Matt Cunningham: Community tired of being treated like guinea pigs

The contrast between the tragedy we witness here first-hand and what passes for our national public discourse in Aboriginal affairs has never been more stark, writes Matt Cunningham.

Australia Day protests outside the notorious Don Dale Youth Detention Centre. Picture: (A)manda Parkinson

As the election campaign reached its final week, our federal politicians and their following media pack turned their minds to the big issues in Indigenous affairs.

For the best part of the week we’ve been treated to debates about the merits of Welcome to Country and arguments about whether a re-elected Albanese government might try to revive the Voice to Parliament.

All very important stuff.

Or so it might seem if you spend your Saturday mornings sipping soy lattes in an inner-city cafe a long way from here.

In the Territory, there’s been little discussion about whether Uncle Colin or Aunty Joy should say a few words before the footy, or whether Penny Wong was serious when she told a couple of comedians the Voice was inevitable.

Invasion Day protests outside the notorious Don Dale Youth Detention Centre. Picture: (A)manda Parkinson

We’ve been too busy grappling with another senseless death, allegedly committed by a young Aboriginal man who was already on bail for serious alleged violent offences.

The contrast between the tragedy we witness here first-hand and what passes for our national public discourse in Aboriginal affairs has never been more stark.

But it might help explain why so many attempts by east-coast experts to intervene in the Territory’s affairs have so badly missed the mark.

While the Howard Government’s 2007 Emergency Response draws most of the attention, it is far from the only “intervention” in the Territory that has had dire consequences.

This week it’s worth examining the impact of another intervention.

One ordered by former Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who watched a fairly one-sided TV show back in July 2016, and thought it might be a good idea to call a Royal Commission.

There’s little doubt the Territory’s juvenile detention facilities needed an overhaul.

The tear-gassing of children at Don Dale had been revealed in 2015 by Children’s Commissioner Colleen Gwynne.

The CLP government of the day had subsequently ordered the Vita review and Corrections Minister John Elferink had begun implementing significant changes in the youth justice system.

This work was recognised by Four Corners reporter Caro Meldrum-Hanna in a letter she sent to Mr Elferink six weeks before her now infamous report on Don Dale went to air.

“Based on our research, the Northern Territory is proactively trying to make things better,” she wrote.

“From Sentenced to a Job, in-prison education programs, reducing offending rates, restraining the growth of prisoners, to barbecues being planned inside Don Dale to teach the juveniles about cooking. Under your tenure as Minister, a new adult prison has been built, juvenile offenders have been moved to the facility at Berrimah, child protection reviews have been launched and a new Corrections Commissioner has been appointed. Minister Elferink, this is a significant legacy. It is also your legacy.”

Former corrections Minister John Elferink leaves the NT Supreme Court after giving evidence to the Royal Commission into youth detention.

Unfortunately, none of that research managed to make it into the program that went to air three weeks before the 2016 Territory election.

And by the time the sun had come up on July 26 that year, Mr Turnbull was sending in the lawyers.

It’s more than eight years since that bunch of well-paid, east-coast experts flew into town to tell the Territory how to fix its youth justice system.

For the best part of nine months, witnesses were scrutinised, criticised and patronised by blow-ins whose education at sandstone southern universities apparently made them far better equipped to know the solutions to this impossibly complex issue than those who had spent decades working at the coal face.

Good people’s reputations were tarnished.

Criminals were treated like victims.

And victims were ignored altogether.

Local journalists were not trusted to cover the inquiry.

The Commission – which paid consultants $1100 a day to manage its image – instead tried to fly a reporter and photographer in from Sydney to accompany Commissioners Margaret White and Mick Gooda on a tour of the Don Dale Detention Centre.

It was a $75 million southern inquisition that promised to make us safer but only left us in a God-awful mess.

In this column five years ago I wondered if the Royal Commission into the Protection and Detention of Children might be the undoing of the Gunner Labor Government?

Covid might have saved the day in 2020, but there’s little doubt Labor’s catastrophic defeat at last August’s NT election owes a great deal of thanks to the changes it made on the Royal Commission’s recommendation, even if it eventually tried to wind some of those back.

The most damaging was the idea that detention should only be used as an option of last resort, even for the most dangerous youth offenders.

It’s an idea that probably sounds great at a Fitzroy dinner party, but has a little bit less appeal when there’s a chance that same dangerous offender could be lurking in your neighbourhood. That principle was removed from the law this week during an emergency sitting of Parliament prompted by the horrific stabbing death of Nightcliff supermarket owner Linford Feick.

Bail laws have also been strengthened.

The Royal Commission’s work now completely undone amid the overwhelming anger of a community tired of being treated like guinea pigs in a failed social experiment.

It’s little wonder our federal politicians would much rather talk about something else.

Originally published as Matt Cunningham: Community tired of being treated like guinea pigs