“Having an intelligent conversation with people works,” says Justine Davis, the new independent member for the Northern Territory electorate of Johnston, in Darwin’s northern suburbs.
A stone’s throw away, in the neighbouring seat of Sanderson, voters delivered a 21% swing to the conservative Country Liberal party, which is promising the return of spit hoods in prisons, tougher bail laws and lowering the age criminal responsibility to 10.
Yet Davis, a first-time candidate and a community justice worker, won Johnston by talking about the sorts of evidence-based justice policies to keep young people out of prisons – such as restorative justice and diversion programs – that have been eschewed by major parties for promises to be “tough” on crime.
Out in the community, Davis says she found people looking for something different.
Even when her conversations with voters became challenging, Davis says she watched people – including some who began by “saying stuff that was pretty objectionable” – begin to think about law and order differently.
“A lot of people said no one is brave enough to have these conversations,” Davis says.
“I think people change their own minds. If you spend time listening and talking to people, that’s what happens. It doesn’t even have to be about convincing people, it doesn’t have to be a value-based conversation.
“[The campaign was] a combination of listening to people, acknowledging them, not shying away from difficult conversations – sometimes saying ‘absolutely things are not OK. It’s not OK for young people to run around with machetes’.
“But it also does not make sense to lock up young children with the idea of making us a safer community. There’s no evidence and it doesn’t work. It doesn’t work for any of us. It does not make any of us safer. In fact it makes all of us less safe.”
‘If you don’t spit, you don’t get a spit guard’
On Friday, the Northern Territory’s new chief minister, Lia Finocchiaro, was asked on ABC radio national about her promise to reintroduce spit hoods, a practice labelled “torture” by Amnesty International.
“We have a crime crisis in the territory and our frontline workers are being insulted at extraordinary level,” Finocchiaro said.
“So the use of modern spit guards in this highly regulated environment provides an additional layer of protection for those people who’ve done the wrong thing and continue to make choices about dangerous and disgusting, degrading behaviour of spitting on frontline workers.
“If you don’t spit, you don’t get a spit guard.”
The comments came after Finocchiaro, on the night of the election, told supporters that “we will do whatever it takes to restore community safety”.
But Davis challenges the notion the CLP has a “mandate” to implement its law and order policies, particularly lowering the age of criminal responsibility.
“I think that’s fundamentally not true,” Davis says. “It’s oversimplifying what people are wanting.”
Her experience – and she says Labor politicians should take note elsewhere in the country – is that people concerned about crime are looking for leadership and genuine solutions.
“I think Labor got a really clear message [in the NT] that playing being conservative didn’t fly with people,” Davis says.
“That’s not what people want from a Labor party and the result shows that.
“There was a huge and pretty incredible swing towards progressive independents [in parts of Darwin], and that story hasn’t really been noticed properly.”
Davis says she doorknocked her entire electorate (which has 5,700 enrolled voters) twice during the campaign. Even among people who are “really angry” about the impact of crime, Davis says only “a tiny minority of people weren’t willing to be thoughtful and engaged about it”.
“In all of that [doorknocking] there were maybe two people who didn’t shift from thinking kids should be locked up and we should throw away the key,” she said.
“That made me really hopeful.
“There’s this idea that the community has the answers and the reality is they don’t. They know what the problem is. It’s your job to listen to the community, take it onboard and then lead.
“[Voters] want someone who has conviction, who they think is not just waffle. I wanted to have broad appeal, but I couldn’t have no conviction.”
