Credlin: A town like Alice Springs needs more police and fewer broken promises
Alice Springs is a tough community desperate for things to change and for the cycle of broken promises from politicians to end, writes Peta Credlin.
Opinion
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As I write this column this weekend, I’m in Alice Springs to see for myself first-hand the crisis that’s dominated national headlines and forced a Prime Minister to take his VIP jet out to Central Australia, as a community says, “enough is enough”.
I must have visited Alice close to 20 times, first as a young 20-something, and then later as a staffer in the Howard government, before my time as chief of staff to a party leader and a prime minister with a deep commitment to Indigenous issues.
As a town, like a lot of country towns including the one I grew up in, it’s always had its issues but there was no denying the spirit of the place, and the entrepreneurship that typified so many residents who moved there to build something special.
But not so much anymore.
Plenty of good and decent people live there but many are just hanging on. As more than one local said, we’ve got to the point this time where we’re weighing up whether we can keep doing this, or if it’s our time to go.
And when they ask if they can “keep doing this”, they’re referring to stuff that the rest of us wouldn’t tolerate in the towns or suburbs where we live: like mopping up after yet another break-in, getting the glass replaced again and again on the front door, putting up extra CCTV cameras to get evidence in a court action that rarely eventuates, calling the insurance company about another stolen vehicle or, worse, leaving hospital banged up after another physical attack.
It’s hard to see grown men cry, but such is their anger and frustration that, as I have listened, the tears have come.
This is a tough community that is desperate for things to change and for the cycle of broken promises from politicians to end.
Most are sceptical about million-dollar spending commitments that are never evaluated to see if the money spent actually achieves an outcome.
They’ve had enough of the endless parade of public service types who come in to deliver taxpayer-funded services and leave, too focused on bureaucratic box-ticking to understand that this is a wonderful, multicultural community that was once a good model of black and white harmony that’s been eroded by grog, political correctness and knee jerk decisions, like the ending of a decade of alcohol restrictions that, while not perfect, helped protect vulnerable women and children.
For all those happy to join marches in our capital cities and decry our national day, Alice Springs is where the rubber hits the road because if you say you care about Indigenous people and our country, then this is not just a problem for Alice Springs to solve alone.
It is a challenge for all of us to get action that’s focused on outcomes, not just dollars being spent, and to not let political correctness get in the way of policy that works.
On this score, it’s pretty clear what’s been happening in Central Australia for years. In remote settlements, very few Indigenous people have real jobs because almost none of them have an economic base. For many, coming to “town” is the chance to find some excitement, meet new people, access services and just maybe come across an economic opportunity. The “town camps” are the neighbourhoods on the fringe of Alice to accommodate this influx, some longer settled and better developed than others. Some residents are transient, others more-or-less-permanent, but the comings and goings make for a disrupted seminocturnal life for everyone. Why not drink and gamble when there’s nothing much else to do, and why not roam the streets at night when you sleep all day? Aimless, unruly youths have long been part of the Alice streetscape but it’s got much worse since the grog bans were lifted, with reported crime up close to 50 per cent.
Likewise, it’s pretty clear what has to be done. Problem drinkers, black or white, need to be denied access to booze, and the friends and family members supplying the problem drinkers have to be denied access to takeaways. But this is much more than just an alcohol problem as people said to me time and time again. It’s a law and order crisis in the short term but, in the longer term, it’s a symptom of the “tyranny of low expectations” applied to Indigenous people.
Frankly, the Prime Minister’s immediate response when he finally flew in last week was pathetic, and that’s the politest way locals put it. The rest of their comments I couldn’t publish. The notion that banning takeaway booze on Monday and Tuesday would make any real difference is ridiculous. And limiting people to a single purchase on other days is hardly going to help – when that could be three bottles of cheap plonk – or to just drink on premises given they will still be open anyway.
But the PM’s biggest mistake, though, was not ensuring that Alice has a permanently enlarged police presence so that gangs don’t rule the streets. If we can send the Australian Federal Police overseas to return law and order in places like the Solomon Islands, why not here in the heart of our own country?
Throughout remote Australia, the absence of proper policing is a huge issue, that the Howard government intervention only temporarily addressed. For obvious reasons, it’s hard to get individual police officers to go, and keeping them there in special housing is much more expensive than in the normal run of towns and cities. And, as many unfortunate individuals have found, there is a fine line between being an effective cop and being turned into a national pariah.
Inevitably, the Alice Springs crisis is becoming caught up in national debate over the proposed constitutionally entrenched Indigenous Voice to the government and the parliament. The paradox here is that the government pushing the Voice was wilfully deaf to the voices of local Indigenous leaders, such as former Alice Springs deputy mayor, Senator Jacinta Price, and former NT deputy chief minister, Marion Scrymgour, now the local federal Labor MP, who both cited the importance of alcohol restrictions to control crime in their maiden speeches to parliament. The fact that the PM is deaf to these voices shows just how hollow his Voice proposal really is; it’s about voices that Labor agree with, not voices saying what needs to be said.
My fear is that any future Voice would make these problems worse, not better, because as locals in Alice were quick to point out, it’s likely to be dominated by inner-city activists, not those with “red dirt’ between their toes.
With the events of last week, it’s clear the real Voice agenda is about division not unity, pushing separatism and peddling grievance.
A Voice, if it gets up, will find it much easier to demand the abolition of Australia Day, the making of treaties, and the rewriting of history than it will to do what’s really needed: namely, to get the kids to school, and the adults to work, and the communities policed in remote Australia.
Throughout this week on Credlin at 6pm on Sky News, I promised the people of Alice Springs I would put to air their stories. Please, I hope you will listen to their voices where others have not.
Watch Peta on Credlin on Sky News, weeknights at 6pm
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