The central Australian town of Alice Springs is living through a spike in serious social unrest and violence, prompting a rapid visit by the prime minister and new alcohol restrictions.
Fresh grog rules have already come into effect, and Anthony Albanese said a total ban could be on the cards.
There’s been plenty of discussion about what led to this – and how to face the challenges ahead.
Here’s a history of how we got here.
What’s going on right now?
Over the past year, property offences in Alice Springs have jumped by almost 60%, assaults increased by 38% and domestic violence assaults have doubled. According to local health organisations, this is the result of the easing of alcohol restrictions.
After 15 years, intervention-era grog bans in NT lapsed in July. While many Aboriginal communities chose to opt-in to ongoing restrictions for another two years, some did not – including the town camps around Alice Springs.
Aboriginal organisations say they had repeatedly warned all levels of governments that alcohol-related harms would rise if grog bans were lifted, but nothing was done.
NT police say the situation was exacerbated by an influx of around 300 people from remote communities, who came into Alice Springs before Christmas and were stranded after severe flooding cut roads to their home communities.
As media coverage of the crisis escalated, the Alice Springs mayor, Matt Paterson, and opposition leader, Peter Dutton, called for federal police to be brought in to restore order, but this was roundly rejected.
The NT police commissioner, Jamie Chalker, told Sky News more police was not going to help, saying: “We’ve already filled the jails.”
What has been done this week?
On Tuesday, Albanese and his most senior Indigenous colleagues – including the Indigenous Australians minister, Linda Burney, and senators Patrick Dodson, Marion Scrymgour and Malarndirri McCarthy – converged on Alice Springs for a flurry of meetings with key local organisations.
They announced Monday and Tuesday would be takeaway alcohol-free days in the town. On other days, takeaway alcohol could only be sold between 3pm and 7pm, with a limit of one transaction per person per day.
The NT chief minister, Natasha Fyles, said this would be managed via the Banned Drinker Register, which requires anyone wanting to buy takeaway alcohol to show photo ID. A ban can last from three months to a year. Police say around 800 people have been added to the BDR in Alice Springs in recent weeks.
As well as alcohol restrictions, Albanese promised $48.8m over two years, including $14.2m for “high visibility policing” including targeting grog running and liquor license compliance. There will be $25m in community services funding for central Australian organisations, $2m for the Tangentyere women’s council and $5.6m to fix up a “severe shortfall” in emergency accommodation.
Luritja woman Dorelle Anderson, the first Aboriginal director of the Northern Territory’s families department, will coordinate those efforts and consult on further alcohol bans. Anderson is due to provide an initial report on 1 February.
Albanese said on Wednesday a total alcohol ban could be introduced in remote communities around Alice Springs, and an opt-out system, depending on Anderson’s report.
What is the bigger picture?
Locals say poverty, dispossession and disadvantage as a result of years of punitive government policies and neglect of service delivery in remote communities are the bigger problem.
The Alice Springs traditional owner group Lhere Artepe put it this way: “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.”
Housing is poorly maintained by the NT government. Last year a court found that the inadequate and inhumane housing experienced by residents at a community near Alice Springs was due to repeated failures by authorities to conduct necessary repairs. One claimant lived with a blocked toilet and leaking shower for 269 days.
Aboriginal families live below the poverty line with limited access to essential services. In 2020, 43% of Indigenous people in remote communities reported having gone without food in the previous 12 months.
They have lived under the now-defunct work for the dole scheme. The government’s own review in 2019 found social problems had increased since it began, including more children breaking into houses to steal food.
They have experienced the negative effects of cashless welfare and income quarantining. The former government’s analysis found assault and other crimes had increased over the life of the program. Alice Springs, with 398 participants on the cashless card, had the highest increase in crime across the NT in 2021.
Frequently, 100% of all kids in NT jails are Aboriginal kids.
There have been long-term cuts to family violence support services and a lack of safe places for women and children. Burney, the Indigenous Australians minister, said she was appalled to learn there were 16 ICU beds at Alice Springs hospital, and 14 of them were occupied by Aboriginal women who had been attacked.
What rules had previously been in place?
This goes back to the Howard government’s highly controversial NT intervention in 2007.
The intervention was triggered by the release of the Little Children are Sacred report, which found Aboriginal child sexual abuse was of urgent national significance.
The then Indigenous affairs minister, Mal Brough, claimed paedophile rings were operating in Aboriginal communities, allegations that were later discredited by the Australian Crime Commission in 2009.
Howard declared a “national emergency”. The Australian Defence Force was deployed into 73 NT Aboriginal communities to establish logistics centres under the guise of community safety.
The Howard government compulsorily acquired township leases over Aboriginal-owned land and revoked the permit system administered by Aboriginal land councils to control access to Aboriginal land.
Medical teams were flown in to conduct health checks on children. Signs were posted declaring bans on alcohol and pornography in township or “prescribed” areas. Income management was applied to all community residents receiving welfare payments, and payments were linked to school attendance.
Police presence was increased in these prescribed communities.
The Howard government had to suspend the Racial Discrimination Act to make this possible. The move was given bipartisan support.
Parliamentary reviews, including by the Australian National Audit Office, showed that many social problems became worse under the intervention – but that it was hard to tell because evaluation of programs was not well maintained.
The UN special rapporteur on human rights strongly criticised the intervention for its breaches of human rights.
When the intervention legislation expired in 2012, the Gillard Labor government passed the Stronger Futures act, which extended many of the intervention’s regulations for another 10 years.
Was Stronger Futures any different?
The Gillard government said Stronger Futures measures, including income management, were not racially discriminatory. But they were widely opposed by Aboriginal communities, which said they were racist because they applied only to people from prescribed communities.
Welfare quarantining, school attendance measures, and penalties for alcohol and pornography use were all extended despite a lack of evidence that these measures were effective.
Stronger Futures had a sunset date of July 2022, and that lapsed with neither the federal government or the NT government intervening. When the act “sunsetted”, all the restrictions on alcohol lapsed.
Was letting the policies lapse a bad thing?
The key measure many local organisations sought to keep was alcohol restrictions.
The Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (NPY) Women’s Council wrote to the Morrison government in May, imploring it to consider the vulnerable people in those communities, especially women and children, saying they were most at risk of further harm and abuse if the restrictions eased.
AMSANT, the peak Aboriginal health body for the NT, publicly warned governments in April of the health risks in letting bans lapse, and pleaded for more time to consult communities and prepare.
But the NT chief minister at the time, Michael Gunner, said the intervention-era bans were racist and it was time for communities to make their own choices. The Morrison government said it was up to the NT to make the call, but did not oppose the lifting of grog bans.
What do communities want?
Locals are already saying the bans imposed this week will not be enough to address the underlying challenges that communities are facing, and emphasised the need for community-driven solutions.
Shirleen Campbell, the Tangentyere Women’s Family Safety Group coordinator, told Guardian Australia that alcohol bans, total or not, are a “band-aid”.
“Alcohol is not the driver of domestic violence, it often numbs people from the intergenerational trauma which we carry that every day. These problems come from the colonisation, we need to unpack that as well and that involves education,” she said.
The Arrernte midwife Cherisse Buzzacott said there was not enough in place to help kids.
“None of our communities have got functional playgrounds. We don’t have internet access, lots of the kids are coming into the CBD for wifi, there’s nothing really for kids to do,” she said.
Felicity Hayes, an elder, traditional owner and educator who lives in Irrkerlantye, a town camp on the outskirts of Alice Springs, said she felt frustrated and ignored by governments.
“They need to talk to us. No one comes and asks us what we want, it’s always what they want,” Hayes said.
