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Kerrynne Liddle says ‘prove it’s not happening’ on child sexual abuse in Alice
Liberal senator Kerrynne Liddle, the first Indigenous senator from South Australia, and a name being touted as a contender for shadow minister for Indigenous Australians after Julian Leeser’s resignation.
I think we have to be really careful about politicising this issue, because matters related to any form of assault are sensitive, but important to understand and respond to.
… I think what’s really important though, is it can’t ignore the issue of sexual abuse, but you must also tackle those issues, alongside other issues which include [service] delivery and decision dysfunction.
Do you encourage your leader to temper his language given we haven’t yet seen evidence to say that there is a widespread phenomenon of this?
I say prove it’s not happening. And then we can have a conversation about the kind of language that we can actually use for this.
… You’ve got you’ve got the statistics, which everyone accepts are underreported and underrepresented. You’ve got to have relationships with communities to enable people to start talking about these safe spaces for young people to raise this issue of need to support people to have housing so that young people and older people are not at risk of this.
It’s possible to be optimistic about Australia’s economic future, and to be realistic about a global slowdown.
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