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The Prime Minister has announced new measures to tackle out-of-control crime in Alice Springs on a visit to the troubled Northern Territory city on Tuesday.
Police and some commentators said crime levels in the inner city have risen since the government lifted alcohol bans in July.
The problems were ‘immediate’, police said, when the Stronger Futures in the Northern Territory Act ceased on July 17, 2022, meaning alcohol became available for the first time in many of the Territory’s indigenous settlements. since 2007.
Anthony Albanese outlined the immediate restrictions that will be implemented in cooperation with the NT authorities.
A new body will also be created to coordinate partnerships between the Territory and the Federal Governments.
“We have agreed to establish a central Australian regional controller and that person will be Dorrelle Anderson,” Mr Albanese said.
‘Dorrelle is the right person for the job, someone who has a lot of experience and someone who is familiar with this local community.
Anthony Albanese (pictured) has announced new measures to tackle runaway crime in Alice Springs on a visit to the troubled Northern Territory city on Tuesday.
“She will have the responsibility of making sure that the federal and state programs are coordinated in the best possible way.”
Earlier, the prime minister met with Alice Springs leaders about rising youth crime rates in the remote town, which one of his senior ministers called a crisis.
Albanese said it’s a challenging situation, with many locals fed up with the violence and calling for “boots on the ground.”
“All Australians deserve to live in safe and healthy communities,” he said on Twitter on Tuesday.
“I’m here in Alice Springs to meet with community groups, (the) council, (Northern Territory) government and frontline services.”
NT Chief Minister Natasha Fyles said alcohol and dysfunctional remote communities were to blame, but another Howard-era intervention with booze bans and welfare checks was not the answer.
“We need to talk to the Commonwealth about need-based funding for certain services,” he told Sky News on Tuesday after arriving in Alice Springs.
“I don’t think we need federal police or military intervention.”
Ms Fyles said the problems in Alice Springs were multifaceted and urgently needed to be resolved.
“I met with the police here in Alice Springs today and they are just as frustrated as I am, but we will not give up, we will continue to work on solutions (and) I believe those solutions are within the NT, not the military,” he said.
Alice Springs traditional owners group, Lhere Artepe Aboriginal Corporation, said decades of “chronic and systemic neglect” in remote communities had fueled the crisis, which was “out of control” and “shameful”.
“The men, women and children on the streets of Alice Springs are rarely Arrernte (local) people,” chief executive Graeme Smith said.
“Almost all of them are from bush communities where they live in third world conditions with no future and little hope.”
He said that for many, the streets of Alice Springs were better than their own “crowded, broken and impoverished” communities.
Smith said recently repealed intervention-era alcohol bans had contributed to the problem.
Earlier, Labor leader Bill Shorten said the crisis demanded immediate attention, but solving the problem couldn’t just be a police problem.
“The root causes of what is causing the pain and distress will be addressed,” he said.
It is a crisis. There is no doubt that there are real problems there.
He said the people of Alice Springs did not want another heavy-handed response from Canberra.
NT Police Commissioner Jamie Chalker said he would welcome any federal support, including more police, but strongly rejected the deployment of the defense force to impose martial law.
“We can’t stop our way out of this,” he said.
Chalker said failed social policies and alcohol were part of the problem, but stopped short of calling for the reinstatement of mandatory dry areas.
‘My people keep coming to the line, but where is everyone else?’ she told ABC Radio.
‘There are many services that are simply not available in these remote communities.
“You add alcohol use to the mix and family tensions and then we deal with the consequences of that as well.”
He said that Townsville also suffered from major social order problems, along with the towns in the Kimberley region.
“There’s something very underlying here,” he said.
Federal deputy Liberal leader Sussan Ley also did not go so far as to call for the reinstatement of mandatory alcohol bans, but said the government needed to do better.
“These are complex issues, they are not easily resolved and there needs to be some tough love,” he said.
Opposition leader Peter Dutton called it “the biggest problem in our country today.”
“There are reports of children running around with machetes, children who don’t want to go home because they feel it’s not safe to stay there, so they commit crimes,” he said.
It’s a problem of law and order and crime.