We have a history of well-intentioned reformers coming in and making everything much worse: the stolen generation, the NTER, laws against alcohol consumption that cause even more destructive patterns of behaviour, etc. I've known men and women who trained as police, and went off to the NT rosy-cheeked idealists. All came back either depressed or outright racist. It's a hard problem.
Abusive parents create abused children, who grow up to be abusive parents themselves; the same is true of poverty. Abuse and poverty are grinding cycles that are very hard to disrupt. How do you teach a boy who's never met his father about the importance of being there for his own sons and daughters? How do you talk about the cycle without blaming or objectivising the human beings trapped within?
But then, maybe Bill Leak was just plain old racist, and I read a pattern in the noise.