WARNING: This article contains the image of an Aboriginal person who has passed.
The Northern Territory's Australian of the Year has used a speech at Garma Festival to call out media reporting of the death of Warlpiri man Kumanjayi Walker and the trial of Zachary Rolfe.
During her keynote address, 'Handcuffed to Justice', the Central Arrernte woman and Director of the Northern Territory Aboriginal Justice Unit spoke of structural racism in media and the criminal justice system.
Ms Liddle referenced her extensive career which has encompassed a number of fields, saying she had seen "the good, the bad and the ugly".
Zachary Rolfe trial
She called out "recent media coverage related to the death of Kumanjayi Walker" and the reporting of the trial of Zachary Rolfe.
Ms Liddle accused media of sensationalising family and domestic violence against Aboriginal women, and questioned whether similar crimes within urban, non-Aboriginal communities "would receive the same, sustained effort".
"During my policing career, I witnessed the assaults and homicides, so I have concerns about the attitudes that typify the graphic, horrific details, such as the claims in one article that Walker subjected his partner to unreported abuse," she said.
Ms Liddle did not name sources, however, during Rolfe's trial Newscorp masthead The Australian was regularly criticised for its reporting.
On March 14, the paper published a front-page article titled 'Kumanjayi bashed me, but I loved him'.
Listed as an exclusive, the article began by listing horrific acts of violence that Walker allegedly perpetrated against his girlfriend "years before police fatally shot him".
Ms Liddle said articles that accused Walker of being violent didn't provide any analysis of the underlying causes of the behaviour, but rather implied violence against women was "somehow unique to Aboriginal communities".
Kumanjayi Walker died after being shot three times in his home by a Northern Territory police officer during an arrest. Source: Supplied
"Did the horrific murder of Hannah Clarke and her three children demonstrate an animalistic Anglo Celtic culture amongst Queenslanders? Do the many hundreds of other such murders of female partners... annually indicate that nationally?" Ms Liddle questioned.
Ms Liddle said that although it's "always been the case that bad news makes for good news, judged by sales and clicks", the role of media is crucial to shaping social understandings.
"Don't underestimate the powerful role each of you play in shaping community attitudes and change for justice outcomes and community safety," she warned.
Violence against women
Ms Liddle also confronted the silence that meets Aboriginal women reporting violence.
"Misogyny, patriarchy, and sexism have created a social, cultural, and environmental political environment in which violence towards women... [is] trivialized and coercive control is ignored," she said.
"Coronial inquests and other inquiries have consistently shown that responses are less supportive and speedy in the case of Aboriginal cultural and linguistically diverse women."
She also noted the recent findings of "systemic failures" among the Queensland Police Service to respond adequately to domestic violence.
"If Queensland Police are found inadequately trained and supervised in domestic family violence matters leading to many deaths - then we need to ask what is the situation in the Northern Territory, especially in relation to Aboriginal women?"
Ms Liddle said that the silence allows a misconception of "helplessness" about Aboriginal women and paves the way for decades of "authoritarian and racists controls by authorities".
"This deficit discourse of dysfunctional and [the] helplessness of Aboriginal women has have been used for decades to justify authoritarian [responses], most deplorably in NT detention," she said.
'It completely ignores... the attempts, mostly by older women, to intervene and protect [our] children.
"It ignores the men who stand up against this violence who work on aggression and family violence."
Arrernte woman and NT Australian of the Year Leanne Liddle was keynote speaker at the Garma Festival. Source: ABC Australia
Traditional ways without drugs or violence
Ms Liddle described how the introduced influences of drugs and alcohol have had a devastating impact on Indigenous communities.
"Traditional culture certainly has a so-called payback focus that is employed to resolve conflicts and disputes," she said.
"However, random frenzies or attacks by drunken or drunk people is not a reflection of that system but a distorted manifestation of how our culture has been abused and destroyed, largely from outside, painting all Aboriginal Territorians or perhaps all Aboriginal males as violent.
"It doesn't make it any better to name the blame as culture or cultural. It still denigrates and defames an entire group."
Ms Liddle's sentiments were shared by Indigenous parliamentarians also present, NT Senator Jacinta Price, and Member for Lingiari Marion Scrymgour, who spoke on their concerns around the lack of support and infrastructure to support communities, especially after 14-year old alcohol bans were lifted in previously dry communities.
Racism in the justice system
Ms Liddle made history when she began her career, becoming the first Aboriginal policewoman in South Australia. During her time, she experienced severe racism and abuse, prompting her decision to become a lawyer.
Now, with high-profile government roles, experience in the United Nations and heading the Justice Agreement for the NT, the Alice Springs woman is one of the few best placed to speak about systemic racism in justice.
"Racism works 24/7 to reproduce racial inequalities, regardless of the deliberate intentions of those who are in the state apparatus," she said.
"It is not limited to poisonous attitudes and violent or abusive behaviours because it includes laws that impact overwhelmingly against some groups, rather than others.
"It includes laws and procedures that make it extremely unlikely for Aboriginal people to serve on juries of offenders who are mostly Aboriginal."
Liddle drew a line from these inequalities to the realities of Aboriginal people being over-incarcerated.
"Clearly, a very large number of Aboriginal men and women, boys and girls, are handcuffed by police every year," she said.
"In 2021, 86 per cent of adult prisoners in the Northern Territory [were] Aboriginal and almost 100 per cent of juveniles in detention here in the Northern Territory are also Aboriginal. We only make up 31 per cent of the NT's total population."
Ms Liddle called for a "smarter response" to breaking "this disastrous cycle of crime and punishment".
"I think the Aboriginal justice agreement paves that way... It now has bipartisan support and funding," she said.
"It will succeed because for our community, our families and our children sake, it must. Because we can't afford to fail."
