Protecting the right to drink trumps the safety of Indigenous women in the NT | Nova Peris | Comment is free | theguardian.com: In Darwin alone domestic violence-related assaults have jumped 35% in the last two years. It is even worse outside the capital city. The rates of domestic violence in Tennant Creek are 12 times higher than in Darwin. In Tennant Creek police statistics show that only 10% of domestic violence assaults don’t involve alcohol.You would have to suspect she's right. Also, as someone in comments notes, this is a much more important practical issue than Aboriginal recognition in the constitution.
In the NT, the right to drink trumps the rights of victims, who are continually bashed in alcohol fuelled violence. I am extremely concerned that the Abbott government has decided to sign up to this approach.
A domestic violence strategy that does not even mention alcohol is not worth the paper it is written on. A domestic violence strategy that continues to allow people who commit alcohol related domestic violence to keep drinking as much as they like will not work.
I put it down as yet another case of bad Abbott government priorities.
A friend of mine has first hand experience of the impact of alcohol on aboriginal women and children. She works in Darwin and is disgusted by the whole situation. She has had to treat far too many aboriginal women who were bashed for any number of reasons, the most tragic of those being when they returned to the settlement without booze or drugs and were summarily given a good beating for their failure.
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