Women’s safety advocates are urging governments and the police to take immediate action after a landmark coroner’s report exposed systemic failings that contributed to the deaths of four Aboriginal women in the Northern Territory.
The NT coroner Elisabeth Armitage on Monday handed down findings into the deaths of Miss Yunupiŋu, Ngeygo Ragurrk, Kumarn Rubuntja and Kumanjayi Haywood, making 35 recommendations aimed at stemming what she called the “epidemic of violence”.
All four women reported fears for their safety to authorities or loved ones in the weeks, months and even years before they were killed. The perpetrators had histories of family violence and were known to police.
Urgent and immediate action was needed to prevent further deaths, said Top End Women’s Legal Service’s chief executive officer, Caitlin Weatherby-Fell.
“It’s getting worse. It’s beyond critical. There are almost no words to describe how serious this crisis is. We need action now,” she said.
The coroner found the NT had the worst domestic and family violence rates in the nation. Its domestic homicide rate is seven times the national rate. Aboriginal women in the NT are 40 times more likely to be hospitalised for domestic violence.
“There doesn’t seem to be any appetite to be responding to this problem in a way that actually provides an adequate response as well as prevents it,” Weatherby-Fell said.
Speaking outside the coroner’s court on Monday, the NT police commissioner, Michael Murphy, said domestic, family and sexual violence “overwhelms police” but that the force is now considering the coroner’s 35 recommendations. Murphy cited tighter bail laws and the establishment of a police portfolio focusing solely on domestic, family and sexual violence (DFSV).
He said the police emergency call centre, the JESCC, had a program under way to employ 25 Aboriginal language speakers so that “people can speak to someone who can understand them, and [we can] get resources to them as quick as we can”.
Appropriate language services were a recommendation of the coroner.
Murphy said tackling DFSV required a whole-of-government response.
“In the last seven days we have had 1,156 calls to DV and sadly that’s a 30% decrease on the week prior, so it’s still a huge consumer of policing services,” he said.
“We are doing a remarkable amount of work but it really rests with prevention and education across the other agencies as well, such as health, housing and territory families.”
On Tuesday, the national commissioner for DFSV, Micaela Cronin, told ABC radio the inquest was “very unusual” in that the coroner was “holding everyone to account”.
The coroner was “using every lever in her power to ensure changes are made”, Cronin said.
She said that there had been eight further DFSV deaths of women and one sistergirl in the NT since the beginning of June, four of them from Katherine.
“If we’d seen that many women die in a small country town, relatively speaking, anywhere else in the country, we would see national outrage – quite rightly so. We don’t see that in the Northern Territory,” she said.
The federal minister for Indigenous Australians, Malarndirri McCarthy, said the NT has received $180m in federal funding to government and the Aboriginal community-controlled sector.
“And we want them to spend the money where it’s needed. I’ve certainly been speaking to the women’s shelters, the family and domestic violence sector. I know they need that funding and I would urge the Northern Territory government to actually spend where it’s required, to assist those sectors,” McCarthy said.
The NT government said that they are carefully reviewing the coroner’s recommendations.
The Country Liberal party says it has committed $180m over five years to respond to domestic and family violence and is allocating money where it is most needed.
