Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Domestic violence prevention Minister Robin Carl made headlines this week
when she questioned Elizabeth Armitage's approach when it came to
the coronial inquest into the deaths of four Aboriginal women,
saying she found the long anticipated report failed so dismally
to hit the mark. Minister Carl said the coroner's approach
(00:20):
had been protracted, resulting in lengthy reports delivered in a
manner seeming to lack the humility that one might expect
from an officer of the court, more focused on the
reveal rather than the result. Minister Robin Carl joins me
on the line ahead of Parliament sitting today. Good morning
to your minister.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Good morning Katie.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Minister. What did you What did you feel the coroner
missed in her report?
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Well, I think Katie, what she missed was the very
thing that she stated she was going to do and
acknowledged in the body of her report, which was radical
change was needed. We couldn't keep doing things the same way.
And then after the very long process that she undertook,
for some reason that I really can't understand, having gone
(01:09):
through the report, she changed her mind and went, actually, no,
we don't need to be radical, We'll just keep doing
more of the same. So for me, it was an
opportunity to really send a very strong message that we
can't keep doing more of the same. It could have
been given her impromata to say, please change how we
approach things in this space, and she didn't do that.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
What would you have liked to have seen?
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Well, I think what I would have liked to have
seen where she actually made some really important points around
how we need to be empowering our communities to actually
have the ability to stand up and call out behaviors
of perpetrators when they're in community, how we protect the
victims survivors of domestic violence so they can remain in
(01:53):
their community. How do we actually create those frameworks so
that we don't disrupt people? And she'd called out the behavior.
She called it out multiple times in the report. She
called out the fact that culture had now become weaponized
in the con coercive control space. She called out the
fact that miss Unipingu's the part her partner's family forcibly
(02:19):
returned her to the community when she had managed to
escape the community, and we all know the tragic result
of that. So she called out the behavior. She could
have framed a recommendation that said, we can see this
as an issue, this has to be addressed, and I
strongly urged that, you know, steps be taken to empowered
(02:39):
communities to do that. And while she hasn't made that
call in the recommendations, the fact that it is in
her report and that she has provided evidence in the
report around that, I take some heart in the fact
that we can actually use that evidence to actually frame
our response going forward.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Minister, do you are you concerned that you know that
we are seeing a situation here where people are not
calling out some of that behavior for fear of being
labeled racist.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Oh, absolutely, without question. And I also feel that in
our communities, and I've been to communities, I've talked to
many many people, we've lived experience. I've talked to the
not for profit sector, I've talked to the departmental people.
I've talked to them very candidly about where we're where
(03:31):
the falling down in this space has been, and where
we really need to refocus and rechange how we're doing things.
And they are very afraid of standing up and calling
that out without the protection of the evidence behind it.
So it's not about saying, like, when you look at
what Greg Kavanaugh said in two thousand and six and
(03:51):
called out the fact that we cannot allow this sort
of behavior to continue in our communities, and here we
are two decades later, still having the exact same situations,
in fact, worse situations occurring. We absolutely have to assist
our communities and the people living in those communities to
be able to deliver a program and to support the
(04:15):
victims of domestic violence in their community and really hold
perpetrators to account. We cannot have a situation where a
perpetrator's family goes, actually, you know what. We know that
he's beating you, we know that he's assaulting you, but
you need to be back here because that's really important
from the cultural connection that he gives you to this community.
(04:36):
Of course, miss Unipinghu had a cultural connection to her community,
and of course that was absolutely critical. But surely her
safety should have come before that.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
Minister, you were scathing in your remarks about the coroner,
saying that her approach has been protracted, resulting in lengthy
reports delivered in a manner seeming to lack the humility
that one might expect from an officer of the court.
We all focused on the reveal rather than the result.
Do you think she's the right person for the role?
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Well, what I think is that she did the work.
She definitely did the work. She took a very long
time to do it, so she obviously knows where to look,
where to get the answers, what to examine. She absolutely
gave voices to these women who deserve those voices. What
I think was missing was the urgency of getting to
(05:30):
the end of that, gathering that information and making those recommendations.
We all know that the longer it takes, the less
likely is you're going to be able to have a
very effective approach. So it was just the one thing
that I really took away from my review of what
had happened in the past that a detailed and comprehensive
(05:53):
review of a situation and investigation of a situation does
not need to take a year. And when you drag
some thing out, it drags it out for the families,
it drags it out for the communities, and it means
everybody is just left waiting to see what that recommendation
would be. So waiting seventeen months to hear what the
(06:13):
outcome of her investigation was was simply too long and
quite frankly, very expensive, Katie. That's the thing that power
us I realized. So the actual coronial cost just under
half a million dollars, and that does not take into
account the costs that were incurred by departments for their
role in the coronial. So, for example, the Department of
(06:33):
Children's and Families expended one hundred and eighteen thousand dollars.
I'm sure that there were similar costs incurred by the
police as well. So I would be very surprised if
when we pulled all of the costs together it didn't
get close to a million dollars. I would much rather
spend that million dollars delivering services. And when you compare
(06:54):
it to the average cost of coronials across the year,
which is about six and a half thousand dollars, it's significant.
And that's what happens when something is protracted and prolonged
and doesn't actually give us that really short, sharp assessment
of what went wrong, where it went wrong, and what
we should be doing to address it.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
I know Justine Davis well, yesterday she joined us on
the show and said she found it concerning that the
COLP government was commenting on the Coronia's the Coroner's sorry,
the coroner's reports. Should there be a separation of powers?
And are you crossing a line? Is the government crossing
a line by, you know, by commenting on the coroner's
(07:37):
reporting and the costs or Katie?
Speaker 2 (07:41):
The coroner demanded that we comment on her report. That's
what she required. And the report, it's not so much
the report, it's the recommendations that came out of it.
That's what I was commenting on. I really was hoping
that it would provide us with the evidence and the
support that we need to really ill change in this space.
(08:01):
And of course there's a separation of powers. She has
the power to do and say whatever she wants, and
that's clearly what she's done. But at the end of
the day, if you submit my report and you want
someone to comment on it, you shouldn't be offended when
comments are given simply because you don't like what the
comments are.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Are we getting to a difficult situation at the moment
with the coroner now? I mean, obviously some of the
recommendations I know that you and the government have accepted
and obviously not in your portfolio, but the government also
taking a look through the recommendations that were handed down
into the coronial inquest into Kumenji Walker. But are we
(08:41):
reaching a situation here in the Northern Territory where the
government potentially isn't really taking seriously recommendations that the coroner's providing.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
I don't think so, Katie. I think what people probably
don't realize that coronial recommendations are seeing that recommendations that
governments can take on board or not take on board.
That's historical, that's never been any different. What I would
say is that it's pretty obvious under previous government's recommendations
were made were more often than not ignored and not
taken on board. We really wanted to take this and
(09:16):
on board. An actual fact, we have taken them on
board because, as I said in my report to Parliament,
twenty four of the recommendations are already accommodated in programs
and services that are currently being delivered. And I'd also
make the observation that Justine said, oh, we don't know
where the money is going and we don't know where
the money is being spent. Well, we actually issued a
(09:36):
release back in May the detailed where the thirty six
million dollars that we've committed is being spent, what the
programs are that are being supported, and we very much
are are focusing in those areas that the coroner noted
needed to have focused but didn't give us an entry
(09:57):
point to say, but we can do it differently, can
take a different approach, Minister.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
I know, as you've just touched on there, the COLP
government supports twenty two recommendations, accepts ten in principle, does
not support three. Now one of those recommendations related to
programs and processes. Sorry, twenty four of the thirty five,
as you said, recommended related to programs and processes already
in place. But then one of the new recommendations called
(10:23):
for early intervention to break the cycle of violence for
young people. What has the government done in this space?
Speaker 2 (10:33):
In order to break that cycle, you have to be
able to get to those kids before they start down
a path that's impossible to reverse. And I know that
the members of the opposition and those on the crossbench
love to say that they don't agree with this, and
that's fine. They don't have to agree with this, but
(10:53):
the Circuit Breaker program is demonstrating very very clearly that
we can impact the outcome of domestic violence by getting
to kids early, by finding those kids who are at risk,
and then working with their families, because if kids are
at risk, there's something going wrong in the family situation,
and the only way we can do that is to
(11:14):
actually work with the children and their families to rectify
whatever's going on. So in the latest statistics that have
come out there has the only place where there's been
a decrease in domestic violence assaults across the terreat at
this moment in time is in Alice Springs. And I
know the evaluation process is still something that will come
(11:35):
out and it's an ongoing thing, but the Circuit Breaker
program has been incredibly successful in Alice Springs. The teams
there have done an incredible job, as has the teams
in the daw and Parmesan and Castroin regions to really
work with kids and their families. And we've had ninety
four referrals to other programs, including domestic family sexual violence
(11:57):
interventions to assist those families to break that vicious cycle.
So I said, I'm more than happy if there are
other areas that those on the other side think we
can be doing to access those kids I'd be delighted
to hear them, but so far it's crickets.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
Well, Minister, we are going to have to leave it there.
I know you've got a head into Parliament. Really appreciate
your time this morning. The Minister for the Prevention of
Domestic Violence, Robin Carl, Thank
Speaker 2 (12:28):
You, Thanks Katie, thank you.
Domestic violence prevention Minister Robin Carl made headlines this week
when she questioned Elizabeth Armitage's approach when it came to
the coronial inquest into the deaths of four Aboriginal women,
saying she found the long anticipated report failed so dismally
to hit the mark. Minister Carl said the coroner's approach
(00:20):
had been protracted, resulting in lengthy reports delivered in a
manner seeming to lack the humility that one might expect
from an officer of the court, more focused on the
reveal rather than the result. Minister Robin Carl joins me
on the line ahead of Parliament sitting today. Good morning
to your minister.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Good morning Katie.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Minister. What did you What did you feel the coroner
missed in her report?
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Well, I think Katie, what she missed was the very
thing that she stated she was going to do and
acknowledged in the body of her report, which was radical
change was needed. We couldn't keep doing things the same way.
And then after the very long process that she undertook,
for some reason that I really can't understand, having gone
(01:09):
through the report, she changed her mind and went, actually, no,
we don't need to be radical, We'll just keep doing
more of the same. So for me, it was an
opportunity to really send a very strong message that we
can't keep doing more of the same. It could have
been given her impromata to say, please change how we
approach things in this space, and she didn't do that.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
What would you have liked to have seen?
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Well, I think what I would have liked to have
seen where she actually made some really important points around
how we need to be empowering our communities to actually
have the ability to stand up and call out behaviors
of perpetrators when they're in community, how we protect the
victims survivors of domestic violence so they can remain in
(01:53):
their community. How do we actually create those frameworks so
that we don't disrupt people? And she'd called out the behavior.
She called it out multiple times in the report. She
called out the fact that culture had now become weaponized
in the con coercive control space. She called out the
fact that miss Unipingu's the part her partner's family forcibly
(02:19):
returned her to the community when she had managed to
escape the community, and we all know the tragic result
of that. So she called out the behavior. She could
have framed a recommendation that said, we can see this
as an issue, this has to be addressed, and I
strongly urged that, you know, steps be taken to empowered
(02:39):
communities to do that. And while she hasn't made that
call in the recommendations, the fact that it is in
her report and that she has provided evidence in the
report around that, I take some heart in the fact
that we can actually use that evidence to actually frame
our response going forward.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Minister, do you are you concerned that you know that
we are seeing a situation here where people are not
calling out some of that behavior for fear of being
labeled racist.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Oh, absolutely, without question. And I also feel that in
our communities, and I've been to communities, I've talked to
many many people, we've lived experience. I've talked to the
not for profit sector, I've talked to the departmental people.
I've talked to them very candidly about where we're where
(03:31):
the falling down in this space has been, and where
we really need to refocus and rechange how we're doing things.
And they are very afraid of standing up and calling
that out without the protection of the evidence behind it.
So it's not about saying, like, when you look at
what Greg Kavanaugh said in two thousand and six and
(03:51):
called out the fact that we cannot allow this sort
of behavior to continue in our communities, and here we
are two decades later, still having the exact same situations,
in fact, worse situations occurring. We absolutely have to assist
our communities and the people living in those communities to
be able to deliver a program and to support the
(04:15):
victims of domestic violence in their community and really hold
perpetrators to account. We cannot have a situation where a
perpetrator's family goes, actually, you know what. We know that
he's beating you, we know that he's assaulting you, but
you need to be back here because that's really important
from the cultural connection that he gives you to this community.
(04:36):
Of course, miss Unipinghu had a cultural connection to her community,
and of course that was absolutely critical. But surely her
safety should have come before that.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
Minister, you were scathing in your remarks about the coroner,
saying that her approach has been protracted, resulting in lengthy
reports delivered in a manner seeming to lack the humility
that one might expect from an officer of the court.
We all focused on the reveal rather than the result.
Do you think she's the right person for the role?
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Well, what I think is that she did the work.
She definitely did the work. She took a very long
time to do it, so she obviously knows where to look,
where to get the answers, what to examine. She absolutely
gave voices to these women who deserve those voices. What
I think was missing was the urgency of getting to
(05:30):
the end of that, gathering that information and making those recommendations.
We all know that the longer it takes, the less
likely is you're going to be able to have a
very effective approach. So it was just the one thing
that I really took away from my review of what
had happened in the past that a detailed and comprehensive
(05:53):
review of a situation and investigation of a situation does
not need to take a year. And when you drag
some thing out, it drags it out for the families,
it drags it out for the communities, and it means
everybody is just left waiting to see what that recommendation
would be. So waiting seventeen months to hear what the
(06:13):
outcome of her investigation was was simply too long and
quite frankly, very expensive, Katie. That's the thing that power
us I realized. So the actual coronial cost just under
half a million dollars, and that does not take into
account the costs that were incurred by departments for their
role in the coronial. So, for example, the Department of
(06:33):
Children's and Families expended one hundred and eighteen thousand dollars.
I'm sure that there were similar costs incurred by the
police as well. So I would be very surprised if
when we pulled all of the costs together it didn't
get close to a million dollars. I would much rather
spend that million dollars delivering services. And when you compare
(06:54):
it to the average cost of coronials across the year,
which is about six and a half thousand dollars, it's significant.
And that's what happens when something is protracted and prolonged
and doesn't actually give us that really short, sharp assessment
of what went wrong, where it went wrong, and what
we should be doing to address it.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
I know Justine Davis well, yesterday she joined us on
the show and said she found it concerning that the
COLP government was commenting on the Coronia's the Coroner's sorry,
the coroner's reports. Should there be a separation of powers?
And are you crossing a line? Is the government crossing
a line by, you know, by commenting on the coroner's
(07:37):
reporting and the costs or Katie?
Speaker 2 (07:41):
The coroner demanded that we comment on her report. That's
what she required. And the report, it's not so much
the report, it's the recommendations that came out of it.
That's what I was commenting on. I really was hoping
that it would provide us with the evidence and the
support that we need to really ill change in this space.
(08:01):
And of course there's a separation of powers. She has
the power to do and say whatever she wants, and
that's clearly what she's done. But at the end of
the day, if you submit my report and you want
someone to comment on it, you shouldn't be offended when
comments are given simply because you don't like what the
comments are.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Are we getting to a difficult situation at the moment
with the coroner now? I mean, obviously some of the
recommendations I know that you and the government have accepted
and obviously not in your portfolio, but the government also
taking a look through the recommendations that were handed down
into the coronial inquest into Kumenji Walker. But are we
(08:41):
reaching a situation here in the Northern Territory where the
government potentially isn't really taking seriously recommendations that the coroner's providing.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
I don't think so, Katie. I think what people probably
don't realize that coronial recommendations are seeing that recommendations that
governments can take on board or not take on board.
That's historical, that's never been any different. What I would
say is that it's pretty obvious under previous government's recommendations
were made were more often than not ignored and not
taken on board. We really wanted to take this and
(09:16):
on board. An actual fact, we have taken them on
board because, as I said in my report to Parliament,
twenty four of the recommendations are already accommodated in programs
and services that are currently being delivered. And I'd also
make the observation that Justine said, oh, we don't know
where the money is going and we don't know where
the money is being spent. Well, we actually issued a
(09:36):
release back in May the detailed where the thirty six
million dollars that we've committed is being spent, what the
programs are that are being supported, and we very much
are are focusing in those areas that the coroner noted
needed to have focused but didn't give us an entry
(09:57):
point to say, but we can do it differently, can
take a different approach, Minister.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
I know, as you've just touched on there, the COLP
government supports twenty two recommendations, accepts ten in principle, does
not support three. Now one of those recommendations related to
programs and processes. Sorry, twenty four of the thirty five,
as you said, recommended related to programs and processes already
in place. But then one of the new recommendations called
(10:23):
for early intervention to break the cycle of violence for
young people. What has the government done in this space?
Speaker 2 (10:33):
In order to break that cycle, you have to be
able to get to those kids before they start down
a path that's impossible to reverse. And I know that
the members of the opposition and those on the crossbench
love to say that they don't agree with this, and
that's fine. They don't have to agree with this, but
(10:53):
the Circuit Breaker program is demonstrating very very clearly that
we can impact the outcome of domestic violence by getting
to kids early, by finding those kids who are at risk,
and then working with their families, because if kids are
at risk, there's something going wrong in the family situation,
and the only way we can do that is to
(11:14):
actually work with the children and their families to rectify
whatever's going on. So in the latest statistics that have
come out there has the only place where there's been
a decrease in domestic violence assaults across the terreat at
this moment in time is in Alice Springs. And I
know the evaluation process is still something that will come
(11:35):
out and it's an ongoing thing, but the Circuit Breaker
program has been incredibly successful in Alice Springs. The teams
there have done an incredible job, as has the teams
in the daw and Parmesan and Castroin regions to really
work with kids and their families. And we've had ninety
four referrals to other programs, including domestic family sexual violence
(11:57):
interventions to assist those families to break that vicious cycle.
So I said, I'm more than happy if there are
other areas that those on the other side think we
can be doing to access those kids I'd be delighted
to hear them, but so far it's crickets.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
Well, Minister, we are going to have to leave it there.
I know you've got a head into Parliament. Really appreciate
your time this morning. The Minister for the Prevention of
Domestic Violence, Robin Carl, Thank
Speaker 2 (12:28):
You, Thanks Katie, thank you.
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