NT attorney-general defends state govt's tough-on-crime policies

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00:00Attorney-General, welcome to Stateline. I want to start by addressing a controversy

00:06which has been unfolding over the last few weeks involving Jake Danby. He was the driver

00:11involved in a fatal hit and run and he was sentenced to a 12-month community corrections

00:15order. That sentence is now being appealed on the basis of being manifestly unjust. He's

00:21your sister's stepson. Do you regret not disclosing that potential conflict of interest publicly

00:26at an earlier stage? Olivana, I understand the community interest in this particular case

00:32but of course it is before the courts so I can't add any comment to that particular case

00:36as the Attorney-General. Surely if you had just acknowledged it publicly to begin with

00:41it wouldn't have sort of gained so much attention? So it was disclosed at the time. We were in

00:45opposition at the time. There isn't anything further to add and of course we wouldn't want

00:50to jeopardise the proceedings that are at foot now so I really have nothing else further to add.

00:55Let's move on to some other issues. Territorians were promised a reduction in crime in the first

01:01hundred days of the CLP coming into government. There have been some small wins based on the

01:06latest crime data. Property crime is down but violent crime is on the rise across the territory.

01:12Is your government failing to address the underlying drivers of crime in the NT?

01:17I think for me one of the telltale signs that we'd started to cut through on that was not only when

01:22the data came out to say that there were some types of offences which had reduced but when I was in

01:28the mall just a couple of months ago and a couple of tourists came up and said g'day and they were

01:34telling me about how they come to the territory every year for a holiday and that last year they had

01:39thought about maybe not coming up because they'd heard so much from you know out of the territory

01:44about it wasn't being safe. And they shared with me that they were really glad that they actually

01:49did come up because they noticed a really remarkable difference to how it felt in the territory.

01:55In your own electorate violent crime was up based on the most recent data so can you honestly

02:02you know look your constituents in the eye and say yes our policies are working and yes we're doing

02:06enough to tackle those drivers of crime? I'm really honest with Territorians like this is not

02:11a set and forget approach. We have to keep working on it. You're on the record saying that meeting the

02:17territories closing the gap targets can't come at the expense of community safety. How does improving

02:22the outcomes for Indigenous Australians detract from community safety? I mean surely one of those

02:27things leads to another. Our government fully supports the work that has to be done because we do believe

02:32in closing that gap. When it comes to one of those measures which is to reduce the number of incarcerated

02:37people who are Aboriginal of course that statistic has not come down and it hasn't come down for a very

02:44long time. It's not a new thing and so what the way that I look at it and the way that people talk to

02:50me about it is it's not just about Aboriginals who are being incarcerated. It's the way I think of it

02:56is it's about the victims who often are Aboriginals and I think we need to start with that to say well

03:02if Aboriginal victims are the ones that are you know being having crime perpetrated against them

03:08that's where we should be focusing on. But what did you mean by saying that closing the gap targets

03:13can't come at the expense of community safety? Can't the two things run concurrently together?

03:18And they do yeah they absolutely do. What I mean by that is like there used to be a position that

03:24we wanted to reduce crime and therefore we you know had less people who were incarcerated and

03:30that's how it felt like in the community that there was just not being dealt with with the

03:34consequences and so we were really clear when we came to government that we did want to have

03:39consequences for offenders and it doesn't matter or what race you are we we have to deal with that

03:44and especially because many of the victims are Aboriginal as well and so they're the people that

03:50I'm standing up for to say well we need to stamp that out we can't have crimes perpetrated against

03:55them. I don't think anyone would argue that we don't want community safety I think all portions of

04:00our community want to be safe in the community but clearly I mean we've had four land councils come out

04:06and say that they think that your government's policies are racist so how does the government

04:11mend that? Well I question the fact that we have so many victims who are Aboriginal victims and so how

04:20is it racist that we want to protect those people at the same time as protecting all people which is

04:26exactly what we're trying to do.

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