If the NT wants to silence coroners from exposing systemic racism, then the Federal Government must step in. Coroner Elisabeth Armitage (l) and NT Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro A guest post by George Newhouse* The Northern Territory Government is preparing a response to Coroner Elisabeth Armitage’s detailed inquest findings into the 2019 police shooting of [...]
Mandawuy Yunupingu The following is the kind of warm and deeply personal account by Phil O’Brien that can only come from a sustained friendship, in this case with his very good mate, Mandawuy Yunupingu, aka "Munda." Munda was taken from us by a terrible disease just over 13 years ago at the far-too-young age of [...]
A guest post by Paul Gregoire. This article was first published by the Sydney Criminal Lawyers website. Released on 7 July 2025, the 683 page coronial report into the killing of Warlpiri Luritja teenager Kumanjayi Walker by then NT police constable Zachary Rolfe, which was produced by NT coroner Elisabeth Armitage, was so damning in its finding [...]
On Monday last – in the midst of an unprecedented leadership crisis in the NT police force and with corrections and the justice system descending into chaos – the NT Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro was a guest of Katie Woolf’s on her morning show on Darwin commercial radio MIX104.9FM. Katie Woolf is regarded by some [...]
NT police issue Glock 22, .40 calibre This Musical Dispatch from the Front is a guest post by my old—in both senses of that word—friend Frank Baarda,* a long-term resident of Yuendumu. Greetings, This is a tale of how IMHO the police should be and how it is. On our odyssey when we returned from [...]
This Musical Dispatch from the Front is a guest post by my old—in both senses of that word—friend Frank Baarda,* a long-term resident of Yuendumu. For decades we have made our annual trek up and down the Stuart Highway. I recall some memorable road: signs: Ki Ki – Australia’s Pistachio Capital Bordertown – Bob Hawke’s [...]
Guest post by Chips Mackinolty* While “we speak our mother’s tongue” is a universal truism, it is something often forgotten in the context of colonialism and the overt and extended suppression of Indigenous languages across what is now called Australia. How can a “mother’s tongue” be spoken if the children have been taken away? If [...]
It was late November 2010, one of those red-hot November days that only the Western Desert can turn on. Over six hundred people travelled for days from far and wide to bury young Jampijinpa at the small town of Nyirripi, a four-and-a-half hour dusty drive west from Alice Springs on rough dirt roads.
In Kaytetye country the Pelican is known as walaymperre, as in Walaymperre thangkerne alkenhe arntwe arenye, repe ware elpalhapenye kape arltere. Thangkerne nyartelepe aynenke aylperre kape pwele-pwele.
Photo by Katrina Beavan, ABC Alice Springs This is a guest post by Frank Baarda, a long-term resident of Yuendumu, NT. Yesterday hundreds of Yuendumu residents marched on the Yuendumu police station. The police station was going to be opened to allow the station to be swept. Sweeping is a ritual whereby after a death [...]
