Residents of Alice Springs' town camps are not supportive of a return of blanket alcohol bans, a local Aboriginal council says, as a snap review ordered by the prime minister begins.
The so-called Stronger Futures bans lapsed in dozens of the Northern Territory's remote and regional First Nations communities last July, including in 18 Alice Springs town camps, after being in place for 15 years.
Now, amid a surge in alcohol-related crime and violence in Alice Springs, the federal and NT governments have announced a raft of new alcohol restrictions.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, along with federal Labor First Nations MPs and ministers, touched down in Alice Springs yesterday to assess the situation amid a public outcry and calls for the Australian Federal Police or the defence force to be deployed to the region.
Among the new changes announced for the town, Mondays and Tuesdays have been designated as takeaway-alcohol-free days, with daily opening hours otherwise restricted to between 3pm and 7pm.
The prime minister stopped short of reinstating the bans for town camps and remote communities.
But a senior bureaucrat has been given one week to advise whether they should be re-imposed and communities required to apply to opt out.
Mr Albanese said he supported the "immediate measures to place restrictions on the availability of alcohol, as well as ensuring that … a very timely review will allow consultation [about liquor bans] to take place with communities themselves."
Tangentyere Council CEO says alcohol bans were 'race-based laws'
The organisation that provides services to Alice Springs' town camps says it continues to support the bans being scrapped and has not heard calls from town camp leaders about reinstalling them.
The council's chief executive, Walter Shaw, said: "Tangentyere Council supports the aspirations of its members and town campers for self-determination and the abolition of punitive, race-based laws."
"The Stronger Futures legislation that saw town camps declared prohibited areas did not reduce the over-consumption of alcohol in Alice Springs," he said.
"What these laws did was criminalise Aboriginal people based on where they live.
"There have been discussions with NT government officials and at the Tangentyere board level about opting into the restrictions.
"None of the town camp housing associations who are Tangentyere Council member organisations have indicated they want to pursue this option."
Speaking on ABC RN Breakfast this morning, Northern Territory Chief Minister Natasha Fyles floated the possibility of using the Electoral Commission to gauge support for the alcohol bans.
"This is something where communities have had the opportunity to opt in to being a dry community — we have seen a number of communities make that choice but others have said no," she said.
"How we assess that in that alcohol management plan is something that the controller [Dorrelle Anderson] will look at and I will seek advice on. Do we go out literally to a ballot, do we get the Electoral Commission to go out to these communities?"
Police union, health organisation say bans worked
NT Police Association president Paul McCue wrote in a Senate inquiry submission last week that the "evidence of increased access to alcohol" from Alice Springs liquor outlets since the bans lifted was "compelling".
"In the first 70 days in Alice Springs after the demise of the [Stronger Future] Act, 15,203 people were refused entry to takeaway liquor outlets as compared to 3,853 in the 80 days prior to the end of the designated [alcohol protected areas] around the Alice Springs district," Mr McCue said.
"This is an increase of 395 per cent in less than three months."
Yesterday, Congress Aboriginal health service boss Donna Ah Chee, whose home was this week broken into in Alice Springs, said her organisation had predicted the rise in crime after Stronger Futures ended.
"This is a preventable situation that's happening here in Alice Springs," Ms Ah Chee said.
"We know [the bans] worked. It definitely worked."
Although the Coalition government was in power in Canberra in the months prior to the bans ending, neither it nor the Australian Labor Party would commit to continuing them.
This meant it was up to the NT government to deal with the fallout from the bans ending.
Its response has been criticised for a perceived lack of consultation, and for not making it easier for communities to choose to continue with the alcohol prohibition if they wanted to.
A spokesperson from the NT Chief Minister's Department yesterday defended the government's consultation process in the lead-up to the bans lifting.
"Prior to the cessation of the [bans], there were 723 face-to-face engagements with representatives from impacted areas, including town camps, outstations and communities," they said.
The spokesperson said traditional owners and land councils were included in the consultation.
The NT government has also received criticism for offering communities an "opt-in" model after the bans lifted, meaning they would need to apply to continue alcohol prohibition.
In announcing the changes last night, and after months of declining to budge on the policy, the NT government said it would now look towards an "opt-out" system, following renewed community consultation.
Of the dozens of communities which fell under the bans, NT government data shows just 13 communities have opted to remain dry, with another five applications being processed.
Just three of the communities that have applied to opt into bans are in Central Australia.
