Two men have been charged with assault in separate domestic violence cases in Alice Springs, including one man who allegedly threw an axe at his wife.
Northern Territory police said the axe missed but the man then punched the young woman several times. He was arrested and on Monday charged with assaulting a female.
In a separate incident between 11pm Saturday and 6am Sunday, a man allegedly kicked his pregnant wife in the stomach.
He has been charged with assaulting a female and breaching a domestic violence order.
Both women were treated for non-life-threatening injuries.
The incidents occurred on an otherwise relatively quiet weekend but amid an increased focus on long-running domestic and family violence issues in the Northern Territory.
Last week Alice Springs police responded to an “extreme” night of violence, with a reported 99 domestic violence callouts and four hospitalisations.
Last month the NT coroner released his report into the deaths of two Aboriginal women who had been repeatedly assaulted by partners over many years. One, Kwementyaye Murphy, was killed by her partner. The other, Kwementyaye McCormack, died after receiving a stab wound to her leg but no one was charged at the time. Police have since reopened the investigation after coroner Greg Cavanagh found the initial inquiry to be inadequate.
Cavanagh and NT police commissioner Reece Kershaw pointed to the alarming rates of violence in the NT, particularly in Aboriginal communities, where Cavanagh said it was “out of control”.
Kershaw revealed officers had responded to almost 75,000 domestic violence incidents in the past three years. About 40% were in Alice Springs.
Alcohol was a primary factor in more than 60% of cases he said. The Northern Territory government is working towards returning the banned drinkers register, which acted as a point of sale intervention to stop those identified as problem drinkers from buying alcohol.
The previous CLP government had scrapped the policy, focusing instead on temporary beat locations (TBLs) that saw police stationed outside bottle shops to randomly check IDs and ensure alcohol was not being taken to restricted areas.
TLBs had reportedly seen success in smaller towns but were resource heavy and not feasible in Darwin due to the number of outlets. Labor has said they will not scrap TBLs but leave it up to police to continue if they wish.
The police association has said the BDR should be brought back in as soon as possible, along with other measures which put more responsibility on alcohol suppliers rather than police.
“As a community we need to not just necessarily look at short-term solutions – which is what police at bottle shops are – but there needs to be a far greater holistic solution to address alcohol-related domestic violence,” Paul McCue, president of the Northern Territory Police Association told Guardian Australia.
“We would certainly be advocating particularly for towns like Alice Springs, Katherine and Tennant Creek to have [the BDR] quicker than 12 months.”
McCue said he couldn’t comment specifically on Labor’s proposal to trial a domestic violence specialist court in Alice Springs, but he said “anything was worth considering”.
