WARNING: This story contains the image of an Indigenous person who has died. The coroner investigating the murder of a woman in Alice Springs has heard she was kicked out of a social club alongside her drunk and aggressive partner just hours before she was killed, despite telling staff she was concerned for her safety.
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00:00 Ms. Robuncia's death is one that shocked the Alice Springs community when it happened more
00:06 than two years ago.
00:08 And that grief and sadness has really been felt in the coroner's court this week.
00:12 We've heard Ms. Robuncia was murdered by her partner, Malcolm Abbott, when he repeatedly
00:19 ran over her with a car in the car park of the Alice Springs Hospital.
00:23 Ms. Robuncia was well known in Alice Springs as an anti-violence campaigner.
00:29 She was an advocate for victim survivors.
00:32 But we heard from some of her colleagues this week that even they didn't know that she was
00:36 suffering abuse at home.
00:38 We've heard that she contacted police on 22 occasions throughout the 20-month relationship
00:45 that she had with Malcolm Abbott.
00:48 And what we've heard over the last few days has been evidence of a series of missed opportunities
00:54 and missed red flags, as we often hear about in coronial inquests.
01:00 Malcolm Abbott did already have a conviction for manslaughter, something that many of Ms.
01:06 Robuncia's friends and family were unaware of.
01:09 We even heard yesterday that just hours before her death, she had been drinking at a social
01:16 club with Mr. Abbott and had raised concerns for her safety there.
01:22 And yet, just a few hours later, she was killed in a brutal killing in the Alice Springs Hospital
01:30 car park.
01:31 Now, you've been covering this series of inquests since June.
01:34 What has the coroner uncovered more broadly about domestic violence in the NT?
01:39 Yeah, well, this series of inquests is what's making up the Northern Territory Coroner's
01:45 really broad inquiry into the Northern Territory's domestic violence response.
01:50 And what she's really been painting is a pretty dire picture of the services in the Northern
01:57 Territory.
01:59 We seem to just be dealing with rates of domestic violence that are so overwhelming for everyone
02:05 involved.
02:06 We're hearing from women's shelters that they are turning survivors away every single day.
02:12 We're hearing from police that they don't have the resources to respond to Code One domestic
02:18 violence calls in the immediate time that they should be.
02:22 We're even hearing from corrections that in prisons, not everyone is able to access the
02:28 rehabilitation programs that they need.
02:31 And we've heard it's not for a lack of goodwill in the sector, but it's simply the under-resourcing
02:38 that is there for domestic violence services.
02:42 One of the other things that the coroner's really made a point to remember has been that
02:48 in each of these four coronial inquests, there have been four families, and sometimes more
02:55 than that, that have been really impacted by domestic and family violence.
03:00 In Ms. Rabunch's case, both her family and Mr. Abbott's family have been struggling with
03:05 her death since it happened more than two years ago.
03:09 And they will live with the effects of domestic and family violence every single day, and
03:15 will do for generations to come.
03:17 [BLANK_AUDIO]