It was the plea from a former child prisoner that hit me. On seeing his picture flooding the media once again last week, Dylan Voller wrote on social media asking that the image of him – as an incarcerated child at Don Dale in a spit hood, tied in a chair – stop being used. Now a young man, in the process of healing, Voller pointed out how retraumatising seeing this image was, and how dehumanising it is.
Voller’s right. It is exploitative and dehumanising. The image was circulating again because many people had just seen an election won and lost based almost entirely on the major parties taking “tough on crime” stances. For better or worse, this image of Voller became iconic many years ago as to where these stances inevitably lead – to systemically abused children.
Since coming to power last month, the Northern Territory’s new chief minister, Lia Finocchiaro, has made many statements reinforcing her conservative party’s plans to deal with crime. These have included reducing the NT’s age of criminal responsibility back down to 10 years old, creating boot camps, welfare cuts for parents of youth offenders, and the reintroduction of spit hoods.
It paints a grim picture. While other jurisdictions are looking at raising the age (though I note the Victorian premier, Jacinta Allan, has walked back her support to raise the age to 14), the NT is going backwards. From a jurisdiction that not long ago claimed the dubious prize of having every single incarcerated child being one of Indigenous background, the writing is already on the wall of just which kids are going to be filling those cells and wearing those spit hoods.
Labor deserved to lose the election, because it’s not like they offered a stark point of contrast. Like the CLP, Labor also ran a “tough on crime” campaign. The former chief minister Eva Lawler – who lost her seat – was making videos praising the curfews and waxing lyrical on the need for “tough love”. If NT residents believe they are under siege due to rising crime rates, and both parties are posturing as the ones who are truly taking the tough stance, then voters are essentially left voting for a pair of identical twins. Rolling the dice to give the other lot a go was going to be the outcome.
Even Tuesday’s announcement that Selena Uibo has now taken up the leadership of NT Labor, thus becoming the first Indigenous woman to be the leader of a major political party, does not feel like cause to celebrate. As an Arrernte woman who has spent her entire life going up and back from the territory, and who has numerous family members still living there, I am significantly more concerned that pure racism has both won and lost an election, and more Aboriginal children have been doomed to institutional abuse.
There are real problems that need dealing with in the NT. There are children at risk, who need support and safe places to go. Poverty is a huge problem, and one that has most certainly not been helped by the Northern Territory Intervention, and mandatory welfare quarantining. There are a lack of jobs and indeed, when the Community Development Program was in operation, it inadvertently showed that jobs can actually be created in communities. The problem is, like the olden days of labour exploitation of cattle station workers and domestics, nobody actually wants to pay these workers for their graft.
I have previously claimed that to the many people in Australia who have never set foot in the NT, Alice Springs remains a “wild west-type” frontier town in their imaginations. They are fine sitting at their safe distance, nodding at yet another news piece on Indigenous youth crime, while not knowing that the place could use a massive injection of infrastructure. Perhaps you’d have fewer kids wandering the streets at night if public transport services ran more regularly and were free? Perhaps there would be less smashed in windows if the once vibrant Todd Mall became a hub of activity again, including spaces that would positively attract kids that needed somewhere safe to hang out with their friends? It shouldn’t be such a huge battle to get a decent skate park installed, for example.
For a little bit there, I dared to hope. The speech at Garma delivered by the NT police commissioner, Michael Murphy, was an open-hearted gesture that could have led to better relationships between communities and the constabulary. Instead, Murphy was bullied so mercilessly by his peers for having the gall to talk about racism and systemic failures that he quit the Police Association. The Arrernte former police officer, and qualified barrister, Leanne Liddle’s appointment as the executive director of the community resilience and engagement command also gave cause for hope for new approaches and community partnerships. Just how able will she be able to do her job though, in an environment so keen on incarcerating and torturing Aboriginal kids that votes are won on this issue.
Voller’s photo should have served as a stark warning when it first hit the public – one that meant no children should ever be subjected to this ever again. A warning that building communities and providing alternatives were desperately needed. Instead, it was doing the rounds to show people that nothing was learned by the disgraceful saga that was Don Dale, and the NT is falling over itself to repeat these abuses.
In reality, the only ones who won the election were the fear-mongers, the outrage press and the regressives. What a shameful state of affairs.
Celeste Liddle is an Arrernte woman living in Melbourne. She is a freelance writer, social commentator and activist. Liddle was a Greens candidate for the seat of Cooper in the 2022 federal election. She left the party in February 2023
