Speaker 1: Just a warning. Today's episode discusses traumatic events and refers
Speaker 1: to deceased Aboriginal people and contains offensive language. It's also
Speaker 1: the second episode in a three part series. If you
Speaker 1: haven't yet, go listen to episode one, Children of the Intervention.
Speaker 1: You see a lot of cops here in pursuit vehicles,
Speaker 1: driving the Cage's divisional van to get in this part
Speaker 1: of the world, or checking the IDs as people line
Speaker 1: up outside the bottle shop in the town's main shopping center.
Speaker 1: It feels like they're everywhere, and the numbers back up
Speaker 1: what the eyes can see. For every one hundred thousand
Speaker 1: people in the Northern Territory, there are seven hundred and
Speaker 1: thirty cops, almost triple the national average. We spoke to
Speaker 1: Uncle Brian in the last episode, along with Damien and
Speaker 1: his eighteen year old son Bison. They represent three generations
Speaker 1: of Urunda men, all of whom have had their own
Speaker 1: experiences with the territory and police. It doesn't make you
Speaker 1: feel like when you're walking down the street and you
Speaker 1: see a police fan head towards you, it's.
Speaker 2: Like sad sort of thing. It is because you know
Speaker 2: they're looking at you, they're targeting you. Soon's the actually
Speaker 2: one black color. They're watching you.
Speaker 3: They're getting a little bit overboard.
Speaker 1: To be honest, everywhere I go in al Springs, locals
Speaker 1: tell me about interactions they've had with the cops. Not
Speaker 1: everyone wants to say it into a microphone, but the
Speaker 1: stories are similar, stories about violent cops and about not
Speaker 1: feeling safe in their own town.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you talk about murder, They've killed a lot of people.
Speaker 2: They killed a lot of people, especially our people, black people.
Speaker 2: Nothing in the orditary nobody was found guilty.
Speaker 1: Uncle Brian's talking about the fact that since the point
Speaker 1: of first contact between black and white people on this continent,
Speaker 1: thousands of Aboriginal people have died in custody and not
Speaker 1: a single law enforcement official has ever been convicted.
Speaker 4: You know, they walk around saying about gangs in the
Speaker 4: town and all this, and that, who's the gangs?
Speaker 3: We're not the gang.
Speaker 4: Who's the ones we're in a badge linked up to
Speaker 4: another association, not another badge. They're the ones with their
Speaker 4: game because they're the ones who were their uniform.
Speaker 1: The broken relationship between the police and locals isn't just
Speaker 1: conjecture on the streets of Alice Springs. It's acknowledged by
Speaker 1: the INNT Police Commissioner, who earlier this year apologized to
Speaker 1: Aboriginal Territorians for the harm caused by his organization.
Speaker 5: So today, as the Police Commissioner of the Northern Territory,
Speaker 5: I unagreeably say sorry Aratorians in the past, Hans and
Speaker 5: the injustices paused or members of the Northern Territory Police.
Speaker 1: I want to understand how things got to this point,
Speaker 1: whether it's possible to mend all the broken pieces splintering
Speaker 1: the community here. To begin to find meaning, I'd need
Speaker 1: to speak to the police themselves and the arrunder woman
Speaker 1: tasked with changing the culture within the force and trying
Speaker 1: to rebuild the relationship between her organization and her people.
Speaker 1: I'm Daniel James from Schwartz Media and seven AM. This
Speaker 1: is Ela Springs, Episode two. The Coppers. There's one story
Speaker 1: that sums up where things stand between the cops and
Speaker 1: the community. Here is twenty twenty two. Police officer Zachary
Speaker 1: Rolf has just been acquitted for the murder of a
Speaker 1: nineteen year old wolpery Man com and Jie Walker. There
Speaker 1: were no Indigenous people on the jury. It was overwhelmingly white.
Speaker 1: His family had waited years for a verdict, and when
Speaker 1: it finally came, they were left reeling.
Speaker 6: Today is not a very really a happy day for us.
Speaker 7: It's another sad day.
Speaker 1: Standing on the steps of the Supreme Court in Alice Springs,
Speaker 1: their palpable grief, their anger, and the deep despair showed
Speaker 1: the chasm that had grown between the police and the
Speaker 1: Aboriginal community. This is Senior Wolprialda ned Jump, a jimp
Speaker 1: of hard graves.
Speaker 6: I just say, when we are going to get justice,
Speaker 6: when no guns in the row remote community.
Speaker 8: W I want no guns. Enough is enough, It's gotta stop.
Speaker 1: When he killed Kim and Jie Walker, Zachary Roll fired
Speaker 1: three shots during a tempt to arrest him. Walker was
Speaker 1: holding a pair of scissors at the time. A community
Speaker 1: officer who'd arrested Walker many times before said he'd never
Speaker 1: known him to resist arrest. He said Walker had been
Speaker 1: in town for his granddad's funeral and it was agreed
Speaker 1: that he'd hand himself in after that, but he didn't
Speaker 1: get the chance to do that. A subsequent coronial inquest
Speaker 1: into Walker's death took two years to run. Another two
Speaker 1: years in the life of Walker's family finishing earlier this year.
Speaker 1: The inquest revealed that Zachary Ralph had been involved in
Speaker 1: forty six use of force incidents in his three years
Speaker 1: in Our Springs. One of the videos from his own
Speaker 1: body cam was the arrest of a fourteen year old.
Speaker 1: The kid jumps in a wheelie bin, Ralph kicks the
Speaker 1: bin over while with child's inside. An internal investigation found
Speaker 1: his use of force was not excessive, but during the inquest,
Speaker 1: Rolf gave Frank a wide ranging testimony on the culture
Speaker 1: within the Northern Territory Police Force. The testimony would reveal
Speaker 1: what many had assumed for a long time, a culture
Speaker 1: of widespread racism exists within the force.
Speaker 9: A series of explosive text messages downloaded from Constable Zachary
Speaker 9: Rolf's phone following his arrest in twenty nineteen have been
Speaker 9: read aloud to the court the current sergeant in charge.
Speaker 1: Revelations with Nowhere to Hide in the form of testimony
Speaker 1: and texts from police officers presented to the inquest for
Speaker 1: all the world to see.
Speaker 9: An unnamed officer texted Rolf saying, who'd you had a
Speaker 9: rough arvo yesterday?
Speaker 10: Grubby?
Speaker 9: Constable Rolf replying referring to Indigenous people as in another
Speaker 9: message to.
Speaker 11: The level of racism was palpable because there was the
Speaker 11: text messages shared between the police officers that were involved
Speaker 11: in the operation and.
Speaker 1: John Lawrence sc is the former president of the NT
Speaker 1: Bar Association. He touched down in the territory via Melbourne
Speaker 1: from Edinburgh in the eighties at the same time the
Speaker 1: Royal Commission into Death and Custody was happening, and for
Speaker 1: nearly four decades he's represented Aboriginal people in the NT
Speaker 1: justice system. Even after all that time, witnessing Territory police
Speaker 1: up close, that inquest was still shocking.
Speaker 11: The films and then a coming out at the same inquest,
Speaker 11: we discovered that the same group had these annual Christmas
Speaker 11: dinners where they gave our awards which were horrendously blatantly
Speaker 11: Alabama Sdale recis with Coon of the Year award and
Speaker 11: you know, blacking up stuff, and I mean stuff that
Speaker 11: you know, honestly, I didn't think that we had descended
Speaker 11: to that level.
Speaker 1: John takes the long view when he says that the
Speaker 1: fractual relationship between the police and original communities has always
Speaker 1: been a byproduct of colonization. But things really kicking the
Speaker 1: gay during the intervention.
Speaker 11: When the intervention came in, one of the things that
Speaker 11: they spent millions on was setting up police stations in
Speaker 11: communities that previously didn't have any. Now, if you put
Speaker 11: a police station anywhere which was previously apparently crime free,
Speaker 11: you're going to end up within six months with a
Speaker 11: lot of people arrested in chats with criminal offenses. I mean,
Speaker 11: I've joked that if I was an Aboriginal person in
Speaker 11: twenty twenty four, I wouldn't even walk past the courthouse
Speaker 11: because there's some kind of hoovering vacuum mechanism that could
Speaker 11: suck you in the front door, put you in a dock,
Speaker 11: and then put you down into the sales below, and
Speaker 11: you're in the black Maria van and off to jail
Speaker 11: you go. It's just that's how effective efficient our system
Speaker 11: has become. It's crazy shit.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the nuts and bolts of a little bit.
Speaker 1: What happens when a kid is arrested.
Speaker 11: What happens percedurally, what happens to Aboriginal kids is that
Speaker 11: they get taken the court and they will be let's
Speaker 11: say tried. Now, what they are entitled to like you
Speaker 11: and I is due process, which includes, as your bastions,
Speaker 11: the presumption of innocence, the honest of proof being on
Speaker 11: the state, which is beyond reasonable doubt, and it has
Speaker 11: to be based on real admissible evidence. Now, these are
Speaker 11: the standard protections and safeguards that our system has in
Speaker 11: order to prevent injustice and wrongful convictions, but none of
Speaker 11: them really have any application. If you're a seventeen year
Speaker 11: old Aboriginal kid who's up for breaking entry or stealing cars,
Speaker 11: you're just whisked through a system at one hundred mile
Speaker 11: an hour.
Speaker 1: Kids are represented by crumbling legal aid services stretched beyond
Speaker 1: their limits, bill restrictions, plystone kids aren't met because they
Speaker 1: can't be met, and so an seventy percent of kids
Speaker 1: who are in detention are on remand presumed innocent under
Speaker 1: the law, but locked up nonetheless, and they end up
Speaker 1: in places locked Dondale.
Speaker 12: This is the vision that has sent shockwaves around the world.
Speaker 12: This was not filmed in Gontanamo Bay or North Korea.
Speaker 12: This was filmed in the Northern Territory, in our own country.
Speaker 13: The events at the Dondale Center that were set out
Speaker 13: on four corners shocked and appalled Australians and we are
Speaker 13: dealing with it with a Royal commission.
Speaker 1: Dondale used detention center, the one Malcolm Turmble would eventually
Speaker 1: establish a Royal Commission over, was built in ninety one
Speaker 1: specifically to lock up kids between the ages of ten
Speaker 1: and seventeen. Some sentence to serve time there, others held
Speaker 1: their own romand the facility is in Darwin, but kids
Speaker 1: from all springs are often shipped there, fifteen hours up
Speaker 1: the road away from home, their families and all they know.
Speaker 1: Most are Aboriginal. In fact, nearly eighty two percent of
Speaker 1: inmates in NTA prison are Aboriginal, even though they only
Speaker 1: make up thirty percent of the NTI population. At times
Speaker 1: one hundred percent of all youth incarcerated here have been Aboriginal.
Speaker 1: John remembers the first time a case of a kid
Speaker 1: at don Dale was handed to him. All his years
Speaker 1: of experience couldn't prepare him for what he saw happening there.
Speaker 11: No sooner at I first discovered it than they realized
Speaker 11: that this had been going on for years and it
Speaker 11: was still going on, and it was like a bile
Speaker 11: that needed to be busted, that stuff for stuff that
Speaker 11: was going on in Dindale, which was explored by full Corners,
Speaker 11: was tortured and abuse, solitary confinement, assault, psychological batterings, all
Speaker 11: of that none more.
Speaker 1: What does that do to kids saved? There's a kid
Speaker 1: that's been on don Dale and they earn that back
Speaker 1: on the streets of somewhere like Alice Springs, what do
Speaker 1: they go back as worse?
Speaker 11: Their trauma and their injuries and damage are campaigned, So
Speaker 11: they come out more injured than they went in, and
Speaker 11: they haven't been rehabilitated in any each yeap or form,
Speaker 11: So they just go back to where they came from
Speaker 11: and the sacle goes on. It's this sacle of perpetuation,
Speaker 11: which is really what the legal situation here is.
Speaker 1: Kids are made worse by a failing justice system. Some
Speaker 1: kids bend to its will, others are broken by it.
Speaker 1: If they do come out the other side, often the
Speaker 1: cycle they're in is all they've known and all they
Speaker 1: will know. That cycle starts and ends with the Coppers,
Speaker 1: a cycle that extends through its one hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: four year history, which leads to the police Commissioner rising
Speaker 1: to his feet at Gama to make this apology.
Speaker 5: I know that I cannot change or I'm the past
Speaker 5: and as the police emissioner alongside with our police officers, yeah,
Speaker 5: we can commit to not repeat mistakes and the injustices.
Speaker 7: Of the past.
Speaker 5: All the territory police need to be accountable for the
Speaker 5: past treatment of Aboriginal people.
Speaker 1: Standing next to the Commissioner was ar under woman Leanne Little.
Speaker 1: This is the coupe who's been given the job of
Speaker 1: mending the relationship between the police and her people, the
Speaker 1: woman who has to take the apology and make it count.
Speaker 1: So what's their plan?
Speaker 10: Yeah, okay, that's after the break.
Speaker 14: So it's marine about quarters await U in the morning
Speaker 14: and we are on our way to the well the
Speaker 14: police headquarter is here in Alice Springs to speak to
Speaker 14: Leanne Little, and we're speaking to her at a time
Speaker 14: when the Chief Commissioner has just made an apology to
Speaker 14: the Aboriginal people of the Northern Territory and she has
Speaker 14: now been charged with basically changing the culture of the
Speaker 14: force to address things like systemic racism, interpersonal racism, racial profiling.
Speaker 14: I think, without a shadow of a doubt you could
Speaker 14: easily say it's the most difficult and challenging job within
Speaker 14: the force. Itself, and the relations between the Aboriginal community
Speaker 14: here and anti police are probably at an all time light.
Speaker 1: Alice Springs Police station looks like a typical municipal building
Speaker 1: from the eighties, non threatening but imposing in a town
Speaker 1: of his size. It's only once you're inside it feels
Speaker 1: like a cop shop. Protective glass shielding the front counter,
Speaker 1: interview rooms to the left, a limited access to anywhere
Speaker 1: beyond that. As we wait to be shown to a
Speaker 1: room to record the interview, Leanne arrives and signs in.
Speaker 14: Daniel.
Speaker 1: I noticed she takes time to speak to the constable
Speaker 1: behind the glass, an Aboriginal man. She gives him her
Speaker 1: contact details and tells him to stay in touch. We're
Speaker 1: shown into a small office somewhere in the heart of
Speaker 1: the building. Okay, we're ready to roll. First of all, Leanna,
Speaker 1: thank you very much for your time. Know how busy
Speaker 1: you are as we sit here now in twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: just at the start of your journey in this role.
Speaker 1: Would you say that the Northern Territory Police is a
Speaker 1: racist institution.
Speaker 15: No, I see some individuals that have been racist, and
Speaker 15: I see a lot of good officers that need more
Speaker 15: good officers.
Speaker 7: Around them, and.
Speaker 15: I see a system where those good officers need tools
Speaker 15: to be able to make sure that those people who
Speaker 15: have behaviors because usually with the racism, people are sexist
Speaker 15: as well, people are homophobic, So it's a combination of attitudes,
Speaker 15: not just one alone. So you know, it needs to
Speaker 15: be everything that needs to be tackled.
Speaker 1: So do you think that the original community of Alice
Speaker 1: Springs trust the police as we sit here at the.
Speaker 15: Moment, I think there's a lot of work to be done.
Speaker 15: I think there's a lot of tangible outcomes that need
Speaker 15: to be seen on the ground before people regain that
Speaker 15: trust in police. People should feel that when they call
Speaker 15: for police, and when police attend as an offender or
Speaker 15: a victim, that they're getting the service that theyase.
Speaker 1: Leanne was born and raised in Alice Springs. Her dadd
Speaker 1: was a construction worker, her mum a school counselor. It
Speaker 1: was a safe upbringing with food on the table. Her
Speaker 1: parents often took kids in. Leanne was told not to
Speaker 1: ask questions, just to make them feel welcome. It's something
Speaker 1: that used to happen a lot when there was no
Speaker 1: wrong door for a kid to walk through if they
Speaker 1: needed to get help from within their own community. So
Speaker 1: what was some of your first interactions with the police
Speaker 1: in Alice Springs?
Speaker 15: It was assistant commissioner was His name was sass Grant
Speaker 15: and he was my athletics coach and amazing man. And
Speaker 15: I actually didn't realize he was assistant commissioner until I
Speaker 15: was in my teenage years, because I think I would
Speaker 15: have run faster if I knew it was a placement.
Speaker 1: What was your event?
Speaker 7: I was a sprinter, sprint.
Speaker 15: And he always used to say to me that he
Speaker 15: thought I could make it to the Olympics and if
Speaker 15: horses and boyfriends thinking it in the way, I might
Speaker 15: have gone there.
Speaker 1: The way things used to be has clearly informed how
Speaker 1: she's trying to address the issues confronting her people. As
Speaker 1: a young woman, she wanted to join the police force
Speaker 1: to instigate change, to run towards it.
Speaker 15: My parents wouldn't let me join the Order Archi police force, ironically,
Speaker 15: so that's why I saut Australia. So they said you
Speaker 15: can go to the border. You know nobody there, off
Speaker 15: you go. And they thought, because.
Speaker 1: You don't want to be you don't want to be
Speaker 1: arresting family members and causing trouble for your.
Speaker 15: Mob, and they at that time said the non changed
Speaker 15: police forces racist and they didn't want me to experience that,
Speaker 15: so off I went. I hadn't ever seen the traffic
Speaker 15: light before, let alone around about, so things are very
Speaker 15: different for me down there.
Speaker 7: It was very lonely.
Speaker 1: There's a photo over there from that time, leaning on
Speaker 1: a police car with the Adelaide skyline behind her. She's
Speaker 1: proudly wearing a police uniform, blue skirt, blue jumper and
Speaker 1: a big smile on her face. But being a black
Speaker 1: copper was never going to be easy. The picture doesn't
Speaker 1: come close to portraying the reality of what she was
Speaker 1: experiencing and what was ahead. Why did you decide to leave?
Speaker 15: I get injured on duty, had a terrible accident and
Speaker 15: ended up sort of having to re evaluate my life,
Speaker 15: and then at that same time.
Speaker 7: Outlined to the lawyer at the times.
Speaker 15: And missions of racism in the police force, and from
Speaker 15: there it sort of snowballed into a Human Rights and
Speaker 15: Echo Opportunity Commission court matter and it ended in an
Speaker 15: out of court settlement.
Speaker 1: In the late nineties. Leanne Little left and retrained as
Speaker 1: a lawyer. In the twenty ten, working with the Attorney
Speaker 1: General to establish the Aboriginal Justice Unit. It was a
Speaker 1: job that took her all across the NT.
Speaker 15: So we're here at un blood Watch, hid by invitation
Speaker 15: from the Central Man Council.
Speaker 1: Her goal was to end the over policing and overincarceration
Speaker 1: of Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory. But in late
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, while Leanne was putting the finishing touches on
Speaker 1: the Aboriginal Justice Agreement, kimen Ji Walker was killed. Like
Speaker 1: much of Australia, Leanne watched the inquest unfold. When she
Speaker 1: saw the racist text messages that it dredged up the
Speaker 1: deeply racist awards ceremony run by the elite Tactical Unit,
Speaker 1: she was incensed and she couldn't let it slide.
Speaker 15: I rang the Police Commissioner and told him exactly how
Speaker 15: I felt a little bit surprised. I suppose I was
Speaker 15: surprised that lots of other people didn't know what was happening.
Speaker 15: But that's how racism exists in the system, in small pockets,
Speaker 15: in large organizations, and they find people, you know, who
Speaker 15: think like that, who they're brave enough to say that too,
Speaker 15: and they sort of stick together. But to be perfectly honest,
Speaker 15: I was impressed by what people were saying to me
Speaker 15: next that they too, as police officers, were ashamed and
Speaker 15: embarrassed and sorry for the you know what was exposed.
Speaker 7: I think it was a.
Speaker 15: Moment of shame and embarrassment and for me, the police
Speaker 15: force needed to own that if we were to move
Speaker 15: forward in fixing what needed to be fixed.
Speaker 1: It was off the back of this call that Lee
Speaker 1: made a decision that I'm not sure many people in
Speaker 1: her position would make after her parents warned her the
Speaker 1: police were racist, after she felt pushed out of the
Speaker 1: force by her treatment as the first Aboriginal police officer.
Speaker 1: After watching the inquest and seeing everything get laid bare,
Speaker 1: Leanne went back. She rejoined the police for the same
Speaker 1: reason she's ever done anything, because I.
Speaker 7: Think I can make a difference.
Speaker 15: I think that I really have the skills that can
Speaker 15: work with other people in the team to make a difference.
Speaker 1: Now, as the executive Director of the Community Resilience and
Speaker 1: Engagement Command for the Northern Territory Police Force, she's specifically
Speaker 1: tasked with tackling and rooting out racism in the force.
Speaker 15: It sounds like a big task, but at the same time,
Speaker 15: there should be no racism and a police force and
Speaker 15: people should be able to work in a professional space
Speaker 15: and be their best, and not only do non original
Speaker 15: people don't want and Aboriginal people don't want racism.
Speaker 7: So I think that's a perfect recipe for me to.
Speaker 15: Come in and create an environment and train people up
Speaker 15: and encourage people to call out racism when they see it,
Speaker 15: to have complaint mechanisms in place for people when it
Speaker 15: is raised.
Speaker 1: Leanne has the jewel task of stopping racism towards Aboriginal
Speaker 1: offices and changing the way cops police Aboriginal people. So
Speaker 1: where does she even start. She's aiming to get thirty
Speaker 1: percent Aboriginal on torrost Rattle on the people on the force.
Speaker 1: She says, the lack of lived experience and decision making
Speaker 1: at every level has led to so many of the
Speaker 1: problems here. There's also a number of other measures, like
Speaker 1: training police and cultural awareness and strengthening complaint systems so
Speaker 1: officers have somewhere to go when they see or experience racism.
Speaker 1: As Leanne runs through these measures for me, I can't
Speaker 1: help but think it's like putting a band aid on
Speaker 1: a gaping wound. She's trying to make the changes at
Speaker 1: a time when the powerful Territory Police union has said
Speaker 1: it things cops are being unfairly blamed for racism. How
Speaker 1: do you change police officers who don't want to be changed?
Speaker 1: He said, the blame shouldn't be all placed on them.
Speaker 1: It's a reminder that the most powerful person in the
Speaker 1: justice system is the cop on the beat. They're the
Speaker 1: ones that can taste pepper spray or shoot you on
Speaker 1: the spot. They are the law. Prosecutors can only prosecute,
Speaker 1: judges can only sentence. If a cop resists change, then
Speaker 1: that can be one cop too many, and to change things,
Speaker 1: Leanne is going to have to deal with every type
Speaker 1: of cop. The more we talk, the more real our
Speaker 1: conversation becomes. It feels like the enormity of the task
Speaker 1: is hitting her, and so returns to why she's persevering
Speaker 1: in spite of it all.
Speaker 15: I remember when I was a kid going to school
Speaker 15: and I was really good at sport, was a really
Speaker 15: fast runner, and I was a school captain and there
Speaker 15: was a disabled girl who had cerebral palsy and I
Speaker 15: was in charge of who was on the relay, and
Speaker 15: she wanted to run and everyone was saying to me,
Speaker 15: don't let her run, don't let her run. She'll you know,
Speaker 15: she's gonna We're gonna lose if she let her run.
Speaker 15: And I just sat there way let her run, and
Speaker 15: it made her day when she ran.
Speaker 7: So I'm gonna get upset. Inclusivetivity is important.
Speaker 1: Sometimes people just need a chance.
Speaker 15: Yeah, Nate came from my mum. She was always she
Speaker 15: taught us.
Speaker 7: She died twelve months ago, so raw.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I just came across the tenth anniversary of my
Speaker 1: dad passing, and tenth I thought it'd be over it
Speaker 1: by then, but you don't get over it. You just
Speaker 1: deal with it.
Speaker 15: I worry about who replaces people are my dad, Yeah,
Speaker 15: you know, they were warriors, still are and that fire
Speaker 15: in the belly stuff. You know, they dealt with so
Speaker 15: much more than what we deal with, and we think
Speaker 15: we're hard done by, But when they go, you know,
Speaker 15: what are we like?
Speaker 7: We've got to keep fighting for what's what's fair.
Speaker 1: Just seems to me that here in the territory, if
Speaker 1: you're Aboriginal, no matter how strong your role models have been,
Speaker 1: how they've nurtured and cared for you, even in the
Speaker 1: best of circumstances, you are invariably that far away from
Speaker 1: crossing over to another line because of all the societal
Speaker 1: factors and attitude little factors. Do you think that's a
Speaker 1: fair statement.
Speaker 7: I think that's an absolute correct statement.
Speaker 15: No matter how wealthy I am, no matter how will
Speaker 15: I dress, no matter how high I am in as
Speaker 15: a position title, no matter what sort of car I drive,
Speaker 15: no matter how many degrees I've got. I've got five,
Speaker 15: I think. But you know, for me, it's irrelevant. I'm
Speaker 15: still an Aboriginal person that is not looked at for
Speaker 15: someone who's been successful. And I hate this question because
Speaker 15: people say, what did your parents do differently to be
Speaker 15: the way that you and your family are to be
Speaker 15: who they are today? And I say you should be
Speaker 15: asking yourself that question. What didn't those other kids get
Speaker 15: or what has happened to them so that they didn't succeed?
Speaker 7: We thank you so much for your time, No thank you.
Speaker 1: After the interview, I spent a good part of the
Speaker 1: day walking around town. I landed at the Todd Tavern,
Speaker 1: the flash point that sparked the chaos that brought me
Speaker 1: to Weller Springs in the first place. There's a front
Speaker 1: bar and a back bar. In the front bar were
Speaker 1: a couple of gray nomads sitting down for a cannon mill.
Speaker 1: The place is almost empty. As I turn the corner
Speaker 1: and go into the back bar, it's full of Aboriginal
Speaker 1: people speaking in language, playing Poky's and buying jugs of beer.
Speaker 1: Two security guards march up and down the room.
Speaker 10: It's dark.
Speaker 1: The windows are almost entirely blacked out, so people can't
Speaker 1: see out, and people can't see in. The front bar
Speaker 1: and the back bar sum up the gulf between the
Speaker 1: two worlds in one small town, one filled with light,
Speaker 1: comfort and room to think, the other, dark, crowded and confined,
Speaker 1: a place known locally as the animal bar. As I
Speaker 1: looked out the window, some young Aboriginal kids with broad,
Speaker 1: cheeky smiles were pushing their faces up against the glass
Speaker 1: of the tavern. One was being lifted up by our mum.
Speaker 1: Months earlier, kids not much older had been hurling themselves
Speaker 1: at the same windows, trying to break through. Later, I'd
Speaker 1: find out that lawyers logged a human rights complain against
Speaker 1: the Antique government and police Commissioner Michael Murphy. The lawyers
Speaker 1: alleged that three unnamed Aboriginal police officers experienced racial vilification, derision,
Speaker 1: and unequal pay for twenty years. In response, the police
Speaker 1: Commissioner says he's committed to cultural reform of the force.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, the streets of Valor Springs remained divided,
Speaker 1: a listless hype bed of tension and chaos, people angered,
Speaker 1: knowing the leavers to change things are just out of reach.
Speaker 1: This is our Springs next episode, as politicians threaten hardline solutions,
Speaker 1: I'm returning to Arunda Country to explore a different way forward.
Speaker 12: Territorians have stood up against nearly two decades of escalating
Speaker 12: crime and economy going.
Speaker 9: Backwards, and the erosion of our once iconic lifestyle. But
Speaker 9: tomorrow is the start of a new day.
Speaker 1: Do you see a long term figure here for yourself
Speaker 1: and your family.
Speaker 16: At the moment, No, they're saying, I will put everybody
Speaker 16: in jail, set the plan that everybody in the Northern
Speaker 16: Church who will either be a prisoner or a warden
Speaker 16: by the year twenty fifty.
Speaker 3: I've seen a chemical here that actually works. Was that chemical?
Speaker 3: Chemical is back on the country.