Alice Springs senator wants to remove kids from families amid crime crisis
Senator Jacinta Price says a failure to intervene in children wandering the streets of Alice Springs is a leading cause of the crime crisis. Read her suggested solutions to the situation.
Alice Springs
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Country Liberal Party Senator Jacinta Price says children wandering the streets of Alice Springs late at night need to be removed from their families.
Dozens of children - some as young as five - can often be seen walking around in Alice Springs unsupervised late at night.
Senator Price said authorities needed to ensure the children were safe.
“To leave a child in a dysfunctional situation because of their race because somehow being maintained in a dysfunctional family situation is more important to them because of their culture (is wrong),” she said.
“What’s more important than upholding their human rights?
“It’s completely un-Australian and (our failure to intervene) is why we are faced with this situation.”
Senator Price also supported calls by Labor MP Marion Scrymgour to return alcohol bans to Indigenous communities and town camps after they were lifted when the Stronger Futures legislation expired last July.
Ms Scrymgour told The Australian she had watched lawlessness grow in the town since the bans were lifted.
“I just find it unacceptable in this day and age that the violence against Aboriginal women in this town raises very little urgency from anyone - it’s appalling,” she said.
Senator Price said the decision to lift the alcohol bans had been catastrophic.
“I’ve had phone calls from remote communities where school principals are beside themselves because they’re 500km from Alice Springs and parents are either dumping their children in the community, going back into Alice Springs to buy alcohol, drinking that alcohol on the drive back or taking their children with them while they are drink driving,” she said.
“Their school’s had to shut down at lunchtime because the teachers’ aides are intoxicated.
“Alcohol-fuelled violence is now taking control of these communities once again.”
Senator Price said she would seek bi-partisan support to reinstate alcohol bans under federal law.
“I have the intention of introducing the Safe Measures NT Bill 2023 in the senate during the March sittings to help provide a solution to one aspect of the crime crisis affecting Central Australia,” she said.
“Territorians aren’t stupid - we knew lifting the Stronger Futures legislation would cause absolute chaos and it has.
“(My Bill) aims to reinstate alcohol bans to once again being about safer communities.”
Arrente man Harold Moseley, 42, who was born in Alice Springs, said Aboriginal organisations needed to do more to get the kids off the streets.
“Spend time with them, teach them the right way,” he said.
“Sports, their culture, everything. Get them off the streets.”
*Matt Cunningham is the Sky News correspondent for the Northern Territory
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