An Indigenous Liberal senator has backed the Opposition Leader’s claims of widespread child sexual abuse in central Australia.
South Australian senator Kerrynne Liddle said care was needed about politicising any form of assault, but she fired back at those who have attacked Mr Dutton for failing to provide evidence to back up his sexual assault claims.
“I say prove it’s not happening and then we can have a conversation about the kind of language we can actually use for this,” Senator Liddle told ABC radio on Friday.
“You’ve got the statistics, which everyone accepts are underreported and underrepresented.”
Mr Dutton has been accused of using crime in Alice Springs as a “political football” during his campaign against the Indigenous voice.
He has visited Alice Springs this week, highlighting crime and unrest in the central Australian community as a reason why local solutions are needed instead of a national voice.
But he came under fire for saying there were children in the town who were being sexually abused yet people were told nothing could be done.
Assistant Indigenous Australians Minister Malarndirri McCarthy said Mr Dutton needed to be careful of making “irresponsible allegations” that could not be followed up.
“It is a very serious allegation to raise the abuse of a child and a serious allegation to make that a child is being returned to an abuser,” she said on Thursday.
Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney, meanwhile, accused him of using the issues in Alice Springs as a political football.
“The statistics are heading in the right direction in Alice Springs. There has been a reduction in presentations to the emergency ward, and substantial reductions in call-outs for domestic violence,” she said.
“Dramatic changes which have not been reflected, unfortunately, by the use of Alice Springs as a political football that we are seeing right now.”
Northern Territory Police Minister Kate Worden slammed Mr Dutton’s comments as a “dog act”, adding his visit was opportunistic after the Coalition’s decade in government.
Ms Worden also challenged Mr Dutton to report any crimes he was aware of given the NT’s mandatory regime for reporting child abuse.
“What we’ve seen … from Peter Dutton in central Australia is absolutely opportunistic, political game-playing and using the most vulnerable people here in the heart of our nation as a pawn in that game,” she said.
Another Indigenous Coalition senator, Jacinta Price, a former deputy mayor of Alice Springs, said Ms Worden’s comments were disgusting.
“I know of children in my own extended family, I know of children in other people’s families, everybody knows what’s going on,” the Country Liberal Party senator said.
Senator Price said Mr Dutton, a former police officer, wanted to see a reduction in child sexual abuse.
Mr Dutton has also accused the NT government of playing politics, saying the chief minister has refused to act. He has called for the Australian Federal Police to be sent in.
Elsewhere, Acting Prime Minister Richard Marles said both sides of politics had worked to improve the situation in Alice Springs and problems in the Northern Territory town shouldn’t be politicised.
“It’s really important that we’re not making Alice Springs a political football. A lot of work has gone on here to try and improve the situation in Alice Springs,” he told Nine’s Today program on Friday.
“We need to be working with each other to try to improve the situation.”
Mr Marles said Ms Burney would visit Alice Springs soon.
“Linda Burney has been there a number of times and she’s going back there in the next couple of weeks,” he told the Nine Network on Friday.
-with AAP
