Marcia Langton, a leading Indigenous academic who has studied rates of child rape and prostitution in the far northeast of Western Australia, has backed moves by the state’s Police Commissioner to ban the sale of full-strength alcohol in the region.
A confidential report by Professor Langton and colleagues from the University of Melbourne describes “the shocking extent, gravity and normalisation of violence for the Indigenous community” in the region that takes in the towns of Wyndham, Kununurra and surrounding Aboriginal communities.
Child rape and child prostitution were increasing but unreported in Kununurra, according to residents, Aboriginal people and service providers who gave evidence about the harm caused by alcohol in the region.
The report is among documents provided by WA Police Commissioner Chris Dawson to WA director of liquor licensing Lanie Chopping as proof that the Kimberley is in crisis and that severe blanket restrictions are necessary. Ms Chopping is taking responses from licensees until July 2022 before making a decision.
Mr Dawson wants bottle shops across the entire Kimberley banned from selling full-strength alcohol. His stance has pitted him against the McGowan government for more than two years. WA Premier Mark McGowan has repeatedly said he prefers a banned drinkers register, which is being trialled in the Kimberley.
Professor Langton, who has worked with the commonwealth government and 51 other prominent Australians to design a proposal for the Indigenous voice, believes Mr Dawson is justified.
“All the evidence points to the conclusion that the Police Commissioner has arrived at. I must agree with him,” she said.
“The alcohol industry must not be allowed to profit from the social disadvantage and circumstances in remote Western Australia. The industry has lost the argument about socially responsible drinking because the enormous costs in lives taken or irreparably damaged by alcohol and alcohol-fuelled violence are not justifiable.”
The researchers relied on police data and interviews with 66 residents, health workers, lawyers and other service providers during four field trips between November 2018 and May 2019.
“Many community members and service providers disclosed incidences of rape, sexual abuse and child prostitution in Kununurra. It was also reported that these types of incidents have increased in recent years and regularly go unreported and undisclosed,” the report states. The report found the severity of family violence was extreme. Victims of sex crimes were disproportionately children and Indigenous. More than half – 54 per cent – of all sexual assaults in the Wyndham-East Kimberley region between 2009 and 2019 were committed against children aged 17 or younger.
According to the 2016 census, just 28.7 per cent of the region’s population were aged 19 or under. Of the children sexually assaulted in that 10-year period, 73 per cent were Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander girls and young women. Across the region, 37.2 per cent of residents are Indigenous.
The report finds the rate of alcohol-related assaults in the region nearly doubled between 2009 and 2019. Domestic assaults also increased at disturbing rates over that time, more than tripling.
“Alcohol was a recurrent and ever-present factor, exacerbating and contributing to violence in its many forms,” the report authors wrote.
Assault rates for the entire Wyndham-East Kimberley region increased 56 per cent between 2009 and 2019.
