Like many towns and cities in Australia, almost everyone in Alice Springs has a story of someone they know or love being the victim of domestic violence.
One of those people is great-grandmother Doreen Carroll Nungurla, who lost a family member when she was a young child.
“All these years later it’s still very hard to talk about,” she says. “I’m 80 years old now and this is history but it still makes me sad talking about it.”
The Western Arrernte woman says too many children are growing up experiencing family violence, leading many to turn to the streets for safety. “That’s why the kids are running amok … you can’t always blame the kids.”
She has sat on council boards and federal government advisory bodies, spoken with ministers advocating for change and a voice and says there are more services than when she herself escaped violence – but she fears “nothing is working”.
“We need the police but we also need people that understand the situation properly,” she says.
Town councillor and Ingkintja Men’s Clinic manager, Michael Liddle, wants to get men to start talking and break the stigma and shame of domestic violence.
Months of planning have gone into bringing together community leaders and elders and Liddle hopes that the town will come out in force in a rally on Tuesday: “We have to penetrate the eyes and ears of the men who don’t have the time or the want to read or see domestic violence and how it’s impacting their own lives,” Liddle says, adding: “What we’re trying to do is break the mould and remould us and shape us into another person and a person that can contribute to the household, contribute to the economy, and not contribute to incarceration rates, which we’re contributing hugely to now.”
Family and domestic violence has been spotlighted after a landmark inquest into the deaths of four Aboriginal women – Miss Yunupiŋu, Ngeygo Ragurrk, Kumarn Rubuntja and Kumanjayi Haywood – with the coroner making 35 recommendations aimed at reducing an “epidemic of violence”.
The Central Land Council’s chair, Warren Williams, has been urging action from community but also more funding from government, saying too many women have been killed waiting for change.
“All men in our community, we need to stand up and rally against this. Our women are being slaughtered nearly every day … We need to keep our women and children safe.”
Liddle is related to Ms Haywood: “I had a young family member who was burned by her husband in a fire, she was killed after trying to run away. He set her alight and then he passed a couple of days later. We all need to talk about this.”
A report by the Australian Institute of Criminology has revealed the number of women killed. A total of 476 Indigenous women were murdered between June 1989 and June 2023. Of those, 151 lost their lives in the NT.
The NT government’s minister for prevention of domestic violence, Robyn Cahill, has urged the federal government to provide needs-based, rather than per capita, funding and said DV-related assaults had increased by more than 80% over eight years.
“Critical to any actions we take will be working with frontline workers across all sectors, which is why I have been travelling across the territory to hear from them directly. What I have heard so far is that we must do things differently.”
The NT government has said it is carefully considering the recommendations from the coronial inquest.
