Anthony Albanese must grasp nettle or kiss Yes vote goodbye

Anthony Albanese in Canberra on Tuesday. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

The troubles in Alice Springs have been decades in the making. Nothing has worked.

Anthony Albanese, whether he likes it or not, must find a solution.

The welfare of Indigenous communities demands it.

And the success of the Prime Minister’s proposed referendum on an Indigenous voice to parliament may also depend on it.

For that reason, he is presented with a critical decision.

There needs to be an immediate fix for the acute issues facing communities in Alice Springs. This is not in dispute.

In modern Australia, a nation whose wealth elevates it to being among just a few that may avoid recession this year, the greater ­national shame rests with a reality that such depraved conditions for Indigenous children still exist.

Second, a new long-term plan to address the underlying causes, including education as identified by Noel Pearson, should be addressed as a policy priority.

This is a burning moral obligation for the Albanese gov­ernment. And Albanese has acknowledged both these needs rhetorically.

There needs to be an immediate fix for the acute issues facing communities in Alice Springs.

But the Prime Minister’s case has been weakened from the ­outset by a politically reflexive ­response.

Blaming the former Coalition government has diminished his authority while ignoring the pleas of community leaders who have had a gutful of politics.

What is required of Albanese, at least in the short term, is the temporary abandonment of Labor’s ideological fixations.

It demands that he, not only as Prime Minister but as leader of Labor’s left, do things that will be uncomfortable and contrary to that faction’s rigid and, in this case, misaligned principles.

This will require him to step in over the top of the Northern ­Territory Labor government, which has singularly presided over Alice Springs’ recent descent into violence.

Having acknowledged the political pressure to at least show up in Alice Springs, Albanese now owns the problem.

It is widely accepted that a non-discriminatory grog ban must be reimposed.

More policing resources must also be put into the town.

The commonwealth must also return to being the lead jurisdiction, or at a minimum become a joint venture partner with the NT government, which has proven both incapable and lacking in the resources needed to deal with a disaster of its own making.

This is the first step.

Police officers chase a group of young children on the streets of Alice Springs. Picture Mark Brake

The second step is for a thorough and clear-eyed examination of endemic social problems that have cultivated the crisis, which are undeniably in the commonwealth’s remit.

Albanese is at risk of losing the politics on this issue, which has broader implications for the Yes case on the referendum.

If the issues in Alice Springs, which also exist in other regional communities, are allowed to linger, the politics may well turn against the government.

Even advocates of the voice recognise the hypocrisy of the disastrous decision by Labor to wind back alcohol restrictions in the NT despite the pleas from some communities that they remain.

This contradiction extends to the Albanese government’s decision to abolish the cashless welfare card in other jurisdictions under the same principle, while blaming the Coalition for allowing the intervention to lapse in the NT.

Protraction of the political argument will weaken rather than bolster the government’s case.

If the Yes campaign is to prevail, the federal Labor government must make clear that a voice to parliament would recognise that different communities retain the right to have their own views.

This is a central point that will undermine the case for a voice to parliament; failure to recognise that a collective position will be a miscarriage of justice for communities that have problems and issues unique to them.

Unless the troubles in Alice Springs are addressed quickly, the Yes campaign is at risk of being eroded by cynicism not only among remote Indigenous communities but also among the broader soft Yes vote upon which Albanese relies to succeed.