Peta Credlin: Anthony Albanese’s Voice proposal has no answers for towns like Alice

Labor claims the trouble-plagued Alice Springs shows that everything else has failed and that’s why we need a Voice. But the Voice will simply double down on that failure, writes Peta Credlin.

A key difference between the two big parties is that Labor tends to exploit problems as a means to change the way we’re governed, to grow the role of government and reduce the power of the individual.

The Liberals, on the other hand, still tend to see the role of government as only necessary to do the things that individuals can’t do for themselves, and to focus on practical change, not ideological war.

Take the epidemic of domestic dysfunction afflicting Alice Springs and other remote townships.

Labor reckons that this just proves we need a constitutionally entrenched Indigenous Voice to everyone on everything.

Labor’s line is that Alice shows everything else has failed and that’s why we need a Voice; when instead, the Voice would be doubling down on failure.

That’s because the Voice is all about the same activists who’ve dominated Indigenous policy for years and are responsible for good policies (like grog bans) being thrown out because some claimed it was racist.

Worse still, the Voice is predicated on being ‘advisory’, so all care and no responsibility.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton (left) and Senator Jacinta Price hold a press conference on ANZAC Hill in Alice Springs on Thursday. Picture: Liam Mendes

Nowhere is it planned for the Voice to take on the role of actually fixing anything and accepting the consequences if change doesn’t happen.

It’s just an elaborate con job to create a whole new power structure at the heart of our Constitution, co-governance by stealth, that will do nothing to deal with the problems on the ground in so many remote Indigenous communities.

By contrast, the Libs think the crisis in Alice Springs proves the need for stronger government action on the ground — more police, more child protection, etc — that the creation of a national Voice might make even more complicated and difficult.

The ABC’s arrogant challenge to the Opposition Leader last week typifies the left’s denialism about problems in Indigenous communities and the broadcaster’s obsession with symbols rather than substance when it comes to Indigenous affairs.

When Dutton called out “rampant sexual abuse” in Alice Springs last week, the ABC’s reporter-on-the-spot editorialised that an Indigenous body had called Dutton “uninformed” and demanded that the Opposition Leader produce evidence to back up what he’d said.

Dutton’s response was that he’d spoken to the police and social workers, “some of whom are on stress leave … because of the scenes that they’ve endured”.

“I don’t know what the bureaucrats are saying,” he went on, “but I can tell you what the human experience is on the front line and if the ABC and others don’t see fit to report that … it reflects more on the ABC than it does on the locals here.”

It was, of course, at that point that the ABC chose to cut off its live broadcast of the media conference.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s Voice proposal is not going to fix the problems faced by Indigenous people, writes Peta Credlin.

The facts that the ABC doesn’t want you to know, from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare — the national agency that collects this data — show that child protection notifications are five times higher in the Northern Territory than in any other jurisdiction.

In NSW, there are 23 child protection notifications per 1000 children in the state, but in the NT it’s a horrific 95 notifications a year for every 1000 children.

While a notification is not a substantiated case of abuse, even when comparing substantiated cases of child protection claims the NT is still by far the worst jurisdiction in the country.

This is the epidemic of family dysfunction that Dutton says the government should be focused on, while the collective left accuses anyone worrying about child abuse in remote Australia as racist.

Last week, the NT Police Minister said that Dutton’s focus on child abuse and domestic dysfunction in Alice Springs was, to quote, a “dog act”. Even though this is what the official stats say is happening. Even though it’s the constant testimony of police, nurses and social workers on the ground.

And even though the Mayor of Alice Springs Matt Paterson has confirmed that the levels of dysfunction and violence —— that dipped slightly when Alice was the nation’s focus earlier this year — are now back to where they were, despite the grog bans partially put back in.

Although Alice Springs remains a town in crisis, the Albanese government would still rather talk about the Voice than deal with the problems on the ground.

What’s the point of establishing a Voice if it’s not going to make any difference to the social disasters unfolding in towns like Alice?

Indeed, the Voice will only make the problems worse, because whatever the government says about remote representation, it’s almost certain to be dominated by city-based activists demanding changes to Australia Day, treaties and reparations, and claiming that problems on the ground are the result of racism and colonialism, rather than the inevitable consequence of kids not going to school, adults not going to work, and communities not being properly policed.

A separate, race-based Voice is wrong in principle.

But the very last thing Australia needs right now is something that’s not just wrong in principle, but will be a distraction from solving the problems that really matter.

NSW LIBERAL PARTY LACKS ANYONE WORTHY OF FILLING MOLAN’S SHOES

Next month the NSW Liberal Party will chose a senator to replace the late, great former general Jim Molan.

The failed mediocrities that are so far the only names in contention demonstrate just how much trouble the Liberals are in. Because with the preselection essentially to be decided by factional string-pulling, no candidate of any stature is likely to nominate.

Former Liberal Senator Jim Molan, who died in January.

The 750-member Liberal state council comprises delegates from every branch in the state and is heavily factionalised.

The biggest faction is the so-called “moderate” (or left-wing) faction currently controlled by former state treasurer Matt Kean and still heavily influenced by former state minister and lobbyist Michael Photios.

There’s the so-called centre-right faction, led by former federal minister Alex Hawke, that has recently been in an unholy alliance with the left.

Then there’s the conservatives who are usually in a minority at state council, because the left is usually better organised.

The late Jim Molan was no one’s flunky and had cross-factional appeal by virtue of his record and character. Even so, he himself had struggled to get preselection and in reality only fluked his way in and, it should not be forgotten, had to keep fighting against the system to hold his seat.

So far, the only publicly identified contenders are all from the Kean faction — former defeated federal MP Fiona Scott; former state MP and unsuccessful federal candidate Andrew Constance; and the current state president Maria Kovacic, who is supposedly the factional first choice on the grounds that she would supposedly help fix the party’s “women problem”.

None of these people are going to add to the party’s firepower in Canberra.

Honestly, where are the conservatives that reflect the views of Liberal voters? Where are the people of Molan’s calibre?

Maybe it’s time for federal intervention into the NSW and Victorian divisions of the Liberal Party to ensure that it stops being an insiders’ club squabbling over the spoils of defeat.

Watch Peta on Credlin on Sky News, weeknights at 6pm