Lifting alcohol bans has had dreadful consequences

The depressing state of community safety in Alice Springs and surrounding communities speaks volumes about the abject failure of government at all levels to heed the difficult lessons of the past. Events on the streets of Central Australia’s biggest city, where gangs of young children roam day and night and terrorise citizens in public, in shops and in their homes, is exactly what was warned of by Indigenous leaders before alcohol restrictions, first introduced as part of the Howard government’s Northern Territory intervention, were lifted last year. The high levels of drunken violence that have erupted as alcohol is allowed back into communities that have been dry for more than a decade are almost too horrific to contemplate. The failure of both the commonwealth and Northern Territory governments to admit their roles in what has happened is a damning indictment. It smacks of efforts to appease metropolitan sentiments at the expense of vulnerable residents in communities that lack resources to cope.

The upsurge in drunken violence and domestic abuse is exactly what Indigenous leaders such as Jacinta Nampijinpa Price have been struggling to draw to political attention. The head of the Central Australian Aboriginal Congress health service, Donna Ah Chee, says grog bans need to be reintroduced because alcohol is causing the crisis. Anthony Albanese agreed to visit Alice Springs on Tuesday after public attention threatened to undermine federal government efforts to promote an Indigenous voice to parliament. Ironically, the government’s Indigenous advisory body, the National Indigenous Australians Agency, warned that abandoning alcohol controls when the Stronger Futures legislation lapsed could increase the risk of alcohol-related harm in some communities. But it said the “Australian government does not require ongoing legislative instruments to help address community issues associated with alcohol” because the NT government was “well placed to deliver its jurisdictional responsibilities with targeted strategies to address alcohol misuse”. The Stronger Futures legislation was put in place by Labor in 2012 to replace the NT National Emergency Response Act legislated by the Howard government in 2007. Under the Stronger Futures laws, the commonwealth enforced alcohol restrictions that included penalties for the sale and possession of alcohol. A 2015 review of the laws by Minter Ellison noted anecdotal suggestions that “alcohol restrictions have had some success in improving the circumstances of remote Aboriginal communities in the NT”. A 2016 KPMG review noted “some positive changes” but said it was not possible to identify whether the SFNT Act contributed to the changes. The legislation was allowed to lapse because it was seen as racially based.

The collapse in community safety in Alice Springs can be traced directly to the abandonment of the commonwealth controls. Police have been left to pick up the pieces. NT Police Commissioner Jamie Chalker is right when he says it is not possible for Alice Springs to arrest itself out of strife. In Alice Springs on Tuesday, NT Chief Minister Natasha Fyles finally agreed to do her job and increase restrictions on alcohol but the response falls well short of local community expectations. The Prime Minister must pay more attention to real-world experiences of people such as Ms Ah Chee, who favours positive discrimination to restrict alcohol and protect women and children, than the views of those responsible for allowing this mess that must now be confronted.