What really happened in the Alice Springs town hall meeting

It was the Alice Springs gathering which drew national headlines and was labelled as a meeting of “white supremacists” by the ABC. See what actually happened inside the packed town hall in episode two of Cry from the Heart.

The man behind a controversial Alice Springs town hall meeting has doubled down on his calls for police or government to be involved in helping children who wander the streets “unaccompanied”.

Garth Thompson organised last month’s tension-filled meeting which saw more than 2,500 locals – almost 10 per cent of the entire Alice Springs population – pack out a convention centre, fed up with the chaos that has been occurring on the city’s streets day and night.

The ABC reported the event was a meeting of “white supremacists”, a claim that drew condemnation from Alice Springs Mayor Matt Paterson and ended with the national broadcaster issuing an apology and correction.

Mr Thompson described the ABC’s coverage of the meeting as “disgusting” and stood firm in his call from that night that locals should “call the police” if they see young children on the streets during school hours – a comment that led to abuse from a small number of attendees.

Episode two of The Daily Telegraph’s new documentary Cry from the Heart is out now and takes viewers inside the meeting so they see for themselves the broad range of views discussed.

Garth Thompson speaks at the meeting which the ABC described as full of “white supremacists”.

“For anyone to step up and try and call me a white supremacist, or my family, it was disgusting,” he said.

“My point wasn’t anything more than during school times, if kids are out and about unaccompanied, ring the police and ask for a welfare check.

“Someone is responsible for these kids. Whether it’s the staff from the school, whether it’s the families’ that haven’t made sure they made it to school, or whether it’s (Department of) Territory Families … a ten-year-old is not responsible for themselves.

“I wasn’t proud to see that many people show up (to the meeting), it just goes to show that things have gone too far.

A packed Town Hall meeting in Alice Springs made national headlines. Picture: Facebook

“But those people went into the venue using the white supremacy language … that wasn’t the attitude they took from the meeting, that was the attitude they took to the meeting.”

One of the key discussion points at the meeting was a plan to sue the Northern Territory government for a total of $1.5 billion for what Mr Thompson described as a failure of their duties in Alice Springs.

The business owner revealed that since then, another meeting has been held with interested locals where several other points – aside from the suing of the NT government – were created, including getting urgent help for the huge number of Triple-0 calls in Alice Springs.

The Outback city had more calls than Darwin last year, despite having one-fifth of the population.

Chris and Cheryl Slater were among the concerned locals who attended the town hall meeting and said they were considering leaving Alice Springs.

“We are working on a few different points that we need to see a change in the town,” Mr Thompson said.

“The first is calling for Triple-0 to be relocated back into Alice Springs.

“We are also calling for a review of the bail conditions for repeat offenders, a call for the judicial system to improve its appropriate sentencing and for a review of the government’s treatment of young children found unaccompanied.”

Originally published as What really happened in the Alice Springs town hall meeting