Kids return to the streets in Alice Springs to run amok

Three months after The Australian revealed how children as young as 10 were running wild at night in Alice Springs, not much seems to have changed | WATCH

A group of children roams the streets of Alice Springs just before midnight on Thursday, mirroring the scene The Australian published on its front page on January Picture: Liam Mendes/The Australian

The girl looks about 14. “I’m drunk, f..k you,” she yells as we pass on the street.

Her mates laugh.

It’s 11.20pm on Thursday in Alice Springs, and the group of a dozen or so Indigenous children and early teens heads on towards the main drag of town.

“Yeah, we drunk,” her friend calls back. “What the f..k for, bra,” she says as her friends continue laughing. “We’ll beat you, we’ll smash your car,” she adds as the gang cross the road.

Most of the kids are around 15, with some closer to 10 or 11. Three months on from our first reports revealing the extent of kids running wild in Alice Springs and it’s clear little has changed. Perhaps nothing.

Despite the promise of almost $300m in extra funding and new restrictions on alcohol sales, children are still on the streets late at night, on their own, playing cat and mouse with the cops – on the same day Peter Dutton flew out of town after kicking over a hornet’s nest of accusations and counter-accusations over rampant child sexual abuse.

The issue no one seemed to want to talk about was neglect.

Where are the parents?

Tonight, the gang comes across three wheelie bins that had already been upturned by another mob and started throwing shredding paper in the air like confetti. They soon get bored. As two kids saunter across the street, a car is forced to slam on its brakes to avoid hitting them. They barely notice. Neither would be older than 10.

A police paddy wagon pulls up. “Oi, are you mob going home?” an officer asks. “If I see you again in town, I’m going to drop you home.”

“I’m with my big sister,” the younger child says. Maybe.

They say they’re going to the bus. “Alright, go sit in the bus, I’m not going to see you in town,” the officer says, and drives on.

People in NT government-branded Toyota Landcruisers and not-for-profit branded minivans work hard but ineffectually to ferry kids home, using walkie-talkies to co-ordinate pickups and drop-offs.

Often, the service ends well before midnight; other times, it’s non-existent. When they do take children home, it’s often not long before the kids return.

Young children roaming the streets of Alice Springs just before midnight on Thursday. Picture: Liam Mendes/The Australian

On Friday, Labor MP for Lingiari Marion Scrymgour said politicians had to stop “pointing the finger at each other”.

“I think everyone in the territory, we’ve got to work together to resolve some of these issues,” she said.

Ms Scrymgour, whose seat has the nation’s largest Indigenous population, agreed there had “been inroads” into domestic and family violence.

“I think alcohol restrictions have given some respite to staff in the hospital system and police, there has been a reduction in the levels of alcohol-fuelled violence, and the presentations into the emergency room, there’s been changes there,” she says.

But in terms of youth crime, nothing has changed, she says.

“So what are people doing? There’s got to be some accountability here,” she said.

She called on Aboriginal leadership to “step up” and become “front and centre” of the issues. “We’ve all got to stop pussyfooting around this and look at the solution going forward. We’ve got to stop wasting the money and resources. I don’t think we’ve got the policy grunt or capacity within governments to … deal with this and that’s where I think the Aboriginal leadership needs to come into this.”