Cunningham: The disgusting problem the NT is all too happy to sweep under the rug

The Northern Territory’s disgusting domestic violence statistics should put us all to shame. Yet for some reason we can’t seem to take this issue seriously, writes Matt Cunningham.

The Northern Territory has some of the highest rates of domestic and family violence in the world.

I wouldn’t ordinarily quote Kate Worden, but the figures she detailed in parliament this week lay bare just how significant this problem is.

A homicide rate seven times the national average.

An assault rate four times the national average.

Aboriginal women eight times more likely to be assaulted than non-Aboriginal women.

And a staggering 37 per cent of women and girls from the age of 15 who report that they have experienced physical violence.

Those figures put us all to shame.

Yet for some reason we can’t seem to take this issue seriously.

Aboriginal women who are the victims of abuse (physical and verbal) and violence are largely ignored.

The perpetrators are routinely forgiven.

Consider the pathetic level of support offered to Yothu Yindi Foundation chief executive Denise Bowden after she alleged NT Treaty Commissioner and 2009 Australian of the Year Mick Dodson had called her a “slut” and threatened to “knock your f-----g lights out” at a football match.

Barkly electorate officer Darius Plummer (left) pictured with Steve Edgington and NT opposition leader Lia Finnochiaro (far right). Picture: Supplied

Senior Labor figures lobbied then-Chief Minister Michael Gunner (unsuccessfully, to Gunner’s credit) not to force Dodson’s resignation.

The ABC didn’t run the story in any of its national news and current affairs shows, and Dodson’s name remains on our nation’s highest honours list.

What might have happened to Steve Waugh, Pat Rafter or Tim Flannery if they’d been accused of the same behaviour?

The winner of this week’s prize for condoning domestic violence is the Country Liberal Party. The Australian newspaper revealed Barkly MLA Steve Edgington, the CLP’s spokesman for the prevention of family violence, hired a serial domestic violence offender to work in his office.

Darius Plummer, according to the report, had faced court 27 times for domestic violence-related offences including breaching domestic violence orders and breaching bail.

He’d been jailed at least three times.

Edgington says he didn’t know the extent of his staffer’s history before he hired him last year. But he admitted he was aware of at least two of his offences.

How then, he thought it was a good idea to hire him is hard to fathom.

The only likely explanation is political expediency.

That the CLP needed a well-connected Indigenous man to help convince Aboriginal constituents in Edgington’s vast bush electorate – won in 2020 by just 7 votes – to vote for him.

Edgington at least showed there is a skerrick of integrity left in the Parliament by resigning from the domestic violence portfolio on Thursday night, after offering to resign from the frontbench altogether.

CLP spokesman for the prevention of domestic violence Steve Edgington defends hiring a staffer with an extensive DV-related criminal history. Picture: Pema Tamang Pakhrin

A day earlier, Attorney-General Chansey Paech, in an amazing show a chutzpah, had launched a blistering attack on Edgington and the CLP in Parliament.

“The CLP do not care about protecting Territory women and children,” he said.

“You can’t trust the CLP to address violence against women and children. You can’t trust the CLP to put the rights of Territorians first. The answer is simple Mr Speaker, the CLP, the Criminal Liberal Party, are the party who defend criminals, are the party who pose with criminals and the party who are criminals and employ criminals, that’s who you are.”

He then turned his sights on CLP Senator Jacinta Price.

“What does the CLP’s very own senator (Jacinta Price) who claims to defend domestic and family violence advocates say about the appalling disgusting behaviour of her Territory colleague to continue to employ a woman basher.”

Paech must be hoping Territorians have short memories.

For it was Senator Price and Federal Labor MP Marion Scrymgour who used their maiden speeches in the federal parliament in 2022 to beg the Northern Territory Government to reinstate alcohol bans in Aboriginal town camps in Alice Springs and elsewhere, after they had been lifted overnight when the Stronger Futures legislation expired in July 2022.

“When a government puts in a protective regime of that kind and leaves it in place for that long, you can’t just suddenly pull the pin on it without any protection, sanctuary or plan for the vulnerable women and children whom the original measure was supposed to protect,” Scrymgour said.

Minister for the Prevention of Domestic, Family and Sexual violence, Kate Worden. Picture: Pema Tamang Pakhrin

“To do that is more than negligent — at the level of impact on actual lives, it is tantamount to causing injury by omission. It is like pulling your forces out of Afghanistan but leaving the local workers and their dependants in harm’s way on the ground without an escape plan, but that is what has happened.”

Paech and his Labor cabinet colleagues ignored these warnings, even in the face of irrefutable evidence that lifting the alcohol bans was contributing to unprecedented levels of domestic violence.

It’s hard to fathom this decision, which was only changed when Prime Minister Anthony Albanese flew to Alice Springs and forced the NT Government’s hand.

The most plausible explanation is political expediency.

Once again, the rights of victims carried less weight than those of the perpetrators. And until that changes, those statistics Kate Worden read out in Parliament this week will continue to shame us all.