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The Advertiser
2 days ago
- Politics
- The Advertiser
Every now and again, for decades, the same issue gets a big headline
In 1972, police at an Aboriginal settlement at Papunya, several hundred kilometres west of Alice Springs, closed down a travelling Slim Dusty concert after some of the young men somehow got access to alcohol and became drunk. Many in the crowd welcomed action against the drunks ruining the concert but resented the element of group punishment in having the concert abruptly stopped. Some, including some of the troublemakers, walked to the heavily fenced police compound and began shouting. Someone threw stones on the roof. There were police wives and children in the dwellings, and a constable emerged with a shotgun. He fired into the air, and, soon after, the crowd dispersed. The next morning, ABC AM ran a one-sided report on the "riot", calling for all police in outback settlements to be issued with Armalite automatic rifles so they could defend their nearest and dearest when under attack. A score or so of people were charged over the disorder, and the matter came before the notorious Alice Springs magistrate, "Scrubby'' Hall. When the cop told of firing his shotgun in the air, Scrubby stopped him to ask why he didn't fire directly into the crowd. Scrubby was regularly given to giving vent to his prejudices, though usually they did not get anything like the circulation of the above instance. Some of his defenders insisted that his outbursts were teases of his lack of affection for what today might be called "woke" Southerners oozing sympathy for Aboriginal people or disapproval of how cops set out to handle Indigenous people. I never saw him engage his brain before opening his mouth. His usual habit if he realised that he had gone too far was not to apologise but to "row back", usually with an acquittal on some highly technical and seemingly invented ground, or with a sentence so mild that the defendant would have been mad to appeal. That way, it would not come up for critical comment from a higher court. It was not so easy when his words had sped down the overland telegraph. The federal attorney-general, Lionel Murphy, intervened in the case. Nothing that Murphy, or the Whitlam government, or any other person from Canberra has ever done since has had much effect on the culture of the NT Police Force or done much to prevent repeats of what became known as the "great Papunya massacre". Nor has it ever succeeded in affecting a prevailing culture of the white residents of the NT, many of whom, thanks to remoteness subsidies intended for the benefit of Indigenous residents, give non-Aboriginal residents one of the highest standards of government service in the world. This week saw the report of the coronial inquest into the death of Kumanjayi Walker - shot dead six years ago by Canberra's own Zachary Rolfe, who left Canberra Grammar for the army and Afghanistan, then joined the NT Police Force. Rolfe was acquitted when charged with murder, but the inquest, while not traversing the acquittal, investigated the circumstances and background. Almost every confrontation has caused police spokesmen to demand that NT police are better equipped to face their tormentors. The recent Walker inquest is almost unique in suggesting that police moving around in Aboriginal settlements should not carry guns. But it would be bound to face heavy resistance from the police union, which controls the asylum. More representative of the Rolfe-like factions than bush cops or enlightened ones, it tends to believe that it is only by the gun that the Indigenous residents are awed. Perhaps it is strange that Aboriginal deaths in custody are only rarely at the hands of locals. The trouble tends to come when outsiders, disrespecting the locals, come in to show them how it is done. Yet NT police are like most state - and AFP - officers, in being more and more armed than ever. They are dressed as paramilitary figures, with armour, gas, tasers and guns, and any number of vehicles looking like tanks. Cops are doing more driving and shouting than walking and talking. Police public relations agents speak of community policing even as fewer cops are to be seen in the community, and more and more involved in petty administration such as rosters and fudging public complaints. Police activity is these days more intrusive, and with increasingly scant regard for privacy and dignity or human rights. They are increasingly not "of" the community in any sense. This is as true in the NT as in the ACT, except that, if anything, NT police numbers are such that they command significant local political power and a craven press. And, usually, they are at the top of the anti-woke crowd. During the inquest, we were read Rolfe's emails in which he complains to family, girlfriends and colleagues about the failure of the NT police to accept his request to join the tactical response group, the unit which has a tendency to think of itself as a civilian SAS. Fitness, guts and martial spirit count for nothing, his superior tells him. Rolfe has been told that he needs more experience in working with Aboriginal people, particularly in rural settlements. But Rolfe despises cops working in settlements and thinks them lazy and unambitious. "The order of preference these days is blacks, chicks, gays and lazy f---s ... and then [you]," said a colleague of Rolfe's in a text message exchange. The attitudes of young cops are repugnant, even to other more reasonable cops who cannot seem to change the culture. But it reflects the attitudes of many young men and women (white men and women, that is) in the Alice Springs community. From about 15 minutes after they blow in - and about 80 per cent of white Territorians are blow-ins who weren't there 10 years ago, they inveigle against "Southerners" and folk in Canberra who reputedly have no idea of the privations they suffer. Chief of these is not remoteness, because the overwhelming proportion live in comfortable cities with schools and civic services of Canberra standard. It's the challenge of law and order coming from young Aboriginal men and women who have drifted into town but who do not find there comfortable accommodation, services or jobs. Mostly they hang around fringe camps and, when they can, and if they have the money, grog shops. Most would be better off, and in a less tumultuous environment, were they to remain in, or return to, settlements. But government, and boredom, is effectively pushing them out, in part by propagating the canard that welfare beneficiaries should go where the work is, and that Alice Springs is such a place. It isn't, at least for drifters without much education or experience. The lawlessness is obvious enough. It is the despair even of people well-disposed to Aboriginal people, and a substantial Aboriginal middle class, because it manifests itself in burglaries and theft, in fighting, and in young people drifting around the streets at all hours of the day or night. It is also manifest in drug and alcohol abuse, most of which, given the practical homelessness of many of the offenders, is in the street or on the riverbeds. It is, of course, also the despair of the police, white traders, and government officials, at all levels of government. In over 100 years of white settlement, non-Aboriginal culture has found itself unable to cope with the phenomenon and bereft of new ideas. They have tried curfews, originally requiring all Aboriginal people to be out of town at sundown, now reintroduced around grog laws and slightly more sophisticated. They have tried any number of welfare schemes, sports and other youth activity services, some of which alas, aggravate the lure of the city without adding much to its social capital. Most of all, they have tried the "firm hand", usually at the hands of the police. The NT is currently going through a law-and-order phase. The white electorate voted enthusiastically for a "do the crime, do the time" regime, even for juveniles, and has wound back the ages at which children are held criminally responsible. Over the past year, imprisonment rates, already among the highest and most shameful in the world, have virtually doubled, if with no discernible effect on obvious street crime. An enormous proportion of Aboriginal folk are behind bars for minor traffic crimes. Only a few years ago, the inadequacy of juvenile detention facilities was an international scandal and the subject of a royal commission. The government, and, it seems, most of the white population, have decided to give up on it: crowding and abuse in juvenile detention centres and jails is now manifestly worse than before. The coroner in the Walker inquest found that the NT police service was racist, sexist, and homophobic. It was also adept at evasiveness and avoiding accountability and responsibility. It had almost a reflex propensity to cover up misbehaviour by officers, and to look after mates, right or wrong. That tendency was balanced by considerable bitching and backstabbing, and failures of leadership and supervision by officers at the sergeant level. RELATED: Who is Zachary Rolfe: the story of the NT cop with prominent Canberra parents Had Rolfe been held accountable earlier in his career for his propensity to prefer violence as a solution, Walker's death at Yuendumu might not have occurred. Some of the internal police correspondence between senior police also suggested a culture of blame-shifting and attempts to limit the scope of the inquiry while always pretending to be entirely cooperative. Leaving Rolfe out of it, a number of very senior cops have, over recent years, been active in perverting the course of justice, and sometimes convicted of it. It is, in this, a semi-criminal organisation in urgent need of fundamental reform. Perhaps like the Australian Public Service after three years of half-hearted efforts to root out and punish the perversion of good administration of the Scott Morrison era. Or perhaps put another way, a fairly typical bureaucracy in which the control systems, such as the Australian Public Service Commission, have been a central and essential part of the mechanisms for keeping the public out of the loop about rorting and corruption in the system. MORE JACK WATERFORD: One must bear this in mind when considering the shocking findings of the coroner, Elisabeth Armitage. No one can be surprised at findings about many of the NT police members being systemically racist, sexist and homophobic, but the force is still treated with respect by politicians, and, usually, the media. The crisis of Aboriginal lawlessness - which generates the usual free pass for police misbehaviour - is real enough, but the reality of conditions under which police lawlessness and violence come into regular conflict with Aboriginal lawlessness and violence is too often overlooked. On balance, I am on the side of law and order, but they do carry a lot of lead in their saddle. There are noble NT cops, and people doing their best, particularly in Aboriginal communities, but the credit this deserves is undermined by the open contempt that many frontline cops have for the law. And many of those provide the political context for demands for "firm action". The primary industry in the NT is skimming off government grants for Indigenous services. Business is booming, not least from $4 billion the federal government is throwing at Aboriginal housing to be seen to be doing "something". So is money from programs intended to recreate Aboriginal-controlled services deliberately destroyed by governments, Liberal then Labor, from nearly 20 years ago. And, these days, as the extent of need for disability services is being understood, in rorting the NDIS scheme. As ever, most of the money being spent on Aboriginal welfare is going to white contractors and white public servants. But when the music stops, Aboriginal people cop the blame for being feckless and irresponsible, as if they wasted it themselves. It is always hard to compare the honesty and competence of the varieties of territorial government on offer. But a good many rate the nepotism, jobbery, and corruption of the current regime up there with champions of old, not least for the semi-Trumpian tendency of simply ignoring unpleasant information, acting without announcement and, as ever, blaming shortcomings on Canberra. Particularly pronounced, in both Labor and Liberal National Party governments, is the "Buggins's turn" philosophy by which successive regimes believe they have the right to throw out public servants regarded as the other side's mates and cronies and install instead one's own mates and cronies. This is always a sure guarantee that corruption is endemic. What is not happening is any external will to hold miscreants to account, particularly given the fact NT federal seats are marginal. To think it was only 40 years ago when a federal minister for finance, Peter Walsh, announced he had decided the cost of featherbedding the NT for endless uneconomic projects was greater than the political advantage of holding NT seats. It had to stop. It hasn't. In 1972, police at an Aboriginal settlement at Papunya, several hundred kilometres west of Alice Springs, closed down a travelling Slim Dusty concert after some of the young men somehow got access to alcohol and became drunk. Many in the crowd welcomed action against the drunks ruining the concert but resented the element of group punishment in having the concert abruptly stopped. Some, including some of the troublemakers, walked to the heavily fenced police compound and began shouting. Someone threw stones on the roof. There were police wives and children in the dwellings, and a constable emerged with a shotgun. He fired into the air, and, soon after, the crowd dispersed. The next morning, ABC AM ran a one-sided report on the "riot", calling for all police in outback settlements to be issued with Armalite automatic rifles so they could defend their nearest and dearest when under attack. A score or so of people were charged over the disorder, and the matter came before the notorious Alice Springs magistrate, "Scrubby'' Hall. When the cop told of firing his shotgun in the air, Scrubby stopped him to ask why he didn't fire directly into the crowd. Scrubby was regularly given to giving vent to his prejudices, though usually they did not get anything like the circulation of the above instance. Some of his defenders insisted that his outbursts were teases of his lack of affection for what today might be called "woke" Southerners oozing sympathy for Aboriginal people or disapproval of how cops set out to handle Indigenous people. I never saw him engage his brain before opening his mouth. His usual habit if he realised that he had gone too far was not to apologise but to "row back", usually with an acquittal on some highly technical and seemingly invented ground, or with a sentence so mild that the defendant would have been mad to appeal. That way, it would not come up for critical comment from a higher court. It was not so easy when his words had sped down the overland telegraph. The federal attorney-general, Lionel Murphy, intervened in the case. Nothing that Murphy, or the Whitlam government, or any other person from Canberra has ever done since has had much effect on the culture of the NT Police Force or done much to prevent repeats of what became known as the "great Papunya massacre". Nor has it ever succeeded in affecting a prevailing culture of the white residents of the NT, many of whom, thanks to remoteness subsidies intended for the benefit of Indigenous residents, give non-Aboriginal residents one of the highest standards of government service in the world. This week saw the report of the coronial inquest into the death of Kumanjayi Walker - shot dead six years ago by Canberra's own Zachary Rolfe, who left Canberra Grammar for the army and Afghanistan, then joined the NT Police Force. Rolfe was acquitted when charged with murder, but the inquest, while not traversing the acquittal, investigated the circumstances and background. Almost every confrontation has caused police spokesmen to demand that NT police are better equipped to face their tormentors. The recent Walker inquest is almost unique in suggesting that police moving around in Aboriginal settlements should not carry guns. But it would be bound to face heavy resistance from the police union, which controls the asylum. More representative of the Rolfe-like factions than bush cops or enlightened ones, it tends to believe that it is only by the gun that the Indigenous residents are awed. Perhaps it is strange that Aboriginal deaths in custody are only rarely at the hands of locals. The trouble tends to come when outsiders, disrespecting the locals, come in to show them how it is done. Yet NT police are like most state - and AFP - officers, in being more and more armed than ever. They are dressed as paramilitary figures, with armour, gas, tasers and guns, and any number of vehicles looking like tanks. Cops are doing more driving and shouting than walking and talking. Police public relations agents speak of community policing even as fewer cops are to be seen in the community, and more and more involved in petty administration such as rosters and fudging public complaints. Police activity is these days more intrusive, and with increasingly scant regard for privacy and dignity or human rights. They are increasingly not "of" the community in any sense. This is as true in the NT as in the ACT, except that, if anything, NT police numbers are such that they command significant local political power and a craven press. And, usually, they are at the top of the anti-woke crowd. During the inquest, we were read Rolfe's emails in which he complains to family, girlfriends and colleagues about the failure of the NT police to accept his request to join the tactical response group, the unit which has a tendency to think of itself as a civilian SAS. Fitness, guts and martial spirit count for nothing, his superior tells him. Rolfe has been told that he needs more experience in working with Aboriginal people, particularly in rural settlements. But Rolfe despises cops working in settlements and thinks them lazy and unambitious. "The order of preference these days is blacks, chicks, gays and lazy f---s ... and then [you]," said a colleague of Rolfe's in a text message exchange. The attitudes of young cops are repugnant, even to other more reasonable cops who cannot seem to change the culture. But it reflects the attitudes of many young men and women (white men and women, that is) in the Alice Springs community. From about 15 minutes after they blow in - and about 80 per cent of white Territorians are blow-ins who weren't there 10 years ago, they inveigle against "Southerners" and folk in Canberra who reputedly have no idea of the privations they suffer. Chief of these is not remoteness, because the overwhelming proportion live in comfortable cities with schools and civic services of Canberra standard. It's the challenge of law and order coming from young Aboriginal men and women who have drifted into town but who do not find there comfortable accommodation, services or jobs. Mostly they hang around fringe camps and, when they can, and if they have the money, grog shops. Most would be better off, and in a less tumultuous environment, were they to remain in, or return to, settlements. But government, and boredom, is effectively pushing them out, in part by propagating the canard that welfare beneficiaries should go where the work is, and that Alice Springs is such a place. It isn't, at least for drifters without much education or experience. The lawlessness is obvious enough. It is the despair even of people well-disposed to Aboriginal people, and a substantial Aboriginal middle class, because it manifests itself in burglaries and theft, in fighting, and in young people drifting around the streets at all hours of the day or night. It is also manifest in drug and alcohol abuse, most of which, given the practical homelessness of many of the offenders, is in the street or on the riverbeds. It is, of course, also the despair of the police, white traders, and government officials, at all levels of government. In over 100 years of white settlement, non-Aboriginal culture has found itself unable to cope with the phenomenon and bereft of new ideas. They have tried curfews, originally requiring all Aboriginal people to be out of town at sundown, now reintroduced around grog laws and slightly more sophisticated. They have tried any number of welfare schemes, sports and other youth activity services, some of which alas, aggravate the lure of the city without adding much to its social capital. Most of all, they have tried the "firm hand", usually at the hands of the police. The NT is currently going through a law-and-order phase. The white electorate voted enthusiastically for a "do the crime, do the time" regime, even for juveniles, and has wound back the ages at which children are held criminally responsible. Over the past year, imprisonment rates, already among the highest and most shameful in the world, have virtually doubled, if with no discernible effect on obvious street crime. An enormous proportion of Aboriginal folk are behind bars for minor traffic crimes. Only a few years ago, the inadequacy of juvenile detention facilities was an international scandal and the subject of a royal commission. The government, and, it seems, most of the white population, have decided to give up on it: crowding and abuse in juvenile detention centres and jails is now manifestly worse than before. The coroner in the Walker inquest found that the NT police service was racist, sexist, and homophobic. It was also adept at evasiveness and avoiding accountability and responsibility. It had almost a reflex propensity to cover up misbehaviour by officers, and to look after mates, right or wrong. That tendency was balanced by considerable bitching and backstabbing, and failures of leadership and supervision by officers at the sergeant level. RELATED: Who is Zachary Rolfe: the story of the NT cop with prominent Canberra parents Had Rolfe been held accountable earlier in his career for his propensity to prefer violence as a solution, Walker's death at Yuendumu might not have occurred. Some of the internal police correspondence between senior police also suggested a culture of blame-shifting and attempts to limit the scope of the inquiry while always pretending to be entirely cooperative. Leaving Rolfe out of it, a number of very senior cops have, over recent years, been active in perverting the course of justice, and sometimes convicted of it. It is, in this, a semi-criminal organisation in urgent need of fundamental reform. Perhaps like the Australian Public Service after three years of half-hearted efforts to root out and punish the perversion of good administration of the Scott Morrison era. Or perhaps put another way, a fairly typical bureaucracy in which the control systems, such as the Australian Public Service Commission, have been a central and essential part of the mechanisms for keeping the public out of the loop about rorting and corruption in the system. MORE JACK WATERFORD: One must bear this in mind when considering the shocking findings of the coroner, Elisabeth Armitage. No one can be surprised at findings about many of the NT police members being systemically racist, sexist and homophobic, but the force is still treated with respect by politicians, and, usually, the media. The crisis of Aboriginal lawlessness - which generates the usual free pass for police misbehaviour - is real enough, but the reality of conditions under which police lawlessness and violence come into regular conflict with Aboriginal lawlessness and violence is too often overlooked. On balance, I am on the side of law and order, but they do carry a lot of lead in their saddle. There are noble NT cops, and people doing their best, particularly in Aboriginal communities, but the credit this deserves is undermined by the open contempt that many frontline cops have for the law. And many of those provide the political context for demands for "firm action". The primary industry in the NT is skimming off government grants for Indigenous services. Business is booming, not least from $4 billion the federal government is throwing at Aboriginal housing to be seen to be doing "something". So is money from programs intended to recreate Aboriginal-controlled services deliberately destroyed by governments, Liberal then Labor, from nearly 20 years ago. And, these days, as the extent of need for disability services is being understood, in rorting the NDIS scheme. As ever, most of the money being spent on Aboriginal welfare is going to white contractors and white public servants. But when the music stops, Aboriginal people cop the blame for being feckless and irresponsible, as if they wasted it themselves. It is always hard to compare the honesty and competence of the varieties of territorial government on offer. But a good many rate the nepotism, jobbery, and corruption of the current regime up there with champions of old, not least for the semi-Trumpian tendency of simply ignoring unpleasant information, acting without announcement and, as ever, blaming shortcomings on Canberra. Particularly pronounced, in both Labor and Liberal National Party governments, is the "Buggins's turn" philosophy by which successive regimes believe they have the right to throw out public servants regarded as the other side's mates and cronies and install instead one's own mates and cronies. This is always a sure guarantee that corruption is endemic. What is not happening is any external will to hold miscreants to account, particularly given the fact NT federal seats are marginal. To think it was only 40 years ago when a federal minister for finance, Peter Walsh, announced he had decided the cost of featherbedding the NT for endless uneconomic projects was greater than the political advantage of holding NT seats. It had to stop. It hasn't. In 1972, police at an Aboriginal settlement at Papunya, several hundred kilometres west of Alice Springs, closed down a travelling Slim Dusty concert after some of the young men somehow got access to alcohol and became drunk. Many in the crowd welcomed action against the drunks ruining the concert but resented the element of group punishment in having the concert abruptly stopped. Some, including some of the troublemakers, walked to the heavily fenced police compound and began shouting. Someone threw stones on the roof. There were police wives and children in the dwellings, and a constable emerged with a shotgun. He fired into the air, and, soon after, the crowd dispersed. The next morning, ABC AM ran a one-sided report on the "riot", calling for all police in outback settlements to be issued with Armalite automatic rifles so they could defend their nearest and dearest when under attack. A score or so of people were charged over the disorder, and the matter came before the notorious Alice Springs magistrate, "Scrubby'' Hall. When the cop told of firing his shotgun in the air, Scrubby stopped him to ask why he didn't fire directly into the crowd. Scrubby was regularly given to giving vent to his prejudices, though usually they did not get anything like the circulation of the above instance. Some of his defenders insisted that his outbursts were teases of his lack of affection for what today might be called "woke" Southerners oozing sympathy for Aboriginal people or disapproval of how cops set out to handle Indigenous people. I never saw him engage his brain before opening his mouth. His usual habit if he realised that he had gone too far was not to apologise but to "row back", usually with an acquittal on some highly technical and seemingly invented ground, or with a sentence so mild that the defendant would have been mad to appeal. That way, it would not come up for critical comment from a higher court. It was not so easy when his words had sped down the overland telegraph. The federal attorney-general, Lionel Murphy, intervened in the case. Nothing that Murphy, or the Whitlam government, or any other person from Canberra has ever done since has had much effect on the culture of the NT Police Force or done much to prevent repeats of what became known as the "great Papunya massacre". Nor has it ever succeeded in affecting a prevailing culture of the white residents of the NT, many of whom, thanks to remoteness subsidies intended for the benefit of Indigenous residents, give non-Aboriginal residents one of the highest standards of government service in the world. This week saw the report of the coronial inquest into the death of Kumanjayi Walker - shot dead six years ago by Canberra's own Zachary Rolfe, who left Canberra Grammar for the army and Afghanistan, then joined the NT Police Force. Rolfe was acquitted when charged with murder, but the inquest, while not traversing the acquittal, investigated the circumstances and background. Almost every confrontation has caused police spokesmen to demand that NT police are better equipped to face their tormentors. The recent Walker inquest is almost unique in suggesting that police moving around in Aboriginal settlements should not carry guns. But it would be bound to face heavy resistance from the police union, which controls the asylum. More representative of the Rolfe-like factions than bush cops or enlightened ones, it tends to believe that it is only by the gun that the Indigenous residents are awed. Perhaps it is strange that Aboriginal deaths in custody are only rarely at the hands of locals. The trouble tends to come when outsiders, disrespecting the locals, come in to show them how it is done. Yet NT police are like most state - and AFP - officers, in being more and more armed than ever. They are dressed as paramilitary figures, with armour, gas, tasers and guns, and any number of vehicles looking like tanks. Cops are doing more driving and shouting than walking and talking. Police public relations agents speak of community policing even as fewer cops are to be seen in the community, and more and more involved in petty administration such as rosters and fudging public complaints. Police activity is these days more intrusive, and with increasingly scant regard for privacy and dignity or human rights. They are increasingly not "of" the community in any sense. This is as true in the NT as in the ACT, except that, if anything, NT police numbers are such that they command significant local political power and a craven press. And, usually, they are at the top of the anti-woke crowd. During the inquest, we were read Rolfe's emails in which he complains to family, girlfriends and colleagues about the failure of the NT police to accept his request to join the tactical response group, the unit which has a tendency to think of itself as a civilian SAS. Fitness, guts and martial spirit count for nothing, his superior tells him. Rolfe has been told that he needs more experience in working with Aboriginal people, particularly in rural settlements. But Rolfe despises cops working in settlements and thinks them lazy and unambitious. "The order of preference these days is blacks, chicks, gays and lazy f---s ... and then [you]," said a colleague of Rolfe's in a text message exchange. The attitudes of young cops are repugnant, even to other more reasonable cops who cannot seem to change the culture. But it reflects the attitudes of many young men and women (white men and women, that is) in the Alice Springs community. From about 15 minutes after they blow in - and about 80 per cent of white Territorians are blow-ins who weren't there 10 years ago, they inveigle against "Southerners" and folk in Canberra who reputedly have no idea of the privations they suffer. Chief of these is not remoteness, because the overwhelming proportion live in comfortable cities with schools and civic services of Canberra standard. It's the challenge of law and order coming from young Aboriginal men and women who have drifted into town but who do not find there comfortable accommodation, services or jobs. Mostly they hang around fringe camps and, when they can, and if they have the money, grog shops. Most would be better off, and in a less tumultuous environment, were they to remain in, or return to, settlements. But government, and boredom, is effectively pushing them out, in part by propagating the canard that welfare beneficiaries should go where the work is, and that Alice Springs is such a place. It isn't, at least for drifters without much education or experience. The lawlessness is obvious enough. It is the despair even of people well-disposed to Aboriginal people, and a substantial Aboriginal middle class, because it manifests itself in burglaries and theft, in fighting, and in young people drifting around the streets at all hours of the day or night. It is also manifest in drug and alcohol abuse, most of which, given the practical homelessness of many of the offenders, is in the street or on the riverbeds. It is, of course, also the despair of the police, white traders, and government officials, at all levels of government. In over 100 years of white settlement, non-Aboriginal culture has found itself unable to cope with the phenomenon and bereft of new ideas. They have tried curfews, originally requiring all Aboriginal people to be out of town at sundown, now reintroduced around grog laws and slightly more sophisticated. They have tried any number of welfare schemes, sports and other youth activity services, some of which alas, aggravate the lure of the city without adding much to its social capital. Most of all, they have tried the "firm hand", usually at the hands of the police. The NT is currently going through a law-and-order phase. The white electorate voted enthusiastically for a "do the crime, do the time" regime, even for juveniles, and has wound back the ages at which children are held criminally responsible. Over the past year, imprisonment rates, already among the highest and most shameful in the world, have virtually doubled, if with no discernible effect on obvious street crime. An enormous proportion of Aboriginal folk are behind bars for minor traffic crimes. Only a few years ago, the inadequacy of juvenile detention facilities was an international scandal and the subject of a royal commission. The government, and, it seems, most of the white population, have decided to give up on it: crowding and abuse in juvenile detention centres and jails is now manifestly worse than before. The coroner in the Walker inquest found that the NT police service was racist, sexist, and homophobic. It was also adept at evasiveness and avoiding accountability and responsibility. It had almost a reflex propensity to cover up misbehaviour by officers, and to look after mates, right or wrong. That tendency was balanced by considerable bitching and backstabbing, and failures of leadership and supervision by officers at the sergeant level. RELATED: Who is Zachary Rolfe: the story of the NT cop with prominent Canberra parents Had Rolfe been held accountable earlier in his career for his propensity to prefer violence as a solution, Walker's death at Yuendumu might not have occurred. Some of the internal police correspondence between senior police also suggested a culture of blame-shifting and attempts to limit the scope of the inquiry while always pretending to be entirely cooperative. Leaving Rolfe out of it, a number of very senior cops have, over recent years, been active in perverting the course of justice, and sometimes convicted of it. It is, in this, a semi-criminal organisation in urgent need of fundamental reform. Perhaps like the Australian Public Service after three years of half-hearted efforts to root out and punish the perversion of good administration of the Scott Morrison era. Or perhaps put another way, a fairly typical bureaucracy in which the control systems, such as the Australian Public Service Commission, have been a central and essential part of the mechanisms for keeping the public out of the loop about rorting and corruption in the system. MORE JACK WATERFORD: One must bear this in mind when considering the shocking findings of the coroner, Elisabeth Armitage. No one can be surprised at findings about many of the NT police members being systemically racist, sexist and homophobic, but the force is still treated with respect by politicians, and, usually, the media. The crisis of Aboriginal lawlessness - which generates the usual free pass for police misbehaviour - is real enough, but the reality of conditions under which police lawlessness and violence come into regular conflict with Aboriginal lawlessness and violence is too often overlooked. On balance, I am on the side of law and order, but they do carry a lot of lead in their saddle. There are noble NT cops, and people doing their best, particularly in Aboriginal communities, but the credit this deserves is undermined by the open contempt that many frontline cops have for the law. And many of those provide the political context for demands for "firm action". The primary industry in the NT is skimming off government grants for Indigenous services. Business is booming, not least from $4 billion the federal government is throwing at Aboriginal housing to be seen to be doing "something". So is money from programs intended to recreate Aboriginal-controlled services deliberately destroyed by governments, Liberal then Labor, from nearly 20 years ago. And, these days, as the extent of need for disability services is being understood, in rorting the NDIS scheme. As ever, most of the money being spent on Aboriginal welfare is going to white contractors and white public servants. But when the music stops, Aboriginal people cop the blame for being feckless and irresponsible, as if they wasted it themselves. It is always hard to compare the honesty and competence of the varieties of territorial government on offer. But a good many rate the nepotism, jobbery, and corruption of the current regime up there with champions of old, not least for the semi-Trumpian tendency of simply ignoring unpleasant information, acting without announcement and, as ever, blaming shortcomings on Canberra. Particularly pronounced, in both Labor and Liberal National Party governments, is the "Buggins's turn" philosophy by which successive regimes believe they have the right to throw out public servants regarded as the other side's mates and cronies and install instead one's own mates and cronies. This is always a sure guarantee that corruption is endemic. What is not happening is any external will to hold miscreants to account, particularly given the fact NT federal seats are marginal. To think it was only 40 years ago when a federal minister for finance, Peter Walsh, announced he had decided the cost of featherbedding the NT for endless uneconomic projects was greater than the political advantage of holding NT seats. It had to stop. It hasn't. In 1972, police at an Aboriginal settlement at Papunya, several hundred kilometres west of Alice Springs, closed down a travelling Slim Dusty concert after some of the young men somehow got access to alcohol and became drunk. Many in the crowd welcomed action against the drunks ruining the concert but resented the element of group punishment in having the concert abruptly stopped. Some, including some of the troublemakers, walked to the heavily fenced police compound and began shouting. Someone threw stones on the roof. There were police wives and children in the dwellings, and a constable emerged with a shotgun. He fired into the air, and, soon after, the crowd dispersed. The next morning, ABC AM ran a one-sided report on the "riot", calling for all police in outback settlements to be issued with Armalite automatic rifles so they could defend their nearest and dearest when under attack. A score or so of people were charged over the disorder, and the matter came before the notorious Alice Springs magistrate, "Scrubby'' Hall. When the cop told of firing his shotgun in the air, Scrubby stopped him to ask why he didn't fire directly into the crowd. Scrubby was regularly given to giving vent to his prejudices, though usually they did not get anything like the circulation of the above instance. Some of his defenders insisted that his outbursts were teases of his lack of affection for what today might be called "woke" Southerners oozing sympathy for Aboriginal people or disapproval of how cops set out to handle Indigenous people. I never saw him engage his brain before opening his mouth. His usual habit if he realised that he had gone too far was not to apologise but to "row back", usually with an acquittal on some highly technical and seemingly invented ground, or with a sentence so mild that the defendant would have been mad to appeal. That way, it would not come up for critical comment from a higher court. It was not so easy when his words had sped down the overland telegraph. The federal attorney-general, Lionel Murphy, intervened in the case. Nothing that Murphy, or the Whitlam government, or any other person from Canberra has ever done since has had much effect on the culture of the NT Police Force or done much to prevent repeats of what became known as the "great Papunya massacre". Nor has it ever succeeded in affecting a prevailing culture of the white residents of the NT, many of whom, thanks to remoteness subsidies intended for the benefit of Indigenous residents, give non-Aboriginal residents one of the highest standards of government service in the world. This week saw the report of the coronial inquest into the death of Kumanjayi Walker - shot dead six years ago by Canberra's own Zachary Rolfe, who left Canberra Grammar for the army and Afghanistan, then joined the NT Police Force. Rolfe was acquitted when charged with murder, but the inquest, while not traversing the acquittal, investigated the circumstances and background. Almost every confrontation has caused police spokesmen to demand that NT police are better equipped to face their tormentors. The recent Walker inquest is almost unique in suggesting that police moving around in Aboriginal settlements should not carry guns. But it would be bound to face heavy resistance from the police union, which controls the asylum. More representative of the Rolfe-like factions than bush cops or enlightened ones, it tends to believe that it is only by the gun that the Indigenous residents are awed. Perhaps it is strange that Aboriginal deaths in custody are only rarely at the hands of locals. The trouble tends to come when outsiders, disrespecting the locals, come in to show them how it is done. Yet NT police are like most state - and AFP - officers, in being more and more armed than ever. They are dressed as paramilitary figures, with armour, gas, tasers and guns, and any number of vehicles looking like tanks. Cops are doing more driving and shouting than walking and talking. Police public relations agents speak of community policing even as fewer cops are to be seen in the community, and more and more involved in petty administration such as rosters and fudging public complaints. Police activity is these days more intrusive, and with increasingly scant regard for privacy and dignity or human rights. They are increasingly not "of" the community in any sense. This is as true in the NT as in the ACT, except that, if anything, NT police numbers are such that they command significant local political power and a craven press. And, usually, they are at the top of the anti-woke crowd. During the inquest, we were read Rolfe's emails in which he complains to family, girlfriends and colleagues about the failure of the NT police to accept his request to join the tactical response group, the unit which has a tendency to think of itself as a civilian SAS. Fitness, guts and martial spirit count for nothing, his superior tells him. Rolfe has been told that he needs more experience in working with Aboriginal people, particularly in rural settlements. But Rolfe despises cops working in settlements and thinks them lazy and unambitious. "The order of preference these days is blacks, chicks, gays and lazy f---s ... and then [you]," said a colleague of Rolfe's in a text message exchange. The attitudes of young cops are repugnant, even to other more reasonable cops who cannot seem to change the culture. But it reflects the attitudes of many young men and women (white men and women, that is) in the Alice Springs community. From about 15 minutes after they blow in - and about 80 per cent of white Territorians are blow-ins who weren't there 10 years ago, they inveigle against "Southerners" and folk in Canberra who reputedly have no idea of the privations they suffer. Chief of these is not remoteness, because the overwhelming proportion live in comfortable cities with schools and civic services of Canberra standard. It's the challenge of law and order coming from young Aboriginal men and women who have drifted into town but who do not find there comfortable accommodation, services or jobs. Mostly they hang around fringe camps and, when they can, and if they have the money, grog shops. Most would be better off, and in a less tumultuous environment, were they to remain in, or return to, settlements. But government, and boredom, is effectively pushing them out, in part by propagating the canard that welfare beneficiaries should go where the work is, and that Alice Springs is such a place. It isn't, at least for drifters without much education or experience. The lawlessness is obvious enough. It is the despair even of people well-disposed to Aboriginal people, and a substantial Aboriginal middle class, because it manifests itself in burglaries and theft, in fighting, and in young people drifting around the streets at all hours of the day or night. It is also manifest in drug and alcohol abuse, most of which, given the practical homelessness of many of the offenders, is in the street or on the riverbeds. It is, of course, also the despair of the police, white traders, and government officials, at all levels of government. In over 100 years of white settlement, non-Aboriginal culture has found itself unable to cope with the phenomenon and bereft of new ideas. They have tried curfews, originally requiring all Aboriginal people to be out of town at sundown, now reintroduced around grog laws and slightly more sophisticated. They have tried any number of welfare schemes, sports and other youth activity services, some of which alas, aggravate the lure of the city without adding much to its social capital. Most of all, they have tried the "firm hand", usually at the hands of the police. The NT is currently going through a law-and-order phase. The white electorate voted enthusiastically for a "do the crime, do the time" regime, even for juveniles, and has wound back the ages at which children are held criminally responsible. Over the past year, imprisonment rates, already among the highest and most shameful in the world, have virtually doubled, if with no discernible effect on obvious street crime. An enormous proportion of Aboriginal folk are behind bars for minor traffic crimes. Only a few years ago, the inadequacy of juvenile detention facilities was an international scandal and the subject of a royal commission. The government, and, it seems, most of the white population, have decided to give up on it: crowding and abuse in juvenile detention centres and jails is now manifestly worse than before. The coroner in the Walker inquest found that the NT police service was racist, sexist, and homophobic. It was also adept at evasiveness and avoiding accountability and responsibility. It had almost a reflex propensity to cover up misbehaviour by officers, and to look after mates, right or wrong. That tendency was balanced by considerable bitching and backstabbing, and failures of leadership and supervision by officers at the sergeant level. RELATED: Who is Zachary Rolfe: the story of the NT cop with prominent Canberra parents Had Rolfe been held accountable earlier in his career for his propensity to prefer violence as a solution, Walker's death at Yuendumu might not have occurred. Some of the internal police correspondence between senior police also suggested a culture of blame-shifting and attempts to limit the scope of the inquiry while always pretending to be entirely cooperative. Leaving Rolfe out of it, a number of very senior cops have, over recent years, been active in perverting the course of justice, and sometimes convicted of it. It is, in this, a semi-criminal organisation in urgent need of fundamental reform. Perhaps like the Australian Public Service after three years of half-hearted efforts to root out and punish the perversion of good administration of the Scott Morrison era. Or perhaps put another way, a fairly typical bureaucracy in which the control systems, such as the Australian Public Service Commission, have been a central and essential part of the mechanisms for keeping the public out of the loop about rorting and corruption in the system. MORE JACK WATERFORD: One must bear this in mind when considering the shocking findings of the coroner, Elisabeth Armitage. No one can be surprised at findings about many of the NT police members being systemically racist, sexist and homophobic, but the force is still treated with respect by politicians, and, usually, the media. The crisis of Aboriginal lawlessness - which generates the usual free pass for police misbehaviour - is real enough, but the reality of conditions under which police lawlessness and violence come into regular conflict with Aboriginal lawlessness and violence is too often overlooked. On balance, I am on the side of law and order, but they do carry a lot of lead in their saddle. There are noble NT cops, and people doing their best, particularly in Aboriginal communities, but the credit this deserves is undermined by the open contempt that many frontline cops have for the law. And many of those provide the political context for demands for "firm action". The primary industry in the NT is skimming off government grants for Indigenous services. Business is booming, not least from $4 billion the federal government is throwing at Aboriginal housing to be seen to be doing "something". So is money from programs intended to recreate Aboriginal-controlled services deliberately destroyed by governments, Liberal then Labor, from nearly 20 years ago. And, these days, as the extent of need for disability services is being understood, in rorting the NDIS scheme. As ever, most of the money being spent on Aboriginal welfare is going to white contractors and white public servants. But when the music stops, Aboriginal people cop the blame for being feckless and irresponsible, as if they wasted it themselves. It is always hard to compare the honesty and competence of the varieties of territorial government on offer. But a good many rate the nepotism, jobbery, and corruption of the current regime up there with champions of old, not least for the semi-Trumpian tendency of simply ignoring unpleasant information, acting without announcement and, as ever, blaming shortcomings on Canberra. Particularly pronounced, in both Labor and Liberal National Party governments, is the "Buggins's turn" philosophy by which successive regimes believe they have the right to throw out public servants regarded as the other side's mates and cronies and install instead one's own mates and cronies. This is always a sure guarantee that corruption is endemic. What is not happening is any external will to hold miscreants to account, particularly given the fact NT federal seats are marginal. To think it was only 40 years ago when a federal minister for finance, Peter Walsh, announced he had decided the cost of featherbedding the NT for endless uneconomic projects was greater than the political advantage of holding NT seats. It had to stop. It hasn't.
The Advertiser
5 days ago
- The Advertiser
Family 'validated' over coroner's police racism finding
A community says it has "had enough" of police after a coronial inquest into the death of an Indigenous teenager renewed allegations of racism. Kumanjayi Walker was fatally shot by then-constable Zachary Rolfe in the community of Yuendumu in 2019. In handing down her findings into the 19-year-old's death, coroner Elisabeth Armitage said she found Mr Rolfe to be racist and the Northern Territory Police Force to have "the hallmarks of institutionalised racism". Mr Rolfe maintained in a statement issued by his lawyer on Tuesday that it "was never about race". Mr Walker's family welcomed the coroner's findings. "When we heard the coroner say there was structural and entrenched racism in the NT Police Force, we felt validated as a family," Mr Walker's cousin Samara Fernandez-Brown said in Yuendumu on Tuesday Ms Fernandez-Brown said she was grateful the coroner's findings were handed down in the community, 300km from Alice Springs, on Monday. But she said recommendations around police accountability in the NT were not strong enough. "We heard countless evidence about how the police have been racist, how they have been violent and how they have used too much force when it comes to our people," Ms Fernandez-Brown said. The coroner's findings were postponed after the death of another Warlpiri man, Kumanjayi White, who died in police custody in Alice Springs in May. Mr White's grandfather, senior Yuendumu Elder Ned Hargraves, said something must be done. "We've had enough of these police," he said. "They are doing the biggest damage to our community ... they have no shame whatsoever." NT Police Acting Commissioner Martin Dole said it was clear racism existed in the force. "It is a truth that we must face. What was tolerated in the past will no longer be acceptable," he said in Alice Springs. Mr Dole said a decision to leave Yuendumu shortly after the findings were handed down was made after discussions with Elders. His comments come after Mr Hargraves expressed his disappointment the commissioner left the community without speaking with him. "I apologise that he feels that way," Mr Dole said. "I did have consultations with several of the Elders and we thought it best that meeting take place in future days." Mr Hargraves said he would be strongly against the commissioner returning to Yuendumu. "I won't talk to him again ... I don't want to," he said. The force's cultural reform executive director Leanne Liddle said NT Police was working to rebuild trust through an anti-racism strategy. Ms Fernandez-Brown said while she would like to remain optimistic about structural change, she wouldn't "hold my breath" for that to come from within the NT police force. "Asking the Northern Territory police force to become safe is unsustainable and a band-aid solution," she said. "I'd like to see a structure that replaces that altogether." 13YARN 13 92 76 Lifeline 13 11 14 A community says it has "had enough" of police after a coronial inquest into the death of an Indigenous teenager renewed allegations of racism. Kumanjayi Walker was fatally shot by then-constable Zachary Rolfe in the community of Yuendumu in 2019. In handing down her findings into the 19-year-old's death, coroner Elisabeth Armitage said she found Mr Rolfe to be racist and the Northern Territory Police Force to have "the hallmarks of institutionalised racism". Mr Rolfe maintained in a statement issued by his lawyer on Tuesday that it "was never about race". Mr Walker's family welcomed the coroner's findings. "When we heard the coroner say there was structural and entrenched racism in the NT Police Force, we felt validated as a family," Mr Walker's cousin Samara Fernandez-Brown said in Yuendumu on Tuesday Ms Fernandez-Brown said she was grateful the coroner's findings were handed down in the community, 300km from Alice Springs, on Monday. But she said recommendations around police accountability in the NT were not strong enough. "We heard countless evidence about how the police have been racist, how they have been violent and how they have used too much force when it comes to our people," Ms Fernandez-Brown said. The coroner's findings were postponed after the death of another Warlpiri man, Kumanjayi White, who died in police custody in Alice Springs in May. Mr White's grandfather, senior Yuendumu Elder Ned Hargraves, said something must be done. "We've had enough of these police," he said. "They are doing the biggest damage to our community ... they have no shame whatsoever." NT Police Acting Commissioner Martin Dole said it was clear racism existed in the force. "It is a truth that we must face. What was tolerated in the past will no longer be acceptable," he said in Alice Springs. Mr Dole said a decision to leave Yuendumu shortly after the findings were handed down was made after discussions with Elders. His comments come after Mr Hargraves expressed his disappointment the commissioner left the community without speaking with him. "I apologise that he feels that way," Mr Dole said. "I did have consultations with several of the Elders and we thought it best that meeting take place in future days." Mr Hargraves said he would be strongly against the commissioner returning to Yuendumu. "I won't talk to him again ... I don't want to," he said. The force's cultural reform executive director Leanne Liddle said NT Police was working to rebuild trust through an anti-racism strategy. Ms Fernandez-Brown said while she would like to remain optimistic about structural change, she wouldn't "hold my breath" for that to come from within the NT police force. "Asking the Northern Territory police force to become safe is unsustainable and a band-aid solution," she said. "I'd like to see a structure that replaces that altogether." 13YARN 13 92 76 Lifeline 13 11 14 A community says it has "had enough" of police after a coronial inquest into the death of an Indigenous teenager renewed allegations of racism. Kumanjayi Walker was fatally shot by then-constable Zachary Rolfe in the community of Yuendumu in 2019. In handing down her findings into the 19-year-old's death, coroner Elisabeth Armitage said she found Mr Rolfe to be racist and the Northern Territory Police Force to have "the hallmarks of institutionalised racism". Mr Rolfe maintained in a statement issued by his lawyer on Tuesday that it "was never about race". Mr Walker's family welcomed the coroner's findings. "When we heard the coroner say there was structural and entrenched racism in the NT Police Force, we felt validated as a family," Mr Walker's cousin Samara Fernandez-Brown said in Yuendumu on Tuesday Ms Fernandez-Brown said she was grateful the coroner's findings were handed down in the community, 300km from Alice Springs, on Monday. But she said recommendations around police accountability in the NT were not strong enough. "We heard countless evidence about how the police have been racist, how they have been violent and how they have used too much force when it comes to our people," Ms Fernandez-Brown said. The coroner's findings were postponed after the death of another Warlpiri man, Kumanjayi White, who died in police custody in Alice Springs in May. Mr White's grandfather, senior Yuendumu Elder Ned Hargraves, said something must be done. "We've had enough of these police," he said. "They are doing the biggest damage to our community ... they have no shame whatsoever." NT Police Acting Commissioner Martin Dole said it was clear racism existed in the force. "It is a truth that we must face. What was tolerated in the past will no longer be acceptable," he said in Alice Springs. Mr Dole said a decision to leave Yuendumu shortly after the findings were handed down was made after discussions with Elders. His comments come after Mr Hargraves expressed his disappointment the commissioner left the community without speaking with him. "I apologise that he feels that way," Mr Dole said. "I did have consultations with several of the Elders and we thought it best that meeting take place in future days." Mr Hargraves said he would be strongly against the commissioner returning to Yuendumu. "I won't talk to him again ... I don't want to," he said. The force's cultural reform executive director Leanne Liddle said NT Police was working to rebuild trust through an anti-racism strategy. Ms Fernandez-Brown said while she would like to remain optimistic about structural change, she wouldn't "hold my breath" for that to come from within the NT police force. "Asking the Northern Territory police force to become safe is unsustainable and a band-aid solution," she said. "I'd like to see a structure that replaces that altogether." 13YARN 13 92 76 Lifeline 13 11 14 A community says it has "had enough" of police after a coronial inquest into the death of an Indigenous teenager renewed allegations of racism. Kumanjayi Walker was fatally shot by then-constable Zachary Rolfe in the community of Yuendumu in 2019. In handing down her findings into the 19-year-old's death, coroner Elisabeth Armitage said she found Mr Rolfe to be racist and the Northern Territory Police Force to have "the hallmarks of institutionalised racism". Mr Rolfe maintained in a statement issued by his lawyer on Tuesday that it "was never about race". Mr Walker's family welcomed the coroner's findings. "When we heard the coroner say there was structural and entrenched racism in the NT Police Force, we felt validated as a family," Mr Walker's cousin Samara Fernandez-Brown said in Yuendumu on Tuesday Ms Fernandez-Brown said she was grateful the coroner's findings were handed down in the community, 300km from Alice Springs, on Monday. But she said recommendations around police accountability in the NT were not strong enough. "We heard countless evidence about how the police have been racist, how they have been violent and how they have used too much force when it comes to our people," Ms Fernandez-Brown said. The coroner's findings were postponed after the death of another Warlpiri man, Kumanjayi White, who died in police custody in Alice Springs in May. Mr White's grandfather, senior Yuendumu Elder Ned Hargraves, said something must be done. "We've had enough of these police," he said. "They are doing the biggest damage to our community ... they have no shame whatsoever." NT Police Acting Commissioner Martin Dole said it was clear racism existed in the force. "It is a truth that we must face. What was tolerated in the past will no longer be acceptable," he said in Alice Springs. Mr Dole said a decision to leave Yuendumu shortly after the findings were handed down was made after discussions with Elders. His comments come after Mr Hargraves expressed his disappointment the commissioner left the community without speaking with him. "I apologise that he feels that way," Mr Dole said. "I did have consultations with several of the Elders and we thought it best that meeting take place in future days." Mr Hargraves said he would be strongly against the commissioner returning to Yuendumu. "I won't talk to him again ... I don't want to," he said. The force's cultural reform executive director Leanne Liddle said NT Police was working to rebuild trust through an anti-racism strategy. Ms Fernandez-Brown said while she would like to remain optimistic about structural change, she wouldn't "hold my breath" for that to come from within the NT police force. "Asking the Northern Territory police force to become safe is unsustainable and a band-aid solution," she said. "I'd like to see a structure that replaces that altogether." 13YARN 13 92 76 Lifeline 13 11 14
Perth Now
5 days ago
- Perth Now
Family 'validated' over coroner's police racism finding
A community says it has "had enough" of police after a coronial inquest into the death of an Indigenous teenager renewed allegations of racism. Kumanjayi Walker was fatally shot by then-constable Zachary Rolfe in the community of Yuendumu in 2019. In handing down her findings into the 19-year-old's death, coroner Elisabeth Armitage said she found Mr Rolfe to be racist and the Northern Territory Police Force to have "the hallmarks of institutionalised racism". Mr Rolfe maintained in a statement issued by his lawyer on Tuesday that it "was never about race". Mr Walker's family welcomed the coroner's findings. "When we heard the coroner say there was structural and entrenched racism in the NT Police Force, we felt validated as a family," Mr Walker's cousin Samara Fernandez-Brown said in Yuendumu on Tuesday Ms Fernandez-Brown said she was grateful the coroner's findings were handed down in the community, 300km from Alice Springs, on Monday. But she said recommendations around police accountability in the NT were not strong enough. "We heard countless evidence about how the police have been racist, how they have been violent and how they have used too much force when it comes to our people," Ms Fernandez-Brown said. The coroner's findings were postponed after the death of another Warlpiri man, Kumanjayi White, who died in police custody in Alice Springs in May. Mr White's grandfather, senior Yuendumu Elder Ned Hargraves, said something must be done. "We've had enough of these police," he said. "They are doing the biggest damage to our community ... they have no shame whatsoever." NT Police Acting Commissioner Martin Dole said it was clear racism existed in the force. "It is a truth that we must face. What was tolerated in the past will no longer be acceptable," he said in Alice Springs. Mr Dole said a decision to leave Yuendumu shortly after the findings were handed down was made after discussions with Elders. His comments come after Mr Hargraves expressed his disappointment the commissioner left the community without speaking with him. "I apologise that he feels that way," Mr Dole said. "I did have consultations with several of the Elders and we thought it best that meeting take place in future days." Mr Hargraves said he would be strongly against the commissioner returning to Yuendumu. "I won't talk to him again ... I don't want to," he said. The force's cultural reform executive director Leanne Liddle said NT Police was working to rebuild trust through an anti-racism strategy. Ms Fernandez-Brown said while she would like to remain optimistic about structural change, she wouldn't "hold my breath" for that to come from within the NT police force. "Asking the Northern Territory police force to become safe is unsustainable and a band-aid solution," she said. "I'd like to see a structure that replaces that altogether." 13YARN 13 92 76 Lifeline 13 11 14
The Australian
6 days ago
- The Australian
NT Police admit racism existed in force
WARNING: This story contains the name and image of an Indigenous person who has died. The Northern Territory Police Force has acknowledged racism existed within the organisation a day after the Coroner handed down a scathing 600-page report into the death of a 19-year old Aboriginal teen. Kumanjayi Walker was shot dead by former constable Zachary Rolfe after he was stabbed on November 9, 2019. Coroner Elisabeth Armitage spent three years investigating Kumanjayi's life and the events surrounding his death finding the 'racist attitudes' of a constable attracted to 'high-adrenaline policing' contributed to his death. She also found the NT Police Force was entrenched with institutional racism. Northern Territory Coroner Elisabeth Armitage handed down a scathing 600-page report into the death of 19-year old Aboriginal teen Kumanjayi Walker finding racism existed within the NT Police Force. Picture: Glen Campbell Acting commissioner Martin Dole acknowledged the coroner's findings accepting all forms of racism existed within the NT Police Force at various times. 'This was borne out in the evidence received during this inquest that is confronting, but it is a truth that we must face, what was tolerated in the past will no longer be acceptable,' he said. 'We are committed to stamping out racism in all its forms and making this a safer and fairer organisation for everybody.' Commissioner Dole said they would carefully consider 18 recommendations directed to the NT Police Force by the coroner. 'We acknowledge the deep hurt that followed the events of the 9th November 2019 and the long inquest that followed,' he said. 'I extend my sincere sympathy to Kumanjayi's loved ones, and thank every witness and community member who contributed to the coroner's findings. 'These recommendations deserve to be considered properly, thoroughly and with the seriousness that they warrant. 'Our response will take time, because it must be meaningful and enduring.' Acting commissioner Martin Dole acknowledged the coroner's findings accepting racism existed within the NT Police Force at various time and was a confronting truth they must face. Picture: Gera Kazakov The commissioner said the NT Police force must listen, hear and act more closely with remote communities. 'That includes seriously re-examining how we return to a meaningful version of community policing, one that reflects the needs and expectations of Aboriginal people and builds trust at a local level,' he said. 'Our commitment is clear, lasting reform delivered transparently in partnership with Aboriginal communities. 'Only then can we move forward together in truth, respect and genuine understanding.' Executive director Leanne Little said while the coroner's findings were deeply confronting, they were not new to many Aboriginal people. She said what mattered now was how police responded to the findings. 'The Northern Territory Police Force is not going backwards, we are moving forward and over the past 12 months, I've already seen meaningful change occur across the organisation,' she said. Former NT Police constable Zach Rolfe was acquitted by a jury of murder, manslaughter, and engaging in a violent act causing death in the NT Supreme Court in 2022. Picture: Jason Walls Ms Little is developing the Force's first anti-racism strategy to eliminate discrimination across the organisation. 'The coroner has made it clear, racism has existed in this organisation in all its forms,' she said. 'What was tolerated in the past will no longer be acceptable, and that's not just a statement, that is a commitment.' Ms Little said they would take any necessary actions to rebuild trust through sustained partnerships and culturally informed community policing. 'I believe that we are on the right path,' she said. 'The past cannot be undone, but the future is ours to shape. 'This is not the end of a difficult process, it is a beginning of something far more important, lasting reform, shared respect and a police force that all Territorians can trust.' Territory Coroner Elisabeth Armitage recommended the NT Police make public and strengthen its anti-racism strategy in her report into the death of Aboriginal teen Kumanjayi Walker. Picture: Glen Campbell Coroner Armitage recommended that the NT Police make public and strengthen its anti-racism strategy in her report. She also recommended police create agreements with Yuendumu leaders to decide when it would be appropriate for police to carry firearms in the community. 'NT Police Force must take steps through its training, supervision, culture and leadership to ensure racist attitudes do not develop and if they do, they are identified and corrected and are not tolerated or condoned,' Ms Armitage said. 'To be clear, many of the police officers who gave evidence to the inquest impressed me as curious and culturally sensitive officers who dedicated their working lives to serving the largely Aboriginal communities they were tasked to police,' she said. 'They were not racist. Even so, I found that racist language and actions were not confined to Mr Rolfe and this was not a case of one bad apple.'
Perth Now
6 days ago
- Perth Now
‘Confronting': NT cops reply to racist finding
WARNING: This story contains the name and image of an Indigenous person who has died. The Northern Territory Police Force has acknowledged racism existed within the organisation a day after the Coroner handed down a scathing 600-page report into the death of a 19-year old Aboriginal teen. Kumanjayi Walker was shot dead by former constable Zachary Rolfe after he was stabbed on November 9, 2019. Coroner Elisabeth Armitage spent three years investigating Kumanjayi's life and the events surrounding his death finding the 'racist attitudes' of a constable attracted to 'high-adrenaline policing' contributed to his death. She also found the NT Police Force was entrenched with institutional racism. Northern Territory Coroner Elisabeth Armitage handed down a scathing 600-page report into the death of 19-year old Aboriginal teen Kumanjayi Walker finding racism existed within the NT Police Force. Glen Campbell Credit: News Corp Australia Acting commissioner Martin Dole acknowledged the coroner's findings accepting all forms of racism existed within the NT Police Force at various times. 'This was borne out in the evidence received during this inquest that is confronting, but it is a truth that we must face, what was tolerated in the past will no longer be acceptable,' he said. 'We are committed to stamping out racism in all its forms and making this a safer and fairer organisation for everybody.' Commissioner Dole said they would carefully consider 18 recommendations directed to the NT Police Force by the coroner. 'We acknowledge the deep hurt that followed the events of the 9th November 2019 and the long inquest that followed,' he said. 'I extend my sincere sympathy to Kumanjayi's loved ones, and thank every witness and community member who contributed to the coroner's findings. 'These recommendations deserve to be considered properly, thoroughly and with the seriousness that they warrant. 'Our response will take time, because it must be meaningful and enduring.' Acting commissioner Martin Dole acknowledged the coroner's findings accepting racism existed within the NT Police Force at various time and was a confronting truth they must face. Gera Kazakov Credit: News Corp Australia The commissioner said the NT Police force must listen, hear and act more closely with remote communities. 'That includes seriously re-examining how we return to a meaningful version of community policing, one that reflects the needs and expectations of Aboriginal people and builds trust at a local level,' he said. 'Our commitment is clear, lasting reform delivered transparently in partnership with Aboriginal communities. 'Only then can we move forward together in truth, respect and genuine understanding.' Executive director Leanne Little said while the coroner's findings were deeply confronting, they were not new to many Aboriginal people. She said what mattered now was how police responded to the findings. 'The Northern Territory Police Force is not going backwards, we are moving forward and over the past 12 months, I've already seen meaningful change occur across the organisation,' she said. Former NT Police constable Zach Rolfe was acquitted by a jury of murder, manslaughter, and engaging in a violent act causing death in the NT Supreme Court in 2022. Jason Walls Credit: News Corp Australia Ms Little is developing the Force's first anti-racism strategy to eliminate discrimination across the organisation. 'The coroner has made it clear, racism has existed in this organisation in all its forms,' she said. 'What was tolerated in the past will no longer be acceptable, and that's not just a statement, that is a commitment.' Ms Little said they would take any necessary actions to rebuild trust through sustained partnerships and culturally informed community policing. 'I believe that we are on the right path,' she said. 'The past cannot be undone, but the future is ours to shape. 'This is not the end of a difficult process, it is a beginning of something far more important, lasting reform, shared respect and a police force that all Territorians can trust.' Territory Coroner Elisabeth Armitage recommended the NT Police make public and strengthen its anti-racism strategy in her report into the death of Aboriginal teen Kumanjayi Walker. Glen Campbell Credit: News Corp Australia Coroner Armitage recommended that the NT Police make public and strengthen its anti-racism strategy in her report. She also recommended police create agreements with Yuendumu leaders to decide when it would be appropriate for police to carry firearms in the community. 'NT Police Force must take steps through its training, supervision, culture and leadership to ensure racist attitudes do not develop and if they do, they are identified and corrected and are not tolerated or condoned,' Ms Armitage said. 'To be clear, many of the police officers who gave evidence to the inquest impressed me as curious and culturally sensitive officers who dedicated their working lives to serving the largely Aboriginal communities they were tasked to police,' she said. 'They were not racist. Even so, I found that racist language and actions were not confined to Mr Rolfe and this was not a case of one bad apple.'
