Our Green minister was congratulating himself for going, as he saw it, further than the recommendations of an inquiry into ACT prison management deficiencies and imposing an extra check and balance in the form of an Inspectorate of Custodial Services to ensure that all's well at the Alexander Maconochie Centre.

His announcement, and others, was in response to a review by Philip Moss, a former watchdog over police integrity, over matters associated with the death of a young Aborigine in May last year. The Moss review – somewhat less than at arm's length from the jail itself, given it was staffed by Justice Directorate officers – didn't directly examine the cause of Freeman's death, which is supposedly the exclusive province of the coroner. But it looked at a host of circumstances, including the brutal bashing of Freeman by other prisoners within hours of his being put in prison, the inability of investigating police to find anyone to charge, an array of prison irregularities, including the mixing of convicted and remand prisoners, and hints of a prison drug rehabilitation system going seriously and dangerously awry.

Rattenbury didn't quite deliver an actual inspectorate. Rather, he bought a formula from his advisers, which, while appearing to promise something, had lots of let-outs, lacked any definition and which was about as substantial as a puff of smoke.

In a "hard-boiled" pulp novel of prohibition times, a American detective is idly calculating the potential number of lies and separate meanings of "only genuine pre-war American whisky sold here". Try this paragraph for actual commitment to anything:

"Justice and Community Services will progress work on developing an inspectorate of custodial services function. JACS will explore existing models in other jurisdictions ... [including] the WA and NSW inspectors of custodial services ... as well as the Commonwealth Ombudsman's immigration detention centre inspection review function. The model selected as most suitable will provide a high level of transparency and accountability of the sector through reports to the Legislative Assembly[!]. It is anticipated that the ACT inspectorate functions will be operational by the end of 2017, and that critical incident review will either be performed by that body or allocated to an existing statutory oversight scheme in the same timeframe."

Moss has, over the years, perfected the art of never much hurting anyone's feelings, even when – or if – he has any criticisms to proffer.

But even his mild-mannered and understated review could hardly have made anyone concerned with the ACT justice system comfortable with how the ACT jail is being run. What had been intended to set international standards as a jail where human rights were respected has virtually given up the pretence of trying to meet the aspirations.

No one has been more publicly critical than its political father, former chief minister Jon Stanhope, who had really intended and hoped that the ACT city-state with the world's highest standard of living could organise, fund and manage civilised custody, care, treatment and rehabilitation of those whose crimes deserve incarceration.

Under present management, the Alexander Maconochie Centre is regarded, whether by prisoners, prison officers or others in the justice system, as an inferior substitute for NSW jails – generally regarded as having appalling standards. In several of the areas in which the prison was supposed to set new standards – such as educational, training and rehabilitative services, drug treatment and mental-health care, and in the safety and security of prisoners – any number of independent external reports have told us that officials and politicians have failed. It's not been for want of resources or popular will, though warder resistance and unimaginative leadership has been a big factor.

In line with other prisons, the centre faces new and old challenges with the ready availability of access to illegal drugs, mobile phones and cash, in or outside the premises, and means of intimidating, compromising and controlling some of the staff who work in the prison, whether directly as guards, or in its ancillary services.

As a worker in the prison told me recently, staff are regularly reminded, in the most friendly way, that inmates know their home addresses, and the names of partners and children. Prison work has hardly ever attracted the best or brightest – nor is it particularly well paid.

It's generally thought (though hardly ever, for industrial relations and morale reasons, by administrators or politicians) that most of the drugs in prison come in with staff connivance or direct involvement. The role of mysterious tennis balls said to be raining down in exercise yards is exaggerated. Visitors also conceal and pass on drugs (and mobile phones), a fact occasionally triumphed to distract attention from staff involvement.

But Freeman's case, if coronial curiosity extends beyond Moss' slightly worried hints, may show that the drug problem goes well beyond smuggling.

Freeman, when on the outside, was a prolific user of drugs, particularly amphetamines. But relatives insist he eschewed narcotics, such as heroin, because an elder sister died of narcotic abuse when Freeman was 12.

The coronial investigation has been typically secretive. The public has never been told how and why Freeman died. The coroner will have a tight and narrow inquiry into the actual cause of death, and will not look at Freeman's history in the jail, except as it directly touches on the death. Thus, for example, the coroner thinks the bashing of Freeman a year before he died, which caused serious head injuries, and the process of prison neglect and incompetence lightly sketched by Moss, is beyond his jurisdiction. Likewise with the incapacity of the police investigation, and the role of the prosecution and magisterial system.

Despite Freeman's history of extensive drug use before he went to jail, I'm told he was shown to be free of illicit drugs during a random drug test less than a month before he died. Yet soon after, I am told, he went to prison health authorities and told them he had a narcotics problem. And, I am told, he was soon put upon a methadone program. What testing or evaluation took place I don't know. Properly, even civilians on methadone maintenance programs are supposed to be given their methadone dissolved in orange juice, swallowed in front of health personnel, and prisoners (and most civilians) are not given forward supplies lest they market them on the street.

Freeman is said to have died from taking more methadone than his body could manage. Perhaps his tolerance had been overestimated. But I've been told the amount found in his body, and physical evidence in his cell, suggests he had ingested several doses, to which he should not have had access.

Those who read between the lines of the Moss inquiry, or the deliberately obscure bureaucratese of Rattenbury's response, will find hints that there was not only something awry, but that the whole management of the methadone and drug-treatment program has been reorganised. But, so far, police, coroners, prison authorities, ministers and independent watchdogs have not thought that the public, nor the Aboriginal community, have any right to know, let alone to make informed comments and criticism about what happened.

Even more alarmingly, the ACT, which ought to be setting an example to the rest of Australia for managing Aboriginal and Islander prisoners and remandees, still fails to meet even the minimal standards of the 20-year-old recommendations of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. And, with the help of an eager judiciary, federal police and ACT prosecution system, Aborigines are grossly over-represented in the ACT's jail. Perhaps typically, prison management statistics on the subject may understate the over-representation by 30 per cent.

I commented, four months ago, about the shameful manner by which the minister, prisoner authorities, police and the coronial process kept Freeman's immediate family in the dark for weeks about the circumstances of the death. The government's response this week contains no element of apology or regret.

Indeed, the government has yet to concede that its claim that its notification procedures followed guidelines from the royal commission was, not to put too fine a point on it, a conscious terminological inexactitude of the worst category.

There is obvious concern in Rattenbury's voice, and sincerity in his wish that things now improve. But anyone who actually read the 18-page statement would know that nothing will happen and that, as far as complacent bureaucrats are concerned, nothing is intended to happen. And anyone who reads them carefully will deduce that Rattenbury, in adopting and promulgating what he has, is but a patsy of a department that has it all over him.

Here's a typical paragraph, which starts forthrightly. I've italicised some of the weasel words. "The ACT government will implement each of the agreed recommendations". But ...

"However, some of these will need to be successively implemented, as a number of the recommendations will require long-term planning, cross-directional coordination and have multi-year implications."

What this means is that most recommendations are still in play, accepted only in principle. Implementation will be held up indefinitely while people responsible for the existing mess call for more reports, from mates in the national prison industry, on the long-term implications, the need for delay while other initiatives – some no doubt from other agencies – are canvassed, and while the effect on the budget is considered, weighed, measured and finally used to kibosh everything once public attention wanes.

"Implementation of recommendations from the Moss review will also consider any future recommendations that may result from the coronial inquest," this paragraph, helpfully, concludes. The inquest, if and whenever conducted, will provide ample scope for further delay, especially if the coroner makes any observations, comments or recommendations ever so slightly different from Moss' recommendations. No doubt, for safety's sake, nothing should be done until we know, which will certainly not be within the next four months.

Similar weasel words and gobbledegook are used to convey the impression that the jail now plans to get serious about "best-practice" electronic surveillance of prisoners (though not, apparently, custodial officers). One can safely predict that ACT best practice would not allow accidental public witnessing of a tear-gassing incident, such as that which inspired the royal commission into Northern Territory juvenile justice. Much as, completely by coincidence, some of the critical detail of Freeman's bashing was unable to be seen by surveillance systems.

Another recommendation invites police to accord a higher priority to the investigation of any assaults at the prison. Students of obfuscation are invited to read the response to recommendation 2 to see how the federal police give the impression of agreeing while actually promising nothing of the sort. Likewise, recommendation 3 invites the ACT Director of Public Prosecutions to be in favour of charging prisoners who commit serious assaults at the jail. The DPP blandly agrees to do this – no great concession – while pointing out that he can and will prosecute only cases where there evidence supports the charge, and where he believes a conviction is highly likely. Given that police incapacity or unwillingness to penetrate the warder and prisoner code of silence, and thus their inability to produce prosecutable briefs, the DPP's promise suggests there will be no change of approach.

Many Australians wondered this week at yet further confirmation of the incapacity of territory, state and federal government to mobilise or galvanise any change in the increasing (not decreasing) gap in Aboriginal disadvantage. The Freeman saga of the past couple of years is a perfect demonstration of why, at a million local levels, things are going backwards, not forwards, and getting worse, not better. Nothing changes with piecemeal rearrangements of the deckchairs, brave hopes and vaguely good intentions, and the continuation of policies proven to have failed. Real change, and guts and leadership involves something more than singly department bumph and bullshit.

Jack Waterford is a former Canberra Times editor.