In her 36 years living in Alice Springs, Donna Ah Chee’s home had never been burgled. Then, in the space of just one week this month, her home was broken into twice.
The first time, she thinks it was just kids, rummaging through drawers and cupboards. The second time, two drunk men, one of them brandishing a large industrial spanner, smashed through her kitchen window while she was home alone.
It took more than 40 minutes for police to arrive, she says.
“The town’s under siege,” says Ah Chee, a Bundjalung woman and the head of the Central Australian Aboriginal Congress. “It’s not just me, the whole town’s hurting: businesses, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people together are all suffering because of this.”
Alice Springs has become a national flashpoint in recent weeks with a surge in antisocial behaviour and crime, sparking calls by the mayor for military and federal police intervention.
This week, Anthony Albanese made a whirlwind trip to the town, announcing new alcohol restrictions and promising $48.8m over two years for a range of measures, including liquor licence compliance and emergency accommodation.
But to many of the local Arrernte people who have called this place home for generations, the measures feel all too familiar. And once again, they say they’re not being consulted on the policies being put in place.
‘We fear curfews’
For more than a decade, intervention-era alcohol bans were in place in remote Aboriginal communities. When those came to an end in July, liquor became legal in some communities for the first time in 15 years.
Since then, there’s been an escalating wave of crime and violence in Alice Springs. Over the past year, property offences in the town have jumped by almost 60%, assaults increased by 38% and domestic violence assaults have doubled. Many in the town are frustrated about young people taking to the streets at night, sometimes getting into trouble.
The Alice Springs mayor, Matt Paterson, said earlier this month the issue had reached “crisis levels”.
As media coverage intensified, the prime minister announced a ban on takeaway alcohol sales on Monday and Tuesday, and limits on bottle store opening hours for the rest of the week. Albanese has said a total alcohol ban could be on the cards.
The Northern Territory chief minister, Natasha Fyles, said the measures were about bringing some “immediate relief” for the community as it grapples with a surge in crime and alcohol-related harm.
But Arrernte woman Cherisse Buzzacott, who was born and raised in Alice Springs, says the new restrictions make her worried.
Buzzacott, like many others in the town, lived through the Howard government’s highly controversial NT intervention in 2007, where the military was brought in under the guise of community safety.
The intervention also compulsorily acquired township leases over Aboriginal-owned land. Income management was applied to all community residents receiving welfare payments, and signs were posted declaring bans on alcohol and pornography in township or “prescribed” areas.
Buzzacott says people are now afraid of another NT intervention.
“We fear curfews, military. The over policing that’s happening, that’s not an answer … it’s not facing what the actual issues are,” says Buzzacott, a former midwife who now works with the Indigenous-led Children’s Ground, which aims to improve the literacy of with kids and families in communities.
She worries for her three young sons.
“I think about how my kids are gonna grow up. I don’t want them walking around the streets and walking to shops and just being watched,” said Buzzacott. “Because that’s basically where we are headed, kids can’t go anywhere without being unaccompanied and are just constantly being pulled up.”
William Tilmouth, an Arrernte elder, stolen generations survivor and chair of Children’s Ground, also doesn’t believe the hastily announced alcohol restrictions will work. Instead, he believes they will leave another disempowering legacy for communities.
“I’ve seen copious amounts of policies in the past in relation to alcohol and I’m yet to find one that actually works,” he said.
‘It’s a Band-Aid’
Instead of more intervention-era policies, people in Alice Springs want to see policies that target the real issues facing the town.
Shirleen Campbell, a Warlpiri, Anmatyerre, Arrernte and Luritja woman who has been advocating for women’s safety for years, says alcohol is just one factor affecting the community – and it’s simplistic to believe alcohol restrictions will address family and domestic violence.
Domestic, family and sexual violence were already at high levels in NT before the alcohol bans were lifted, with First Nations women drastically overrepresented and filling the intensive care beds at the local hospital.
“It’s a Band-Aid,” says Campbell, who is the co-coordinator of Tangentyere Women’s Family Safety Group, working in and around the Alice Springs town camps with families, children and young people. “Violence comes from colonisation, so we need to unpack that as well, and it’s about education.”
Campbell says the intervention-era policies contributed to the current problems. The policies punished people trying their best and ruptured the strong family units that had kept them together for thousands of generations.
“The intervention was a paintbrush that painted all our men with negativity. It damaged them,” she says.
Campbell says empowering communities starts with families, breaking down colonial ideas of gender, stereotypes and inequality.
Buzzacott says governments and communities need to work together to address underlying issues such as access to safe housing, healthy food and a connection to their culture and language.
With no functional playgrounds and limited internet access, Buzzacott says young people have little to do, leading them to act out.
“They’re sad. They’ve got no hope. They’ve got no aspirations for the future,” she says.
“We need to be talking to the kids about what they want, and talking to elders in Alice Springs but also in communities about how we can put in some culturally safe activities.”
‘Speak to the people’
Locals in the town say politicians come and go. This time, what they really want is to be listened to.
The government has appointed a Central Australian Regional Controller who will consult on further alcohol bans, and who is due to provide an initial report on 1 February.
But people in Alice Springs say they don’t feel they have been consulted.
“The problem is we’re not part of any consultations that are happening, we’re not meeting with the prime minister,” Buzzacott says.
Tilmouth agrees.
“Historically, Aboriginal people had to put up with prescribed solutions by people who knew nothing about us and yet made decisions for [us],” Tilmouth says.
Strong Grandmothers Group of the Central Desert, a group formed about a decade ago to help vulnerable young people in Alice Springs, used to conduct night patrols and spend time sitting and talking with children. Now they say they are old and tired and want a strong and empowered younger generation.
They want change but they want those in power to listen to those on the ground.
“This is about opening up the conversation and putting the truth out there, because if they keep on hiding it, it’s never going to happen,” says Elaine Peckham, a member of the group.
“Speak to the people,” says Doreen Carroll, a fellow group member. “We keep saying don’t fly in and fly out. Sit with the people, explain it to us.”
