The problems on Darwin’s buses are not new and the Transport Workers Union has long campaigned for better protection for their members. What struck me as strange about the various news reports and press releases covering this issue was the absence of any explanation about who is assaulting the drivers and why the drivers are being attacked so frequently. Is it, I wondered, a spontaneous reaction by disaffected Darwin residents to a substandard bus service? Perhaps too many buses arrived late which incensed long-suffering passengers…?
The NT Branch Secretary of the TWU, Ian Smith, last December said that, ‘Anti-social behaviour had reached a crisis point across the Darwin Bus Network … Nobody should have to go to work fearing that they might be verbally assaulted, physically hit, spat on, or have a dangerous weapon pulled on them while simply trying to do their job. It is not good enough.’ As one stoic bus driver recently put it, ‘You’d be hard-pressed to find a bus driver in the fleet that hasn’t been spat on mate.’
It is hard to disagree with Mr Smith’s sentiments, but the TWU, like the ABC, is somewhat vague about who is doing all the assaulting and spitting on Darwin’s buses. In order to get a better understanding of the problem I rang the TWU and spoke to a press officer. I asked why there was a particular problem in Darwin and was told that it wasn’t restricted to Darwin but also applied to Adelaide and parts of West Australia. Drivers across all three Western states are frequently spat on by unhappy customers.
I said that this didn’t seem to be a problem in the East Coast states and the press officer agreed it was mainly a problem in the Western states. I asked why this was and got no clear answer. I asked who were the people attacking the bus drivers? This was, I thought, a fairly straightforward question. ‘What do you mean?’ was the response. I explained that I was trying to get a deeper understanding of the root causes of this long-standing problem and it would clarify matters if I had a clearer picture of who was doing all the attacking and spitting. The TWU representative explained that their main interest was the welfare and safety of the workers. I was left with the impression that she was avoiding the drift of my questions so I came out directly with, ‘Is it a particular social group that is causing the problems in Darwin?’ My respondent pointed out that it was not the job of the TWU to look into the sort of issues that were implied in my questions and after a few more minutes of avoiding any direct answer we ended the conversation.
While I claim no particular expertise in this area, I believe that, in the event of a dispute, the average Aussie thug is more likely to punch you on the nose than to spit in your face. Facial expectoration is something I suspected belonged to a particular group of unhappy members where it was a more common expression.
In trying to understand why Darwin bus drivers are being spat on with increasing frequency, I contacted the relevant body of the NT police to ask for their assessment. The police have an official request form on which I submitted a detailed set of questions regarding the issue. The response was almost immediate and said, ‘We have received your request, however, given the resource constraints – we are unable to service it.’
There is frequent reference in the media to the incarceration rates of Indigenous people and the usual complaint is that the justice system in general, and the police in particular, discriminate against Indigenous people. While we have access to rates of incarceration and the reasons why people are incarcerated it is not broken down into racial identity categories. In Darwin, the Indigenous population make up 30 per cent of the population but 82 per cent of the people in prison. Among the main reasons that are usually given for the high Aboriginal incarceration rates are ‘colonisation’ and ‘the Stolen Generation’ and there is no doubt that the destruction of Aboriginal social structure following the invasion of this land is the major cause of the high incidence of criminality and anti-social behaviour in Aboriginal communities. But we cannot continue forever to avoid a detailed analysis of the problems in those communities by using the Stolen Generations mantra.
The problems confronting many communities in Papua New Guinea today are very similar to those in Australian Aboriginal communities. The PNG transition from a tribal subsistence agricultural society to participation in the modern world is beset by the same problems that exist in Aboriginal communities here. In particular, the transition from traditional tribal law to a western legal system is always difficult. Equally difficult is the collapse of authority of local community leaders and the inability of the family to control adolescent children. Gangs of youths roam the streets of PNG cities and towns in the same way that they do in the NT and North Queensland towns and there was no stolen generation in PNG. Nor was there ever dispossession. The vast majority of PNG land is still in the hands of the people who have lived there for thousands of years.
We are constantly reminded of the need for a ‘truth telling’ as part of the preamble to the forthcoming referendum but so far what we have is a one-sided version of truth and the government and most branches of the media tiptoe around sensitive issues such as who is spitting in the faces of NT bus drivers. Until we can honestly and openly discuss the causes of criminality in Aboriginal communities in all their complexity, the notion of ‘truth telling’ should really be called ‘half-truth telling’.
