Remote Indigenous communities ‘worn-down by undelivered promises’, says Alice Springs principal

Alice Springs principal Gavin Morris sees ‘dire’ disadvantage among his students every day and doesn’t know whether the voice to parliament can fix it.

Alice Springs Yipirinya School principal Gavin Morris. Picture: Grenville Turner

Alice Springs principal Gavin Morris doesn’t know whether the voice to parliament can fix the kind of horrors he experiences trying to care for his young Indigenous students at the Yipirinya School but he knows something has to give.

In April, the dedicated principal revealed to the nation the extent of the crisis engulfing Indigenous children, telling The Australian of incidents where children were sometimes returned to school in handcuffs or wearing ankle bracelets, of one in which a 12-year-old and his mates led teachers on a wild pursuit through town in a stolen minibus.

Now Mr Morris has issued a plea to all Australians to consider whether the voice can be a genuine mechanism for change or simply a tokenistic invitation to speak about our attempts at achieving “pseudo reconciliation”.

Whichever path we choose, he says, cannot be the one that saw him recently sitting in a hospital emergency department with a six-year-old student who had attempted suicide.

Mr Morris spent hours trying to reach a family member who wasn’t intoxicated or cared enough to show up for the child.

“Even a brief glimpse into the dire living conditions of some of our students shows that overcrowding, lack of food security, little or broken sleep, issues with alcohol and other substances is not uncommon across Indigenous families. Often basic needs are simply not met,” he writes in an op-ed in The Australian.

Mr Morris, Yipirinya School principal since late 2021, doesn’t know whether a voice to parliament will address these basic needs. “As I write this piece, strong leaders in power are speaking up and advocating for an Indigenous voice to parliament.

“Aboriginal organisations that control billions of dollars in funding purport to speak and act on behalf of Aboriginal communities and yet this money does not seem to be flowing to the students and families who need it most.

“If there is a national mechanism that can adequately hear and support this by delivering change for individuals and families in our town camps and remote communities, then a resounding yes driven by real action with heart should be endorsed.

“Like other bodies before it, will this voice proposal simply be another layer of bureaucracy for our community to navigate? Will it offer a genuine mechanism for change or will it simply be a tokenistic invitation to speak about our attempts at achieving pseudo reconciliation?

“I do not know the answers to these questions. But I do know the gap between what is promised and what is delivered is a growing chasm built on this nation’s early foundations,” he says. “In my experience, the Aboriginal people who live in these communities – who confront dire circumstances day to day – are tired, worn down by undelivered promises.”