The Northern Territory chief minister insists a one-off payment of a quarter of a billion dollars in federal funding will make a meaningful difference to Indigenous disadvantage in Central Australia.
But both levels of government have been accused of walking away from a key recommendation made in a pivotal report on social disorder in Alice Springs published on Monday.
The report prompted the return of blanket alcohol bans to dozens of communities and town camps, as well as calling for needs-based funding for service providers to break cycles of Indigenous disadvantage.
The Commonwealth has pledged $250 million for a response it says will focus on six areas: youth diversion and engagement, job creation, remote service delivery, foetal alcohol spectrum disorder, family support including domestic violence services and on-country learning.
However, Chay Brown, a prominent domestic violence researcher based in Alice Springs, has labelled the funding commitment a "drop in the ocean" for stretched frontline services in the region.
"Needs-based funding is a sustained commitment over decades to address these problems," Dr Brown said.
"These problems are not six months in the making … they are decades in the making.
"So in order to address them, we need a commitment to sustained funding over decades to bring about that generational change."
The report by senior public servant Dorrelle Anderson contained no shortage of troubling statistics, finding the number of alcohol-related domestic violence assaults in Alice Springs since February 2022 had been greater than those in Darwin — a city about five times its size.
Chief Minister Natasha Fyles on Tuesday said she believed the funding commitment was needs-based, and that the report's funding recommendation had been accepted by the prime minister.
However Indigenous Affairs Minister Linda Burney did not confirm that when directly asked if the funding was needs-based on RN Breakfast this morning.
"The commitment is $250 million additional, which is on top of the $48 million that was committed by the prime minister just over a week ago, plus millions of dollars in election commitments that go to things like upgraded roads, housing and homelands, health infrastructure," she said.
"When you add all that up, I think it's a very substantial commitment to the Northern Territory."
She said the Albanese government would remain in conversation with the NT government about further funding needs.
The federal government has not provided more detail about elements of the initial $50 million despite requests from the ABC.
Existing programs to be reviewed
A clearer picture is beginning to emerge of how the funding package will be spent.
The chief minister on Tuesday said the money would begin flowing immediately, with some spent over a time frame of several years.
Report author Dorrelle Anderson has also been tasked with reviewing the appropriateness of current services.
"Some of [the funding] is one-off — to bring facilities into line, to perhaps build new facilities — and other parts of it is recurrent over four years," Ms Fyles told ABC Radio Darwin.
"There may be some tough decisions. This is balancing the limited taxpayer resources we have with getting programs that work and we have seen changes in models over the decades.
"It's not going to be brutal cuts for the sake of it, but we do need to have a deep, hard look at what we're delivering."
Federal Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has applauded the NT government's move to reinstate alcohol bans in affected communities, but said the safety of children should be the top priority.
Advocacy groups such as those in the domestic violence and housing sectors have repeatedly called for funding to be based on the NT's significant levels of need rather than its marginal population, in part because of the high cost of service delivery in remote areas.
Last week, a peak body in the drug and alcohol sector said some of its service providers were so underfunded they preside over condemned buildings
The ABC has previously detailed how domestic violence victims in some large, remote parts of the NT have to travel hundreds of kilometres to access a women's shelter.
The prime minister's office has been contacted for comment.
