Former NT cop John Elferink returns medal in apology protest

A former senior NT police officer and MLA has returned his police service medal in protest at police chief Michael Murphy’s apology to Indigenous people.

John Elferink as a Northern Territory police officer in 1986.

A former senior Northern Territory police officer and MLA has returned his police service medal in protest at police chief Michael Murphy’s apology to Indigenous people, claiming the “greatest harm done to Aboriginal people in the NT was at the hands of other Aboriginal people”.

John Elferink was a 14-year member of the force and was awarded the Northern Territory Police Service Medal in recognition of 10 years of continuous meritorious service, before becoming a member of the NT Legislative Assembly, where he served in the Country Liberal Party for four terms from 1997 to 2016.

Last week, the practising lawyer posted his medal to Darwin, with a letter to Mr Murphy stating the apology meant his once “cherished” medal was now “rendered something to be ashamed of”.

The letter followed Mr Murphy’s apology, delivered at the Garma Festival in Arnhem Land earlier this month, for “the past harms and the injustices caused by members”.

The manner in which the apology occurred infuriated many members of the police force.

The NT Police Association’s criticism of the apology, especially the lack of consultation with it’s members, resulted in Mr Murphy resigning his membership of the association.

In expressing his disappointment at the apology, the former NT attorney-general branded it “simply the wrong message to send”, saying it reinforced the idea of victimhood and was an “emotional attempt at some form of reconciliation”.

“This fashion arises out of the collective guilt that Australia has determined to embrace for ‘our’ colonial past,” Mr Elferink wrote.

“It needs to be recalled many Aboriginal people have been employed by the NT Police to serve and they have done so as they have seen the Police Force as the best vehicle to represent their communities as well. Your unqualified apology diminishes them and their judgment to support the police equally,” he wrote.

He said in his letter that in his time as a policeman it was Aboriginal women who were the victims of “atrocious” assaults at the hands of their relatives “as an extension of cultural practices”.

Mr Elferink in Adelaide on Wednesday. Picture: Liam Mendes

“The problem with apologising as a national pastime is that it actually serves to deflect responsibility from the people who need to be accountable for their actions which are the offenders themselves,” he wrote.

“It may now be fully expected that your frontline members will now be accused of racism when they try to do their job by the people who should be restrained from being villainous, violent or criminal in their conduct. This accusation can now be made on the basis that you, the police commissioner, said so.

“It is the unqualified nature of your apology which abrades the most. If there was an apology to be made it should have been coupled with a call on all people (Aboriginal or otherwise) to be responsible citizens in their own communities and to impress upon the citizenry that their safety starts with them.

“An unqualified apology implies that the people being apologised to are by some mechanism granted absolution.”

Speaking to The Australian in Adelaide where he lives Mr Elferink believes that an improvement in relations with Indigenous Australians didn’t have to come at the expense of a relationship with Mr Murphy’s officers, most of whom weren’t consulted or notified of the apology prior to it being made.

“It was the unilateral nature of it, along with the absolute nature of it, which I think was the thing that caught a lot of people off guard and upset a lot of people, and he would have been aware of that,” Mr Elfernik said.

Mr Elferink said Mr Murphy should have acknowledged the “great relationship” police and Aboriginal people have had “over many, many years”.

“I looked at my service medal and thought to myself, ‘well, if your membership of the police association is as commoditised to the point where you can simply dismiss it as your symbol of resistance to criticism, then equally, the medal which I was given for my 15 years of service is commoditised as well,” he said.

“You can have it back.”