A parliamentary inquiry examining job opportunities in the Northern Territory has heard a federally-funded remote employment service is "clearly broken", as businesses and organisations struggle to find staff, while many Indigenous people remain unemployed.
The Inquiry into Community Safety, Support Services and Job Opportunities travelled to Darwin and Alice Springs this week, where stakeholders from a range of sectors gave evidence to a joint standing committee chaired by Senator Pat Dodson.
The inquiry is also considering the fallout from the sunsetting of Stronger Futures legislation in July, which marked the end of long-term liquor bans in dozens of town camps and remote living areas across the Northern Territory.
The Community Development Program (CDP), a controversial remote employment and community development service administered by the previous federal government, has already been flagged for an overhaul by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
Tourism body claims CDP too 'rigid'
Tourism Central Australia chief executive Danial Rochford said the CDP was in desperate need of reform, to end staffing shortages and provide jobs to those seeking meaningful employment.
"On one hand, there are many Indigenous people here in Central Australia in need of meaningful employment, while on the other hand, we have many, almost all businesses crying out for staff," he said.
"It pains me to see businesses, even Indigenous-owned businesses, having to resort to using Pacific labour schemes and using Filipino workers, to do what I could only describe as low-skilled roles.
"What this says is the mechanism to support and nurture people into meaningful, important and positive career pathways is broken."
Mr Rochford lamented the "rigidity" of the CDP, which he said had prevented him from hiring two unemployed Indigenous women for CDP-funded positions in the TCA visitor centre earlier this year.
"Two eager, enthusiastic, young Indigenous women took the proactive step of bringing their CVs into my office," he said.
"I thought this would be a great opportunity to employ both of them [using the funding], but I was quickly told I couldn't employ them because these two women lived in Alice Springs' township, and were not part of the CDP program.
"As of today, I've still not been able to fill the two positions due to the lack of CDP referrals."
Support for return of alcohol bans
Since the Stronger Futures legislation ended in the Northern Territory in July, frontline agencies have reported anecdotal spikes in alcohol-related harm and violence, both in Alice Springs and remote Central Australian communities.
The Central Australian Aboriginal Congress, the largest Aboriginal-controlled health service in the Northern Territory, argued Indigenous women and children were paying the price of the sudden, unfettered access to alcohol.
"What is clear to us is the strong link between the unrestricted availability of alcohol and family violence," the organisation's chief executive Donna Ah Chee said.
"This is something Aboriginal people have understood through our own experiences over many years.
"Of course, alcohol is not the only cause of family violence — there are many causes — however, it is vital that the concept of many interacting causes for complex social problems is properly understood."
Ms Ah Chee expressed her support for the reintroduction of the alcohol restrictions, which the NT government previously described as a "discriminatory" and "racist" policy.
She said the restrictions complemented other current alcohol policies in the Northern Territory, including an alcohol floor price and the use of police auxiliary liquor inspectors (PALIs).
"Congress has fought racial discrimination since we began in 1973, but Aboriginal women and families also have the right to conduct their lives free of alcohol-fuelled violence," she said.
"This is a fundamental right which helps to ensure that the next generation of children can develop free from the family violence that we know is so harmful to healthy brain development.
"Put simply, children repeatedly exposed to violence in their early years do not develop in a healthy way."
'Police bring more people in than the ambulance'
Over the course of three sitting days, the committee repeatedly flagged the lack of relevant data available to quantify the harms being observed.
Stephen Gourley, director of emergency medicine at Alice Springs Hospital, said the number of patients affected by violence and alcohol presenting to the emergency department had increased in the past year.
But Dr Gourley said the numbers don't tell "the full story".
"It's the level of injuries that we're seeing that is horrific," he said.
"There's probably no other word for it — it has a toll not only on the women that are being beaten, but it also has a toll on the families, community and us, the people that people look after them."
Injuries from domestic violence common
Dr Gourley said he was often confronted in the emergency department by a slew of shocking injuries caused by perpetrators of domestic violence.
During a handover he did in the department a few weeks ago, he said there were people listed with "a head hit against the wall, head hit with a rock, beaten with an iron bar, bitten to the face requiring surgical closure, bitten on the hand, struck on the arm and fractured their arm from a metal pole."
"The list goes on, and it's so common," Dr Gourley said.
"This is one of the only hospitals I've ever worked in where the police bring more people in than the ambulance."
The committee is set to prepare a report by March 1, 2023.
