no friends within the wider Aboriginal community and certainly none at all in the white community.

A Traditional Owner and elder from Cairns called Yanner a “…disgrace, and our community will not tolerate this attack on a woman.”

 

Murrandoo Jason Yanner, regarded as a thug amongst the wider Aboriginal community verbally assaults Pauline Hanson at an art show.

Murrandoo Jason Yanner, regarded as a thug among the wider Aboriginal community verbally assaults Pauline Hanson at an art show.

Yanner was given a suspended jail sentence by a Mt Isa court over his role in a vicious pub brawl. The Court of Appeal found Yanner’s sentence should be increased, ordering he be jailed for 18 months, but wholly suspended the sentence for a period of four years.

The Attorney General had appealed a Mt Isa District Court sentence in which Yanner was placed on community-based orders.

However, in a split decision, one of the three appeal court judges, Chief Justice Paul de Jersey, found Yanner should actually serve time in jail – recommending an 18-month sentence suspended after six months, with an operational period of four years.

“There is no doubt in my mind that Murrandoo Yanner should be actually imprisoned,” Justice de Jersey said in his written judgment.

“His substantial episode of unprovoked vicious and brutal thuggery involved as many as four innocent victims, people who were thereby both physically injured and emotionally traumatised.”

Yanner and his young brother, Bruce Lee Yanner, 21, were involved in the fight outside the Burketown Hotel in May 1997. Yanner had pleaded guilty in the Mt Isa District Court to three charges of assault causing bodily harm and one of assault causing bodily harm in company, over attacks on a woman, a Telstra worker and a male nurse.