Gadigal Calls on Canberra to Sanction the Racist NT Country Liberals Ministry

“We called this rally in response and solidarity with the mob up in the NT, who have had enough of the CLP government, enough with the racist policies facing Blak children up there, and enough with the Northern Territory government attacking Blak children,” Wiradjuri man Ethan Lyons told those gathered at the 2 September 2025 Rally to Sanction the Racist NT Government.

Hundreds demonstrated on Gadigal land, before the Australian prime minister’s office in the Sydney suburb of Marrickville, as, on Anthony Albanese’s watch, the NT Country Liberal Party has unleashed a law-and-order drive, following having been elected into office in August 2024, and this broad policy distinctly targets First Peoples for incarceration, and in particular, it targets Aboriginal children.

Organised by The Blak Caucus, the Gadigal rally was held in conjunction with another on Larrakia land before the Northern Territory parliament, which was organised by Justice Not Jails, a social justice group formed in direct response to the Finocchiaro government’s harsh crime and bail reforms that have instilled an “us against them” attitude on the ground.

In MCing the protest, Gumbaynggirr Dunghutti Bundjalung woman Lizzy Jarrett outlined that the Country Liberals haven’t just toughened criminal laws but the party has further flagged social reforms to arm transport and social housing inspectors with guns, while a 12-month OC spray trial has just commenced, which allows residents to arm themselves with the “nonlethal weapon”.

But pervading the sizable crowd for a Tuesday night at 6 pm was the understanding that urban centres across the continent had just been overtaken by white supremacists over the weekend, and Lyons outlined that it is policies like those of the NT Country Liberals that are emboldening racists everywhere, and he clarified that the streets he was on belong to “Gadigal mob”, not neo-Nazis.

Hunting kids down

“What we saw on the weekend was shameful,” Bundjalung woman Vanessa Turnbull-Roberts said. The lawyer recalled that when she was recently in the NT, she saw “on every second block” “Aboriginal children with ankle bracelets on”, and she too underscored that investing in the policing, the monitoring and the incarceration of Aboriginal children and young people is big business.

“We stand in strong solidarity with the NT,” added the ACT Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children and Young People Commissioner.

“We stand in strong solidarity with every single state and territory that is hunting Blak children, from Jai Wright to Elijah to Cassius to the two boys hunted and chased into a river, to the many voices that we don’t even know are still missing and murdered on these lands.”

Disproportionately incarcerating First Nations children occurs in all Australian states and territories, but Aboriginal kids usually make up 90 percent of the child inmate population, while in March this year, 88 percent of NT adult prisoners were First Nations people.

In settler colonial Australia, the criminal justice system provides that as the NT has the largest portion of its overall population comprised of Aboriginal people, or 26 percent of people living in the Territory, means it’s the most excessive imprisoner of Indigenous peoples. If the NT was a country, its incarceration rate would come in at second place, with chief incarcerator El Salvador coming in first.

Legislation tabled last October served to toughen the NT bail regime for both adults and youths, which has entailed a 44 percent rise of adults held on remand, or detained prior to going to trial, while in terms of kids, it’s a 57 percent rise.

As Stephen Enciso from Justice Not Jails told Sydney Criminal Lawyers last month, the Finocchiaro ministry is now turning to overhaul the Youth Justice Act 2005 (NT).

“We need to combat white supremacy,” Turnbull-Roberts added. “If they are doing it in broad daylight – as we know policing do it in broad daylight to our children and young people, on the regular – this is going to increase. This is neo-imperialism at its finest.”

Targeted for centuries

“Over the past 237 years, our people have endured so much trauma, so much hate and so much brutalisation at the hands of this illegal occupation,” said Dunghutti man Paul Silva. “We stand here today, at the front of Anthony Albanese’s office in a stance of solidarity with the Northern Territory community in their quest to call out the Northern Territory government.”

“As of yesterday, 1 September, in the NT, members of the public can buy OC spray, or what is known as pepper spray,” he continued.

“Many Aussies and people living here don’t know that the NT is a testing ground on our people. They are testing and implementing not only OC spray, but they have done it with tasers, they have done it with other things that they test upon our people like they are animals.”

Silva raised the 27 May 2025 killing of Kumanjayi White, a 24-year-old Warlpiri man with disabilities, at the hands of two plainclothes police officers who restrained him until he stopped breathing. The Dunghutti man’s uncle, David Dungay Junior, was killed in a similar manner by six prison guards in Sydney’s Long Bay Gaol. One of the NT cops, a police prosecutor, is now prosecuting White’s father.

The killing of White was the second police killing of a young Warlpiri man from the remote Aboriginal community of Yuendumu. The handing down of the inquest report into the 2019 shooting death of Kumanjayi Walker had to be delayed due to police having killed another member of that community. The coronial report called out the NT Police Force for its racist culture that fosters these killings.

In response to the damning assessment, Northern Territory chief minister and police minister Lia Finocchiaro left the inquest report unaddressed for two weeks. Then she announced she’d be overhauling the coronial system, as if the coronial report had been produced in a problematic way. Indeed, Finocchiaro simply dismisses any criticism of her severe law-and-order drive and policies.

“My message for many people right around what they see as Australia,” Silva continued, “is this is the time now to stand up for First Nations people. For far too long, our people have been kicked to the side, left in the dark and put over in the corner to sit down and be silent. It is our time for us young fellas to take the baton off our older people and take on this system.”

License for extremism

“We hear mob in the NT saying we don’t want guns in housing. We don’t want pepper spray and guns on public transport. What happens in this city, when you see a gun on a train? What happens when NT mob get shot? They get hunted. They get added to a number of mob, who have been assaulted and killed in the NT,” Lyons said, on retaking the microphone.

The Finocchiaro government announced in June that it would be turning public transport and housing officers into police public safety officers (PPSOs), who will continue attending social housing, transport and shopping centres armed with guns. The CLP also plans to prohibit the wearing of dirty or stained clothing on public transport.

Lyons set out the demands that The Blak Caucus and Justice Not Jails have arrived at, which include the federal government sanctioning the CLP and intervening to change the laws as Canberra has the power to directly do in the NT, along with implementing minimum standards for adult and youth prisons, bringing justice for Kumanjayi White and dropping guns on buses and the pepper spray trial.

The Wiradjuri man further quoted Warlpiri elder Ned Hargraves, the grandfather of Kumanjayi White, who was attending the joint rally in Darwin at the time, and said, “The police officer involved in his death is still walking around doing his job. This is a disgrace. He needs to be stood down”.

“How can we trust the police? They are killing my people. The prime minister has the power to step in and make a difference.”

Main image: Screenshots from Instagram page city_cb_4palestine2.0