Welfare payments drove crime spike that is still plaguing the NT

There was an obvious driver for the escalation of crime that is still plaguing the NT but few people wanted to hear about it, writes Matt Cunningham.

There’s been plenty of discussion lately about the need for evidence-based policy.

Whether it’s alcohol-related harm or bail and sentencing laws, governments are often urged to base their decisions on the evidence.

This makes sense.

There’s no point doing something if you don’t know it will work - or worse still if it might make things worse.

The only problem is that ideology often drives which evidence people want to put forward and which they want to ignore.

Consider the rising crime wave the Northern Territory has been dealing with for almost three years.

There was an obvious driver for the escalation of crime that is still plaguing the NT but few people wanted to hear about it.

It was the former federal Coalition government’s decision to double welfare payments and allow early access to superannuation during the Covid pandemic.

It was entirely avoidable.

Former Labor MLA Scott McConnell predicted the ensuing damage well before it happened.

He called for the payments to be suspended in the NT saying they would lead to people from remote communities heading into places like Alice Springs and Darwin in search of alcohol and drugs.

“Although a lot of people will do the right thing with the payments and spend them on food or clothing or other things, we do need to acknowledge that in the Northern Territory we do have an issue with these types of stimulus payments being turned into alcohol and other damaging drugs,” Mr McConnell said in March 2020.

“I am very concerned that a number of people could be interested in coming to urban centres to engage in activities that are not good for their health or welfare.”

Labor MLA Scott McConnell called for payments to be suspended in the NTrichm. Picture: Justin Kennedy

In late 2020 I started investigating the impact of these payments.

Documents obtained under freedom of information from the National Indigenous Australians Agency showed community leaders had been sounding the alarm about the impact of these payments for months.

They were seeing huge spikes in gambling, extraordinary prices being paid to grog runners, an increase in child neglect and an influx of people into major centres, often in search of alcohol.

Police data confirmed this trend.

They witnessed significant spikes in alcohol-related harm, particularly domestic violence.

Police Commissioner Jamie Chalker said bottles of Bundaberg rum were selling for $900 on the black market.

Service providers including Larrakia Nation and Mission Australia were overwhelmed.

The impact was bad in Darwin, worse in Alice Springs.

Yet when I arrived in Alice Springs in March 2021 to report on the situation on the ground, I received a call from the head of a non-government organisation.

They had heard about the story I was planning to report and wanted to stop it.

The organisation had been saying the increased payments had led to an increase in purchases of whitegoods, fresh fruit and vegetables and other essentials.

NT Police Commissioner Jamie Chalker said bottles of Bundaberg rum were selling for $900 on the black market. Picture: Pema Tamang

There was some evidence to support this position, including in the freedom of information documents.

But it was far outweighed by stories of drinking and gambling that was having a devastating impact.

Three years since McConnell sounded the alarm about these payments, the jury is well-and-truly back in.

In her report into alcohol-related harm in Central Australia, ordered by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese after his visit to Alice Springs in January, Regional Controller Dorelle Anderson writes: “In 2020 and 2021, there was a rise in assaults across the NT with sharp increases notable in Darwin, Palmerston and NT Balance.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that Covid was a significant contributor to the rise in assaults during this period, specifically the economic support payments, the ability to access superannuation, JobKeeper and regular Covid supplement payments.”

Police data suggests the evidence is more than anecdotal.

In the year ending November 2022 there was a 96.7 per cent increase in alcohol-related domestic-violence assaults in Alice Springs compared to the same period ending November 2019.

In an ABC radio interview last week, Mr Chalker again identified the payments as a major driver of the violence we are seeing on our streets today.

He repeated police reports of bottles of rum selling for $900 when the payments were in place and said they were still being sold for $500 today.

When the payments ended there was also an increase in property offences.

Mr McConnell looks like Nostradamus today, but his prediction was an easy one to make based on past evidence.

Peter Costello’s baby bonus and Kevin Rudd’s GFC stimulus package are among previous well-intentioned policies that had delivered similar unintended consequences.

Still, nobody listened.

So as we try to find ways to address the rising alcohol-fuelled violence on our streets, let’s look to the evidence.

But let’s make sure we look at all of it, not just the bits that suit our agenda.

Matt Cunningham is the Darwin Bureau chief and Northern Australia correspondent for Sky News