With their raised hands covered in red paint, survivors of domestic violence sat on grassy hills in the Red Centre demanding change.
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Almost a year ago the Tangentyere Women's Family Safety Group gathered in Alice Springs to appeal for urgent funding for the domestic and family violence sector.
For decades they have called for the same things, and this weekend they will do it again.
Alongside sector advocates in the Central Australian town and in Darwin, survivors will come together as part of national rallies to stop gendered violence.
What is happening in the NT is a national shame, says Arunda woman and Central Australian Aboriginal Family Legal Unit chief executive PC Clarke.
"We have been shouting from the rooftops about the crisis right here in our backyard," she said.
"Aboriginal women and children have been suffering and dying yet somehow it seems like the national news just don't hear us."
A man was convicted in the NT Supreme Court for stripping his partner in the street and assaulting her in a "prolonged fashion".
With a perforated bowel and broken jaw, he then made her walk two kilometres through Darwin, according to court documents.
Sentencing the man in July, Chief Justice Michael Grant said "if it was not for medical intervention (she) would have died".
Despite multiple prior convictions including assaulting a woman with a weapon and breaches of domestic violence orders, he was sentenced to four years and four months, with a non-parole period of two years and two months.
The man could be released by January 2026.
A woman died in Royal Darwin Hospital on Monday, two weeks after her intimate partner allegedly beat her repeatedly on July 11.
These are not rare occasions but daily occurrences stretching health and social services across the NT, advocates and health professionals say.
In 2024, more than 40 women and nine children have been killed due to domestic, family or sexual violence in Australia - about one woman killed every four days.
While anti-violence campaigners Our Watch have recorded some generational changes in domestic and family violence rates, NT women are seven times more likely to be killed by intimate partners than anywhere else in the nation.
Aboriginal women in the NT are 13 times more likely to be subjected to gendered violence than anyone else.
The NT receives about four per cent of federal funding under the five-year national partnership agreement and the NT government has committed $70 million over two years to the sector.
Successive governments are to blame for underfunding the sector, Central Australian Women's Legal Service chief executive Anna Ryan said.
"How can you 'escape' domestic violence when there is nowhere to 'escape' to," she said.
The NT has six domestic violence shelters and a dozen remote safe-houses, which advocates say are in crisis.
Ms Ryan has called for a "whole of community approach" involving government, eduction, business and community organisations to stop blaming women and create specialist intervention and pathways.
It's time for the government to step up, says the Tangentyere group's Alice Springs co-coordinator Shirleen Campbell.
"We are doing the good work and the government needs to collaborate with us, listen to us and support us," she said.
Advocates will come together in Alice Springs on Friday, before a rally in Darwin to call for mandatory trauma-informed training for police and first responders.
They will call for 50 per cent of new housing built under the Housing Australia Future Fund to go to survivors of domestic, family and gendered violence.
They are calling for adequate long-term sector funding including $180 million over five years from the NT government.
The NT is the only place to not have a peak body for domestic and family violence, which advocates say is critical.
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Australian Associated Press
