Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price’s plea to reinstate grog bans

Country Liberal senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price will push Labor to establish a committee to run ­alcohol bans in besieged Alice Springs.

NT senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

Country Liberal senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price will push Labor to establish a committee to run ­alcohol bans in besieged Alice Springs, as Labor MP Marion Scrymgour warned NT authorities that the Albanese government will overrule them if the crisis does not calm down soon.

Senator Price is in the process of penning a private senator’s bill to reinstall the ban to keep drink out of vulnerable communities until an alcohol management plan can be put in place.

The NT government announced a temporary three-month booze ban on Mondays and Tuesdays in a bid to quell the crime wave which erupted after the expiry of alcohol bans mid-last year.

Senator Price criticised the approach taken by the NT and federal governments to resolve the crisis unfolding in her home town and argued that an alcohol management committee is needed to oversee the process.

“Appropriate infrastructure needs to be in place with education on responsible alcohol management before alcohol can go anywhere near vulnerable communities,” she writes in The Australian.

“Instead of investing millions into a racially divisive ­referendum and another overpaid bureaucratic body the ­government should be investing in effective drug and alcohol ­services and effective rehabilitation.”

It comes as Lingiari MP Marion Scrymgour said the federal government will intervene if the Northern Territory government fails to “step up” and quickly resolve the crisis.

Ms Scrymgour, who said on Monday the Indigenous voice to parliament was the “furthest thing” from the mind of her community in the face of the crisis, didn’t rule out her government “coming in over the top” of the territory to enforce its own ­restrictions.

“As the federal representative, I’ll be making sure we don’t walk away from any of the agreements that have been done over the last couple of days,” she told Sky News.

“But moving forward, the prime minister gave a very clear commitment: if the Northern Territory government doesn’t implement what they said that they should, that he will certainly be looking at acting from the federal government. We don’t want to come in over the top – that’s never been the case for us – but it is important for citizens of this country to feel safe.”

Ms Scrymgour also disputed claims made by the Northern Territory government that blanket alcohol bans were a “race based policy”.

“I think that what people have to get away from is that this is race based,” she said. “It becomes race based when there is inaction … when people don’t do what they should be doing.

“The Northern Territory government has to step up here and they have to do the work that they need to do to make sure that Territorians are going to be looked after and kept safe in their homes here in Central Australia and right throughout the Northern Territory.”

A Northern Territory government spokesperson said it was working with the federal ­government “to address generational issues in Alice Springs” but could not be drawn further on the hanging threat of an intervention.

NT Chief Minister Natasha Fyles told The Australian earlier this week that federal intervention “had been tried” but didn’t work. “It targeted and disempowered Aboriginal Territorians and entrenched disadvantage, rather than improve it,” she said.