Kumanjayi Walker inquest: Yuendumu residents in ‘humiliating’ Centrelink grind

Residents in remote Aboriginal communities where median incomes are just $250 a week are ‘being governed in a holding pattern’ of bureaucracy while their children go hungry.

Institute of Postcolonial Studies director Melinda Hinkson says remote Territorians are ‘forced to work to receive their welfare payments’ or get cut off. Picture: Jason Walls

The Centrelink hold music is the soundtrack to the daily “humiliating grind” for families trying to make ends meet in Yuendumu where the median weekly income is just $250, a court has heard.

Territory Coroner Elisabeth Armitage is presiding over a months-long inquest in the Alice Springs Local Court into the police shooting death of 19-year-old Warlpiri-Luritja man Kumanjayi Walker at Yuendumu in 2019.

On Wednesday, Institute of Postcolonial Studies director Melinda Hinkson told the court the phasing out of the federal government’s Community Development Employment Projects program had been disastrous for Aboriginal communities.

Dr Hinkson said while the CDEP focused on creating meaningful employment for local Indigenous people in Yuendumu and elsewhere, the Community Development Program which replaced it was far more punitive.

“CDP only applies to remote living Aboriginal people and people are forced to work to receive their welfare payments, five hours a day, five days per week, or suffer cuts to those base welfare payments, they get breached,” she said.

“Which might mean, for any number of reasons, not turning up to work on a particular day or a number of days, and for that they can receive a penalty of up to eight weeks in their welfare payments being cut.”

Dr Hinkson agreed with counsel for the Parumpurru Committee of Yuendumu Community, Julian McMahon SC, that the breaches could see grandparents caring for multiple grandchildren stripped of their income for many weeks.

House 511 (the memory house) in Yuendumu where Kumanjayi Walker was shot by Constable Zach Rolfe. Picture: Jason Walls

“I know of a 65-year-old woman who has just been breached in recent days, received an eight week penalty, and in fact she should be on the old age pension and receiving a higher payment and not being subject to this kind of regime at all,” she said.

Dr Hinkson said it was unclear why the woman had not been moved onto the aged pension but suggested the government considered it “her responsibility to turn up to Centrelink and fill out the relevant forms”.

“We might think that the people who are administering these things – given that they require a phone call from each of the people being administered in this way, every fortnight – that they would be on top of questions such as when somebody should be taken across to an age pension,” she said.

Dr Hinkson said “the most common music being heard at Yuendumu these days” was “the hold music for the Centrelink line”, reflecting “the humiliating grind of constantly having to jump through administrative hoops”.

“Whether on the phone or having to front up to an office and sit and wait for hours on end, simply to meet an administrative requirement in situations where it’s clear that there will be no job, people are just being governed in a holding pattern,” she said.

“I think it’s also worth mentioning that the latest census tells us that the median income at Yuendumu is $250, and we know that the cost of food in remote communities is 50 per cent higher than what we pay in cities.

“So that’s before you even come to the issue of breaching and penalising people and removing a very modest welfare payment.”

The inquest continues.

‘Tragic failure of leadership’: Zach Rolfe defence witness

Zach Rolfe “never should have met” Kumanjayi Walker who was the victim of “a tragic failure of leadership” by NT Police, a key witness for Constable Rolfe’s defence has testified.

Former Australian Federal Police defensive skills and chief firearms instructor, Ben McDevitt, gave evidence in the Supreme Court that Constable Rolfe was justified in fatally shooting Mr Walker before a jury found him not guilty on all charges in March last year.

Taking the stand again on Tuesday, Mr McDevitt told an inquest into the 2019 Yuendumu shooting he laid the blame for the fatally bungled arrest “at the feet of (the force’s) senior executive and management”.

“In a nutshell, my personal belief is that those two young men, Kumanjayi Walker and Constable Zachary Rolfe probably never should have met,” he said.

“I believe that, quite frankly, the reason that they did was largely due to a tragic failure of leadership.”

Mr McDevitt told the court while Constable Rolfe and his Immediate Response Team colleagues made tactical errors in approaching Mr Walker inside House 511, leadership from the top brass was “totally lacking”.

“Of course they had responsibility at the tactical and operational levels, once they were committed to the operation then the decision making was over to them,” he said.

“But their guidance should be strict and should be within parameters and it should be absolutely crystal clear to everybody what the command and control arrangements are.”

Former AFP instructor Ben McDevitt said ‘serious consideration should have been given to the use of the TRG’.

Mr McDevitt said there was “no clarity whatsoever of leadership, of command and control”, and “no underlying risk assessment” or “proper planning process”.

“I mean the members of the IRT themselves didn’t know who was in charge, and then when you go higher it doesn’t seem that people know who actually was in charge at an executive level as well, who was keeping an eye on this,” he said.

“Quite frankly, for something like that, in my view, four men and a dog just doesn’t cut it, but that’s what they had on the ground and I’m sure they would say they did the best they could with what they had, but it’s up to the executive and senior management to allocate.”

Mr McDevitt said NT Police’s specialist Territory Response Group should have at least been consulted on the planned arrest after Mr Walker rushed at another group of officers armed with an axe three days earlier.

“I believe serious consideration should have been given to the use of the TRG and, at the very least, I believe if that were considered, you would have seen a risk assessment prepared,” he said.

“You would have seen a lot more consideration go into the planning of the operation, which would have been a much safer result for everybody involved.”

The inquest continues on Wednesday.