Piers Akerman: Abhorrent situation in Alice Springs will not be solved by a Voice to Parliament

There is nothing in the Voice to Parliament referendum options being promoted that addresses the clear and immediate problems in Alice Springs, writes Piers Akerman.

Anthony Albanese trashed Australia Day with his partisan advocacy for the fiercely contested Voice to Parliament referendum.

He was not alone. The Senior Australian of the Year, Tom Calma, who co-wrote the report on Voice options with activist academic Marcia Langton, also took the opportunity to use an Australia Day ceremony as a partisan soapbox to advocate for the contentious proposal while gratuitously suggesting older Aussies (whom he allegedly represents) may be too doddery to discern malicious propaganda from hard facts.

Naturally, those who logically refuse to support the as-yet-undetailed Voice proposal, were denied any voice at all on these Labor government platforms. Again, the Labor minority government appears to have abused convention and ignored the views of many Australians, Indigenous and otherwise.

This is another slap in the face for those who genuinely want to see the root problems of dysfunction in predominantly Indigenous communities addressed before any constitutional changes are made to install more layers of bureaucracy in Canberra, in every state and territory capital, and, indeed, in every local council area, at unimaginable cost.

Anthony Albanese during his press conference in Alice Springs last week. Picture: Liam Mendes / The Australian

It is a tragic but indisputable fact that both the federal Labor government and the Northern Territory Labor government were warned over the past six months that their failure to re-establish alcohol bans in remote Aboriginal communities – as repeatedly requested by elders and community councils – would lead to the catastrophic breakdown in society now playing out in Alice Springs and elsewhere across the NT.

Albanese’s FIFO visit to Alice Springs last week to hold a press conference with NT Chief Minister Natasha Fyles, in the presence of federal Minister for Indigenous Australians Linda Burney, was a gross insult to all Australians, not only those directly affected by the current crime wave. Burney’s claim that the violence would not have occurred had a Voice been installed in the Constitution is patent claptrap.

The savage attacks, looting, rapes and mayhem can all be traced back to the Whitlam Labor government’s establishment of fantasy policies doomed from the outset.

Predicated on the notion that Indigenous Australians, if left in vast reserves without any economic underpinning, lacking few if any opportunities to hold real jobs or participate fully in modern society, would be immune to the ravages of drugs and alcohol but would instead flourish as “Noble Savages” was really out of the Dreamtime.

As NT Country Liberal Party Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price warned last June: “Mark my words with federal Labor abolishing the Cashless Debit Card and NT Labor opening the floodgates to alcohol in vulnerable remote communities, rates of DV and sexual abuse of children are about to skyrocket.”

Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Pric. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

The media spotlight will not focus on the devastation of Alice Springs for long. Relentless publicity-seekers like Greens Senator Lidia Thorpe will provide greater diversions. She owes the nation an apology for her inflammatory claim that Australians are killing Indigenous children.

Meanwhile, on the hot and dusty streets of Alice, gangs of children – some not yet five years old – will threaten passers-by and smash those shopfronts not already boarded up.

The hospitals will soon be choked with the wounded.

There is nothing in the Voice referendum options being promoted that addresses the clear and immediate problems.

Albanese, Burney and Calma have rejected the promise of opportunity the Enlightenment brought to this continent, in favour of entrenching a sour and sad culture of victimhood.