It’s a pretty privileged life, the life of a highly paid legal bureaucrat. Certainly it never involves anything so gauche as having to put your life on the line, trying to uphold the law while you face constant violence from generationally unemployed mendicants and lifelong criminals, whose lives revolve around drinking, drugs, fighting and petty theft.
Only someone so airily detached as a middle-aged, upper-class, white female coroner could clutch her pearls about ‘racism’ and ‘colonialism’, rather than the endemic violence and lawlessness of remote Aboriginal communities. Not to mention making idiotic recommendations that will do nothing but ensure that the violence, abuse, child-rape and associated lawlessness will continue – if not worsen.
Constable Zachary Rolfe shot [Kumanjayi Walker] after the officer was stabbed.
The coroner presented her findings to the community of Yuendumu, 300km northwest of Alice Springs, on Monday.
“Having considered all the evidence including Mr Rolfe’s explanations and justifications, I found that Mr Rolfe was racist and that he worked in and was the beneficiary of an organisation with hallmarks of institutional racism,” Ms Armitage said.
Probably, but: so what? The fact remains that a violent career criminal chose to resist lawful arrest and stabbed a police officer in a darkened house in a community synonymous will lawlessness and violence. A community so violent and lawless that there were no medical facilities that might have saved Walker’s life – the local clinic was shut because the healthcare workers’ homes had been repeatedly broken into, and NT Health had evacuated its staff.
“Kumanjayi’s death on 9 November 2019 was avoidable.”
Yes: he could have submitted to arrest. He chose not to. But apparently personal responsibility isn’t a standard Aboriginal people are expected to held to by ivory-tower bureaucrats. Only the rough men with guns who guard the walls while government bureaucrats sleep in safety are ever held to account.
Mr Rolfe released a statement on Monday that said the report demonstrated a “distinct absence of lived experience or genuine comprehension of violence, criminality and victimisation – a privilege ironically afforded to her by the very frontline police officers she critiques. The severity of Armitage’s criticism inadvertently highlights how effectively the police have safeguarded her privileged position, granting her a level of security and comfort that insulates her from the harsh realities faced daily by frontline officers and, more importantly, by countless victims of crime throughout the Northern Territory.
“While Armitage critiques from a place of safety, vulnerable communities continue to endure the direct and brutal consequences of violent crime, deserving far more robust policing rather than criticisms rooted in detachment. The coroner’s infantilisation of indigenous communities does not empower but rather diminishes agency and reinforces dependency. Unfortunately, this coronial investigation represents a misallocation of valuable time and resources, missing a critical opportunity to propose genuinely beneficial and impactful reforms.”
Instead, if Armitage had her way, Aboriginal women and children in remote communities would be abandoned to their fate at the hands of the violent men and ‘the world’s oldest living culture’.
Following her prepared statement, Ms Armitage released her 600-page report.
She makes 32 recommendations, including the NT Police making public and strengthening its anti-racism strategy and creating agreements with Yuendumu leaders to decide when it would be appropriate for police to carry firearms in the community.
In other words: never. In which case, which sane police officer with a shred of concern for going home alive and in one piece would ever set foot in a remote community where violence is a way of life? Where mass brawls with machetes, axes and knives are a common occurrence? Where teachers and nurses – the very people trying to help these hopeless communities – must have panic rooms installed in their residences and face the very real prospect of assault, rape and murder?
Here’s a thought: make Armitage work the beat of a Territory copper for a few months, and see how she fares.
During the inquiry, an expert in frontline psychology explained how repeatedly dealing with a racial group in the most traumatic and confronting circumstances could create general psychological bias toward negative and racist views.
Or, to put it in plain language: familiarity with people on their worst behaviour breeds contempt.
“NT Police Force must take steps through its training, supervision, culture and leadership to ensure racist attitudes do not develop and if they do, they are identified and corrected and are not tolerated or condoned,” Ms Armitage said.
Or maybe – just maybe – Aboriginal people in remote communities could try sobering up, sending their kids to school and not fighting tribal battles all the time?
