Justice for NT Indigenous police

The size and complexity of the challenge confronting Northern Territory Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro and her Country Liberal Party government, elected in a landslide last month to deal with the Territory’s law-and-order crisis, is looking worse by the day. After decades of failures by NT and federal governments on both sides, easy solutions are impossible. However intractable the problems, Ms Finocchiaro’s team must deal with each issue tenaciously and thoroughly. Given the gravity of the problems, revealed by Paul Toohey recently, the CLP’s hard line policies – lowering the age of criminal responsibility from 12 to 10 to make children answerable for the vast damage they wreak, restoring spithoods to protect police, and reinstating truancy officers – are appropriate. As senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price says, authorities must get to the root of youth crime in Indigenous communities rather than “treating it downstream”.

Protecting Indigenous women and children from violence in their own communities is an urgent priority. The time frame between children suffering as victims and perpetrating violence and abuse themselves is depressingly narrow. To break the circuit, Aboriginal Community Police Officers are indispensable. They must be well treated by the NT government, especially in view of their dangerous frontline roles. This is why the serious claims of racial vilification and unequal pay made by at least 20 ACPOs in a complaint to the Australian Human Rights Commission need to be opened up and dealt with. The claims suggest endemic racism within NT police, where Indigenous cops are routinely demeaned as “lazy and useless” and Aboriginals are mistreated by police, Stephen Rice has revealed. If true, such conduct is an impediment to the CLP’s vital goal of improving law and order.

Cleaning up the streets in Darwin and Alice Springs by removing homeless people from public areas before visits from dignitaries is no surprise. But such window-dressing is wrong. It is vital that political leaders such as Anthony Albanese see the problems first-hand.