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The Advertiser
11-07-2025
- Politics
- The Advertiser
Every now and again, for decades, the same issue gets a big headline
In 1972, police at an Aboriginal settlement at Papunya, several hundred kilometres west of Alice Springs, closed down a travelling Slim Dusty concert after some of the young men somehow got access to alcohol and became drunk. Many in the crowd welcomed action against the drunks ruining the concert but resented the element of group punishment in having the concert abruptly stopped. Some, including some of the troublemakers, walked to the heavily fenced police compound and began shouting. Someone threw stones on the roof. There were police wives and children in the dwellings, and a constable emerged with a shotgun. He fired into the air, and, soon after, the crowd dispersed. The next morning, ABC AM ran a one-sided report on the "riot", calling for all police in outback settlements to be issued with Armalite automatic rifles so they could defend their nearest and dearest when under attack. A score or so of people were charged over the disorder, and the matter came before the notorious Alice Springs magistrate, "Scrubby'' Hall. When the cop told of firing his shotgun in the air, Scrubby stopped him to ask why he didn't fire directly into the crowd. Scrubby was regularly given to giving vent to his prejudices, though usually they did not get anything like the circulation of the above instance. Some of his defenders insisted that his outbursts were teases of his lack of affection for what today might be called "woke" Southerners oozing sympathy for Aboriginal people or disapproval of how cops set out to handle Indigenous people. I never saw him engage his brain before opening his mouth. His usual habit if he realised that he had gone too far was not to apologise but to "row back", usually with an acquittal on some highly technical and seemingly invented ground, or with a sentence so mild that the defendant would have been mad to appeal. That way, it would not come up for critical comment from a higher court. It was not so easy when his words had sped down the overland telegraph. The federal attorney-general, Lionel Murphy, intervened in the case. Nothing that Murphy, or the Whitlam government, or any other person from Canberra has ever done since has had much effect on the culture of the NT Police Force or done much to prevent repeats of what became known as the "great Papunya massacre". Nor has it ever succeeded in affecting a prevailing culture of the white residents of the NT, many of whom, thanks to remoteness subsidies intended for the benefit of Indigenous residents, give non-Aboriginal residents one of the highest standards of government service in the world. This week saw the report of the coronial inquest into the death of Kumanjayi Walker - shot dead six years ago by Canberra's own Zachary Rolfe, who left Canberra Grammar for the army and Afghanistan, then joined the NT Police Force. Rolfe was acquitted when charged with murder, but the inquest, while not traversing the acquittal, investigated the circumstances and background. Almost every confrontation has caused police spokesmen to demand that NT police are better equipped to face their tormentors. The recent Walker inquest is almost unique in suggesting that police moving around in Aboriginal settlements should not carry guns. But it would be bound to face heavy resistance from the police union, which controls the asylum. More representative of the Rolfe-like factions than bush cops or enlightened ones, it tends to believe that it is only by the gun that the Indigenous residents are awed. Perhaps it is strange that Aboriginal deaths in custody are only rarely at the hands of locals. The trouble tends to come when outsiders, disrespecting the locals, come in to show them how it is done. Yet NT police are like most state - and AFP - officers, in being more and more armed than ever. They are dressed as paramilitary figures, with armour, gas, tasers and guns, and any number of vehicles looking like tanks. Cops are doing more driving and shouting than walking and talking. Police public relations agents speak of community policing even as fewer cops are to be seen in the community, and more and more involved in petty administration such as rosters and fudging public complaints. Police activity is these days more intrusive, and with increasingly scant regard for privacy and dignity or human rights. They are increasingly not "of" the community in any sense. This is as true in the NT as in the ACT, except that, if anything, NT police numbers are such that they command significant local political power and a craven press. And, usually, they are at the top of the anti-woke crowd. During the inquest, we were read Rolfe's emails in which he complains to family, girlfriends and colleagues about the failure of the NT police to accept his request to join the tactical response group, the unit which has a tendency to think of itself as a civilian SAS. Fitness, guts and martial spirit count for nothing, his superior tells him. Rolfe has been told that he needs more experience in working with Aboriginal people, particularly in rural settlements. But Rolfe despises cops working in settlements and thinks them lazy and unambitious. "The order of preference these days is blacks, chicks, gays and lazy f---s ... and then [you]," said a colleague of Rolfe's in a text message exchange. The attitudes of young cops are repugnant, even to other more reasonable cops who cannot seem to change the culture. But it reflects the attitudes of many young men and women (white men and women, that is) in the Alice Springs community. From about 15 minutes after they blow in - and about 80 per cent of white Territorians are blow-ins who weren't there 10 years ago, they inveigle against "Southerners" and folk in Canberra who reputedly have no idea of the privations they suffer. Chief of these is not remoteness, because the overwhelming proportion live in comfortable cities with schools and civic services of Canberra standard. It's the challenge of law and order coming from young Aboriginal men and women who have drifted into town but who do not find there comfortable accommodation, services or jobs. Mostly they hang around fringe camps and, when they can, and if they have the money, grog shops. Most would be better off, and in a less tumultuous environment, were they to remain in, or return to, settlements. But government, and boredom, is effectively pushing them out, in part by propagating the canard that welfare beneficiaries should go where the work is, and that Alice Springs is such a place. It isn't, at least for drifters without much education or experience. The lawlessness is obvious enough. It is the despair even of people well-disposed to Aboriginal people, and a substantial Aboriginal middle class, because it manifests itself in burglaries and theft, in fighting, and in young people drifting around the streets at all hours of the day or night. It is also manifest in drug and alcohol abuse, most of which, given the practical homelessness of many of the offenders, is in the street or on the riverbeds. It is, of course, also the despair of the police, white traders, and government officials, at all levels of government. In over 100 years of white settlement, non-Aboriginal culture has found itself unable to cope with the phenomenon and bereft of new ideas. They have tried curfews, originally requiring all Aboriginal people to be out of town at sundown, now reintroduced around grog laws and slightly more sophisticated. They have tried any number of welfare schemes, sports and other youth activity services, some of which alas, aggravate the lure of the city without adding much to its social capital. Most of all, they have tried the "firm hand", usually at the hands of the police. The NT is currently going through a law-and-order phase. The white electorate voted enthusiastically for a "do the crime, do the time" regime, even for juveniles, and has wound back the ages at which children are held criminally responsible. Over the past year, imprisonment rates, already among the highest and most shameful in the world, have virtually doubled, if with no discernible effect on obvious street crime. An enormous proportion of Aboriginal folk are behind bars for minor traffic crimes. Only a few years ago, the inadequacy of juvenile detention facilities was an international scandal and the subject of a royal commission. The government, and, it seems, most of the white population, have decided to give up on it: crowding and abuse in juvenile detention centres and jails is now manifestly worse than before. The coroner in the Walker inquest found that the NT police service was racist, sexist, and homophobic. It was also adept at evasiveness and avoiding accountability and responsibility. It had almost a reflex propensity to cover up misbehaviour by officers, and to look after mates, right or wrong. That tendency was balanced by considerable bitching and backstabbing, and failures of leadership and supervision by officers at the sergeant level. RELATED: Who is Zachary Rolfe: the story of the NT cop with prominent Canberra parents Had Rolfe been held accountable earlier in his career for his propensity to prefer violence as a solution, Walker's death at Yuendumu might not have occurred. Some of the internal police correspondence between senior police also suggested a culture of blame-shifting and attempts to limit the scope of the inquiry while always pretending to be entirely cooperative. Leaving Rolfe out of it, a number of very senior cops have, over recent years, been active in perverting the course of justice, and sometimes convicted of it. It is, in this, a semi-criminal organisation in urgent need of fundamental reform. Perhaps like the Australian Public Service after three years of half-hearted efforts to root out and punish the perversion of good administration of the Scott Morrison era. Or perhaps put another way, a fairly typical bureaucracy in which the control systems, such as the Australian Public Service Commission, have been a central and essential part of the mechanisms for keeping the public out of the loop about rorting and corruption in the system. MORE JACK WATERFORD: One must bear this in mind when considering the shocking findings of the coroner, Elisabeth Armitage. No one can be surprised at findings about many of the NT police members being systemically racist, sexist and homophobic, but the force is still treated with respect by politicians, and, usually, the media. The crisis of Aboriginal lawlessness - which generates the usual free pass for police misbehaviour - is real enough, but the reality of conditions under which police lawlessness and violence come into regular conflict with Aboriginal lawlessness and violence is too often overlooked. On balance, I am on the side of law and order, but they do carry a lot of lead in their saddle. There are noble NT cops, and people doing their best, particularly in Aboriginal communities, but the credit this deserves is undermined by the open contempt that many frontline cops have for the law. And many of those provide the political context for demands for "firm action". The primary industry in the NT is skimming off government grants for Indigenous services. Business is booming, not least from $4 billion the federal government is throwing at Aboriginal housing to be seen to be doing "something". So is money from programs intended to recreate Aboriginal-controlled services deliberately destroyed by governments, Liberal then Labor, from nearly 20 years ago. And, these days, as the extent of need for disability services is being understood, in rorting the NDIS scheme. As ever, most of the money being spent on Aboriginal welfare is going to white contractors and white public servants. But when the music stops, Aboriginal people cop the blame for being feckless and irresponsible, as if they wasted it themselves. It is always hard to compare the honesty and competence of the varieties of territorial government on offer. But a good many rate the nepotism, jobbery, and corruption of the current regime up there with champions of old, not least for the semi-Trumpian tendency of simply ignoring unpleasant information, acting without announcement and, as ever, blaming shortcomings on Canberra. Particularly pronounced, in both Labor and Liberal National Party governments, is the "Buggins's turn" philosophy by which successive regimes believe they have the right to throw out public servants regarded as the other side's mates and cronies and install instead one's own mates and cronies. This is always a sure guarantee that corruption is endemic. What is not happening is any external will to hold miscreants to account, particularly given the fact NT federal seats are marginal. To think it was only 40 years ago when a federal minister for finance, Peter Walsh, announced he had decided the cost of featherbedding the NT for endless uneconomic projects was greater than the political advantage of holding NT seats. It had to stop. It hasn't. In 1972, police at an Aboriginal settlement at Papunya, several hundred kilometres west of Alice Springs, closed down a travelling Slim Dusty concert after some of the young men somehow got access to alcohol and became drunk. Many in the crowd welcomed action against the drunks ruining the concert but resented the element of group punishment in having the concert abruptly stopped. Some, including some of the troublemakers, walked to the heavily fenced police compound and began shouting. Someone threw stones on the roof. There were police wives and children in the dwellings, and a constable emerged with a shotgun. He fired into the air, and, soon after, the crowd dispersed. The next morning, ABC AM ran a one-sided report on the "riot", calling for all police in outback settlements to be issued with Armalite automatic rifles so they could defend their nearest and dearest when under attack. A score or so of people were charged over the disorder, and the matter came before the notorious Alice Springs magistrate, "Scrubby'' Hall. When the cop told of firing his shotgun in the air, Scrubby stopped him to ask why he didn't fire directly into the crowd. Scrubby was regularly given to giving vent to his prejudices, though usually they did not get anything like the circulation of the above instance. Some of his defenders insisted that his outbursts were teases of his lack of affection for what today might be called "woke" Southerners oozing sympathy for Aboriginal people or disapproval of how cops set out to handle Indigenous people. I never saw him engage his brain before opening his mouth. His usual habit if he realised that he had gone too far was not to apologise but to "row back", usually with an acquittal on some highly technical and seemingly invented ground, or with a sentence so mild that the defendant would have been mad to appeal. That way, it would not come up for critical comment from a higher court. It was not so easy when his words had sped down the overland telegraph. The federal attorney-general, Lionel Murphy, intervened in the case. Nothing that Murphy, or the Whitlam government, or any other person from Canberra has ever done since has had much effect on the culture of the NT Police Force or done much to prevent repeats of what became known as the "great Papunya massacre". Nor has it ever succeeded in affecting a prevailing culture of the white residents of the NT, many of whom, thanks to remoteness subsidies intended for the benefit of Indigenous residents, give non-Aboriginal residents one of the highest standards of government service in the world. This week saw the report of the coronial inquest into the death of Kumanjayi Walker - shot dead six years ago by Canberra's own Zachary Rolfe, who left Canberra Grammar for the army and Afghanistan, then joined the NT Police Force. Rolfe was acquitted when charged with murder, but the inquest, while not traversing the acquittal, investigated the circumstances and background. Almost every confrontation has caused police spokesmen to demand that NT police are better equipped to face their tormentors. The recent Walker inquest is almost unique in suggesting that police moving around in Aboriginal settlements should not carry guns. But it would be bound to face heavy resistance from the police union, which controls the asylum. More representative of the Rolfe-like factions than bush cops or enlightened ones, it tends to believe that it is only by the gun that the Indigenous residents are awed. Perhaps it is strange that Aboriginal deaths in custody are only rarely at the hands of locals. The trouble tends to come when outsiders, disrespecting the locals, come in to show them how it is done. Yet NT police are like most state - and AFP - officers, in being more and more armed than ever. They are dressed as paramilitary figures, with armour, gas, tasers and guns, and any number of vehicles looking like tanks. Cops are doing more driving and shouting than walking and talking. Police public relations agents speak of community policing even as fewer cops are to be seen in the community, and more and more involved in petty administration such as rosters and fudging public complaints. Police activity is these days more intrusive, and with increasingly scant regard for privacy and dignity or human rights. They are increasingly not "of" the community in any sense. This is as true in the NT as in the ACT, except that, if anything, NT police numbers are such that they command significant local political power and a craven press. And, usually, they are at the top of the anti-woke crowd. During the inquest, we were read Rolfe's emails in which he complains to family, girlfriends and colleagues about the failure of the NT police to accept his request to join the tactical response group, the unit which has a tendency to think of itself as a civilian SAS. Fitness, guts and martial spirit count for nothing, his superior tells him. Rolfe has been told that he needs more experience in working with Aboriginal people, particularly in rural settlements. But Rolfe despises cops working in settlements and thinks them lazy and unambitious. "The order of preference these days is blacks, chicks, gays and lazy f---s ... and then [you]," said a colleague of Rolfe's in a text message exchange. The attitudes of young cops are repugnant, even to other more reasonable cops who cannot seem to change the culture. But it reflects the attitudes of many young men and women (white men and women, that is) in the Alice Springs community. From about 15 minutes after they blow in - and about 80 per cent of white Territorians are blow-ins who weren't there 10 years ago, they inveigle against "Southerners" and folk in Canberra who reputedly have no idea of the privations they suffer. Chief of these is not remoteness, because the overwhelming proportion live in comfortable cities with schools and civic services of Canberra standard. It's the challenge of law and order coming from young Aboriginal men and women who have drifted into town but who do not find there comfortable accommodation, services or jobs. Mostly they hang around fringe camps and, when they can, and if they have the money, grog shops. Most would be better off, and in a less tumultuous environment, were they to remain in, or return to, settlements. But government, and boredom, is effectively pushing them out, in part by propagating the canard that welfare beneficiaries should go where the work is, and that Alice Springs is such a place. It isn't, at least for drifters without much education or experience. The lawlessness is obvious enough. It is the despair even of people well-disposed to Aboriginal people, and a substantial Aboriginal middle class, because it manifests itself in burglaries and theft, in fighting, and in young people drifting around the streets at all hours of the day or night. It is also manifest in drug and alcohol abuse, most of which, given the practical homelessness of many of the offenders, is in the street or on the riverbeds. It is, of course, also the despair of the police, white traders, and government officials, at all levels of government. In over 100 years of white settlement, non-Aboriginal culture has found itself unable to cope with the phenomenon and bereft of new ideas. They have tried curfews, originally requiring all Aboriginal people to be out of town at sundown, now reintroduced around grog laws and slightly more sophisticated. They have tried any number of welfare schemes, sports and other youth activity services, some of which alas, aggravate the lure of the city without adding much to its social capital. Most of all, they have tried the "firm hand", usually at the hands of the police. The NT is currently going through a law-and-order phase. The white electorate voted enthusiastically for a "do the crime, do the time" regime, even for juveniles, and has wound back the ages at which children are held criminally responsible. Over the past year, imprisonment rates, already among the highest and most shameful in the world, have virtually doubled, if with no discernible effect on obvious street crime. An enormous proportion of Aboriginal folk are behind bars for minor traffic crimes. Only a few years ago, the inadequacy of juvenile detention facilities was an international scandal and the subject of a royal commission. The government, and, it seems, most of the white population, have decided to give up on it: crowding and abuse in juvenile detention centres and jails is now manifestly worse than before. The coroner in the Walker inquest found that the NT police service was racist, sexist, and homophobic. It was also adept at evasiveness and avoiding accountability and responsibility. It had almost a reflex propensity to cover up misbehaviour by officers, and to look after mates, right or wrong. That tendency was balanced by considerable bitching and backstabbing, and failures of leadership and supervision by officers at the sergeant level. RELATED: Who is Zachary Rolfe: the story of the NT cop with prominent Canberra parents Had Rolfe been held accountable earlier in his career for his propensity to prefer violence as a solution, Walker's death at Yuendumu might not have occurred. Some of the internal police correspondence between senior police also suggested a culture of blame-shifting and attempts to limit the scope of the inquiry while always pretending to be entirely cooperative. Leaving Rolfe out of it, a number of very senior cops have, over recent years, been active in perverting the course of justice, and sometimes convicted of it. It is, in this, a semi-criminal organisation in urgent need of fundamental reform. Perhaps like the Australian Public Service after three years of half-hearted efforts to root out and punish the perversion of good administration of the Scott Morrison era. Or perhaps put another way, a fairly typical bureaucracy in which the control systems, such as the Australian Public Service Commission, have been a central and essential part of the mechanisms for keeping the public out of the loop about rorting and corruption in the system. MORE JACK WATERFORD: One must bear this in mind when considering the shocking findings of the coroner, Elisabeth Armitage. No one can be surprised at findings about many of the NT police members being systemically racist, sexist and homophobic, but the force is still treated with respect by politicians, and, usually, the media. The crisis of Aboriginal lawlessness - which generates the usual free pass for police misbehaviour - is real enough, but the reality of conditions under which police lawlessness and violence come into regular conflict with Aboriginal lawlessness and violence is too often overlooked. On balance, I am on the side of law and order, but they do carry a lot of lead in their saddle. There are noble NT cops, and people doing their best, particularly in Aboriginal communities, but the credit this deserves is undermined by the open contempt that many frontline cops have for the law. And many of those provide the political context for demands for "firm action". The primary industry in the NT is skimming off government grants for Indigenous services. Business is booming, not least from $4 billion the federal government is throwing at Aboriginal housing to be seen to be doing "something". So is money from programs intended to recreate Aboriginal-controlled services deliberately destroyed by governments, Liberal then Labor, from nearly 20 years ago. And, these days, as the extent of need for disability services is being understood, in rorting the NDIS scheme. As ever, most of the money being spent on Aboriginal welfare is going to white contractors and white public servants. But when the music stops, Aboriginal people cop the blame for being feckless and irresponsible, as if they wasted it themselves. It is always hard to compare the honesty and competence of the varieties of territorial government on offer. But a good many rate the nepotism, jobbery, and corruption of the current regime up there with champions of old, not least for the semi-Trumpian tendency of simply ignoring unpleasant information, acting without announcement and, as ever, blaming shortcomings on Canberra. Particularly pronounced, in both Labor and Liberal National Party governments, is the "Buggins's turn" philosophy by which successive regimes believe they have the right to throw out public servants regarded as the other side's mates and cronies and install instead one's own mates and cronies. This is always a sure guarantee that corruption is endemic. What is not happening is any external will to hold miscreants to account, particularly given the fact NT federal seats are marginal. To think it was only 40 years ago when a federal minister for finance, Peter Walsh, announced he had decided the cost of featherbedding the NT for endless uneconomic projects was greater than the political advantage of holding NT seats. It had to stop. It hasn't. In 1972, police at an Aboriginal settlement at Papunya, several hundred kilometres west of Alice Springs, closed down a travelling Slim Dusty concert after some of the young men somehow got access to alcohol and became drunk. Many in the crowd welcomed action against the drunks ruining the concert but resented the element of group punishment in having the concert abruptly stopped. Some, including some of the troublemakers, walked to the heavily fenced police compound and began shouting. Someone threw stones on the roof. There were police wives and children in the dwellings, and a constable emerged with a shotgun. He fired into the air, and, soon after, the crowd dispersed. The next morning, ABC AM ran a one-sided report on the "riot", calling for all police in outback settlements to be issued with Armalite automatic rifles so they could defend their nearest and dearest when under attack. A score or so of people were charged over the disorder, and the matter came before the notorious Alice Springs magistrate, "Scrubby'' Hall. When the cop told of firing his shotgun in the air, Scrubby stopped him to ask why he didn't fire directly into the crowd. Scrubby was regularly given to giving vent to his prejudices, though usually they did not get anything like the circulation of the above instance. Some of his defenders insisted that his outbursts were teases of his lack of affection for what today might be called "woke" Southerners oozing sympathy for Aboriginal people or disapproval of how cops set out to handle Indigenous people. I never saw him engage his brain before opening his mouth. His usual habit if he realised that he had gone too far was not to apologise but to "row back", usually with an acquittal on some highly technical and seemingly invented ground, or with a sentence so mild that the defendant would have been mad to appeal. That way, it would not come up for critical comment from a higher court. It was not so easy when his words had sped down the overland telegraph. The federal attorney-general, Lionel Murphy, intervened in the case. Nothing that Murphy, or the Whitlam government, or any other person from Canberra has ever done since has had much effect on the culture of the NT Police Force or done much to prevent repeats of what became known as the "great Papunya massacre". Nor has it ever succeeded in affecting a prevailing culture of the white residents of the NT, many of whom, thanks to remoteness subsidies intended for the benefit of Indigenous residents, give non-Aboriginal residents one of the highest standards of government service in the world. This week saw the report of the coronial inquest into the death of Kumanjayi Walker - shot dead six years ago by Canberra's own Zachary Rolfe, who left Canberra Grammar for the army and Afghanistan, then joined the NT Police Force. Rolfe was acquitted when charged with murder, but the inquest, while not traversing the acquittal, investigated the circumstances and background. Almost every confrontation has caused police spokesmen to demand that NT police are better equipped to face their tormentors. The recent Walker inquest is almost unique in suggesting that police moving around in Aboriginal settlements should not carry guns. But it would be bound to face heavy resistance from the police union, which controls the asylum. More representative of the Rolfe-like factions than bush cops or enlightened ones, it tends to believe that it is only by the gun that the Indigenous residents are awed. Perhaps it is strange that Aboriginal deaths in custody are only rarely at the hands of locals. The trouble tends to come when outsiders, disrespecting the locals, come in to show them how it is done. Yet NT police are like most state - and AFP - officers, in being more and more armed than ever. They are dressed as paramilitary figures, with armour, gas, tasers and guns, and any number of vehicles looking like tanks. Cops are doing more driving and shouting than walking and talking. Police public relations agents speak of community policing even as fewer cops are to be seen in the community, and more and more involved in petty administration such as rosters and fudging public complaints. Police activity is these days more intrusive, and with increasingly scant regard for privacy and dignity or human rights. They are increasingly not "of" the community in any sense. This is as true in the NT as in the ACT, except that, if anything, NT police numbers are such that they command significant local political power and a craven press. And, usually, they are at the top of the anti-woke crowd. During the inquest, we were read Rolfe's emails in which he complains to family, girlfriends and colleagues about the failure of the NT police to accept his request to join the tactical response group, the unit which has a tendency to think of itself as a civilian SAS. Fitness, guts and martial spirit count for nothing, his superior tells him. Rolfe has been told that he needs more experience in working with Aboriginal people, particularly in rural settlements. But Rolfe despises cops working in settlements and thinks them lazy and unambitious. "The order of preference these days is blacks, chicks, gays and lazy f---s ... and then [you]," said a colleague of Rolfe's in a text message exchange. The attitudes of young cops are repugnant, even to other more reasonable cops who cannot seem to change the culture. But it reflects the attitudes of many young men and women (white men and women, that is) in the Alice Springs community. From about 15 minutes after they blow in - and about 80 per cent of white Territorians are blow-ins who weren't there 10 years ago, they inveigle against "Southerners" and folk in Canberra who reputedly have no idea of the privations they suffer. Chief of these is not remoteness, because the overwhelming proportion live in comfortable cities with schools and civic services of Canberra standard. It's the challenge of law and order coming from young Aboriginal men and women who have drifted into town but who do not find there comfortable accommodation, services or jobs. Mostly they hang around fringe camps and, when they can, and if they have the money, grog shops. Most would be better off, and in a less tumultuous environment, were they to remain in, or return to, settlements. But government, and boredom, is effectively pushing them out, in part by propagating the canard that welfare beneficiaries should go where the work is, and that Alice Springs is such a place. It isn't, at least for drifters without much education or experience. The lawlessness is obvious enough. It is the despair even of people well-disposed to Aboriginal people, and a substantial Aboriginal middle class, because it manifests itself in burglaries and theft, in fighting, and in young people drifting around the streets at all hours of the day or night. It is also manifest in drug and alcohol abuse, most of which, given the practical homelessness of many of the offenders, is in the street or on the riverbeds. It is, of course, also the despair of the police, white traders, and government officials, at all levels of government. In over 100 years of white settlement, non-Aboriginal culture has found itself unable to cope with the phenomenon and bereft of new ideas. They have tried curfews, originally requiring all Aboriginal people to be out of town at sundown, now reintroduced around grog laws and slightly more sophisticated. They have tried any number of welfare schemes, sports and other youth activity services, some of which alas, aggravate the lure of the city without adding much to its social capital. Most of all, they have tried the "firm hand", usually at the hands of the police. The NT is currently going through a law-and-order phase. The white electorate voted enthusiastically for a "do the crime, do the time" regime, even for juveniles, and has wound back the ages at which children are held criminally responsible. Over the past year, imprisonment rates, already among the highest and most shameful in the world, have virtually doubled, if with no discernible effect on obvious street crime. An enormous proportion of Aboriginal folk are behind bars for minor traffic crimes. Only a few years ago, the inadequacy of juvenile detention facilities was an international scandal and the subject of a royal commission. The government, and, it seems, most of the white population, have decided to give up on it: crowding and abuse in juvenile detention centres and jails is now manifestly worse than before. The coroner in the Walker inquest found that the NT police service was racist, sexist, and homophobic. It was also adept at evasiveness and avoiding accountability and responsibility. It had almost a reflex propensity to cover up misbehaviour by officers, and to look after mates, right or wrong. That tendency was balanced by considerable bitching and backstabbing, and failures of leadership and supervision by officers at the sergeant level. RELATED: Who is Zachary Rolfe: the story of the NT cop with prominent Canberra parents Had Rolfe been held accountable earlier in his career for his propensity to prefer violence as a solution, Walker's death at Yuendumu might not have occurred. Some of the internal police correspondence between senior police also suggested a culture of blame-shifting and attempts to limit the scope of the inquiry while always pretending to be entirely cooperative. Leaving Rolfe out of it, a number of very senior cops have, over recent years, been active in perverting the course of justice, and sometimes convicted of it. It is, in this, a semi-criminal organisation in urgent need of fundamental reform. Perhaps like the Australian Public Service after three years of half-hearted efforts to root out and punish the perversion of good administration of the Scott Morrison era. Or perhaps put another way, a fairly typical bureaucracy in which the control systems, such as the Australian Public Service Commission, have been a central and essential part of the mechanisms for keeping the public out of the loop about rorting and corruption in the system. MORE JACK WATERFORD: One must bear this in mind when considering the shocking findings of the coroner, Elisabeth Armitage. No one can be surprised at findings about many of the NT police members being systemically racist, sexist and homophobic, but the force is still treated with respect by politicians, and, usually, the media. The crisis of Aboriginal lawlessness - which generates the usual free pass for police misbehaviour - is real enough, but the reality of conditions under which police lawlessness and violence come into regular conflict with Aboriginal lawlessness and violence is too often overlooked. On balance, I am on the side of law and order, but they do carry a lot of lead in their saddle. There are noble NT cops, and people doing their best, particularly in Aboriginal communities, but the credit this deserves is undermined by the open contempt that many frontline cops have for the law. And many of those provide the political context for demands for "firm action". The primary industry in the NT is skimming off government grants for Indigenous services. Business is booming, not least from $4 billion the federal government is throwing at Aboriginal housing to be seen to be doing "something". So is money from programs intended to recreate Aboriginal-controlled services deliberately destroyed by governments, Liberal then Labor, from nearly 20 years ago. And, these days, as the extent of need for disability services is being understood, in rorting the NDIS scheme. As ever, most of the money being spent on Aboriginal welfare is going to white contractors and white public servants. But when the music stops, Aboriginal people cop the blame for being feckless and irresponsible, as if they wasted it themselves. It is always hard to compare the honesty and competence of the varieties of territorial government on offer. But a good many rate the nepotism, jobbery, and corruption of the current regime up there with champions of old, not least for the semi-Trumpian tendency of simply ignoring unpleasant information, acting without announcement and, as ever, blaming shortcomings on Canberra. Particularly pronounced, in both Labor and Liberal National Party governments, is the "Buggins's turn" philosophy by which successive regimes believe they have the right to throw out public servants regarded as the other side's mates and cronies and install instead one's own mates and cronies. This is always a sure guarantee that corruption is endemic. What is not happening is any external will to hold miscreants to account, particularly given the fact NT federal seats are marginal. To think it was only 40 years ago when a federal minister for finance, Peter Walsh, announced he had decided the cost of featherbedding the NT for endless uneconomic projects was greater than the political advantage of holding NT seats. It had to stop. It hasn't. In 1972, police at an Aboriginal settlement at Papunya, several hundred kilometres west of Alice Springs, closed down a travelling Slim Dusty concert after some of the young men somehow got access to alcohol and became drunk. Many in the crowd welcomed action against the drunks ruining the concert but resented the element of group punishment in having the concert abruptly stopped. Some, including some of the troublemakers, walked to the heavily fenced police compound and began shouting. Someone threw stones on the roof. There were police wives and children in the dwellings, and a constable emerged with a shotgun. He fired into the air, and, soon after, the crowd dispersed. The next morning, ABC AM ran a one-sided report on the "riot", calling for all police in outback settlements to be issued with Armalite automatic rifles so they could defend their nearest and dearest when under attack. A score or so of people were charged over the disorder, and the matter came before the notorious Alice Springs magistrate, "Scrubby'' Hall. When the cop told of firing his shotgun in the air, Scrubby stopped him to ask why he didn't fire directly into the crowd. Scrubby was regularly given to giving vent to his prejudices, though usually they did not get anything like the circulation of the above instance. Some of his defenders insisted that his outbursts were teases of his lack of affection for what today might be called "woke" Southerners oozing sympathy for Aboriginal people or disapproval of how cops set out to handle Indigenous people. I never saw him engage his brain before opening his mouth. His usual habit if he realised that he had gone too far was not to apologise but to "row back", usually with an acquittal on some highly technical and seemingly invented ground, or with a sentence so mild that the defendant would have been mad to appeal. That way, it would not come up for critical comment from a higher court. It was not so easy when his words had sped down the overland telegraph. The federal attorney-general, Lionel Murphy, intervened in the case. Nothing that Murphy, or the Whitlam government, or any other person from Canberra has ever done since has had much effect on the culture of the NT Police Force or done much to prevent repeats of what became known as the "great Papunya massacre". Nor has it ever succeeded in affecting a prevailing culture of the white residents of the NT, many of whom, thanks to remoteness subsidies intended for the benefit of Indigenous residents, give non-Aboriginal residents one of the highest standards of government service in the world. This week saw the report of the coronial inquest into the death of Kumanjayi Walker - shot dead six years ago by Canberra's own Zachary Rolfe, who left Canberra Grammar for the army and Afghanistan, then joined the NT Police Force. Rolfe was acquitted when charged with murder, but the inquest, while not traversing the acquittal, investigated the circumstances and background. Almost every confrontation has caused police spokesmen to demand that NT police are better equipped to face their tormentors. The recent Walker inquest is almost unique in suggesting that police moving around in Aboriginal settlements should not carry guns. But it would be bound to face heavy resistance from the police union, which controls the asylum. More representative of the Rolfe-like factions than bush cops or enlightened ones, it tends to believe that it is only by the gun that the Indigenous residents are awed. Perhaps it is strange that Aboriginal deaths in custody are only rarely at the hands of locals. The trouble tends to come when outsiders, disrespecting the locals, come in to show them how it is done. Yet NT police are like most state - and AFP - officers, in being more and more armed than ever. They are dressed as paramilitary figures, with armour, gas, tasers and guns, and any number of vehicles looking like tanks. Cops are doing more driving and shouting than walking and talking. Police public relations agents speak of community policing even as fewer cops are to be seen in the community, and more and more involved in petty administration such as rosters and fudging public complaints. Police activity is these days more intrusive, and with increasingly scant regard for privacy and dignity or human rights. They are increasingly not "of" the community in any sense. This is as true in the NT as in the ACT, except that, if anything, NT police numbers are such that they command significant local political power and a craven press. And, usually, they are at the top of the anti-woke crowd. During the inquest, we were read Rolfe's emails in which he complains to family, girlfriends and colleagues about the failure of the NT police to accept his request to join the tactical response group, the unit which has a tendency to think of itself as a civilian SAS. Fitness, guts and martial spirit count for nothing, his superior tells him. Rolfe has been told that he needs more experience in working with Aboriginal people, particularly in rural settlements. But Rolfe despises cops working in settlements and thinks them lazy and unambitious. "The order of preference these days is blacks, chicks, gays and lazy f---s ... and then [you]," said a colleague of Rolfe's in a text message exchange. The attitudes of young cops are repugnant, even to other more reasonable cops who cannot seem to change the culture. But it reflects the attitudes of many young men and women (white men and women, that is) in the Alice Springs community. From about 15 minutes after they blow in - and about 80 per cent of white Territorians are blow-ins who weren't there 10 years ago, they inveigle against "Southerners" and folk in Canberra who reputedly have no idea of the privations they suffer. Chief of these is not remoteness, because the overwhelming proportion live in comfortable cities with schools and civic services of Canberra standard. It's the challenge of law and order coming from young Aboriginal men and women who have drifted into town but who do not find there comfortable accommodation, services or jobs. Mostly they hang around fringe camps and, when they can, and if they have the money, grog shops. Most would be better off, and in a less tumultuous environment, were they to remain in, or return to, settlements. But government, and boredom, is effectively pushing them out, in part by propagating the canard that welfare beneficiaries should go where the work is, and that Alice Springs is such a place. It isn't, at least for drifters without much education or experience. The lawlessness is obvious enough. It is the despair even of people well-disposed to Aboriginal people, and a substantial Aboriginal middle class, because it manifests itself in burglaries and theft, in fighting, and in young people drifting around the streets at all hours of the day or night. It is also manifest in drug and alcohol abuse, most of which, given the practical homelessness of many of the offenders, is in the street or on the riverbeds. It is, of course, also the despair of the police, white traders, and government officials, at all levels of government. In over 100 years of white settlement, non-Aboriginal culture has found itself unable to cope with the phenomenon and bereft of new ideas. They have tried curfews, originally requiring all Aboriginal people to be out of town at sundown, now reintroduced around grog laws and slightly more sophisticated. They have tried any number of welfare schemes, sports and other youth activity services, some of which alas, aggravate the lure of the city without adding much to its social capital. Most of all, they have tried the "firm hand", usually at the hands of the police. The NT is currently going through a law-and-order phase. The white electorate voted enthusiastically for a "do the crime, do the time" regime, even for juveniles, and has wound back the ages at which children are held criminally responsible. Over the past year, imprisonment rates, already among the highest and most shameful in the world, have virtually doubled, if with no discernible effect on obvious street crime. An enormous proportion of Aboriginal folk are behind bars for minor traffic crimes. Only a few years ago, the inadequacy of juvenile detention facilities was an international scandal and the subject of a royal commission. The government, and, it seems, most of the white population, have decided to give up on it: crowding and abuse in juvenile detention centres and jails is now manifestly worse than before. The coroner in the Walker inquest found that the NT police service was racist, sexist, and homophobic. It was also adept at evasiveness and avoiding accountability and responsibility. It had almost a reflex propensity to cover up misbehaviour by officers, and to look after mates, right or wrong. That tendency was balanced by considerable bitching and backstabbing, and failures of leadership and supervision by officers at the sergeant level. RELATED: Who is Zachary Rolfe: the story of the NT cop with prominent Canberra parents Had Rolfe been held accountable earlier in his career for his propensity to prefer violence as a solution, Walker's death at Yuendumu might not have occurred. Some of the internal police correspondence between senior police also suggested a culture of blame-shifting and attempts to limit the scope of the inquiry while always pretending to be entirely cooperative. Leaving Rolfe out of it, a number of very senior cops have, over recent years, been active in perverting the course of justice, and sometimes convicted of it. It is, in this, a semi-criminal organisation in urgent need of fundamental reform. Perhaps like the Australian Public Service after three years of half-hearted efforts to root out and punish the perversion of good administration of the Scott Morrison era. Or perhaps put another way, a fairly typical bureaucracy in which the control systems, such as the Australian Public Service Commission, have been a central and essential part of the mechanisms for keeping the public out of the loop about rorting and corruption in the system. MORE JACK WATERFORD: One must bear this in mind when considering the shocking findings of the coroner, Elisabeth Armitage. No one can be surprised at findings about many of the NT police members being systemically racist, sexist and homophobic, but the force is still treated with respect by politicians, and, usually, the media. The crisis of Aboriginal lawlessness - which generates the usual free pass for police misbehaviour - is real enough, but the reality of conditions under which police lawlessness and violence come into regular conflict with Aboriginal lawlessness and violence is too often overlooked. On balance, I am on the side of law and order, but they do carry a lot of lead in their saddle. There are noble NT cops, and people doing their best, particularly in Aboriginal communities, but the credit this deserves is undermined by the open contempt that many frontline cops have for the law. And many of those provide the political context for demands for "firm action". The primary industry in the NT is skimming off government grants for Indigenous services. Business is booming, not least from $4 billion the federal government is throwing at Aboriginal housing to be seen to be doing "something". So is money from programs intended to recreate Aboriginal-controlled services deliberately destroyed by governments, Liberal then Labor, from nearly 20 years ago. And, these days, as the extent of need for disability services is being understood, in rorting the NDIS scheme. As ever, most of the money being spent on Aboriginal welfare is going to white contractors and white public servants. But when the music stops, Aboriginal people cop the blame for being feckless and irresponsible, as if they wasted it themselves. It is always hard to compare the honesty and competence of the varieties of territorial government on offer. But a good many rate the nepotism, jobbery, and corruption of the current regime up there with champions of old, not least for the semi-Trumpian tendency of simply ignoring unpleasant information, acting without announcement and, as ever, blaming shortcomings on Canberra. Particularly pronounced, in both Labor and Liberal National Party governments, is the "Buggins's turn" philosophy by which successive regimes believe they have the right to throw out public servants regarded as the other side's mates and cronies and install instead one's own mates and cronies. This is always a sure guarantee that corruption is endemic. What is not happening is any external will to hold miscreants to account, particularly given the fact NT federal seats are marginal. To think it was only 40 years ago when a federal minister for finance, Peter Walsh, announced he had decided the cost of featherbedding the NT for endless uneconomic projects was greater than the political advantage of holding NT seats. It had to stop. It hasn't.
The Australian
02-05-2025
- Politics
- The Australian
Australian election 2025: Albanese, Dutton on final day of campaigning before Saturday's election
Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton are leaving nothing to chance as they fight for votes on the final day of campaigning ahead of Saturday's election. The polls are showing Labor is likely to be returned for a second term. But both leaders have invoked the 2019 election result when then prime minister Scott Morrison scored a shock victory over Bill Shorten despite polls showing Labor was in the box seat. 'Well, we'll wait and see, but I certainly take nothing for granted,' the Prime Minister told ABC AM. 'I think 2019 shows the folly of pretending that you know the outcome of an election before the ballots are counted.' Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton will finally face the voters on Saturday after 35 days of election campaigning. Picture: NewsWire The Opposition Leader says he remains confident he can lead the Coalition to a win. 'I think we're in for the fight of our lives, because if you look at the seat by seat analysis, there's no doubt in my mind that we can win this election,' he told ABC AM. 'I think we're seeing a 2019 situation where you've got a lot of interesting contests playing on the ground, where we've had significant efforts by great candidates. 'I think there will be some big surprises on election night.' Mr Albanese is aiming to become the first prime minister since John Howard to win back-to-back elections, while Mr Dutton wants to make history of his own by defeating a first-term government. Going into Saturday's election, Labor holds a notional 78 seats in Australia's 150-seat parliament and the Coalition a notional 57 seats. Peter Dutton held a supporters rally in electorate of Sturt in Adelaide on Thursday. Picture: Adam Head / NewsWire Anthony Albanese, drinking an iconic South Australian dairy drink, was at a TAFE in Tonsley, in the electorate of Boothby on Thursday. Picture: Jason Edwards / NewsWire Record number have voted already Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton are setting a frantic pace on Friday to woo voters, but nearly 40 per cent of Australian voters have already cast their ballot already. A record 5.7 million of the 18.1 million people enrolled to vote in Saturday's election have been to one of 7000 early voting centres to cast a pre-poll ballot, the Australian Election Commission says. Another 152,000 had cast a vote via one of the commission's special or remote booths while 1.1 million postal votes have already been returned. Overseas voting centres have also been busy, with nearly 42,000 Australians lining up to have their say on the election. Early voting starts two weeks before polling day, but this year the period was shortened with public holidays on Easter Monday and Anzac Day. The early polling booths have done big business in that time, with hundreds queuing up – and braving the dozens of volunteers handing out how to vote cards. People have been queuing up to be able to cast their votes before Saturday. Picture: NewsWire / John Gass There have also been some incidents outside booths, but the AEC acting commissioner Jeff Pope says most people have been well behaved. 'We're all seeing isolated incidents … where we have to call police and we are incredibly disappointed by some of that behaviour, and we will continue to call the police,' Mr Pope told RN Breakfast. 'We will continue to pull whatever levers we possibly can to try, and to try and make this the best voting experience for the voter. That's what this is all about.' The AEC is expecting another busy day at pre-polling centres on Friday before they close at 6pm local time. 'Still more than 10 million people needing to vote,' the AEC posted on X. Voting is compulsory in Australia and those enrolled who don't face a fine. Full voting starts across the country on Saturday at 8am local time before closing at 6pm with counting to finally start after five weeks of campaigning. Albo's eight word pitch to voters: 'Aussies deserve better' Anthony Albanese has given his final press conference before polling day which saw some classic moves from the Prime Minister – including a brief flash of his Medicare card. But he ended on eight words: 'Australia deserves better and I'll give them better'. He also sharpened his attack on the opposition and Peter Dutton. 'My opponent is fearful of the present and petrified of the future. The world changes,' Mr Albanese said while campaigning in the Brisbane seat of Longman. Anthony Albanese took his final day campaigning to a Medicare Urgent Care Clinic in the LNP-held seat of Longman with Labor candidate Rhiannyn Douglas (left). Picture: Jason Edwards / NewsWire 'Government is serious. It makes a difference to people's lives,' he said. 'I mean, these people are just not ready. They are just not ready for government. Australia deserves better and I'll give them better.' Mr Albanese also said the former Coalition government he defeated in 2022 had done 'bugger all' to address energy security, and said they would 'gut' funding to education. 'How do you get rid of paid prep for teachers and nurses? How on earth do you go to an election saying that?' Albo's 'objective' to maintain 78 seats Anthony Albanese says Labor still 'has a mountain to climb' to win a second term at Saturday's federal election. Polling released throughout the campaign has consistently showed Labor is in reach of securing a minority government, if not a majority, in the 150-seat parliament. 'On polls, there's a lot of undecided voters … No-one's (prime minister) been re-elected since 2004,' he said. 'I don't take the Australian people for granted. I'm working my guts out to ensure there's a majority government tomorrow.' Anthony Albanese says he is aiming for a majority Labor victory in Saturday's federal election. Picture: Jason Edwards / NewsWire (John Howard was the last Australian prime minister to win an election when he defeated then-Labor leader Mark Latham to win a third term in 2004. He lost the 2007 election – and his own seat of Bennelong – to Kevin Rudd.) However he said Labor was 'striving for majority'. 'I don't want to lose any seats. Obviously, we're on 78 at the moment. That's my objective,' he said. 'My job is to maximise Labor's vote in the next 48 hours. That's what I'm intending to do.' Mr Albanese remained quiet on doing deals with what is expected to again be an extensive crossbench, although has ruled out throughout the campaign of doing a deal with the Greens. When pushed on if he would do any deals, the Prime Minister responded: 'I've made that clear. I refer to my previous 57 comments, to the 57 times I've been asked that question.' Albo's sneaky drop in on Dutton's seat Anthony Albanese has returned to where he began the 2025 election campaign, making a lightning quick stop in Peter Dutton's seat of Dickson. Mr Dutton holds the marginal seat with a slender margin of 1.7 per cent and Labor has talked up its chances of winning the seat for years. The ALP last held Dickson in 2001 when its star recruit, Cheryl Kernot, was bested by Mr Dutton. Anthony Albanese dropped in on Dickson candidate Ali France's campaign headquarters in Brisbane, with Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles. Picture: Jason Edwards / NewsWire This time around Ali France, at her third attempt, is trying to defeat the Opposition Leader. Friday morning's visit was a relatively low key, with Mr Albanese, deputy prime minister Richard Marles and Ms France thanking volunteers in her campaign office for their hard work during a 10-minute visit. Mr Albanese was greeted by about 15 volunteers, some of whom pulled out their Medicare card and waved it at the PM as soon as he walked in. 'You've got your Medicare card? I have to!' Albanese joked, pulling out his card. Anthony Albanese and Ali France volunteers got out their Medicare cards during a stop at Ms France's campaign headquarters in Dickson. Picture: Jason Edwards / NewsWire Ms France told the volunteers 'there are only two days to go and it has been a massive team effort here in Dickson and we're so close … after seven years of constant campaigning we are finally in the home straight'. Mr Albanese endorsed Ms France's campaign, saying Dickson 'needs someone passionate about their local community'. 'Peter Dutton tried to run for preselection down in Macpherson (on the Gold Coast) all those years ago … at the beginning of this campaign he said that he would move to Kirribilli House, not to the Lodge,' Mr Albanese said. 'That says a lot about Queenslander saying they wanted to move to Sydney, rather than to where their actual job is located, which is in Canberra. 'We're backing Australia's public servants, he is sacking Australia's public servants … during the flood events just a short while ago, it was those workers in Services Australia here on the ground making a difference.' Later, Ms France said that a number of Liberal voters had told her on pre-polls that they would switch their vote to Labor because of the Coalition's nuclear power policy. The fact that Albanese and his team are thanking volunteers at Ms France's campaign office – rather than being out and about talking to voters in Dickson – suggests perhaps Labor strategists think their candidate will fall just short. – James Massola/ Pool PM's brutal dig to shadow cabinet Anthony Albanese was also asked which Coalition front bencher gave him 'the most trepidation,' and delivered a scathing dig to the opposition. 'I think one of the issues with this campaign is the fact that they've had to hide people who are senior shadow ministers,' he said. 'There are people who sit on their front bench, and I frankly, shake my head at what their portfolios are. 'There are shadow ministers (where) I have no idea what their job is. No idea because you never hear from them. They haven't been seen in this campaign.' Dutton says he's 'not focused on losing' Peter Dutton has been quizzed on 'what's gone wrong' with his campaign, given the polls indicate Labor could be returned to government with a majority. In an interview on ABC Radio's AM, presenter Sabra Lane brought up 'criticism within your own party already that policies were not up to scratch, and that you personally have not performed well'. Mr Dutton invoked the shock 2019 election, won unexpectedly by then prime minister Scott Morrison, saying that 'quiet Australians went to the polling booth and said, 'I'm not going to reward the prime minister for the last three years.'' (He meant then-opposition leader Bill Shorten.) But he also noted that a first-term government had not lost since the 1930s. Peter Dutton, at the South Australian Produce Markets in Adelaide early on Friday, has defended his campaign. Picture: Adam Head / NewsWire Pressed again on the negative assessments of his campaign from within the Liberal Party, Mr Dutton dismissed it as 'insider talk from left-wing journalists'. 'It's come from within your party,' Ms Lane noted. She also asked Mr Dutton whether he would seek to remain as Liberal leader, should he lose the election. 'If the Coalition loses, do you want to stay on as leader or will you go?' Ms Lane asked. 'I just don't have any focus on losing at all. I believe we can win this election,' he said. 'I think there are forgotten and angry Australians that feel let down by this government, and know they need to change the government.' Dutton says expects 'surprises' on Saturday night Peter Dutton is not giving up on a surprise win in Saturday's federal election, despite polls showing Labor is expected to win a second term. The Opposition Leader said the polls weren't always right, pointing to Scott Morrison's shock win in 2019 when he beat Labor's Bill Shorten despite the bookies paying out before election day. In various interviews on Friday, he said his candidates had been working hard and cutting through with voters in their electorates. 'It's been a long campaign. But it's been a long three years for Australians. Australians have gone backwards,' Mr Dutton told ABC AM. 'I think we're seeing a 2019 situation, where you have a lot of interesting situations unfolding on the ground.' Mr Dutton has been honing this message in recent days, that the Liberals' candidates in key electorates will pull off 'surprises' on election night by beating 'lazy' incumbent Labor MPs. 'They've thrown mud because they don't have a good track record,' he said, regarding the government's campaign strategy. 'The Prime Minister's not saying to people that they're better off. The government cannot say they have achieved a great outcome for young Australians in terms of housing. 'Our positive plan helps.' Frenetic day of campaign begins before dawn Both leaders have been up before dawn to win over voters on the final day of campaigning. The Opposition Leader is starting the day in Adelaide, where he held an upbeat supporters rally with the Liberal candidates for the key seats of Sturt and Boothby overnight. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister – who was also in Adelaide on Thursday – is in Brisbane again, where Labor is desperate to improve on the five of the 30 Queensland sets it currently holds. He will then head to Tasmania and Melbourne and vowed to keep campaigning till '6pm tomorrow night'. More than five million Australians have already voted, with early polling booths closing at 6pm on Friday. On Saturday, thousands of polling booths will open at 8pm till 6pm local time before counting starts at 6pm. Neither leader is giving up, with both mounting a hectic cross-country blitz of key marginal seats. 'Going to go broke': Dutton tours produce market Peter Dutton started his day with a stroll around the South Australian Produce Markets. They're technically located in the electorate Makin, held by Labor's Tony Zappia with a double-digit margin. The Opposition Leader walked around for about 20 minutes, meeting various workers and business owners. One worker, who had worked there for more than 20 years, was asked by Mr Dutton what 'the biggest change' he'd witnessed in that time was. 'Probably harder and harder to get source. Growers walking off the land. Prices all going up. Fertiliser's going up, petrol's going up, labour's going up. Transport's going up. Everything,' he responded. Peter Dutton and SA senator Anne Ruston chatted with workers at the produce market. Picture: Adam Head / NewsWire At the end of the walkabout Mr Dutton met Tony Ceravolo from Ceravolo Orchards, a family-owned fruit business based in the Adelaide Hills and Fleurieu Peninsula, as well as Mr Ceravolo's father Ralph. Mr Ceravolo said the business mainly dealt in apples, pears, cherries and juices. 'I think he's pretty good,' Mr Ceravolo told NewsWire afterwards, adding the government 'has got to understand business'. 'It's tough right now,' he said. 'The way they're pushing wages up and up and up. The unions are going to have to back off a little bit, or we're going to go broke. We won't be around in the next five years if it keeps going.' Opposition Leader Peter Dutton at the South Australian Produce Markets in Adelaide with fruit business owner Ralph Ceravolo. Picture: Adam Head / NewsWire Before leaving the market, Mr Dutton made some brief remarks to the media. 'Today Australians will make a decision, and right up until polls close, people are contemplating: what does our future as a country look like? We can't afford three more years of Labor,' Mr Dutton said. 'We can't afford three more years of higher costs, higher electricity prices, higher gas prices, young people being locked out of the housing market. 'This election is a referendum on the performance of the Albanese government over the last three years, and it has been a bad one.' Polls point to Labor win of some sort The polls are pointing to Anthony Albanese and Labor emerging the winner from the bruising 35-day election campaign. Three polls released on Thursday have Labor winning – but the results differ wildly. The final AFR/Freshwater Strategy poll, released on Thursday night, shows Labor ahead of the Coalition 51.5 per cent to 48.5 per cent on a two-party preferred basis. Labor's primary vote sits at 33 per cent, while the Coalition's is at 37 per cent. Independents were on track to secure 18 per cent of the vote, while the Greens look set to nab 12 per cent. The poll shows a 0.6 per cent swing towards Labor from the 2022 election, and if that swing holds across all electorates, the firm estimates Labor could jag a slim majority of 76 seats in the 150 seat parliament. Polls have Anthony Albanese on track to lead Labor to a second term on Saturday. Picture: Jason Edwards / NewsWire YouGov's modelling released earlier on Thursday points to Mr Albanese winning a solid majority, with 84 seats with the Coalition set to lose a net total of 11 seats to end up with just 47. The latest Redbridge-Accent poll shows the Albanese government has a 53 to 47 per cent two-party-preferred lead over the Coalition, putting Labor in prime position to retain government. Meanwhile, reported bombshell ALP polling has outlined Mr Albanese's path to victory on 72-78 seats in the 150-seat parliament. 'Break either way': Marles Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles told the Today show on Friday there were still 'a large number' of voters who were still undecided. 'In fact, in every election when you see the stats of the number of people who actually make up their mind in the ballot box itself, really means that, yes, the polls are saying one thing, but it's not determinative,' Mr Marles said. 'I mean, there's enough undecided voters out there that this thing can break either way.' Mr Marles also alluded to the 2019 election when the polls had predicted a strong win for Bill Shorten and Labor, but Scott Morrison ended up leading the Coalition to a 'miracle' win. 'We feel happy with the campaign that we've run, but we're very mindful that this is a matter for the Australian people,' Mr Marles said. 'We've gone into elections before where you think you're going to get one result and you get a different one. So I'm not really going to venture a prediction about Saturday night.' 'Battle of bandaids': Greens leader Greens leader Adam Bandt is confident the minor party will play a major part in the next parliament following Saturday's election, and could win new seats to add to its current four. 'Our goal this election is to not only hold those seats in the House, the Senate, but there's seats – Macnamara, Wills, Richmond, Sturt, Perth – where we're in the running,' Mr Bandt told ABC News Breakfast. 'One thing will be crystal clear, the Greens will play a big role in the next parliament, and we're the ones pushing for the real lasting reforms.' Greens Leader Adam Bandt (centre) with Brisbane MPs, Max Chandler-Mather, Elizabeth Watson Brown and Stephen Bates, is hoping to expand the Greens numbers in the lower house. Picture: NewsWire/ Glenn Campbell Mr Bandt was critical of both Labor's and the Coalition's policies put up over the past 35 days of the election campaign. 'We've seen the battle of the Band-Aids between Labor and Liberals. It's been short-termism, a few hundred dollars here that may evaporate in a year,' Mr Bandt said. 'We're talking about ongoing reform to make the country healthier. 'We would like to see dental into Medicare for everyone, but we need to take action on the housing crisis and the climate and environment crisis well. 'We put forward ideas that we think could get done this year.' More to come
