The extraordinary decision to declare a youth curfew in the Alice Springs CBD has given residents in the Red Centre a much-needed circuit-breaker.
The emergency declaration, called late last month, means any person under 18 out on the street overnight without a lawful reason can be taken to a safe place or a responsible adult by police.
This week, authorities extended the curfew to cover the rest of the school holidays, but attention is now turning to possible long-term solutions after restrictions lift.
This means a greater focus on reducing rates of alcohol-related harm, and addressing the chasm of opportunities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.
Prominent members of the Central Australian community say more action is needed not just in Alice Springs, but in the remote communities right across the Red Centre.
Here’s what they had to say.
What can be done now?
Loading…
Donna Ah Chee is the chief executive of the Central Australian Aboriginal Congress, and a long-term advocate for stricter alcohol restrictions to help minimise harm.
She attributes much of the unrest leading up to the curfew declaration not to youths, but to alcohol.
She says in the immediate term, it is imperative police auxiliary liquor inspectors (PALIs) are stationed at every bottle shop.
But Ms Ah Chee also believes the government needs to better use their existing powers to introduce responsibility agreements for the families of repeat offenders.
This includes quarantining parents’ welfare payments, adding struggling with alcohol addiction to the Banned Drinker Register (BDR), and removing repeat youth offenders from households that are unsafe.
“We would like to see the establishment of a secure care youth facility that has a therapeutic program that has the necessary supports for these young kids and young adults,” she says.
Ms Ah Chee says kids will need to spend a minimum of 12 months in these facilities, to “give them a therapeutic response”.
“We can’t have young kids coming and going, they actually have to stay so we have got a targeted audience that we can work with over the long-term for a minimum of 12 months.”
The NT government promised to deliver two facilities following a flare up of crime in January 2023, but neither have eventuated.
What can be done in the medium-term?
Arrernte man and Children’s Ground chair William Tilmouth describes the current response to Indigenous disadvantage as being akin to “an ambulance at the bottom of a cliff”.
He says First Nations people must be empowered to access better access employment opportunities, rather than “prescribed” measures by governments.
“Let the people on the ground decide what they want, what they need and how can they make their lives so much more fulfilling,” he says.
“The empowerment of communities — let’s try it. Don’t sit back and wait for another year or another election.”
Mr Tilmouth says many of the issues in Alice Springs are a result of top-down approaches from government that ignore the agency and the desire for Indigenous Australians to find meaningful employment.
“Let’s not be quick to condemn people who get angry, people who are frustrated with their lives, people who lack opportunity, people who don’t have income, people who suffer an amazing amount of illness.”
“We want to be upstream, working with families and working with communities and empowering them to have a voice.”
Loading…
In the medium-term, long-time Alice Springs resident Scott McConnell, who has been involved at the political and community level, says education and job opportunities for Indigenous Australians need to be the focus.
“We have to rebuild, from a very low level, some trust in the future,” he says.
“One of the most important things for people in the medium- and long-term to change their life trajectory, to decrease their reliance on services like police and medical services and other things, is to increase school attendance.”
He says a key step to increasing attendance rates is to encourage the teaching of local language at schools in remote communities.
What are the long-term solutions?
Blair McFarland runs a youth link-up service in Alice Springs and is the Northern Territory’s 2024 Australian of the Year.
He agrees that bilingual education must be a longer-term aspiration for the education department, saying those schemes prior to the 1990s also provided much-needed employment opportunities for remote residents.
In addition, Mr McFarland says he would like to see NDIS coordinators established in each remote community to provide care for those with specialist needs, particularly those with foetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD).
Loading…
“That coordinator could bring in the training for the parents and for the kids that could stop those kids bouncing in and out of jail for the rest of their lives, which is what happens when you don’t address those behavioural problems when they’re young,” he says.
“Some of those longer-term problems could be resolved with existing resources if they were deployed differently.”
For Ms Ah Chee, work needs to be undertaken to address underlying social determinants, before shorter-term fixes such as police liquor inspectors and curfews can be removed.
“Until we see those improvements – more of our kids getting into year 12 and getting into paid employment, and dealing with overcrowding – we are just going to see these spikes in antisocial behaviour and alcohol-related crime,” she says.
