Former Attorney-General John Elferink says NT youths are angrier than ever

THERE is no doubt that dissatisfaction lies at the heart of much of the social disorder in the Northern Territory, particularly among its youth, former Attorney-General and Corrections Minister John Elferink writes.

Two cops have been the subject of an investigation following the arrest of youths in Alice Springs in 2018. Picture: ABC.

NO social or political revolution was ever fathered by a happy population.

At the heart of social change there is dissatisfaction and there is no doubt that dissatisfaction lies at the heart of much of the social disorder in the Northern Territory, particularly amongst the Territory’s youth.

It is certain there is no shortage of people who look at what they call injustice in the NT and tell the Territory’s youth they have a right to be dissatisfied.

When youth damage property some quarters will cry, “More power to their arms.” Dissatisfaction justifies conduct.

The problem is that such advice is wrong.

Over the past four decades there has been an increasingly strong message to young people in the NT that they are being wronged.

The “system” is the source of unhappiness and if you’re unhappy then any behaviour is justified.

The result of this attitude is that there are now more unhappy youth than ever and they are angrier than ever.

Their supporters will point at the state and cry the Government has failed.

This of course leads to inquiries, investigations and royal commissions among other hand wringing factories that chant a mantra that money and understanding, (particularly money), will fix the decay.

John Elferink at a press conference outside Parliament House in 2016.

A new juvenile detention facility will address the behaviour, or a new program will bring equilibrium where none existed.

At the heart of this thinking is the assumption that government will be the new parent. Government just needs to try and it can fix it all.

Of course, this is bullshit.

Why then after spending hundreds of millions on inquiries, new buildings and new policies do we see more of the same?

What has happened of course is that all of these policies have absolved the perpetrators of any culpability.

To impose a responsibility on an offender is too harsh, too demanding and in the case of some offenders, too racist.

Parents aren’t told to do their job anymore, they’re merely encouraged.

These philosophies may be distilled into a single concept, youth crime should be medicalised. Youth offending is a deviance that should be treated but certainly not, whatever you do, punished.

The loving state will reach out with its benevolent hand and transform the wicked into the wise. All you need is time and absolution.

Three years after the Royal Commission into youth detention in the NT, there is only greater dissatisfaction because the underlying message of social rather than individual culpability for youth offending has led to no better outcomes for the youth of the NT.

Consequently, the answer is that of any brat.

John Elferink in 2017.

Act out and play up when you don’t get your way and sadly there are many who cheer from the sidelines pointing to such petulance as evidence of social failure, not theirs.

It’s not social failure.

It is a full blown tanty in which the angry toddler is all too often a post pubescent teenager with the strength of an adult.

They need to be contained and the state should provide the mechanisms to do so.

But the state is more frightened than ever because intervention requires force from time to time.

The restraint of a child never looks good but the absence of restraint has proven to be even uglier.

The victims are the burghers of the NT, who have their cars stolen, houses broken into and who are randomly assaulted because some delinquent isn’t happy with life.

It will always be a duty of the state to keep people safe, including those in its custody.

But there is no safety for anyone in a well-meaning free for all.

John Elferink was the Northern Territory’s former Attorney-General and Corrections Minister.