There will be immediate restrictions on alcohol sales and more than $50m worth of community support to restore order and safety to the central Australian town of Alice Springs, where alcohol-related harms, violent crime and unrest have reached extreme levels.
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, also announced that Luritja woman Dorelle Anderson, the first Aboriginal director of the Northern Territory’s families department, will be appointed as a central Australian regional controller, to coordinate those immediate efforts.
Anderson will give an initial progress report to the prime minister and the NT chief minister, Natasha Fyles, on 1 February.
Albanese promised $25m in community services funding for central Australian organisations, $2m for the Tangentyere women’s council, $2m for “high visibility” police operations and $2m for CCTV safety lighting. He also committed $4.6m for emergency accommodation, saying there had been a “severe shortfall” in emergency support for families in Alice Springs.
There will be takeaway alcohol-free days on Monday and Tuesday and alcohol-reduced hours on other days, with takeaways allowed between 3pm and 7pm and a limit of one transaction per person each day, Fyles said.
The chief minister said the “data has settled” and it is clear that harms have risen since the previous federal government decided to allow intervention-era alcohol restrictions under the Stronger Futures legislation to lapse mid-2022.
“Peter Dutton was a part of the Coalition cabinet that sat there and let the stronger futures law lapse in the Northern Territory,” Fyles said. “Yet over the last few weeks he’s played politics with this issue without even visiting the Northern Territory.”
“The prime minister and myself as chief minister, we won’t give up. There is tough work that needs to be done. But we are here listening to the community and working with them.”
Alongside Albanese were his most senior federal Indigenous colleagues, including Indigenous Australians minister, Linda Burney, and senators Patrick Dodson, Marion Scrymgour and Malarndirri McCarthy.
Burney said the issues facing Alice Springs were complex, and that alcohol was not the only factor. She said the measures announced were “significant”, and would attempt to address family safety and the welfare of children.
They had spent the afternoon meeting with representatives of health organisation the Central Australian Aboriginal Congress.
Earlier on Tuesday, the Congress CEO, Donna Ah Chee, told the ABC her own home had been burgled twice in four days, with alleged intruders smashing house and car windows.
“There’s a tsunami ahead of us if we don’t get on top of this,” she said.
Ah Chee and Congress’ chief medical officer, Dr John Boffa, both said they and several other Aboriginal organisations had warned the Morrison government and the NT government in May last year that overturning the Intervention-era alcohol restrictions would result in a rise in harm.
“A range of Aboriginal organisations wrote to governments warning them that if this legislation was to simply allowed to lapse, that we would see the sort of crisis we’re seeing now and unfortunately, it’s happened,” Boffa said.
Intervention-era bans on alcohol in remote Aboriginal communities came to an end in July, when liquor became legal in some communities for the first time in 15 years and others were able to buy takeaway alcohol without restrictions.
Since then, NT police statistics show that reported property offences have jumped by almost 60% over the past 12 months, while assaults increased by 38% and domestic violence assaults were up 48%.
“We’re seeing women being beaten on the streets in front of our faces. We’re seeing the trauma that was there come back again,” Boffa said.
The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, had called for federal police to help quell unrest, while Alice Springs mayor, Matt Paterson, had asked for a military-style intervention, but these calls were widely rejected by the prime minister, the chief minister and the territory’s police commissioner, Jamie Chalker.
“I’m not sure that the imagery of Australian soldiers, who are here to serve their country, dealing with First Nations people in a way that sees them having to effect arrests of them and place them in police vehicles and the like is the imagery that we really want for Australia,” Chalker told the ABC.
Lhere Artepe, the organisation representing the traditional owners of Alice Springs, said they welcomed increased attention on a situation that had been “truly out of control”.
“If [Albanese] looks properly he will see that the current crisis in Alice Springs arises from the chronic and systemic neglect of our remote communities over many decades. He will see things that should shame our nation, the Parliament and its elected representatives,” their statement read.
“The Arrernte people are pained that we do not have the capacity to help our brothers and sisters, many of whom are related to us by kin and ceremony.
“We are hurt by the negative images and stereotyping of all Aboriginal people.
“We are harmed by the violence and alcohol abuse in our midst. These problems cannot be talked away. They are real and require a massive undertaking from all stakeholders,” their statement read.
