Any Good Oil reader who’s travelled to Australia in recent years has been subjected to the dreary ritual of “Traditional Acknowledgement” that blights everything here, these days. Whether it’s a simple plane flight, a local council meeting, even a private wedding, we get bludgeoned with the same, made-up, tripe about “elders past, present and emerging”.
What does this fatuous taradiddle even mean? Who are these ‘emerging elders’? Is it the Aboriginal kids running amok in Alice Springs every night? The Aboriginal men giving the wife and kids the bash?
Well, now we know.
An emerging Indigenous leader who runs one of Australia’s most powerful land councils and was recently appointed to a state health service board has been charged with a raft of serious domestic violence and stalking offences.
Dion Creek, chief executive of the Cape York Land Council, was arrested at the weekend in Cairns on 15 charges relating to alleged offences over the past five years.
Mr Creek, who remains in custody, has been touted as among a new generation of Indigenous leaders with grassroots support in Aboriginal communities and strong political connections in both major parties.
Sadly, all that’s probably true.
[Creek] is the second Indigenous leader on Cape York to be arrested for alleged domestic violence in recent months.
In late June, Lockhart River mayor Wayne Butcher, 53, was arrested and charged with six offences, including strangulation, suffocation, deprivation of liberty and assault.
Mr Butcher is the longest-serving mayor in Cape York, and a former head of the Indigenous Leader’s Forum.
And the ‘emerging elders’ just keep swinging.
An Aboriginal-controlled organisation paid tens of millions of dollars in government grants each year to help improve social issues in Alice Springs has come under fire for declining meetings, allegedly failing to deliver services adequately, and allowing a convicted domestic violence offender to sit on its board […]
The ABC can also reveal one of Tangentyere’s board members, Philip Miller, is a convicted domestic violence perpetrator who has been jailed for breaching multiple domestic violence orders, including a 17-month stint behind bars in 2019 […]
Yipirinya school principal Gavin Morris said many of his students from town camps managed by Tangentyere were living in “diabolical” and “fourth world poverty” conditions.
Morris’ students were allegedly dealing with a lot worse than just poverty.
A prominent Alice Springs school principal accused of physically assaulting multiple children has been stood down on full pay by the independent school’s board, the NT government says.
Gavin Morris, the vocal principal of Yipirinya School and Alice Springs town councillor, was arrested on Thursday morning and later charged with five counts of aggravated assault.
NT Police alleged the 46-year-old assaulted six children, aged between eight and 13, at the school on multiple separate occasions in 2023.
To be fair, Morris denies the assault charges. Unfortunately, it’s not his first brush with the law.
The principal of a prominent Alice Springs Aboriginal school has been fined almost $5,000 for hiring two unregistered teachers a year after he was officially warned for a similar offence.
Yipirinya School principal Gavin Morris, 45, pleaded guilty in Alice Springs Local Court to two counts of employing a person who was not a registered teacher.
The charges were brought by the Teacher Registration Board of the Northern Territory, which issued a warning to Dr Morris in 2022 after it was discovered that an unregistered teacher had taught at Yipirinya for 15 days […]
Prosecutor Jon Bortoli told the court that Dr Morris had been informed that any further breaches could result in prosecution.
Is it any wonder Aboriginal kids are running feral, from Alice Springs to Townsville?
Northern Territory Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has repeatedly called for an audit into government spending on Indigenous programs across Australia […]
“This has been a red flag for years and one that’s been brought up by community members for years,” she said.
“This is why we need greater governance in these organisations. This is why we need an audit into how these organisations are run.”
Good luck, with all those millions of federal funding pouring through these organisations.
