Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for External Territories) Share this | Hansard source

This is the third time this month that I have spoken in this parliament on the issue of domestic violence. Like others in this place, I hope that I am not bound to speak here for much longer on this issue, because I hope we can stop it. I will make sure that, until it is stopped, I will continue to speak about it, as many Australians are doing. We should be applauding the people who are standing up and speaking out about domestic violence and saying, 'No more.' It is worth reiterating that, in the Northern Territory, my home, a third of police time is spent dealing with domestic violence. Aboriginal women are victims in 72 per cent of all cases. You cannot underestimate the impact of that data and we cannot overstate the suffering that has been perpetrated upon women in the Northern Territory.

It is also important that we acknowledge the positive things that are being done. This week we saw at the front of the parliament and inside the parliament an opportunity for all of us to link arms and say, 'No more.' That was brought about through an initiative that largely comes out of Central Australia and the Western Desert communities. Charlie King, who was here this week, heard the men talking about the need to stop domestic violence and say, 'No more,' and for us to link up together.

This week we had the Rirratjingu community come down from Yirrkala and perform an important dance for us in a cultural ceremony on the Parliament House forecourt, all for the purpose of highlighting their opposition and concern, the need for our nation to be concerned about domestic violence and the need to say, 'No more.' And for that I thank them. But I think it would be remiss of me not to point out that, for some years now, Aboriginal men and supporting organisations across northern Australia have been taking this issue to heart.

I well recall that when I was Minister for Indigenous Health, Rural and Regional Health and Regional Services Delivery in a former government I was able to support the funding of a camp at Ross River, about 90 kays out of Alice Springs, for a gathering of men from across the country. That gathering of men was, I think, around 2009. It was initiated and run by a group of men out of Central Australia, led by a bloke called Johnny Liddle who worked at the Central Australian Aboriginal Congress, a health organisation. Their campaign was saying no to violence. It stimulated a lot of discussion among men from across the country—from Aboriginal communities by and large. Whilst this was a conference for men, by men, significantly it also involved women, to talk about the issue of violence to these men. My memory does not go back to precisely how many people were there. There would have been a couple of hundred. It was a significant event that I had the privilege and great honour to attend.

Bear in mind that this was only a few years after the intervention in the Northern Territory, when men were being demonised. Aboriginal men felt they were seen as people who perpetrated family violence, violence against children and sexual abuse against children. To have these men come together was a sign of great strength, because they were saying, 'We're aware of all that nonsense, the way we are being portrayed, but here is an opportunity for us to stand up and say this is about us, and this is what we think: "No more to family violence, no more to violence against children, no more to violence against women."' Subsequently, that picked up across the country.

I well remember a march, which I have mentioned previously in this place, involving Aboriginal men in Katherine in the Northern Territory. They organised a march up the Stuart Highway, blocking the Stuart Highway, bringing people in to express the view: 'No more violence.' These men took it upon themselves to do this. They were not asked by government. And that is the strength of this movement which Charlie has now built up around the NO MORE Campaign: it is community driven. It has come from men in remote communities across this country and in the towns and urban centres. We are now seeing, as a result of the publicity it has been given and the efforts of people like Charlie, this movement being adopted across the nation. It is not just about Aboriginal communities. Family violence happens in every postcode, every income bracket and every religion; it does not matter which. We know it happens. Violence was never acceptable, but we have to make sure that people know we should no longer accept the possibility of violence in any community in any part of Australia.

I am again reminded of the work that has been done over years now. You may not have heard of this mob, Mr Deputy Speaker Hastie, because you are a young man: the Normanton Stingers. I will hazard a guess that you do not know where Normanton is. It is at the bottom end of the Gulf of Carpentaria in Queensland, not far from Mornington Island. In 2010, they started a project for their rugby league team called 'Domestic violence not our game'. If members of that team were seen to be engaged in any domestic violence, they were not able to play. This was an initiative by, again, Aboriginal men in Normanton around this issue. I was just reading a piece by Curtis Pitt, the Queensland Treasurer, from 31 May 2015. He was talking about a game of rugby league between the Yarrabah Seahawks and the Mossman PD Sharks. The purpose of the game was to create awareness of domestic violence and to reinforce that domestic violence is everyone's business. It was hosted by the Yarrabah Aboriginal Corporation for Women, in partnership with the Guyula Yarrabah football club.

What that tells us is that there are good things happening around this country around this issue. Whilst we must be concerned and very angry about those men who still think that they can use their power in a relationship to use violence against women and children, in the broader community it is not acceptable, and it is seen as not being acceptable. So I commend all of those who have participated this week in the NO MORE Campaign and those White Ribbon ambassadors involved in the White Ribbon events. It is extremely important that the nation sees that the nation's leaders, men and women, are together linking their arms around this issue of no more violence.

As I end my contribution, I just want to make a couple of observations. There are some significant contributing factors, and we know what these are: poverty in many cases and alcohol in too many cases. Yet we have seen a reluctance by governments to accept the importance of addressing the alcohol issue across this country. People whinge and complain about lock-out laws. I understand that. People whinged in the Northern Territory about having to give their identification at the bottle shop. Well, I do not see a problem. If we know that someone who is an alcoholic or a drinker is involved in family violence activities and we can prevent them getting access to alcohol, we should do so, and we should not apologise for it. I want to commend the new Northern Territory government for the action it is proposing to take in that field, reducing the supply of alcohol and addressing those issues around people who abuse alcohol, abuse their communities and abuse their partners and their children. It is not acceptable, and I know this parliament joins with me in linking arms to say, 'No more.'

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