analysis
A landmark inquiry and 35 recommendations: What's next for the NT's fight to end domestic violence?
NT Coroner Elisabeth Armitage handed down her long-awaited findings on Monday following a landmark inquest into the deaths of Kumarn Rubuntja, Kumanjayi Haywood, Ngeygo Ragurrk and Miss Yunupiŋu and the failure of the systems designed to protect them. (ABC News)
WARNING: This story contains content that some readers may find distressing.
Readers are also advised that this article contains the names and images of Indigenous people who have died, used with the permission of their families.
Elisabeth Armitage wasn't the only woman in the courtroom struggling to hold back tears as she published her 243-page report this week into the domestic violence deaths of Kumarn Rubuntja, Kumanjayi Haywood, Ngeygo Ragurrk and Miss Yunupiŋu.
But despite her focus on the senseless tragedy of the four women's deaths, the Northern Territory coroner's long-awaited findings and recommendations also detailed the "horrifying reality" experienced by 68 others.
Their shamefully abridged lives were not the focus of this inquiry, but they were also brutally killed by their partners in the Northern Territory.
The coroner wrote:
"M took a while coming home from the shops, so her partner thought she may have been seeing someone else.
"He beat her savagely … she bled to death.
"L was murdered by her husband 'because she was a rubbish wife'.
"M's partner falsely accused her of sleeping with a neighbour … he beat her to the head with half of a concrete Besser block … her primary cause of death was bleeding from her lungs, which had been torn by the protruding ends of her 19 fractured ribs."
The harrowing list went on for 16 pages.
Elisabeth Armitage handed down her findings on Monday, following a marathon inquest into domestic violence deaths in the NT. (ABC News: Hamish Harty)
"These women were aged between 17 and 60," Judge Armitage wrote.
"Most were mothers. Almost all were Aboriginal. All of them were loved and deserved to live their lives free from the violence of men."
The coroner made 35 sweeping recommendations for change in the Northern Territory, where rates of intimate partner homicide are seven times the national average.
Broadly, she recommended a significant injection of funding to the sector, noting her report echoed the calls that advocates and experts have been making for years.
"It's about time that people saw and spoke out about the wide-ranging and shocking impact of family violence and gender violence against Aboriginal women," Curtin University associate professor Hannah McGlade said.
"White Australia is playing catch-up with what we as Aboriginal experts have known for a very long time."
Kumarn Rubuntja was murdered by her partner Malcolm Abbott when he repeatedly drove over her, dragging her underneath the car, outside the Alice Springs Hospital in 2021.
Judge Armitage recommended overhauls of rehabilitation programs offered to prisoners, domestic, family and sexual violence (DFSV) training offered to police recruits and the way alcohol is sold in pubs and clubs around the territory.
She wanted to see Aboriginal interpreters based in the emergency call centre and government agencies working together to protect victim-survivors.
She urged the NT government to immediately release $180 million in DFSV support that it promised ahead of August's territory election.
None of her recommendations, she said, were "radical".
Loading...A government already drowning in debt
But NT Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro said her government — which was elected on a platform of law and order — was yet to decide how to allocate the $180 million it promised.
The experts who asked for it in the first place told the coroner last year they already had a detailed plan for the money, if and when it was received.
They want to see it spent directly on frontline services, such as women's shelters and men's behaviour change programs.
They want to see investment in early intervention and education, particularly for young men and boys, to help younger generations understand how to have healthy relationships and stop the violence before it happens.
The coroner said domestic violence was "a crisis we cannot arrest our way out of".
She said analysis by the Office of the Children's Commissioner NT found 94 per cent of children aged 10 to 13 in territory youth detention centres had been exposed to family violence.
"There is frequent media reporting about young people in the Northern Territory committing crimes … that generate fear and resentment in the community," Judge Armitage wrote.
"Given the statistics, it is likely that many of these young people are on the street because their homes are not safe."
The NT is already around $11 billion in debt, with the new CLP government inheriting a budget deficit that is expected to continue to worsen by another billion dollars in the next three years.
Hannah McGlade says she fears "Aboriginal women's lives aren't being valued in Australia". (ABC News: Jake Sturmer)
According to figures compiled by the Parliamentary Budget Office, the NT has the highest net debt per capita in the country, forecast to hit $30,003 in the 2024-25 financial year.
The next largest state or territory debt is in Victoria, with $19,489.
But after the coroner found DFSV already costs the NT economy up to $600 million each year, experts have begged the question — how much are territory lives worth?
Dr McGlade wants to see the new government "take the lives of Aboriginal women seriously".
She doesn't want to see the coroner's report gathering dust on a shelf at Parliament House.
"We need to be addressing this situation in a far more serious, informed manner and stop wasting resources," she said.
Campaigners at an anti-domestic violence rally in Alice Springs last year painted their hands red. (Supplied: Jesse Tyssen)
Government on notice for another inquiry
Judge Armitage has already put the government on notice that she plans to hold a second domestic violence inquiry in August next year.
"[It] will provide an excellent opportunity to review progress on the implementation of these recommendations," she said.
"We must not be complicit in the suffering of women experiencing domestic and family violence by refusing to do the things that the experts tell us need to be done."
Dr McGlade said she hoped the "high profile" nature of the coroner's inquiry would put enough pressure on governments to implement the necessary changes.
"But we do fear that Aboriginal women's lives aren't being valued in Australia and there's not enough concern [or] response being shown," she said.
Stoic skepticism, from women who have seen this all before.
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