Alice Springs crisis must be fixed

THERE’S a crisis unfolding in Alice Springs. That statement will come as little surprise to the people who live there, and no shock to most people in the Northern Territory, writes MATT CUNNINGHAM

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THERE’S a crisis unfolding in Alice Springs.

That statement will come as little surprise to the people who live there, and no shock to most people in the Northern Territory.

But when the cameras from A Current Affair caught the worst of Alice Springs after dark and broadcast it to a national audience on Monday night it put these issues firmly in the spotlight.

Not surprisingly, many are now seeking answers about the cause of what ACA has described as the anarchy in Alice Springs.

Most of those questions have been sent north to Darwin, and the Northern Territory government.

It’s true, the NT government could be doing more for Alice Springs.

Fight on Alice Springs council lawns was featured in a news program on A Current Affair.

It could start by at least giving the impression it cares, for at the moment you could be forgiven for thinking Labor has decided there’s no votes for it to win in Alice, and the town’s problems, therefore, are not a priority.

But if you’re seeking to find blame for what’s happening in Alice Springs, you’d be better off looking east than north.

There have been two significant federal government decisions in the past five years that have directly contributed to the carnage.

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The first was former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s hasty decision to call a Royal Commission into the Protection and Detention of Children on the back of a television show.

Royal Commissions happen far too frequently in this country.

They’re often used by politicians to avoid having to take any responsibility for the issues these inquiries seek to address.

Rather than fix the problems with child protection and detention, the NT Royal Commission has made them worse. That should be of little surprise to people who sat through the Commission’s hearings.

From the beginning this was an outsiders’ inquiry offering outsiders’ solutions to the unique problems of the Northern Territory.

Issues of child protection were tacked on, almost as an afterthought, even though it’s these issues that need to be resolved if we’re ever going to address the over-representation of Indigenous children in youth detention.

It was interesting that one of the commissioners, Mick Gooda, weighed into the debate this week, saying little had changed since the inquiry.

Many in Alice Springs would argue it’s actually got worse.

When you have dozens of children, some as young as eight, wandering the streets unsupervised after midnight, it’s hard to argue an inquiry to protect children has been a success.

It might pay Gooda to reflect on his exchange with former NT Chief Magistrate Hilary Hannam during the final days of the Royal Commission hearings.

Hannam disputed suggestions Aboriginal children were removed from their families for no reason, and gave some shocking examples of cases where authorities failed to intervene despite obvious evidence of abuse and neglect.

She used facts (a rare thing often trumped by feelings these days) from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare to support her argument.

“There are many fewer children removed in the Northern Territory, many fewer Indigenous children, as compared to the substantiated rates of maltreatment,” she said. “Now these are not allegations, they’re substantiated rates.”

Gooda should have sat up and taken notice.

Instead, he wanted to challenge Hannam’s assertion there was no “second stolen generation” taking place. “We will disagree on that, and we will pursue that,” he said.

Commissioners Mick Gooda and Margaret White. Photo: EMMA MURRAY

But if there’s no intervention in cases of serious neglect — such as one Hannam detailed where a girl who showed up at school with a large head wound, smelling of faeces, who had previously been the victim of sexual assault — then authorities are hardly going to be concerned about an eight-year-old kid walking the streets unsupervised at midnight.

This is not an argument for widespread child removals.

But more needs to be done to ensure these children are safe or many of these kids will graduate to become the teenage detainees of our youth justice system that the Royal Commission was so concerned about fixing.

Independent MLA Robyn Lambley made the sensible suggestion recently that there should be beds at the drop-in centre so these kids have a safe place to sleep.

She was hounded down by the usual suspects.

Aside from glossing over child protection, the Royal Commission also left the NT government with an unplayable hand.

The relaxation of bail laws and other measures implemented at the Commission’s recommendation have left police hamstrung as they try to control a worsening situation on the ground.

The Royal Commission started the fire that is burning in Alice Springs.

Then, 12 months ago, the federal government tipped a big bucket of petrol on top of it.

There’s now overwhelming evidence its COVID stimulus payments and early access to superannuation have had disastrous “unintended consequences”.

Increases in alcohol and drug consumption and gambling has contributed to huge spikes in domestic violence and assaults.

There are now fears that when this money dries up next month, it will lead to an increase in property crime.

The Northern Territory government is not without fault when it comes to the carnage in Alice Springs, but Canberra deserves an equal, if not greater, share of the blame.

What’s more important now though, is how it can be fixed.

There’s one simple and obvious place to start.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Chief Minister Michael Gunner should visit Alice Springs together.

These new-found brothers-in-COVID-bromance should alert nobody to their impending visit.

They should invite no cameras to come with them.

They should simply arrive unannounced and walk the streets of Alice Springs at midnight on a Friday or Saturday.

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What they will see will shock them. Hopefully that will be the first step towards some meaningful change.

Let’s just hope they don’t call a Royal Commission.