Speaker 1: From Schwartz Media on Daniel James. This is seven am.
Speaker 1: Alice Springs is making headlines for all the wrong reasons.
Speaker 1: Violent crimes committed by young people, including a recent shocking
Speaker 1: attack on a woman and a two month old baby,
Speaker 1: have left the town shaken. The baby has suffered a
Speaker 1: brain bleed and a fractured skull, and there are now
Speaker 1: big questions about how to keep the community safe, what
Speaker 1: justice should look like, and why crimes like this happen
Speaker 1: at all. Today are under woman Catherine Wittele, CEO of SNAKE,
Speaker 1: the national body representing Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander children,
Speaker 1: on the underlying issues wreaking havoc on the streets of
Speaker 1: Alice Springs and what can be done to address the
Speaker 1: youth crime crisis. It's Wednesday, December eighteenth. Catherine, thanks so
Speaker 1: much for joining us. You're an arund A woman, you
Speaker 1: live in Alice Springs. What's it like living there at
Speaker 1: the moment?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Look, Ella Springs is my home and I'm not only Arunda,
Speaker 3: I'm in Bundarinya belonging to Ellis Springs.
Speaker 2: I'm a to I think most people from.
Speaker 3: Alice Springs right now would be having a bit of
Speaker 3: trouble finding the right word. Everyone's feeling distressed, but distressed
Speaker 3: doesn't quite capture the distress we feel about the recent assaults.
Speaker 3: There's an urgent cry for help tonight after the bashing
Speaker 3: of a two month old baby who's been airlifted to
Speaker 3: the Women's and Children's hospital with a skull fracture.
Speaker 1: The infant was in her mother's arms at their home
Speaker 1: and Alice Springs when the pair was allegedly attacked by
Speaker 1: two teenage thugs with an iron bar.
Speaker 4: It's the latest in a string of violent incidents in
Speaker 4: Alice Springs in recent weeks, including the alleged rape of
Speaker 4: a woman on Saturday night while she was sleeping.
Speaker 3: It's unacceptable that we're seeing a baby flown to hospital
Speaker 3: with a broken skull. It's unacceptable that people were breaking
Speaker 3: to that home in the first place. It's unacceptable that
Speaker 3: a woman can be in her own home and be
Speaker 3: sexually assaulted, and that those events have happened. And for
Speaker 3: all of us that live in Alice Springs, we feel
Speaker 3: great distress for that. And I think all of us
Speaker 3: are thinking about those two cases and feeling it in
Speaker 3: our guts.
Speaker 2: We feel it in our guts.
Speaker 1: Can you just tell me what it feels like on
Speaker 1: the streets and in the homes of people there at
Speaker 1: the moment.
Speaker 3: Ah, Look, there's no doubt that when you go to
Speaker 3: bed at night, you know, you check your doors a
Speaker 3: little closer, when you read the papers, when you get
Speaker 3: onto your social media, you're sort of bracing to see.
Speaker 2: What might come next.
Speaker 3: And when we think about how close we are to
Speaker 3: all of those events, you know, one of them happened
Speaker 3: two doors down from my daughter, and I know that
Speaker 3: in recent weeks, you know, she's been broken into twice.
Speaker 3: So this is really close to home for everyone who
Speaker 3: lives in Alice Springs. We all know someone who has
Speaker 3: been a victim of crime. But I think a lot
Speaker 3: of us also know that the current approaches aren't working.
Speaker 2: They're not working.
Speaker 1: And it was crime in the territory, particularly in Alice Springs,
Speaker 1: that the new NTCLP government campaigned around fixing and they
Speaker 1: won in the landslide in August. So what have they
Speaker 1: done since then to address it?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: Look, I think what we've heard is that it's hard
Speaker 2: to do. It's even hard to talk about.
Speaker 3: To be perfectly honest, what we've heard is that things
Speaker 3: like spithoods are now back in legislation and spitthoods are
Speaker 3: used as instruments of torture.
Speaker 4: A controversial restraint and in anty youth prison since a
Speaker 4: landmark royal commission that could come back into youth if
Speaker 4: the country Liberal party wins the next.
Speaker 3: We have to be really honest about this. Our communities
Speaker 3: voted for this to happen. Our communities voted that children
Speaker 3: as young as ten in juvenile detention can be restrained
Speaker 3: and have spit hoods applied.
Speaker 2: When those hoods are applied.
Speaker 3: We know that something is going really really wrong with
Speaker 3: the behaviors of child in a detention center. We also
Speaker 3: know that when children behave like that in a detention setting,
Speaker 3: it's because they have no access to their parents or
Speaker 3: the people that love them. The chances are that they
Speaker 3: haven't had access to the supports and tools that they
Speaker 3: might need. So we know in the Northern Territory, for example,
Speaker 3: the majority of children in the detention center have significant
Speaker 3: learning disabilities that were never identified and never responded to,
Speaker 3: and they'refore the supports that they need aren't there, and
Speaker 3: what you get is an extraordinary outburst of behaviors which
Speaker 3: are really symptomatic of someone who is traumatized. The other
Speaker 3: thing we've seen, of course, because I mentioned the age
Speaker 3: of ten, was the lowering of the age of criminal responsibility.
Speaker 3: Pre Liberal Party has promised to lure the age of
Speaker 3: criminal responsibility from twelve to ten to four drunks into
Speaker 3: mandetry alcohol rehabilitation. Now increasing the age to fourteen was
Speaker 3: actually a recommendation of the Royal Commission into child detention
Speaker 3: in the Northern Territory. It said, raise the age, get
Speaker 3: rid of the spit hooods. So what we've seen is
Speaker 3: that age of criminal responsibility going down again. The other
Speaker 3: thing that we've heard that communities are incredibly distressed about
Speaker 3: is in increasing the number of children that will be
Speaker 3: put into juvenile detention settings. Those children, particularly from Central Australia,
Speaker 3: will be moved up to the top end, so that's
Speaker 3: thousands of kilometers away from their family, so it means
Speaker 3: they will have no contact with their families while they
Speaker 3: are going through extraordinary hardship. And when I talk about
Speaker 3: these things, I've got to be clear what we're not
Speaker 3: saying that there shouldn't be punishment for criminal behavior.
Speaker 2: No one's saying that.
Speaker 3: Our first response has to be the law and order response.
Speaker 3: There is no way around that. But the second thing
Speaker 3: is we can't keep doing what we've been doing. And
Speaker 3: what we're looking at has not happened overnight. It hasn't
Speaker 3: happened in the last election cycle. It didn't happen in
Speaker 3: the election cycle before that. It has been happening to
Speaker 3: us for decades and decades and decades. We keep coming
Speaker 3: up with the same responses and expecting a different outcome.
Speaker 1: Coming up after the break. Why young people offend and
Speaker 1: what could be done that will actually make a difference, Catherine.
Speaker 1: The Police Commissioner Michael Murphy has said that the nature
Speaker 1: of offending is changing our springs. Why do you think
Speaker 1: we're seeing the level of violent crime at this point
Speaker 1: similarly rise on the streets of other springs.
Speaker 3: We keep treating crime with the same response. Increasing criminalization
Speaker 3: increases crime. The younger you have contact with the criminal
Speaker 3: justice system as opposed to a diversion system, the more
Speaker 3: likely it is you are to be a repeat offender,
Speaker 3: the more likely you are that those offenses will increase
Speaker 3: in severity, and the more likely you are to have
Speaker 3: ongoing contact with the justice system for the rest of
Speaker 3: your life. And all those really terrible life outcomes that
Speaker 3: are associated with that. You can read any criminal expert
Speaker 3: in the world. They will tell you that when children
Speaker 3: or young people or adults even are then returned to
Speaker 3: the same environment and you haven't worked on what was
Speaker 3: causing it, then you can expect a return in that behavior.
Speaker 3: And again, if you look at the event that resulted
Speaker 3: in the harm of a baby and that involved two
Speaker 3: young people, I'd put money on that at least one
Speaker 3: of them, if not both of them, have had significant
Speaker 3: contact with the child protection system. And when we see
Speaker 3: these things, the immediate response is to punish parents, punish families.
Speaker 3: When again, if you start unpacking what those system failures are,
Speaker 3: the chances are that right at the beginning there was poverty.
Speaker 3: The other thing that I hear from mob on the
Speaker 3: ground and is that people have been going to look
Speaker 3: for help and saying, look, we're worried about this particular person,
Speaker 3: and they say they do things like report it to police.
Speaker 3: Police respond to crime. They don't respond to a report
Speaker 3: that someone's walking around. That's not their job. They respond
Speaker 3: to crime. What we know again is nationally and internationally,
Speaker 3: the evidence shows if you have a diversionary response to this.
Speaker 3: In actual fact, rather than punishing a crime that's already happened,
Speaker 3: the criminal behavior or offending behaviors disappears in about seventy
Speaker 3: five some places, we'll talk about eighty five percent success rates.
Speaker 3: Actual fact, when you're talking about reducing crime, that is
Speaker 3: the model of practice that has the most impact.
Speaker 1: Can you tell me more about that, like what would
Speaker 1: a diversionary program look like and what sort of diversionary
Speaker 1: programs are effective in that part of the world.
Speaker 3: If you're truly doing diversion right, it means that every
Speaker 3: child has their own plan. So you've picked up that
Speaker 3: maybe there's a child at risk, and you now have
Speaker 3: to work out, well, what's going on in this child's life?
Speaker 3: And again, poverty is going to be there, almost without fail,
Speaker 3: poverty is going to be there. Does this child have
Speaker 3: somewhere to sleep? Has this child? Does this child need
Speaker 3: some developmental screening? How do we ensure that we are
Speaker 3: giving that child the support they need to handle external stimuli.
Speaker 2: I heard a story the other day.
Speaker 3: Actually, it's quite an extraordinary story, and it's a bit
Speaker 3: of work done by the NPY Women's Counsel and Alice
Speaker 3: Springs and they've gone out to Immunpa community and they've
Speaker 3: said to the children out there, because you know, there's
Speaker 3: a lot of people that have a lot of things
Speaker 3: to say about our children in Central Australia, but not
Speaker 3: a lot of room for their voices to be heard.
Speaker 3: And they asked them, if you could have superheroes, what
Speaker 3: would they look like. And the first thing they said
Speaker 3: was May, which means food. So the first superhero these
Speaker 3: children identified was food. The second superhero was in Ma,
Speaker 3: So what is my Inma means dance song and they said, well,
Speaker 3: what do you need in MAA oh? Because inma makes
Speaker 3: us feel happy and strong. And again, if you apply
Speaker 3: what inma and song mean in a therapeutic model, they
Speaker 3: are actually tools of healing, which this makes sense. The
Speaker 3: third thing they identified was love. We need the love
Speaker 3: of our families. We feel safe when we were in
Speaker 3: our families. And the fourth one was jukopa, So that's
Speaker 3: a law, law that tells you how to behave how
Speaker 3: you might want to understand your environment, what you do
Speaker 3: in an environment when you feel fearful, where you go
Speaker 3: to for support. And then they said to them listen,
Speaker 3: you might have heard about the other superheroes. Haven't you
Speaker 3: like Superman and Spiderman? And oh, we know them, And
Speaker 3: they said, would you like a superhero like that? And
Speaker 3: so they started thinking about that as a superhero. And
Speaker 3: one of the superheroes they came up with in that
Speaker 3: frame was Regina.
Speaker 2: She's a cobweb girl.
Speaker 3: And that particular superhero has the powers to throw her
Speaker 3: net into Alice Springs to catch the naughty kids. And
Speaker 3: again this is the language of children, to catch the
Speaker 3: naughty kids in that net and then very quickly bring
Speaker 3: them back home to the families that love them with
Speaker 3: those other superheroes that they identified can care for them.
Speaker 3: In that example, those children in the middle of the
Speaker 3: who probably have English as a fourth or fifth language,
Speaker 3: identified a hierarchy of needs. The other way that the
Speaker 3: hierarchy of needs is described is you can see it
Speaker 3: in the UN Convention.
Speaker 2: On the Rights of the Child.
Speaker 3: Those children understput inherently what they needed to be successful
Speaker 3: in life and the tools that were required in order
Speaker 3: to respond to the world around them. Those are sorts
Speaker 3: of things that when we're talking about a juvenile diversion tactic,
Speaker 3: we need to be addressing and we need to be
Speaker 3: putting that child's voice front and center in that so
Speaker 3: we actually understand what's going on.
Speaker 1: So, Catherine, Northern Territorians no better than anyone else that
Speaker 1: the federal government can have a role to play in
Speaker 1: that part of the world. What role should the Federal
Speaker 1: government be playing in this response, if anything at all.
Speaker 3: Oh, the truth of it is that what we're looking
Speaker 3: at Nalla Springs is a system failure from all levels
Speaker 3: of government. And there are three levels of government at
Speaker 3: play in the Northern Territory. So the federal government they
Speaker 3: hold the big leavers, that's where the bulk of the
Speaker 3: money comes from. So the federal government really does need
Speaker 3: to look at the need in the Northern Territory. A
Speaker 3: lot of the work I work on relates to the
Speaker 3: National Agreement on Closing the Gap, and one of the
Speaker 3: fundamental calls in that is about shared decision making, talking
Speaker 3: to your community about what it is they might actually need,
Speaker 3: what is actually missing in your community. There's no point
Speaker 3: in coming up with a program that was developed in
Speaker 3: Sydney and applying it in the Bush. It's making sure
Speaker 3: that your places, like the Northern Territory are getting the
Speaker 3: funding that they need. Needs based funding for things like
Speaker 3: domestic violence. That is an extraordinary driver of offending behaviors
Speaker 3: because it drives.
Speaker 2: Children out of the home. They don't feel safe in
Speaker 2: their home.
Speaker 3: It means looking at being innovative and actually saying, well,
Speaker 3: what we're doing is failing. Let's listen more to community
Speaker 3: voices and genuinely investing in community design to say, right now,
Speaker 3: what is it that you need, what is it that's happening,
Speaker 3: and how do we stop this happening.
Speaker 1: Catherine, thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: A few months ago I traveled to Alice Springs to
Speaker 1: take an in depth look at the crisis there. What
Speaker 1: I found was that youth crime is a symptom of
Speaker 1: a series of interventions big and small, into the lives
Speaker 1: of Aboriginal people. To hear my three part report, search
Speaker 1: this is Alice Springs wherever you listen to podcasts. Also
Speaker 1: in the news today, a crackdown on protester writes and
Speaker 1: a plan to bolster social cohesion will be part of
Speaker 1: the Victorian government's response to the suspected terror attack on
Speaker 1: the Addas Israel Synagogue. In a press conference, Victorian Premiatre
Speaker 1: Cinta Allen said she has had enough of a protests
Speaker 1: that have caused disruption in the state, and may leed
Speaker 1: to outlaw protest in the vicinity of places of worship.
Speaker 1: New South Wales is planning similar changes following a rally
Speaker 1: outside the Great Synagogue earlier this month. And North Korean
Speaker 1: troops sent to support Russia and their war against Ukraine
Speaker 1: have been killed during combat. North Korea sent more than
Speaker 1: ten thousand troops to the region, with about thirty now
Speaker 1: killed in the battle in Russia's Cursed Border region, according
Speaker 1: to the Ukraine's military intelligence agency. I'm Daniel James. This
Speaker 1: is seven am. We'll be back with you tomorrow with
Speaker 1: an on the ground report from Damascus in Syria.