Custody Notification Scheme  A Custody Notification Scheme (CNS) is a 24-hour legal advice and support telephone hotline for any Australian Aboriginal person brought into custody, connecting them with lawyers from the Aboriginal Legal Service. It is intended to reduce the high number of Aboriginal deaths in custody by counteracting the effects of institutional racism. Where CNSs have been implemented, there have been dramatic reductions in the numbers of Aboriginal deaths in custody. The implementation of a CNS in all Australian states and territories was recommendation 224 of the 339 recommendations of the 1991 Australian Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody report. Most states and territories did not comply with the CNS recommendation for decades. About 340 Aboriginal people died in custody between the recommendation being made in 1991 and 2015. Between 1991 and 2019, over 400 Aboriginal people have died in custody. In October 2017, the Australian federal government urged states and territories to implement a CNS. The CNS serving the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) and New South Wales (NSW) was established in 2000. It is mandated under NSW law (cl. 37 of the "Law Enforcement (Powers and Responsibilities) Regulation 2016") that officers must inform the CNS, but not in ACT. The service has been successful and has since been cited as a model. In 2016, one Aboriginal person died in custody in NSW; this was the first time an Aboriginal person had died in custody in NSW or the ACT since the CNSs were implemented. Police failed to notify the CNS, rather than there being any problem with the service itself. In May 2016, a report recommended that Western Australia stop jailing people for unpaid fines. The report mentioned the death of Ms Dhu. The report was authored by Neil Morgan, Inspector of Custodial Services. In October 2016 Nigel Scullion, the federal Minister for Indigenous Affairs, offered to fund the first three years of implementation for any state that legislated a CNS. The Western Australian government rejected the offer. In March 2017, Dhu's family criticised both the major political parties in Western Australia for not supporting such a scheme. The incumbent Liberal Party voiced their opposition to the program, while the Labor Party said they would consider the scheme though had made no commitments. Attorney-General of Western Australia, John Quigley, supported such a program, saying "I think it [is] life-saving legislation. I'm sure if they took the late Ms Dhu into custody ... if the Aboriginal Legal Service [had] been contacted on day one it would have been a very different outcome". An online petition calling for the scheme was signed by almost 20,000 people in less than one week.