Are most of the NT's landmark DV inquest recommendations already in place, as the government says?

Australia Broadcast Center

8 hours ago

Two years ago the Northern Territory coroner began an inquiry into the domestic violence deaths of four Aboriginal women, with her findings and recommendations handed down in November.
At the last parliamentary sittings, the NT government provided its long-awaited formal response to the inquiry, with Prevention of Domestic Violence Minister Robyn Cahill stating the 35 recommendations were "uninspiring" and "failed so dismally to hit the mark".
Ms Cahill's comments received significant backlash from the sector and legal associations, who labelled them "hurtful" and "undermining of the independence" of the coroner.
As another series of coronial inquests into domestic violence deaths begins this month in Darwin and Alice Springs — which the NT coroner previously flagged as "an excellent opportunity" to review the government's response — the question remains: What has been the government's progress on implementing the recommendations?
Of the coroner's 35 recommendations, the NT government has accepted 21 of them in full and 11 in principle.
In the government's tabled response to the recommendations, it stated that for the majority of those accepted, funding for the programs was either already available under existing plans or had been recently assigned as part of the 2025-26 budget.
For many of those it accepted in principle, the government said fully implementing them would be "subject to" finding the necessary funding and resourcing, or undertaking significant work to create a "whole new model of operation".
During her speech to parliament, Ms Cahill claimed that "24 of the 35 recommendations related to programs or processes already in place".
But that assertion is disputed by frontline sector workers, including the chief executive of the Women's Safety Services of Central Australia, Larissa Ellis, who has called such a claim "disingenuous at best".
One of the recommendations in dispute is recommendation 7, which relates to an NT-wide rollout of the co-responder model, where police and Department of Children and Families staff work together to support victims and perpetrators of domestic violence.
In her report, the coroner called for the co-responder model, which is already being trialled in Alice Springs, to be funded, evaluated and implemented across the NT.
Ms Cahill claims that model is already "in place".
However, less than two weeks before the last parliamentary sittings, a Department of Children and Families spokesperson told the ABC in a statement that the co-responder model had yet to be expanded across the NT.
The full list of locations for the program's expansion was also only announced in parliament late last month.
Ms Ellis also says the government has "skipped the monitoring and evaluation" of the Alice Springs co-responder pilot, which would have allowed the sector to consider "the lessons that we could learn [and] the challenges that we have experienced here in Alice Springs".
Recommendation 11 is another the government claims is already in place, while sector workers disagree.
The coroner called for the Prevent, Assist, Respond training (PARt) domestic violence program to be rolled out to "all current NT police officers, auxiliaries and new recruits, as well as [to emergency call centre] staff" and its specific funding.
Ms Ellis says: "I would debate that that has been fully implemented".
"The NT government has not funded that initiative, that is funded through philanthropic avenues. And it is temporary funding," she says.
Multiple sector workers have also told the ABC that despite Ms Cahill stating recommendation 17— which calls for the replication of Alice Springs's specialist domestic, family and sexual violence court in other regions — is "in place", there is in fact no specialist court outside of Alice Springs.
The government did not support three of the recommendations:
The government's refusal to establish a peak DFSV body has been particularly contentious.
Ms Cahill says there is no need for a peak body because that role is already fulfilled by a government-funded "domestic, family and sexual violence officer" position at the Northern Territory Council of Social Services.
But Ms Ellis says this position doesn't equate to a peak body.
"We're the only jurisdiction without a domestic and family violence peak, [and] we are the jurisdiction with the highest rates of domestic and family violence across the country," she says.
"The domestic and family violence sector in the Northern Territory is in a terrible position, where we are advocating and arguing with our funders.
"That places us in really precarious situation, because if we advocate too strongly we risk our funding."