Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has introduced new alcohol restrictions in Alice Springs in response to rising crime levels in the Northern Territory town.
However, he says, the measures will stop short of the hardline Northern Territory Emergency Response that was in place across the territory for 15 years.
That policy has been both hailed as a success and criticised as a racist, knee-jerk response that created new problems and risked demonising entire populations.
National Voice for Our Children chief executive Catherine Liddle has said it is "impossible to police your way out of this", pointing to increased numbers of children in detention but a continuing rise in crime.
So, what was the policy that became better known as "The Intervention"?
What prompted The Intervention?
The history of limiting alcohol consumption in remote areas is long, with some Northern Territory communities having voluntarily restricted alcohol for decades, under territory legislation.
However, in 2006, a number of media stories reporting claims of sexual violence in remote Northern Territory Aboriginal communities — including two programs by the ABC's Lateline — prompted the territory government to commission its Little Children are Sacred report.
The report, released in 2007, found disturbing evidence that child sex abuse was a significant problem across Northern Territory communities, prompting a national approach to the issue.
Lateline's reporting, and the research reported on in Little Children are Sacred, have both been called into question, and claims of paedophile rings in communities have been widely criticised.
In September 2007, the Coalition government led by then-prime minister John Howard introduced the Northern Territory Emergency Response, originally slated to last five years.
At the time, Mr Howard said the Commonwealth had to act because the Northern Territory government had taken too long to respond to the report, which called for urgent action.
"We believe that our responsibility to those children overrides any sensitivities of Commonwealth-territory relations," Mr Howard said.
However, report co-chair Rex Wild QC later said the government largely ignored the report's key recommendations, and instead used it as a political tool.
"I think that Canberra seized upon [the report] for political reasons and that precipitated the invasion of the Northern Territory. It was a poor response, the wrong response," Mr Wild told NITV News in 2017.
He said that, although the inquiry was set up to investigate child abuse, it found much larger social problems that needed to be addressed, including a "breakdown" of Aboriginal culture and society.
Mr Wild said the report recommended supporting and empowering Aboriginal people to address abuse within their communities, as well as better education, alcohol reform and improved employment prospects for Aboriginal communities.
In 2012, the federal Labor government extended the intervention, replacing the legislation with the Stronger Futures program in the Northern Territory Act but keeping its trademark restrictions.
That program ended on July 17, 2022.
What measures were introduced under the program?
The Intervention featured compulsory health checks on children, more services — including police, health workers and teachers — for regional communities and the introduction of the BasicsCard income-management system, which controlled the spending of up to 50 per cent of users' income.
It also included the acquisition of townships held under title provisions of the Native Title Act 1993, with compulsory, five-year land leases introduced.
The element that attracted the most attention — from proponents and critics alike — was the blanket ban on alcohol sales and consumption in remote Aboriginal communities.
Which communities were affected?
Despite The Intervention being a federal government initiative, it applied only to communities in the Northern Territory.
More than 70 regional Indigenous communities were targeted under it.
What happened when it ended last year?
A recent surge in violent crime in Alice Springs has been blamed on the Northern Territory government's handling of the end of the Stronger Futures alcohol bans, with other communities also reporting upticks in crime.
The Northern Territory government was urged in 2017 to start planning for the end of the federal government intervention.
Michael Gunner's Labor government was accused of not doing enough to anticipate the change.
The territory's current Labor government, meanwhile, has been accused of acting without consulting major Indigenous groups.
It did pass legislation in May, 2022, giving affected communities the ability to choose — or "opt in" — if they wanted to continue alcohol bans once the federal laws expired.
These communities are the places that did not already have their own bans under the Liquor Act in place: around a dozen remote communities, more than 200 homelands and more than 30 town camps.
They were given until January 31 to make their decision, with the interim bans only continuing for two years.
Did The Intervention work?
It depends on who you ask, and on how you measure success.
Supporters and critics can be found everywhere, from the halls of government to the communities that were subject to the intervention.
Those who support the measures point to reduced crime rates in The Intervention era.
Crime statistics show a more-than-50-per-cent increase in commercial break-ins, property damage and alcohol-related assault over the past year, while there was a 53-per-cent increase in domestic violence-related assaults in Alice Springs.
However, critics say the policy embraced the worst effects of colonialism and argue it resulted in higher rates of incarceration among Indigenous Australians, while doing little to make Aboriginal children safer.
Writing for The Conversation, Thalia Anthony from the University of Technology Sydney and Vanessa Napaltjari Davis from the Australian National University said there was no evidence that communities or children were safer in the years after The Intervention began.
Instead, increasing numbers of Aboriginal children and adults were locked up for minor offences.
Professor Anthony and Ms Davis said The Intervention watered-down land rights, contained rights to social security, increased policing powers in Aboriginal communities and reduced rights to bail and sentencing considerations in court.
In addition, The Intervention displaced Aboriginal-controlled community councils and governance structures.
Northern Territory Attorney-General Chansey Paech has said that, regardless of their effectiveness, the measures contained in the intervention were "racist".
He has also said alcohol restrictions led to expensive, black-market sales as well as people turning to harmful alternatives to alcohol, such as mouthwash and sanitisers.
Others have spoken about the shame and powerlessness felt by those affected by The Intervention, and demanded an apology from the federal government.
National Voice for Our Children chief executive Catherine Liddle told The Drum that, despite some highlights, The Intervention was a "knee-jerk" response and failed to deliver long-term solutions.
"It's impossible to police your way out of this because, when you think about it, the number of children in juvenile detention has escalated," she said.
"We are seeing more children in juvenile detention than before [and] the crime rate is spiking.
"It shows there is something wrong with that approach."
She said there was also a risk that a knee-jerk reaction could demonise and dehumanise members of vulnerable populations.
Rather, she said, a multi-layered approach was needed because "unless we're looking at the entire ecology, all we're doing is slapping a band-aid on it".
Uluru Statement from the Heart co-chair Pat Anderson — who also co-authored the Little Children are Sacred report — said the disbandment of local councils, resulting in the loss of local authority, had played a role in what is being seen today.
"The local authority that's there, naturally, for families and communities has been eroded over this whole period of shocking, shocking neglect of us across the country," she said.
She welcomed Mr Albanese's announcement, but said there were generations of "poverty and neglect and disengagement" to be dealt with.
"We've been talking for generations. Nobody listens," she said, "and now we're at a crisis point across the country."
