On Don Dale, the man

I would like to say a good word for Don Dale. No, not the institution that bears his name, but the man whom the NT government presumably intended to honour, by naming a juvenile “justice” institution after him. They have done him no favours. I worked in the department of community services in the NT in the area of child and family welfare when Don Dale was minister in the 1980s, and was frequently required to brief him on policy and funding of child and family support services. It was common gossip that his own youthful experience had given him particular sympathy for young kids in strife. Our politics were not compatible: he had me categorised as a recalcitrant leftie, and I was frequently frustrated by his wanting to fund organisations that seemed to me to focus on their own development rather than the child client. We had a few good stoushes. “What would you prefer?” he asked me once. “That your kids were out on the street [Darwin was a small town and he named my kids], or in the hands of [and he named the group after funding for some after-school hymn singing]?” I suggested there might be other options, but he gave them the money. He greatly annoyed corrective services by insisting on special privileges (a can of Coke a day) for a child inappropriately, but allegedly unavoidably, detained in an adult facility. So he didn’t revolutionise juvenile justice in the NT, but he cared about those kids and doesn’t deserve to have his name conflated with the sort of practices that have gone on in this institution. The NT government owes these kids some more constructive prospects. It also owes Don Dale a better legacy.

– Julie Ellis, Mount Barker, SA