Comment

Marcia Langton
The NT’s wilful ignorance over Black deaths in custody

When Tim Fischer called High Court judges “pissants” in the ’90s, after they recognised native title and overturned terra nullius, he created the rare spectacle of a government minister excoriating a member of the judiciary in the media. In 2017, three ministers in the Turnbull government – Greg Hunt, Alan Tudge and Michael Sukkar – were threatened with contempt of court charges after they criticised sentencing by the Victorian Supreme Court. This year, the Chief Minister of the Northern Territory, Lia Finocchiaro, publicly dismissed a damning coronial report into yet another Black death in custody.

Elisabeth Armitage’s coronial report, released in July, exposed systemic racism in the Northern Territory Police Force, leading to the death of Kumanjayi Walker, a 19-year-old Warlpiri man fatally shot by Constable Zachary Rolfe at his home in Yuendumu, 300 kilometres from Alice Springs, on the night of November 9, 2019. Armitage found that Rolfe was racist and that his racist attitudes could not be excluded as a contributing cause of Walker’s death. Finocchiaro framed the report as a partisan attack, labelling Armitage and those who highlighted the racism as “offender apologists”. She portrayed the coroner’s recommendations as unnecessary interference with her government’s law-and-order agenda.

Finocchiaro’s response perfectly illustrated one of the central themes of the coronial report: that when racism is embedded in policing, police and their masters close ranks to protect their own. The message to Aboriginal Territorians is unmistakable: your dead are political inconveniences, not failings of the police.

This coronial report is not the first inquiry into the death of Kumanjayi Walker. First, there was the five-week trial of Rolfe in the Supreme Court of the Northern Territory, delayed multiple times, which in March 2022 found him not guilty of murder and cleared him of two alternative charges of manslaughter and engaging in a violent act causing death. Before the trial, police expressed their shock and disgust at the fact Rolfe had been charged at all.

Andrew Boe, who represented the Walker family in the murder trial, put it this way: “Justice here is set up to favour the wealthy and well connected; the poor just get processed.”

Rolfe was certainly well connected. His father, Richard Rolfe OAM, is a luxury car dealer, member of the National Australia Day Council Board, patron of the Heart Foundation (ACT), vice-patron of the Cross of Valour Association and vice-patron of the Australian Bravery Association. His mother is a barrister. Rolfe Jr attended an elite private boys’ school and later enlisted in the Australian Army, serving in Afghanistan before joining the NT Police Force.

Evidence about Rolfe’s lies, violence, theft and psychological state had been excluded from the trial case. It emerged later that he had failed to declare disciplinary action and violent behaviour when applying to join the NT police and was banned from applying to Queensland Police for 10 years due to an integrity breach after failing to disclose being fined for public nuisance and violent behaviour. He admitted to lying on a police application form, omitting the fact he had previously used marijuana and MDMA and, according to impugned evidence, had pleaded guilty to theft at a military trial following an internal military investigation.

At the coronial inquest, Rolfe alleged a racist culture in the elite Territory Response Group (TRG). He claimed he hadn’t seen “a lot” of racist behaviour but that racist language was normalised inside the Northern Territory Police Force. “In the muster room … I could hear something racist every day.”

This evidence about entrenched racism in police ranks instigated a joint investigation in 2024 conducted by the Northern Territory Independent Commissioner Against Corruption (ICAC) and the NT Police Force. It found “historical racism” in the force, including evidence of police use of slurs such as “coon”, the N-word, “black cunts”, “black dogs” and offensive terms for Aboriginal Community Police Officers, “SLACPOs”, indicating the white police regarded them as lazy.

Rolfe himself, and other officers, gave evidence at the coronial inquiry about the yearly Northern Territory Police Nugada Awards for the “most coon-like behaviour” of an officer. Other racist events and demonstrations of racism in the force were also revealed: the “Noogadah” awards for “best effort in displaying one’s Aboriginality” or “lack of hygiene”; a 2015 award with a blackface minstrel image; a 2007 “Sooty Award” depicting a meal cooking in a shopping trolley over a fire, with the caption “for the most coon-like BBQ ever!!”

Another certificate awarded that year had a manipulated image of an Aboriginal man lying on the ground surrounded by photoshopped beer cans. A further award incorporated the Aboriginal flag and read: “CAUTION for a RAPE … that’s all that needs to be said.” In 2008, TRG members circulated an email with the subject “Black Monopoly” with an image of a doctored Monopoly board with every property space labelled “Go to Jail”. Five TRG officers swore statutory declarations denying the awards were racist, claiming they were about poor hygiene, not ethnicity. Legal advice led to these declarations being withheld from police and prosecutors in Rolfe’s trial to protect anonymity.

The ICAC joint report with the NT Police Force concluded “no evidence of racist behaviour after 2015” and recommended the matter be closed. No admissible evidence was found to prosecute or take further action against specific officers. The NT Anti-Discrimination Commissioner and lawyers for Aboriginal officers heavily criticised the investigation as flawed and possibly designed to “wipe the slate clean”. Lawyer Dana Levitt argued that the investigation did not actively look for racism beyond the limited scope, making its “no recent racism” finding inevitable.

This year, Armitage’s coronial inquiry revealed the inescapable conclusion that Rolfe was racist. Rolfe’s contempt for the law and for his victim was on display when he commented on an Instagram post of himself at Finns Beach Club in Bali alongside war criminal Ben Roberts-Smith. The message stated: “Just a couple cops/murderers and war criminals Havin a lovely afternoon in the sun”. The post ended with a red heart emoji, perhaps to emphasise their camaraderie. Questioned about this at the 2024 inquest, Rolfe said he was “making a joke about myself”. He said the joke was how he had been treated by the media and that he would never say something like that in front of Walker’s family. Like all unrepentant men, he made it about himself: “I’ve dealt with the sadness of taking Kumanjayi Walker’s life … I refuse to wallow. If I need to laugh rather than cry, I will laugh.”

Finocchiaro’s response to the coronial inquest was a signal to the police to continue their racism and, well, just keep having fun. The justice system in the territory serves the powerful and, as Andrew Boe says, processes the poor. This raises the question: is this a justice system as most people understand it or is it a business model?

The NT’s “law and order” politics justify heavy Commonwealth funding for police and correctional services to incarcerate Aboriginal adults and children at extraordinary rates. This punitive architecture keeps the territory financially afloat, with every “tough on crime” press conference feeding the same machine. Confronting racism in policing would mean dismantling the political case for that funding stream.

Armitage’s report offered a road map: anti‑racism strategies, trauma‑informed training, community policing and strict safeguards for officers carrying weapons in Aboriginal townships and communities. Finocchiaro’s swift rejection of the coronial findings sends a clear signal: systemic racism will be protected and it will be paid for by the Commonwealth at the rate of seven in every 10 dollars.

Last week, the ABC revealed that a Northern Territory police sergeant had displayed an image linked to white supremacy as his Facebook cover photo. The picture stayed up for three years and was only removed after questions from the ABC. The sergeant involved was Rolfe’s supervisor. He uploaded the image the day Rolfe’s murder trial began. The day after the ABC’s questions, an email was sent to all police telling them to take “immediate steps to ensure that the ‘Thin Blue Line’ patch is not used on any NTPF uniforms, equipment, stations, vehicles and property”.

The same day as the ABC report was published, Martin “Isaac” Jabarula White appeared at Alice Springs Local Court, charged with contravening a domestic violence order. The court dismissed the charges, as they were “improperly laid”. The man who signed the charges was NT police prosecutor Steven Haig, who three months earlier was involved in the killing of White’s son, Kumanjayi White, at a supermarket in Alice Springs.

Kumanjayi White, a Warlpiri man, was also from Yuendumu. Like Kumanjayi Walker, he suffered from a disability, probably foetal alcohol spectrum disorder acquired in utero because of his mother’s alcohol use. He was taking food and died after the “arrest” by Haig and a security guard. Haig has continued working as a police prosecutor in Alice Springs, while the NT Police Force investigate White’s death and “whether any criminality was involved”. Months later, the cause of White’s death remains “undetermined”.

The NT government refuses to implement reforms of the police, its prisons and detention centres, and its laws. These reforms have been recommended by every royal commission and inquiry since 1991. Almost a third of the NT population is Aboriginal and it refuses to rebuild their trust in its government and institutions. The only question left is: who will die next?

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on August 23, 2025 as "Who will die next?".

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