Andrew Bolt: Alice Springs chaos exposes the fallacies of the Voice

Labor’s entire brand of race politics and their plans for the Voice has been totally discredited by what Australia finally sees in Alice Springs.

No wonder Labor politicians had to be dragged screaming on Tuesday to finally see the chaos in Alice Springs for themselves, as Aboriginal men and children run amok.

No wonder Prime Minister Anthony Albanese stole into town without warning, without taking a journalist or cameraman, without touring anywhere publicly, and without giving a press conference until it was too late to make most TV news bulletins.

The reason: the bashings, vandalism, drunkenness and thefts in Alice Springs expose the farce of Labor’s Voice - a kind of advisory Parliament just for Aborigines that Albanese wants to put in our constitution this year.

In fact, Labor’s entire brand of race politics has been totally discredited by what Australia finally sees in Alice Springs.

No, Aboriginal dysfunction is not caused by white racism. No, whites saying sorry and acknowledging elders won’t fix this. No, we shouldn’t leave Aboriginal children in dangerous homes and towns for fear of repeating the so-called “stolen generations”. No, the answer isn’t in Aboriginal “self-determination”.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese holds a press conference in Alice Springs after meeting with local leaders and Chief Minister Natasha Fyles. Picture: Liam Mendes

Most of all, it’s no to the Voice, now shown up as a deadly distraction.

Imagine how much more real good Albanese would have done if every hour spent on promoting his Voice had been spent instead in stopping the rivers of booze in the Alice and getting Aboriginal children out of danger and into schools.

Of course, it’s easier to be angry with white politicians like Albanese and NT Chief Minister Natasha Fyles for having sat back while Alice Springs went to hell after Fyles last year abruptly lifted booze bans on Aboriginal communities. Alcohol-related and domestic violence assaults went up more than 50 per cent.

But where are the Aboriginal leaders in this? The people whose “voice” would supposedly fix things?

Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney, who identifies as Aboriginal, now admits she was shocked on her visit to Alice on Tuesday to hear that 14 of the town’s 16 intensive care beds were filled with Aboriginal women who’d been bashed.

I’m shocked she’s shocked. Why does Burney seem so blind to what’s happening not just in Alice Springs, but many Aboriginal settlements?

Why didn’t she act decisively last year, after the Central Australian Aboriginal Congress on June 9 warned her the violence was already terrible, and “more access to alcohol will undoubtedly add fuel to this fire”?

Anthony Albanese, Pat Dodson (L) and Linda Burney (R) meet with community groups, local council, the NT Government and frontline services in Alice Springs. Picture: PMO

Aha! Voice apologists will say this proves we need Labor’s Aboriginal Voice, because it won’t be ignored like this hypocritical Albanese Government ignored that Aboriginal congress.

But here’s the figure that shocks me. When the booze bans were lifted last year on 144 Aboriginal settlements, the leaders of just 15 opted for the bans to stay.

Even now, Professor Marcia Langton, a co-designer of the Voice, says the plan is for “local people who live with these problems to co-design solutions”, yet many local leaders didn’t get off their backsides to take the first step to stop the boozy destruction of too many Aboriginal communities.

But do white ideologues do much better?

Albanese and Fyles, shamed into holding a summit at Alice Springs on Tuesday, announced a supposed fix that appalled many locals.

No extra Northern Territory police would be hired. The federal police would not come help, either. There would be no children taken off the midnight streets and into care. The booze ban would not return - or not for now.

Instead, there’d be more of the same. More social welfare programs, more CCTV, more teaching of parents to be better, more bureaucrats, and, oh, wait - some restrictions to times for buying alcohol.

But nothing that would also fight similar anarchy and Aboriginal dysfunction in other towns. Nothing for Wadeye, where dozens of homes were torched and a man killed; nothing for Carnarvon, where new homes have been trashed; nothing for Aurukun, where hundreds of residents fled rioters; nothing for Western Australia and Queensland, where people have been allegedly murdered.

No, Labor and the activists will try to ignore all that to peddle their fantasy that all be fixed by the Voice, or a treaty, or sovereignty or anything that paints whites and their laws as the real problem.

This blindness was best illustrated again by hate-preaching Greens Senator Lidia Thorpe, who, with Alice in chaos, still issued a war-cry for Aborigines on Australia Day: “The war is not over so we have to continue to fight the war.”

War? But around Australia, voters are waking up. They behold the works of the Left in Alice Springs, and despair.