Resolution urged for family living on slab near Alice Springs

Deputy Liberal leader Sussan Ley has urged a permanent solution to be found for a family that has been living on a slab outside Alice Springs for years.

Deputy Liberal leader Sussan Ley. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

Deputy Liberal leader Sussan Ley has urged a permanent solution to be found for a family that has been living on a slab outside Alice Springs for years, following a visit to the site this week.

It comes after reporting in The Australian last month revealed the family of more than a dozen had been sheltering under a tarp after one member was forced to move to Alice Springs from the Utopia town camp to receive dialysis.

However, a Northern Territory government spokesman confirmed that since the reporting, outreach teams had visited the family seven times offering temporary accommodation and providing food and water.

“On the seventh occasion the family accepted the offer for temporary accommodation, which will initially be paid for by the NT government,” they said.

“The family are now settled in temporary accommodation.”

But Ms Ley said that on her visit to the cement slab on Tuesday, she found several family members at the site.

The Australian understands the family were still going back and forth to check on their belongings and their dogs, but that all have been given a place in temporary accommodation.

Ms Ley maintained that governments had not acted quickly enough to place the family in housing and that a more permanent solution was needed.

“I cannot express how completely unacceptable this situation is, I am demanding an immediate resolution on this,” she said. “This family has been forced to live in appalling conditions because they have fallen through the gaps, it needs to be fixed and fixed now.”

While the NT government is working closely with the family on permanent housing solutions, the current wait time for public housing in the NT is six to eight years.

The family had been living on a patch of land between the Charles Creek and Hoppy’s town camps, which are run by the Tangentyere land council.