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The father of Zachary Rolfe, the former NT police officer who shot and killed Warlpiri man Kumanjayi Walker, has told a federal government inquiry that more must be done to weed racists from the ranks.

Former constable Rolfe shot and killed Walker while trying to arrest him on 9 November 2019 in Yuendumu, about 300km from Alice Springs.

Walker, 19, stabbed Rolfe with a pair of scissors shortly before he was shot by the then constable. Rolfe was found not guilty in March 2022 of charges of murder and manslaughter relating to Walker’s death.

He has since been dismissed from the force for matters not directly related to the shooting.

In a submission to the inquiry into racism, hate and violence directed at Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, his father, Richard Rolfe, said that he wished to “contribute my knowledge about widespread racist behaviour within the NT police force”.

He said this behaviour “has not only contributed to and increased trauma for First Nations people, but … been condoned as acceptable behaviour by the current CLP government in the NT”.

The submission takes in the evidence provided by his son during an inquest into Walker’s death, in which it was revealed that the NT’s highly trained tactical response group held annual events featuring racist awards.

But it does not mention the racist text messages shared by Rolfe with his colleagues, nor the findings of the coroner Elisabeth Armitage about Walker’s death.

“Mr Rolfe was racist, and he worked in and benefited from an organisation with the hallmarks of institutional racism,” Armitage said in her findings delivered in July 2025.

“While it was not possible for me to say with certainty that Mr Rolfe’s racist attitudes were operative in his decisions on 9 November or were a contributing cause of Kumanjayi’s death, I cannot exclude that possibility.

“That I cannot exclude that possibility is a tragedy for Kumanjayi’s family and community, who will always believe that racism played an integral part in his death and is a taint that may stain the NT police.”

Armitage also said it was important that NT police did not consider the former constable to be “one bad apple”. She described the awards as “among the most grotesque examples of racism uncovered during the Inquest”.

In his submission, Richard included copies of the awards, including several that do not appear to have been included into evidence during the inquest.

The other examples he provided of racism within the NT police force included a sergeant who shared a photo of a topless Aboriginal woman with a WhatsApp group of other officers in Alice Springs.

The other incident referred to by Richard relates to allegations a senior NT police officer was ejected from a Chinese restaurant after uttering racist slurs towards staff of Asian appearance, a claim heard during Walker’s inquest but for which no evidence was provided.

Richard spends much of his submission suggesting that the Finocchiaro government do not have the appetite to reform the NT police.

“The current NT chief minister, Lia Finocchiaro, is also the police minister, and … she has repeatedly refused any genuine external investigation into NT police since coming to power,” he said.

In March last year, Finocchiaro ordered an inquiry into police recruitment after the then NT commissioner Michael Murphy was ousted over a jobs-for-mates scandal.

The joint standing committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander affairs held the first public hearing related to the inquiry in Sydney on Friday, and expect to hold further hearings in other locations.