Domestic violence suffered by Aboriginal woman has been ignored

Politicians Jacinta Price, Malarndirri McCarthy and Marion Scrymgour have used speeches in parliament to highlight the horrific domestic abuse suffered by Aboriginal women, but their stories barely rated a mention in national media, writes Matt Cunningham.

Malarndirri McCarthy is a politician not known for hyperbole or exaggeration.

She generally tries to make a point in a more measured fashion than some of her colleagues.

But her speech in the Senate this week should have stopped us all in our tracks.

“Alcohol is a scourge and you know that domestic violence (is rife) … We all have our stories,” she said.

“(One of my) aunties … was smashed to smithereens by her partner thanks to alcohol. Today she lives … with no feet, they had to be amputated. Her elbows she can’t move because of the fractures from what she received from the hits.”

McCarthy’s story received little media attention.

NT senators, the CLP's Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and Labor's Malarndirri McCarthy

It was sidebar to the latest development in the controversy over alcohol bans in Aboriginal town camps and the Northern Territory government’s belated decision to reinstate the Intervention-era measure.

But almost three weeks after rising rates of crime in Alice Springs prompted a visit from the Prime Minister, the national focus that shone on this issue has well and truly moved on.

After national cabinet met in Canberra last Friday the press pack failed to ask Anthony Albanese or Chief Minister Natasha Fyles a single question about Alice Springs.

They were more focussed on whether Sydney or Adelaide should host the New Year’s cricket Test.

Many of the journalists who have flown in and out of the Territory in the past month to cover the story in Alice Springs have been keen to frame it as a black-versus-white issue.

Those of us who live here know the victims of this tragedy are overwhelmingly Aboriginal. That’s a fact confirmed by Central Australian Regional Controller Dorelle Anderson in her report into alcohol-related harm prepared for the Fyles and Albanese governments.

She found rates of alcohol-fuelled domestic violence in Alice Springs had risen by 96.7 per cent since 2019.

Matt Cunningham is the Northern Australia Correspondent and Darwin Bureau Chief at Sky News Picture: Justin Kennedy

Clinical staff at the Alice Springs Hospital have also noted an increase in the severity of the incidents they are dealing with.

Last month a doctor told Sky News the hospital had treated a woman whose husband had tried to decapitate her before slitting his own throat.

This is not a throwback to some distant time in some faraway country.

This is happening in our country, today.

McCarthy is not the first Aboriginal person to raise this issue in a national forum.

For decades ABC broadcaster and No More campaign founder Charlie King has begged this country to stand up and take notice.

King has not only highlighted the problem, but has done more than perhaps any Australian to try to find a real solution.

He has encouraged men to stand up and be accountable for their actions. And for sporting clubs to stamp out the scourge of domestic violence by penalising perpetrators.

Jacinta Price, Josephine Cashman and Marcia Langton opened eyes and dropped jaws at the National Press Club seven years ago with their brutally honest revelations about this issue.

But the focus was short-lived.

Price is now a Senator.

In July last year, she and Labor’s Lingiari MP Marion Scrymgour used their maiden speeches in parliament to highlight the issue of domestic violence suffered by Aboriginal women.

Price detailed the story of a young mother - Alena Kukla - and her baby boy shot dead by her violent, drunken partner in a murder-suicide at 16-mile camp just north of Alice Springs on July 17 last year.

The Northern Territory media has covered this story at length.

But amid the acres of column inches and hours of airtime the national media has devoted to the Voice to Parliament in the past six months, this horrific story, raised by an Aboriginal voice in the parliament, has barely rated a mention.

Price and Scrymgour also used their speeches to sound the alarm about the end of the Stronger Futures Act and the return of alcohol to smaller Aboriginal communities, homelands and town camps.

Nobody listened. And so here we are.

Six years ago this column described the domestic violence suffered by Aboriginal woman as the crisis no-one talks about.

This was wrong.

There are plenty of people talking about this crisis - most of them are Aboriginal.

This county just doesn’t seem to care.

Originally published as Domestic violence suffered by Aboriginal woman has been ignored