General introduction.

The populations of remote indigenous communities in the are unique. They have the highest proportions of first speakers of indigenous languages in the country. They are the closest to the traditional culture and way of life of almost any others in Australia, on a par with those in the most remote communities of South Australia and Western Australia.

They have the highest rates of some life-threatening chronic illnesses, not only in the country, but in some notable cases, in the world. They have the highest rates of unemployment, road fatalities, interpersonal violence, violence against women, child sexual abuse, youth suicide, substance abuse, in the country. They have the lowest levels of school attendance, educational achievement, and facility with English.

Since the priority goal of the schools has been the preservation of indigenous culture and language several generations of children have gone through them without being taught to speak, let alone read and write, the national language. They are also mostly functionally innumerate.

Their world view comes out of survival for tens of millennia in very small scale, kin based, hunter gatherer societies. The traditional life is not very far in the past. There are those still alive who can clearly remember seeing a European for the first time. Many of those now in middle age are only one generation removed from that experience. The last family to come out of the desert did so as recently as 1984.

None of this is an indication of lack of intelligence. Survival in one of the world’s harshest environments, in the case of the desert people, with one of the world’s simplest technologies required a life-long accumulation of complex and exquisitely detailed knowledge and the application of an incredibly high level of skill.

They are amongst the most linguistically talented people in the world. And yet the schools have still failed to teach them the language needed to effectively communicate with the rest of the world. English is not only our national language but also a dominant world language. They are in a state of crisis and they lack the educational tools to make sense of the outside world.

They do not have a tradition of democratic representation. Aboriginal Australians were granted the right to vote in Commonwealth elections in 1962. They were not legally compelled to vote until 1983. This coupled with ignorance of the national law and, for many a profound disinterest since the priority has to be day to day survival, has led to a disturbingly high proportion of those obliged to enroll to vote not doing so. During elections up to 50% of those enrolled do not vote.

1 There is a wide spread ignorance of the nature of the traditional Aboriginal culture, world view and languages among the wider population of Australians. Very few of those engaging with these communities have been trained to do so effectively. Too many are driven by the desire to avoid offence rather than to get a difficult and complex job done effectively. There are those in the world of business, politics and administration who are very willing to take advantage themselves of the lack of educational achievement and facility with English that disadvantages the people in these communities.

Bess Nungarrayi Price was born and raised at Yuendumu and Warlpiri is her first language. She speaks three other Aboriginal languages as well. She has spent her life living in and working with the people in remote communities in the Centre, Top End and the Kimberley. Almost all of her family lives in such communities or in town camps.

Bess Nungarrayi was appointed to chair the first, and only, Indigenous Affairs Advisory Council for the NT government. She was elected to the NT parliament in 2012, until the election of 2016, and served for a while as the only woman in the NT cabinet in the nation’s first government to be led by an indigenous Australian. She holds a Bachelor of Applied Science in Aboriginal Community Management and Development.

David Price holds an MLitt in Linguistics as well as qualifications in Education and Special Education. He has worked as a teacher in remote communities in the Centre, Top End and Kimberley for over seven years and with remote communities for another fifteen years with the APS and NTPS.

We have now experienced firsthand, and up close, two elections for the Northern Territory parliament and two for the Commonwealth parliament in those communities. Bess Nungarrayi was a candidate in the two NT elections. Our daughter Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, was a candidate in the 2019 Commonwealth election.

The following relates directly to the 2019 Commonwealth election but we have witnessed the kind of behaviour described in the other elections as well. In the remote Northern Territory it has been a problem for as long as we can remember.

2 Concerns

Problems with RAMP (Remote Area Mobile Polling)

 Labor supporters put up hundreds of core flutes posters on roads throughout the NT by tech screwing them to trees. This is an illegal practice. They were removed by local councils when they were alerted but many stayed up in remote areas.

 In remote polling booths across the NT Labor supporters were seen handing out How to Votes and wearing campaign messages and symbols on their clothing within restricted areas.

 In several communities, from one end of the NT to the other, paid Labor workers were seen to place themselves in a position where they could influence voting with the use of the local language within the restricted zones and within the booths themselves.

 At Ali Curung (Alekerange) a paid member of the NTG, a member of the staff of the local Labor MLA was seen to be handing out HTV’s. This occurred elsewhere in Arnhem Land as well.

 Labor workers speaking the local language could also intimidate voters, especially women, if they chose to do so, while AEC staff had no idea of what was being communicated in the local language.

 At Milingimbi voters were being told to vote for Labor, in the local dialect of Yolngu Matha, over community loud speakers that could be clearly heard within the polling booth itself.

 Also, at Milingimbi a European member of the Labor team handed out How To Votes within the exclusion Zone. His behaviour and body language was deliberately aggressive and intimidating. He behaved this way towards Bess Nungarrayi and Jacinta Nampijinpa following them around in the process and when asked not to he replied ‘I’ll stand where I like’. He acted that way towards voters as well, especially Aboriginal women. He was offered free sunglasses by an Air North employee. He refused them telling her that he preferred to stare people in the eyes. This is incredibly aggressive and intimidating behaviour in any culture but is deeply offensive in traditional Aboriginal culture in particular. He moved out of the restricted zone when asked to by AEC staff after a complaint had been made. He moved back in when not being watched and finally complied only when he realised he was being filmed. Senator Marlarndirri MacArthy had to instruct him to move away from Bess Nungarrayi and Jacinta Nampijinpa only after the women directly complained to her even though she’d witnessed it from the start.

3  In other booths, too, large, white males deliberately adopted aggressive poses to intimidate Aboriginal voters, particularly Aboriginal women . We have witnessed this behaviour often.

 Restricted areas were often ill defined. Rather than being delineated by accurate measurement they were usually established through negotiations between the AEC staff and the party teams at each booth. Because of the siting of buildings, parking areas, fences and trees, the restricted zone at Haasts Bluff Community (Ikuntji) was particularly irregular which made it extremely difficult for the CLP team of two to adequately cover all approaches to the booth without inadvertently entering the zone.

Retired politician Alison Anderson working for Labor

 Alison Anderson has had a chequered political career. She entered the NT parliament as a Labor MLA. She resigned from the government and the party accusing both of racism. She then became independent. In a subsequent election she was preselected to stand for the CLP, on the seat, then resigned from that government and party, accusing both of racism, and once again became independent. She then briefly joined the PUP before telling the world that it was ‘a national disgrace’. Since then she has worked for the ALP during the 2016 NT election and the 2019 Commonwealth election.

 In the 2019 election Alison Anderson was paid to work for the Labor campaign. She admitted this herself to David Price. At Laramba she was acting as scrutineer. The AEC staff gave scrutineers AEC staff bibs to wear. David Price scrutineered for the CLP. He brought to the booth captain’s attention the fact that scrutineers were not AEC staff and should not be wearing their staff bibs. Alison Anderson continued to wear their bib. As an ex-MLA and Minister of the Crown she should have been aware that this behaviour was not appropriate.

 She sat within the restricted zone socializing with and speaking to every voter entering the booth in their own language that none of the AEC staff could understand. She sat in a position where she could see what was happening in the booth itself. She called an ALP worker, wearing their t shirt, to come into the restricted zone to hand out HTV’s.

 During the 2016 NT election the journalist for , Amos Aikman, rang Bess Nungarrayi to tell her that Anderson had repeated an outrageously defamatory and obscene allegation to him concerning the public behaviour of Bess Nungarrayi who was a CLP candidate in that election. He reassured her that, it was so outrageous, he refused to believe the allegation and refused to repeat it to Bess Nungarrayi or to anybody else or to follow it up.

4  An based journalist/blogger, Erwin Chlanda, was given a similar story at around the same time. He rang Bess Nungarrayi’s office, her daughter, Jacinta Nampijinpa, and others in the community seeking confirmation. Chlanda would not identify his source but did admit that it was someone associated with the Labor party. He has since refused to apologise despite being asked by both Bess and David Price to do so.

 Bess Nungarrayi has requested that the details of the allegation not be repeated because it was so obscene and defamatory and it so deeply offended her that she did not want anybody else to be exposed to it. It is particularly outrageously demeaning to an Aboriginal woman. It was being spread by somebody who was obviously aware of that fact and it was designed to cause maximum reputational damage and insult.

 During the 2019 election in which Bess Nungarrayi’s daughter, Jacinta Nampijinpa, was a candidate, a European council employee at the Mt Liebig Community (Watiyawanu) told David Price that he had heard the allegations made to Chlanda and the story was still in circulation in the remote communities at the time of the Commonwealth election.

 Alison Anderson’s association with Haasts Bluff Community, , and others in the region is well documented in the Walkley award winning journalist Russsel Skelton’s 2011 book “King Brown Country: the Betrayal of Papunya”. The extremely serious allegations made in that book have never been seriously, or adequately addressed.

 Tadhgh Purtill’s 2016 book “Dystopia in the Desert: The Silent Culture of Australia's Remotest Aboriginal Communities” also elegantly illustrates how local politics and cultural priorities in remote communities can work to produce corruption and mismanagement on a large scale while not being addressed by the authorities charged with the oversight of the administration of those communities. There is a conspiracy of silence that keeps corrupt regimes in power. The Labor Party is in a very good position to take advantage of community dysfunction and corruption during elections.

The AEC

 When David Price went to the AEC headquarters in Alice Springs he was told by a senior officer that the AEC are aware of illegal and nefarious tactics resorted to at election time in the remote communities but could do little about them. He was told that, at one NT election, a large group of people came to the polling booth at Glen Helen asking to be allowed to vote again. They complained that they had been intimidated into voting against their wishes at Haasts Bluff and wanted to rectify that mistake by voting again the way they really wanted to. Of course, the AEC could not legally allow that to happen.

5  Those in the communities who are intimidated do not have the education, the literacy or the confidence to take action against those doing the intimidating. They have to live in those communities in which the bullies have real authority, control the distribution of resources and, in some cases, are capable of resorting to violence in pursuit of their own interests. When the speakers of the local languages aren’t capable of making formal complaint, the AEC can’t, or won’t, take appropriate action. Even in those cases where breach of the law occurs obviously, in public, AEC officers can be very reluctant to take appropriate action when the response to that action will be accusations of racism and cultural insensitivity.

 Election material was being distributed by Get Up at Mataranka that contained out right lies. Once again, when those lies are told to voters who lack education and facility with English, they can be very difficult to counter except through face to face conversation in a form of language that will be fully understood by the voters. The response to a complaint to the AEC was that the agency could not take responsibility for determining the veracity of information contained in such materials. And so, they get away with it.

Alice Springs and its town camps.

 Alice Springs is not a remote community but its town camps are even more socially remote and disadvantaged than the geographically remote communities. A local Labor MLA and his supporters were going into the town camps picking up voters to bring them to booths. This gave them the opportunity to electioneer, to persuade the voters and to hand out How To Votes, on the way to the polling station and to shepherd the voters right up to the booths.

 Bess Nungarrayi understands Pitjantjatjara. She overheard speakers of that language from the community of Imanpa, asking for money for groceries and fuel in exchange for their vote. She did not hear a response from the Labor people and saw no money exchanged. However, it was obvious that these people believed that bribery was a normal part of the election process.

 We were told, by more than one source, that the mini bus used to pick up voters was hired by Tangentyere Council, responsible for services to the town camps and funded to do so by both the Commonwealth and NT governments. It was being driven by an NT Labor MLA. Many of the most senior people working for the town based Aboriginal organisations openly campaign for the Labor party at every election.

6  We have many close family living in the town camps. They are reluctant to be seen to be going against the political views of the powerful people in the organisations that deliver the services, and control the resources available, to the town camps.

General remarks

 The Labor party had hundreds of paid unionists, Get Up members and local people working on their teams. The CLP had very small teams of volunteers. The CLP had no hope of covering all of the booths. In some communities, volunteers had indicated that they would be at a booth but did not turn up on the day. We had one volunteer tell us that he decided not to work for us because he worked in remote communities and he was concerned that Alison Anderson may be in a position to threaten his employment.

 So, in many places we had no people on the ground at all. Where we did have people, we had very small numbers.

 To satisfy the burden of proof requirements to get the AEC to take effective action in relation to formal complaints we would have needed at least one volunteer, on each team, dedicated to observing and recording in detail the behaviour of the subjects of our complaints. We would have needed recording equipment. We would have needed volunteers capable of transcribing and translating recordings in a large number of indigenous languages and dialects.

 We would have needed individuals belonging to the least educated and most marginalised people in Australia to have the confidence and ability to stand up to powerful people in their own communities and to trust that they would be vindicated and protected. We simply didn’t have the resources. We were kept very busy just travelling to the communities over very large distances on bush roads often in very poor condition in old vehicles and then making sure that we were doing our job according to the rules.

 The AEC’s responses to formal complaints are predictable and understandable. Their people do not know the local languages. They aren’t aware of local politics and cultural priorities. Even if they are indigenous themselves, and we have dealt with conscientious, professional AEC officers both indigenous and otherwise, they can’t be expected to know what the locals know.

 Bess Nungarrayi has done translation and interpreting work for many years and is accredited with NAATI, the national body and registered with the NT’s Aboriginal Interpreter Service. So, we are aware of the difficulties involved in recording and translating material in Aboriginal languages. However, without the work of politically neutral, local language speakers, confident enough to stand up to intimidation we don’t see how these problems can be solved.

7  We do need, however, to be prepared to challenge behaviour that is obviously problematic despite the accusations of racism and cultural sensitivity that the bullies and the corrupt rely on to avoid scrutiny and the sanction their behaviour deserves.

Recommendations

As we have stated above we recognise the difficulties faced by the AEC. We have grappled with those difficulties ourselves over a life time. However, we are prepared to make the following recommendations:

1. The AEC rigorously enforces the law applying to behaviour at polling booths as it now stands and penalties be applied where appropriate. 2. The AEC train all staff, indigenous and non-indigenous, working with the RAMP teams in relation to the culture, languages and history of the communities they operate in to the degree that is required for the proper discharge of their responsibilities in those communities. 3. Verifiably politically neutral and mature individuals from the relevant communities are employed by the AEC to act as interpreters and cultural consultants to the AEC RAMP teams. 4. The AEC RAMP teams run workshops in the communities prior to elections such that leaders and those significant individuals likely to take an active role in relation to the elections have some working understanding of the law relating to the election process and of the rights of Australian citizens in relation to that process. 5. That the AEC has some effective role in relation to the monitoring of distribution of election materials to ensure that they don’t contain obvious lies.

Bess Nungarrayi Price David Price

Alice Springs, September 20, 2019.

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