Testimony puts footy star at the scene of the alleged crime: Liam Jurrah was "hitting" victim with a machete

By KIERAN FINNANE
Report # 3. Posted 4:40pm, July 23.
 
Inside the court where he, with two others, is facing serious charges, Liam Jurrah sat mostly with his head in his left hand and his left leg jiggling nervously. Outside, in the lobby, it was obviously a pleasure for the star footballer to see his family members. After court had adjourned for the day about a dozen of them, including prominent figures Harry Nelson and Valerie Martin, gathered around him, proud and affectionate. His lawyers exchanged greetings and pleasantries with them and as they parted Jon Tippet QC told them all to “take care tonight!”.
Mr Jurrah was led away through a side door, to the frustration of his relatives who clamoured for him to come with them, out through the front door to the waiting cameras and remaining crowd.
When he didn’t emerge the crowd quickly dispersed.
The court heard today from two witnesses, Allan Collins and Esau Marshall. Their evidence in chief had been tendered in writing.
Cross-examination by Mr Tippett went to two matters in particular: one, that they had been drinking – “half shot” as opposed to “full drunk”, they both said; two, that it was dark at Little Sisters Town Camp where the critical events unfolded.
They had gone there from Hidden Valley Town Camp, after hearing that there was trouble afoot, to seek out their “enemy”, Mr Tippett suggested, to “fight” and to “hurt” the enemy.
“Fight to defend ourself,” said Mr Marshall. He had the assistance of a Warlpiri interpreter but seemed to understand quite well almost everything that was put to him.
To the suggestion that he couldn’t see what went on because it was very dark, Mr Marshall answered clearly: “I seen what happened.”
Questioned by Ted Sinoch, representing the co-accused Josiah Fry, Mr Marshall told the court that he didn’t see Mr Fry at Little Sisters. He knows Mr Fry well as they play on the same team for the Yuendumu Magpies.
Mr Collins’ evidence was less clear about whether Mr Fry was present at Little Sisters. In his statement to police he did not mention Mr Fry being part of the group that attacked Basil Jurrah. Why not, Mr Sinoch wanted to know. Mr Collins looked at the ceiling for a long moment. Did he forget? Yes, he said.
Both witnesses put Liam Jurrah and Christopher Walker, whose nickname is “Mini Me”, on the scene as perpetrators in the attack on Basil Jurrah, together with a third person.
Mr Sinoch read from Mr Collins’ statement a paragraph to this effect.
Mr Marshall, questioned by prosecutor Steve Robson in order to “rehabilitate” his evidence after cross-examination, said he had seen Basil Jurrah lying on the ground; Liam Jurrah was “hitting him” with a machete, and Christopher Walker had an axe and “was pounding it on Basil”, on his legs and his head.
A further witness was called but did not appear and the Crown withdrew the evidence of two more witnesses after Mr Robson had formed the view that it was “not truthful”.
The hearing continues tomorrow.
Photos, at top: An angry crowd opposite the courthouse kept in check by a large contingent of police. At left: One of the accused, Josiah Fry.

Angry crowd outside court as Liam Jurrah hearing gets under way

By KIERAN FINNANE
Report # 2. Posted 2:10pm, July 23.

 
An angry crowd gathered outside the Alice Springs Courthouse as the committal hearing of charges against Liam Jurrah, Christopher Walker and Josiah Fry got underway.
Feuding Warlpiri families were shouting and raising their fists to one another.
But prominent Yuendumu elder Harry Nelson (at right) was in the crowd, appealing for calm, saying they were not there for payback but to support their family member, Liam.
In the lobby of the courthouse, Mr Jurrah was happy to see family members, men and women, exchanging hugs and smiles. Outside the phalanx of media were waiting for him to come out.
A large detail of police moved in to calm the crowd.
In the courtroom, the less exciting matter of establishing the facts had begun.
Prosecutor Steve Robson outlined the Crown case against the three men. It concerns events on the night of March 7 this year at Little Sisters Town Camp but is related to the death of a young Indigenous male at Warlpiri Town Camp in Alice Springs in September 2010. This death has caused ongoing unrest at Yuendumu and among family groups “of the Warlpiri nation”, said Mr Robson.
He described a scene where family members from one group were socialising around a camp fire outside House One, the home of Murray Woods, at Little Sisters Camp.
It is alleged that Christopher Walker approached the group, saying words to the effect, “I’m here now, anybody want to fight? Come and get me, I’m one of the murderers. I’m going to get family and come back.”
When he came back he allegedly had Liam Jurrah and Josiah Fry with him as well as others.
The prosecution alleges that they were carrying weapons and that they arrived with the intention of assaulting and causing harm to the people around the fire.
It is alleged that Liam Jurrah struck Mr Woods on the head, as well as Ingrid White, causing her to bleed from a laceration.
Families on both sides called for reinforcements. Basil Jurrah arrived with others from Hidden Valley Town Camp, and more people came from the visitors centre on Len Kittle Drive. They were angry towards “the enemy family”.
There was a “second incursion” by the group led by Mr Walker and Liam Jurrah, alleges the prosecution.
Another women, Daphne White, was attacked.
The prosecution alleges Basil Jurrah was struck with a machete by Liam Jurrah, while Mr Walker hit him with an axe. He fell and they continued to strike him while he was on the ground.  He suffered multiple head and facial lacerations, as well as depressed skull fractures and facial fractures. It is Basil Jurrah who is the victim of the ’cause serious harm’ charge.

Liam Jurrah committal hearing has late start, waiting for witnesses

 
By KIERAN FINNANE
Report # 1. Posted 11:05am
 
A smartly dressed but worried looking Liam Jurrah (right) arrived out the front of the Alice Springs Courthouse this morning, to a waiting crowd of cameramen, photographers and reporters.
The star footballer, from Yuendumu and now playing for the Melbourne Football Club, stands accused (together with two others) of unlawfully causing serious harm, going armed with an offensive weapon at night and four counts of aggravated assault.
He is being represented by QC Jon Tippett.
Inside his co-accused Josiah Fry came in scarcely noticed, wearing a blue hoody, khaki pants and work boots.
The third co-accused, Christopher Walker, was brought up from custody, wearing – on this crisp winter’s morning – only a black singlet, shorts and sports shoes.
All three men face the same charges.
The court had prepared for a large crowd but there were more media than other members of the public, including friends and family, and in the end more than enough seats available.
It was something of an anti-climax when Prosecutor Steve Robson told Magistrate David Bamber that they were not ready to proceed immediately. A number of witnesses are coming in from remote communities, chiefly Nyirrpi, and have not yet arrived, Mr Bamber was told.
A couple live in town and the case may be able to start with their evidence shortly.
Photo at top: Jurrah defence team Jon Tippett QC (with sunglasses) and John McBride confronted by media outside the court.

Utopia artist claims top prize

Utopia artist Margaret Loy Pula has won the 2012 Waterhouse Natural History Art Prize, it was announced today.  Her painting Anatye (Bush Potato), acrylic on linen, was chosen from 98 finalist entries for the $50,000 prize.
Through her precise dot work the artist depicts the story of the bush potato vine.  After rain, the women go out to collect the bush potato, using crowbars to dig up the ground. Once collected they are cooked in the hot coals of the fire. They are an important source of bush food for the Anmatyerre people.
The prize judges commented: “This work (pictured below) has a wonderful delicacy, almost fragility, but there’s a strength in the colours coming through. Spectacular detail leads to a work reminiscent of natural shapes, such as spider webs or leaf patterns, with strength coming from cells joined together. The work makes you want to look into it and go on a journey with it.”
The exhibition of the finalists’ work will be on display at the South Australian Museum from 21 July until 9 September 2012.
Alice show
Alice Springs residents will be treated to a solo show by the artist in September at Muk Muk Fine Art, which represents her exclusively.
According to Managing Director Mike Mitchell, Loy has been a finalist in 21 art prizes around Australia over the past year. She won the Sunshine Coast art award, the Paddington art prize in Sydney and now the Waterhouse. She came 2nd in the Outback Art Award in Broken Hill and in her first attempt in 2011 was selected in the Wynne Prize at the Art Gallery of NSW. Of the over 800 entries to this prestigious prize she was one of only 32 to be selected and made it to the final five.
 

An artist for our place and time

Pamela Lofts (August 9, 1949 – July 4, 2012) left behind important legacies in the fields of visual arts and children’s literature. Her ideas and vision reached beyond the Centre but for our readers it is her work in Alice Springs and the desert that is of particular interest and where, apart from her well-loved person, her loss will be greatly felt.
Our archive is not comprehensive but it does trace some of the lines of her legacy – her role as initiator and founding coordinator of Watch This Space (which endures to this day), her achievements as a children’s book illustrator and her career as an exhibiting artist (from 1992  she held 27 solo shows across Australia, and was represented in almost 70 group exhibitions in Australia and internationally). We reinstate here excerpts and images from the archive  in her memory.
 
 
 
October 29, 1997
Watch This Space – disappear? 
 
Watch This Space, Alice Springs’ first and only artist-run exhibition space, is more than its bricks and mortar.
While as from the end of this year it will no longer occupy the 1950s ice and soft drink factory behind Swingers on Gregory Terrace, the artists are determined that it will live on.
Earlier in the year they tried to hold on to the building by lobbying the owner, who intends to take over the building for his own Aboriginal art business and warehouse, but to no avail.
They are continuing to look for another venue that is affordable and appropriate as an experimental art space, but lack of a venue does not mean that their activities will cease.
“It is imperative to maintain the local and national profile that Watch This Space has generated with artists and audiences alike,” says Pam Lofts, who has chiefly coordinated activities and funding for the Space since its first exhibition in March 1994.
She cites the Space’s excellent track record of more than 90 exhibitions, events and performances involving over 200 artists, as the reason why funding bodies should continue to support them, building or no building.
There are plenty of other possibilities for making and exhibiting art in the Central Australian context, she argues.
Both the natural and urban environments can be used as exhibition sites.
A virtual gallery on the Internet could showcase work to a wider audience and set up dialogues with other artist-run and contemporary art spaces.
Camps for local and interstate artists, at a venue such as the Hamilton Downs Youth Camp, could be organised, as could workshops and artists’s talks.
Community arts projects could continue as opportunities for artists to explore and develop ideas.
Art could be shown in a nomadic but art friendly space such as empty shopfronts.
Sound works could be broadcast on community radio.
Lofts is concerned that, without a physical location, the Space may not be able to attract funding to develop the new program structure and is urging all interested to write letters of support and to continue submitting proposals for 1998 …

Landscape (on the road again), joint winner of the Alice Prize in 1995 (this predates our digital archive which began in 1997.) Pictured is one of the nine drawings in charcoal and watercolour,  presented as a single installation. The work is held in the Araluen Art Collection, acquired by the Alice Springs Art Foundation. Image courtesy Araluen.

 
December 3, 1997
When Nomads stop walking: Aboriginal women tell their stories in a new book 
 
What was it like, to be a little girl wandering the Great Sandy Desert some 50 years ago, on the cusp of change from a traditional nomadic lifestyle to the forcibly more settled post-contact years? If the question arouses your curiosity, a just-released book will go some way towards satisfying it.
Yarrtji tells the stories of six Great Sandy Desert women, compiled by Sonja Peter and Pamela Lofts. The very first story sets the tone. It’s told by Martingale Mudgedel Napanangka: “When Tjama was little I hit her with stick. ‘Give me tjirrilpatja [pencil yam],’ I bin say. Tjama wouldn’t give me tjirrilpatja. The three sisters, the three Nampitjins – our mothers – they bin sorry for us. Sorry for me hitting Tjama. Two father bring big mob pussycat. Aunty tell me ‘Don’t hit sisters!’ so we can walk round together.”
Three mothers, two fathers! Almost unimaginable for a European reader, certainly fascinating. There’s no psychological exploration of the kind one would expect in a European autobiography. But the women’s first person accounts of their memories, in Aboriginal English and some language, certainly have an emotional tenor, and as you get used to reading Aboriginal English, the simplicity of expression combined with the scope of the experiences being described, has its own poetry.
Often, Peter and Lofts choose to render the accounts in a free verse form, as above, and in this dramatic account by Kuninyi Rita Nampitjin: “We bin start from Yurngkunpali. We bin finishing water. From there travelling to every soakwater, long way to Ngantjaltjara. No water! From there to Kumpultjirri. Summertime, travelling summertime. From there to Yarlu Yarlu. No water! From there to Kurungupanta. No water! We bin tired and slack from no water. Go to Marl, other side of Lamanpanta. We bin digging hole and sleep inside hole. Make ourselves cool. We bin starting walking night time. No moonlight. We sick one now. My father bin crying for kids. Father and mother say, ‘What will I do? I might losem all the kids.’
“We bin cry. Before sunrise we bin start walking east – kakarra. We bin findem water now at Tjarkatjarka – rockhole – deep one. We bin happy.”
The stories of the kartiyas [white people] go before them. Payi Payi Napangarti’s is particularly appalling: “They tell me story for kartiya … The kartiya put mother and father in the fire, cookem like bullock meat – boilem up in pot … People living in Lanu Lanu bin taste the cooked people. Kartiya force-em to eat that meat. The people pretend to eat – liar way, but really they digging hole and put in meat behind.”
Then comes the actual experience. There are many first or early contact accounts, many of them horror stories: of men, accused of stealing bullocks, chained around their necks, beaten, tied up to a tree all night, whipped; of women and children rounded up, bullied, terrorised, shot at.
You can’t help but be impressed by the detail of the women’s memories of their vast itineraries: where they found what to eat, where there was water, and other events, small and large, but especially their ceremonies. Tjukurrpa stories appear in the text alongside the first person accounts, but distinguished from them by red print. This together with the many photographs, collages and reproductions of the women’s paintings, with every page individually designed, make for a multi-layered ïreading’ experience, one that you could return to and take bit by bit, over many sittings.
In view of the limited possibilities of contact between white Australians and Aboriginal Australians living in remote communities, this book helps fill an important gap. The reader experiences a certain sense of getting to know six women who bear witness to a compelling part of Australian history …
 
 
November 11, 1998
The Alice Prize winners’ circle
 
For judge Alan Dodge, Director of the Art Gallery of Western Australia, four artists from Ikuntji (Haasts Bluff) were among the front runners for this year’s Alice Prize, with Marlee Napurrula finally the winner.
As well, two other Central Australian artists featured in his ‘finalists’ group. One was former Alice Prize winner, Pamela Lofts, whose un: Titled [sic] Mr Dodge found “both amusing and beautiful” (detail at left). Lofts presents bagged samples of soil labelled with the Aboriginal place names, packed in tight concentric circles on a round glass platform.
“The greenish plastic and the metal tags contribute to making it work very well as a beautiful formalist sculpture, but you also want to go in there and see what the different colours of the rich earths are. I liked the ambivalence of it working that way. It’s evocative of a narrative, and it’s rather romantic,” said Mr Dodge.
He did not make mention of the poetic statement painted on the floor, circling the work. It reads: “When I am on a high mountain looking out over country, my Ungurr – life force – flows out from inside my body and I fall open with happiness.” This adds another important dimension to the work: the joy expressed is in stark contrast to the bagged ‘country’, a contrast which makes the piece both sorrowful and clearly political, in line with other recent work by Lofts, focussing broadly on reconciliation. Lofts’ play on the word “untitled” also undoubtedly suggests the work’s reference to Aboriginal land title, or native title, issues ….
 
 
November 7, 2001 
Alice Prize: ‘Immense diversity of humanity’
 
“An emotional work for now”, “a reminder of the immense diversity of humanity”: these are the qualities of Eye Contact which won for its creator Merilyn Fairskye this year’s Alice Prize.  Eye Contact is a video (DVD) work, a first for the Alice Prize, surprising given the proliferation of art works on video over past decades. Its place in the Art Foundation’s permanent collection, till now dominated by paintings on canvas, will enhance the collection’s aim to profile contemporary Australian art practice.
Judge of the prize, Elizabeth Ann Macgregor, Scottish-born director of Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art, was struck by the lack of video and new media works among the entries. (There were no other video works before the preselection panel, and no computer-based works, according to panel member Caroline Lieber). Otherwise, Macgregor said, the exhibition “is a pretty good representation of the wide variety of practice happening in Australia and indeed everywhere … I’m very interested in works that do have something to say, that are not just for art’s or the artist’s sake, works that have some kind of expression of the wider world … A work of art isn’t something absolute that will always look the same. Post September 11 a lot of works have different meanings for us.” …
Alice-based artist Pip McManus’ green line becomes more piercingly relevant as each day goes by, looking as it does at the ancient meeting and clash of the world’s three great monotheistic religions in Jerusalem. While Macgregor stressed the importance of its content, she also hailed its aesthetic achievements as “wonderful”. “The binding together of text and image, which is a very strong part of a lot of contemporary art work, is very successful in this work.”
Pamela Lofts’ sculptural piece Landmarks # 1 (pictured, in a different installation) is more subtle in its reference. It can be read as having a strong Central Australian context – Indigenous and non-Indigenous relations – but it also has a lot of resonance in the current international climate, where there’s a good case to “tread softly”.  Macgregor noted the artist’s use of text “not as a narrative, but in a way that’s supposed to fire your imagination, a very beautiful piece”.
 
 
February 6, 2002
Pamela Lofts: Wide open spaces 
 
The closure of their shop-front gallery [in Cummings Plaza off Todd Mall] is not the end of Watch This Space. Alice’s only artist-run initiative never was primarily about having permanent exhibition space: its main goal has been to foster experimental and non-commercial art, which often takes shape outside a gallery setting. Founding coordinator and on-going curator, Pamela Lofts, says loss of Australia Council funds which prompted the decision to close the gallery is being seen as “an opportunity to re-evaluate what we’ve been doing”.
“The gallery was a commercial space, chewing up a significant chunk of our budget, and may have altered our direction to a certain extent.”
The Space is also supported by Arts NT and these funds will be used to maintain a scaled-down program of events.This may include a second Outsite sculpture prize. The inaugural prize, with all work sited at the Desert Park, was one of the highlights of the Alice Springs Festival last year. Artists’ camps, now something of a Space tradition, are another possible focus. At this stage, and pending supplementary funding, three are planned at sites linked by the Finke River. As in the past, an established guest artist would lead the camps.
“Artist-run initiatives are about people, about who is prepared to do what,” says Lofts. “We are not in a place where there’s a major arts institution pouring out energetic young artists to support an initiative like this. But we’ve had terrific public support in the past and we’re look forward to that continuing. Artist-run spaces do come and go, but I don’t think this one should, because it contributes so significantly to the cultural life of Alice Springs.” An AGM is due in March, when Lofts hopes an energetic committee will be elected to take the Space forward.
 

Watch This Space went on to a new incarnation in George Crescent, seen here on the occasion of the opening of Lofts’ show, Free fall

 
 
October 2, 2002
Taking in the art … while taking the air
 
Outsite 2002, the second sculpture show presented by Watch This Space in the picnic area of the Desert Park, although a little disappointing, is still worth the visit, not least because it is just so enjoyable to consider art in a huge expanse of magnificent landscape, and especially when the art gives itself the task of responding in some way to that landscape. The first Outsite was held last year during the inaugural Alice Springs Festival and, with better funding and a longer lead-in time, attracted interstate as well as local artists and on the whole had greater depth. [With this show] it is pretty much a case of what you see is what you get …
The exception is Pamela Lofts’ Prick. The circle of pompous little gold rabbits, all eyes on a bentwood chair in the middle of the spinifex ring on which they are sitting, is totally surprising and gets you thinking.
Here are playful, multi-layered references to the history of non-Indigenous occupation of Australia (the rabbits, their circle of council, the chair), built on fragile structures (the spinifex ring) that make being “comfortable and relaxed” challenging to say the least (the spinifex cushion) and the fallout of all of this for the natural environment. It’s a neat but complex little edifice for some probing ideas which tend towards brain-snapping because they are so circular and enmeshed (the gold webbing).
It’s rewarding: it challenges you to think and it’s humorous at the same time.
 
 
December 10, 2003
Kids’ classic

His name is Hunwick: born of the pen of Mem Fox and the pencils of Alice Springs artist Pamela Lofts.
Lofts is perhaps better known locally as an installation artist – one of a handful of non-Indigenous artists from the Centre who exhibit nationally and internationally.
But she is also recognised as a children’s book illustrator, the artist behind the Australian children’s classics, Koala Lou and Wombat Stew [by Marcia Vaughan], both into umpteenth editions, and the series of traditional Aboriginal stories for children such as How the Kangaroos got their Tails, which will be relaunched in early 2004 by Scholastic.
Koala Lou was also done with Mem Fox, and the new title, Hunwick’s Egg, takes some of its cues from the earlier book: endearing Australian animal character, touching storyline.
For Lofts, though, Hunwick had the extra appeal for being set in the desert heartland of Australia, where she has made her home since 1991.
She has delighted in rendering in delicate detail and exquisite colour the little-known plants and creatures of the desert. These include bush tomato, parakeelya and parrot, pea or bird flowers (parrot flower pictured below) , as well as the dunnart, mala, honeyant, piedish beetle and case moths. They are the rich environment of the story rather than its characters, and have all been the subject of considerable research by Lofts.
Hunwick, the bilby, is observed in many moods and poses, perhaps a little “humanised” but who would quarrel with that? He is above all very animated, as are all the creatures of this story. This desert is alive!
If Fox is interested in stimulating children’s literacy, Lofts is equally committed to developing their eye, their “visual literacy”. Her work is about illustrating, yes, but also about the art of drawing – mark-making – in which she achieves great finesse.
“For me the project is partly about more traditional drawing being part of our visual world,” she says. Marks made by hand are really important, they are more magical. You can’t achieve the same effect with digital technology.”
Hunwick’s Egg will be published by Harcourt in USA and Penguin in Australia.

 

 
 
June 8, 2006
Local artist Lofts’ love story leaves lots to imagination
An earlier version of Pamela Lofts’ installation, which combines the work of photographer, sculptor, and writer, was called Forensic. It was about process: observation , deduction, investigation over time.
Now, several years later, it is called Country Love: the process has given way to story.
The elements were there from the beginning, in the debris spilling out from this abandoned car in bushland just east of Alice Springs.
Lofts thought at first it was a crash site, and the spectre of a crash in any case haunts her series of images. Some kind of crash – of people, circumstances, emotions – led to this quite wild abandonment.
Among the debris are the accessories of intimate, shared life: a herbal toothpaste, medication, tampons, a newspaper opened on the horoscope page, beads, a bottle of scented oil, a condom packet, salt, a travel brochure, a broken decorated didgeridu, clothing (men’s and women’s) including a hand-knitted red jumper, a tape (Country Love), another (The Dead Kennedys).
This list has thrown you: you assumed, as I did, that this car was abandoned by Aboriginal people but these accessories aren’t quite what you’d expect.
Then you’re thrown again: there’s a pension card bearing an unmistakable Central Australian Aboriginal name. Whatever has gone on here is far more complex than easy assumptions allow.
Lofts stays with the complexity and watches: time slowly obliterates the original chaos, even as it adds its own random elements. But with the red jumper it works on an eloquent emblem : through many seasons the jumper fades, but in a final image (pictured), a little heartburst or open mouth, still red and vivid, appears on its sleeve. The memory of what once was.
Showing at Watch This Space, George Crescent, till June 16.
 
 
May 14, 2009
Lost traditions, lost possibilities. 
 
Requiem for Another
Pamela Lofts
Araluen Arts Centre
May 1 – June 14
 

The desert evoked in Pamela Lofts’s exhibition, Requiem for Another, is a place fundamentally resistant to the desire to domesticate, whether by gaze or by more forceful structuring processes.
It is as implacable as the burnished steel of Lofts’s sculptured tables, as the shimmering horizon line across the lake, as the slowly corrosive forces of wind and sun that little by little will reduce to dust the abandoned outstation the artist has photographed.
In this place has passed ‘Another’ who is mourned by the work, and whom I see as both the people who once knew how to move across the desert lightly, how to live with its unpredictable rhythms, and as the people who could have come into this country and responded differently to what they found. Lost ways of life; lost possibilities.
This is an exciting exhibition to walk into: exciting because of the coherence of Lofts’s vision, which commands the space; because of its aesthetic excellence, particularly in the photographic and sculptural work; because of its hard-edged contemporaneity, both in its concerns and its realization.
There are three strands – the photographs, the sculpture, and the DVD (still at left) – linked by the imaginative space between them as well as by a fourth element, the music. This sparse and haunting piano score for the DVD work (using ‘expanded’ notes from Beethoven’s Fur Elise) was composed by Alistair Noble …
Lofts has united the three strands under her title, Requiem for Another. The Araluen show has provided her the first opportunity to present the work in this way.
The music establishes, in line with the title and Lofts’s intentions, an elegiac mood which strongly directs our response to the work; the initial excitement gives way to a necessary quieter contemplation about what is going on here artistically, what has gone on here in this desert where the artist has placed herself, where she takes us, fleetingly.
The photographs, 11 in all, are diptychs, with the series titled Threshold (mightbe somewhere).
In each diptych (one is pictured above) there is on one side a more closed space, often a foreground surface – a wall, a door – and almost always bearing the mark of someone, a name, a drawing, a splash of paint, the grime of use, the hole from some kind of blow; and on the other side, a more open space – we see through a window, beyond a wall, into a room, across a fence and again, traces left behind, some large (a car wreck, what looks like a static Hills Hoist), some small (a sewing machine, a baby’s jumpsuit).
Look and look again, the artist seems to be telling us: these spaces have their own riches of story. We can even name some who were once here or who were thought about here; we can have an idea of how they might have spent some of their time; we can perhaps read some of their emotions – boredom, frustration, anger, but perhaps also moments of tenderness, of trying to make something work.
The two-sided treatment also emphasises the encounter that these abandoned spaces represent, an encounter between cultures, between types of economy, between people, that here has failed on both sides.
The duality is echoed in the sculptural work, titled Turning the Tables (installation view pictured below).
The form of the table is well chosen for its metaphoric weight: tables are such a place of encounter in Western civilization. But here they rest precariously on supports from another world. Lofts exaggerates their otherness to make her point – the extreme elongation of the claws, their tiny unstable tip.

One is seemingly blank, speaking eloquently both of the pre-settlement terra incognita and the formless land traveled by the Indigenous ancestor spirits who then created its features. But look closely into its lustrous dark surface and the marks of burnishing which could be read as a reference to Indigenous burning practices, a sign of prior occupation of what was claimed as a terra nullius. On this table rests a sculptured object, a hybrid of native animal (parrot) and plant forms – again what was here before.
Into the surface of the other has been cut a Latinate word, Dystoposthesia. We don’t need to know its meaning (“the incompatibility of bodies to the space they inhabit”) to understand that this is the coloniser’s table, bearing the stamp of its imported knowledge system, seemingly tight and closed to the encounter with Another.
The work grieves for the lost past and the history, the other lives that might have been.
The DVD, Ripple Affect, is like a return to source, an invitation to go into the desert afresh, attune ourselves to its rhythms.
However, I’m not quite sure that the timing of this 40 minute meditative piece is right. The lake filmed is an ephemeral one yet we are one third through before we begin to see the transition to a dry lake, with its many changes of surface, each no doubt holding its own story. This duration is both a bit testing for the viewer and a bit unlike the desert.
Nonetheless, it’s worth going with it and Noble’s mesmerising music for the kind of mental space that they open up for thinking about Lofts’s complex of ideas, emotions and associations.
 
 
July 17, 2011
Last migrations
 
 
A soaring bird can take our hearts with her; in her flight we see an incomparable image of freedom. Conversely, there is no more potent image of mortal endings than her fall to earth in death. “Succumbing to gravity” she leaves the airs, expiring in the space of the earthbound before passing beyond.
Pamela Lofts in two compelling series of drawings meditates on this final physical state. Her subjects are fallen Shearwaters, birds that undertake extraordinary migrations across the hemispheres. Without being told this, we can intuit it from the drawings. The last movement of each body speaks of a profound exhaustion, a life fully expended.
In the smaller drawings, the series of 16 titled Free Fall (a broken curve), the birds appear to have exerted themselves to the last breath, their wings outflung, their heads thrown back. In the five larger drawings that make up the series Landfall (wind-scoured), the birds seem to have drawn their energies into themselves. There is something more desperate in the Free Fall series, the birds’ desire to go on living, to regain the airs, enacted to the very last. With the Landfall series there is a surrender, a final folding of the wing and then no more.
There is sorrow at the heart of this show, but the sorrow is leavened by the work’s meditative beauty. Lofts is a fine drawer. Readers familiar with her book illustrations will know that, but these drawings in the character of their mark-making are more like the work that won her the Alice Prize in 1995, Landscape (on the road again). This was a large-scale drawing of the decaying carcass of a kangaroo, a road kill. The scale allowed an ambiguous reading of the carcass as landscape; Lofts, who always has a strong idea at the centre of her work, was commenting on the brutality of the way we, in this technological age, move across the land. Her drawing was able to render the texture of matted fur, the many tones in its darkness, the contrasting tautness of sinew and muscle, the smooth hardness of claw and bone, which at the same time could all be seen as a tortured landscape under a sombre sky.
The ambiguity in the current drawings is of a different order; the birds are unmistakably dead but still we see life in them, the essence of their lives – flight. With the mark-making there is a similar brilliance in rendering the textures and lights in the birds’ dark feathers, whipped by cold winds, the beautiful curve of wing, domed head, slender neck, hooked beak …
This exhibition, under the overall title Free fall (time after time), opened last Friday at Watch This Space, the artist-run initiative conceived by Lofts in 1991 and officially established in 1994. At the opening the current committee, through its chairperson Dan Murphy, announced the creation of an annual award for a Central Australian artist, named The Lofty in honour of the space’s initiator. Lofts and the five other founding members  – Angela Gee, Pip McManus, Jan McKay, Mary-Lou Nugent and Anne Mosey –  were also all given lifetime memberships. The award, in December of each year, will give the recipient $1000 prize money and the opportunity to exhibit at WTS in the following year with no charge for gallery costs.
 
[Click on the title to go to the full review, published since the creation of Alice Springs News Online.]
 
 
March 15, 2012
Antics and elegy guide tour into a bright land of shifting shadows and memories
 
When Australian novelist Kate Grenville opened Obscured by Light, a collaborative exhibition by Pamela Lofts and Kim Mahood showing at Araluen, she referred to the landscape that they have made their stage as the “scary stuff”. It was lightly said but nonetheless an interesting echo of the long held popular conception of the Australian interior as a great and threatening unknown.
A merit of the Lofts and Mahood show is its playfulness and humour in counterbalance to this kind of apprehension, even if there is mostly a comically satiric flavour to their antics in the Tanami Desert. These are mostly enacted by one Violet Sunset (performed by Mahood), a parody of the feminine in gorgeous cocktail frock and kitten heels, created and directed by Lofts …
Woven into the loosely suggested narrative – made up of 53 images and almost as many text fragments – is the elusive figure of The Inland Sea. The preoccupation of early explorers has a contemporary form, suggests the work: “The people in the city where she lives believe that answers are to be found in the desert, although none of them have been there. Although she is not confident that this is true, Violet decides that it is worth finding out.”
There’s nothing like actually being there, the work contends, with all the risks of madness, loneliness, fear, and hardship as well as the rewards of stillness, spaciousness, beauty and joy. “Blue as an eye, curling round the rim of the world” – here is their  ‘inland sea’, an ephemeral lake. “She found it in the end just by being there at the right time.” A fundamental lesson of desert living.
Lofts’ photographic images are as gorgeous as the frock – saturated colour, high gloss – and finely attuned to both the drama of the landscape and the story-telling nature of the enterprise. Lofts excels at work in this vein: viewers may recall her wonderfully evocative Country Love series and, more recently, the haunting Requiem for Another.
The Obscured by Light series is edited from many hundreds of photographs taken during the artists’ joint travels in the Tanami over 15 years. It is a treat, both entertaining and thought-provoking, to be taken on this condensed journey with them.
 
[Click on the title to go to the full review.]
 
 
April 5 2012
Paintings and poems take you by the hand into this country
 
Three friends – two visual artists, one poet – open themselves to the country around them and to one another. What happens there, like life, is partly elusive, but also partly traced in the work on show at Watch This Space, under the title Beyond Conversation.
Through the work, they take us into the country with them.
Here are Pamela Lofts’ small windows (in oil pastel) onto, mostly, great big spaces, evoking their grand rhythms, their many moods under changing skies, the multiplicity of form and colour that gives the lie to the un-nuanced branding of this place as the Red Centre or the Outback, or even those friendlier common namings – the desert, the bush …
 
[Click on the title to go to the full review.]
 

Photo of Pamela Lofts, at work on the illustrations for Hunwick’s Egg, by Kieran Finnane.

All other images by Pamela Lofts (or provided by).

All reports and reviews by Kieran Finnane for the Alice Springs News

Related article: Pamela Lofts, 1949 – 2012

LETTER: Sticking our heads in the sands of the Todd (re-published with Maxine Cook's comment)

Sir – It is remarkable how little comment there has been to mark the recent expiry of the 20 year moratorium that had prevented the construction of a flood mitigation dam on the Todd River north of Alice Springs.
Readers may be interested in a letter dated 13 August 1990 that I received from Barry Coulter, NT Minister for Mines and Energy, in relation to some aspects of flooding of the Todd River, which I now quote: “Your letter of 28 January 1990 to Hon. Roger Vale concerning the level of flooding in Alice Springs was referred to me some time ago for response. I would have replied earlier but the officers concerned in the Power and Water Authority have been fully engaged in preparing the Draft Environmental Impact Statement of which no doubt you are well aware by now.
“Authority records indicate that the largest flood since observations were commenced was in 1910. This is regarded as an 80 year flood. The flood of 1921 is classed as a 40 year flood. For comparison the 1983 flood was a 20 year event and the 1988 flood a 50 year event.
“A 100 year flood could be expected to run generally about 0.5 metres above the 50 year flood of 1988.
“Since the release of the Draft Environmental Impact Statement a revised assessment of the 100 year flood levels has been undertaken. For the property you refer to at the south-west corner of Stott and Leichardt Terraces [a two-storey house now replaced by the new Imparja headquarters] it is estimated that the 100 year flood would run at a depth of 1.1 metres over the ground level. This is some 1.3 metres below the elevated floor level. Since the floor level is well above the 100 year flood level it would appear that if the designer considered flooding, a substantial margin was provided.
“Many comments have been received over the years regarding the impact on flooding levels of the crossings, particularly the Casino Causeway [since this letter renamed Taffy Pick Crossing] which is seen to have the greatest effect. There is no doubt that even the bed level causeways have a constricting effect during major floods because the river bed is known to become mobile to a depth of at least 3 metres.
“However, because the river bed has a fall of some 10 metres from the Charles River junction to Heavitree Gap the backing up effect of crossings and other constrictions is very localised.
“For instance the Casino Causeway is estimated to back up only 400 metres in a major flood such as in 1988. The rise at the crossing is of the order of 0.5 to 1.0 metres depending on the flow and it tapers to zero 400 metres upstream. This is some 1000 metres from the Central Business District. However, the Casino Causeway is known to increase the flooding levels in 8 Housing Commission flats just upstream in South Terrace.
“I can see from your comments you will understand that with the dam in place flood peaks will be reduced and the backing up will not occur except for floods of severity well in excess of 100 year magnitude.
“Your support for this important project which is critical to the safety and quality of life in Alice Springs is appreciated”.
It’s interesting to note these days the 1988 flood is now generally referred to as a 20 year event, rather than a 50 year event as it was being described two decades ago.
In my original letter to Roger Vale, I had drawn attention to the old two-storey house located at the corner of Stott Terrace Bridge which had been built by the Driver family of Elkedra Station in the 1950s. I had been informed some time earlier that it had been designed to take account of flood levels recorded at this site earlier last century, well before the construction of causeways and drainage channels that are now recognised to have localised impacts on water flow in the Todd River within the urban area of Alice Springs.
It’s also worth noting the Imparja headquarters  (pictured above), which would be inundated by more than a metre of water above ground level in a 100 year flood, is located just downstream from the Civic Centre and the Alice Springs Public Library. These public assets are equally at risk of inundation.
Of most concern to me is the Alice Collection at the Public Library, which contains a lot of material of great historical value; much of which would be difficult (and perhaps some of it impossible) to replace in the event of flood damage.
Given the history of rancorous debate about flood mitigation and damming the Todd, it’s no surprise there is a marked reluctance on the part of just about everyone to discuss this matter now, especially in the lead-up to the impending Territory elections.
So far we’ve gotten away with avoiding tackling this problem but eventually we’ll discover that sticking our heads in the sandy bed of the Todd River will be an inadequate defense and inexcusable failure to deal with it.
We have the capacity to resolve this matter but a complete lack of will to act on it.
Alex Nelson
Alice Springs

Harvesting rainwater to green our streets

An Alice Springs friend visiting Adelaide recently sent this photo which she captioned “Gutter dreaming” – her regret being the lost opportunities to green our town’s public spaces by harvesting rainwater.
This is relevant to the debate in Town Council this week about the pros and cons of concreting our street infrastructure, which has developed apace in recent years. Mayor Damien Ryan expressed his unhappiness at the prospect of another concrete roundabout, this time likely to be at the intersection of Undoolya Road and Sturt Terrace (see separate story). Council’s Director of Technical Services, Greg Buxton, defended the approach on the basis of deterioration to road surfaces caused by watering plantings.
But it doesn’t have to be like that, explains Mike Gillam, who on his commercial property in Hele Crescent uses an approved water-harvesting and retention system to cultivate a desert garden.
All rainfall onto the site, runoff from a nearby hill, shedding off buildings and discharging from rainwater tank overflows is retained on the site. In contrast conventional drainage systems discharge rainwater into gutters and drains on the street. With the exception of citrus trees, Mr Gillam’s flourishing gardens require no town water irrigation and that means no issues with salt. Most of the garden is  eight to 10 years old and it continues to grow, perhaps not as quickly as some gardens, on rain water alone. There were some failures in the early years and some trees that were proving too water-dependent were allowed to die.
The Alice Springs News Online asked Mr Gillam to explain what is going on in the Adelaide photo:-
 
Adelaide, and Salisbury Council in particular, is leading the way (Sydney is catching up). In some municipalities storm-water capture is not only watering the verges but with filtration and cleaning it is supplementing general water supply. In the photo we can see that runoff from the road, when it occurs, is collecting in the depression at ground level, giving the plantings a good soaking before any excess goes into an overflow, some kind of riser into the stormwater system. Some systems also use raised mesh grills to capture troublesome material like bark and large leaves and these would be periodically cleaned. It’s interesting to see that not only the significant depression in the foreground has been planted, but the tiny island in the background too, an indication of this enlightened council’s commitment to greening its streets.
The plantings would have been chosen carefully, hardy and decorative species that do not create a lot of leaf litter. This looks like a sedge – Lomandra species are often used in these situations. These favoured ‘architectural’ plants are associated with moist environments and in Central Australia there is a vast difference between a shady creek bank and an exposed roundabout surrounded by scorching concrete and bitumen.
When I planted a Lomandra on our block about eight years ago, I prepared the site by stacking several layers of old car tyres that had been split to create underground water-holding cells. The plant continues to benefit long after a rainfall event because its root system has tapped into underground lenses of water/moisture retained by the rubber tyres. Because it was an experimental planting, I chose an exposed position in full sun to see what would happen – the plant remains healthy but I would expect a more impressive plant with bigger leaves in a shadier environment. Without access to subsurface water my Lomandra would have perished in the first dry year.
In Alice Springs it may be necessary to water plants in the establishment phase but with certain plants, for example Sennas, planted at the right time and with careful preparation of soils you could get away with minimal watering and water harvesting devices could do the rest.
There are all sorts of materials and techniques available that allow retention of sub-surface moisture and myriad built surfaces in our town centre could be activated to harvest rainfall. Desert roundabouts, verges and public gardens are a reflection of our civic identity, pride and ingenuity or lack thereof – these public places should be seen as an opportunity to innovate. We would need a strategy to cope with drought years, and that may require more innovation. For instance we could extend/re-imagine the principle of temporary above ground watering systems, like the barrels that can be seen along the arterial roads in Alice [looked after by a contractor to the NT Government].
Roundabouts are ideally suited to rainwater harvesting: they can be landscaped as shallow bowls with runoff from the road draining into them through slots in the perimeter. Raised beds or terraces in the centre would improve drainage and create a variety of moisture zones to improve growing conditions and expand the options for desert plantings.
We could learn a great deal from the Adelaide experience while changing the mix of plants to better suit local conditions. There’s definitely a lesson for us in this photo and by striving for excellence in the design of our public spaces Alice Springs could quickly become the innovative desert town it wants to be, attracting attention around the world.

Criminal lawyers oppose Country Liberals on mandatory sentencing

It’s about heavier not fairer punishments and it does not deter offenders, they say.

 
By KIERAN FINNANE
 
Mandatory sentencing is strongly associated with the dying phase of the last Country Liberal Government. In many ways Terry Mills leads a different CLP into this election campaign, but it seems the leopard can’t lose this particular spot – a ‘lock ’em up reflex.
Earlier this month, responding to concern over attacks on taxi drivers Mr Mills announced what looks to be a one strike mandatory sentencing policy for assaults on anyone serving the public, not only taxi drivers but including “bus drivers, public servants, bank tellers, retail and hospitality workers”.
An assault on this broad category of victim – including, for example, bouncers at night clubs – will be defined as “aggravated” and attract a minimum sentence of three months.
This beefs up the party’s existing two strike policy statement (see their website) for assault: as a second offence, any assault will attract a minimum of one month; an aggravated assault, a minimum of three months; and causing serious harm, a minimum of one year.
The core problem with this approach – whether to property crime as in the old CLP regime or violent offending –  lies with its failure to take account of an almost infinite variety of circumstances and human responses to them.
Russell Goldflam is President of the Criminal Lawyers Association of the NT, which represents both defence and prosecution lawyers. As he explains, assaults coming before the court can be very minor.
“Assault covers a very, very broad range of activities. You can have an assault which is no more than grabbing somebody by the arm, that in some circumstances can be judged as unlawful.
“Of course the definition doesn’t include force used ‘for the common intercourse of life’, for example a bit of pushing trying to get on a bus, but for an assault to be deemed to have occurred, a person doesn’t even need to have been touched, it can simply be a threat to do so.”
Serious assaults get serious time
Of course, serious assaults deserve a serious response and get it without mandatory sentencing, says Mr Goldflam.
On the very day that Mr Mills made his announcement, a young man who had assaulted and robbbed a taxi driver, was sentenced by the Chief Justice Trevor Riley to two years and three months imprisonment, with a non-parole period of one year and three months.
“I haven’t heard any suggestions that that sentence was too soft,” says Mr Goldflam. “And if that person feels it was too harsh, he can appeal. If the Crown thinks it was too soft, they can appeal. There’s a procedeure to correct sentences imposed. You can’t correct the injustices of mandatory sentencing.”
That injustices will occur is inevitable, for as anyone who has sat in a court knows, one size does not fit all.
Take, for example, an altercation in a shop, leading to some kind of forceful touching or threat of it.
“We had a case like this,” says Mr Goldflam, who is a senior NT Legal Aid lawyer.
“A shopkeeper was racially abusive to one of our clients. In that case I think the person damaged some property, but  let’s say he had pushed the shopkeeper, that would have been an assault, even if the shopkeeper hadn’t suffered any injury whatsoever. Under Mr Mills’ proposed policy, the person would go to gaol for three months.”
Under the law as it stands, assault mandatorily attracts a term of imprisonment – a CLP measure from the 1990s that has not been repealed by Labor. However, the length of the term is not specified, allowing judges the discretion to impose a nominal term where warranted. For example, a person convicted of assault deemed to be very minor or technical in nature could be ‘imprisoned’ until the rising of the court for lunch (“still bad”, says Mr Goldflam, as the imprisonment term goes on to a person’s record).
No mitigating circumstances
In the example of the abusive shopkeeper mentioned, under existing law provocation would not be a defence  but it could be taken into account by the judge when sentencing.
Says Mr Goldflam: “Many assaults are committed after being provoked and the courts will always have regard to provocation as a mitigating circumstance when it’s a feature of the case.
“But if you’ve got mandatory sentencing, then the court can’t mitigate.”
A person before the court might also have never been in trouble before, but again with mandatory sentencing this would count for nothing.
Sooner or later the injustice of this would become apparent to the public, just as it did with the old regime of mandatory sentencing for property crime, and government would come under pressure to fix it.
Mr Goldflam recalls the notorious case of a client of his who was a trainee preschool teacher without any criminal record – “a totally ordinary young woman from suburban Darwin”.
“She was buying a hot dog at 2am in a 24 hour store. The hot dog was revolting and she threw water at the rude salesperson. Some of the water fell on the cash register and damaged it, and she was found guilty of property crime and went to gaol for 14 days.
“There was a huge hoo-hah about it and in response the CLP government passed a law to establish exceptions for mandatory sentencing, whereby basically if you were a person like her, a suburban trainee preschool teacher and the offence was trivial, a judge could use their discretion about penalty. It didn’t help her, she’d already done her time, but it was tailored for people like her.
Making exceptions
“Then another case came along, where the person didn’t quite fit the exceptional circumstances, so they were subject to a gross injustice and so on.
“That’s what would happen with this new law that’s proposed. Inevitably there would be a gross injustice followed by public outcry and they’d pass a law to bring in exceptional circumstances. This would all be extremely expensive and time-consuming, apart from the justice issues involved.”
And once again, the NT – a tiny and young jurisdiction – would be a a complete outlier in the Australian justice context.
“I’m unaware of any other jurisdictions where there’s mandatory sentencing for assault of someone who serves the publc. There may be mandatory sentencing for assault police, but there’s nothing anywhere near the scope of this proposed law.
“The whole basis of our criminal justice system, is that the disposition must be individualised, you have to tailor the sentence to fit the circumstances of the case, and the circumstances of the offender.”
The Sentencing Act lays out in great detail what courts must have regard to in considering sentences. Mandatory sentencing essentially makes a mockery of this Act, passed by a previous CLP government in 1995.
“The Act makes it very clear, the whole sentencing process must be an individualised one. Mandatory sentencing is completely at odds with the framework for sentencing established by their own legislation.
” In his 1997 judgment in the case of Trennery v Bradley, which dealt with the former mandatory sentencing laws for property offences, Justice Dean Mildren put it like this: ‘Prescribed minimum mandatory sentencing provisions are the very antithesis of just sentences. If a court thinks that a proper just sentence is the prescribed minimum or more, the minimum prescribed penalty is unnecessary. It therefore follows that the sole purpose of a prescribed minimum mandatory sentencing regime is to require sentencers to impose heavier sentences than would be proper according to the justice of the case.'”
The separation of powers 
A further objection that the Criminal Lawyers Association has is that mandatory sentencing is inconsistent with the constitutional arrangements we have to separate the arms of government – the legislature, the executive (in the NT, the Chief Minister and Cabinet) and the judiciary.
Says Mr Goldflam: “There’s a role for legislators to say to judges, this is the maxium penalty you can impose for a particular offence. The Sentencing Act requires judges to take into account the maximum penalty. Where the maximum for one crime is life as opposed to two years for another, then the judges know that they have to consider that first crime to be far more serious than the second one. But it doesn’t mean they have to impose the maximum. The maximum is reserved for the most serious category of the offence.”
The argument that mandatory sentencing infringes upon the separation of powers does not mean that such laws are invalid. They have been challenged before in the High Court, which has upheld the right of governments to pass them, despite what the judiciary may think of them.
“I’m not saying they can’t pass such a law,” says Mr Goldflam, “I’m saying they shouldn’t.”
And the argument that such scruples are overcome by the laws acting as a deterrent to offending doesn’t hold water, he says.
“The very strict and harsh mandatory sentencing laws applied to propery offences in the 1990s for some years were supposed to act as a deterrent but during that period property offending went up. There is no evidence that mandatory sentencing has the desired deterrent value.”
The association is also concerned about the Country Liberals’ proposals to toughen the Bail Act.
Bail Act already too tough 
“As I understand it, the NT already has the toughest Bail Act in the country,” says Mr Goldflam. “As a result, many people who are intending to defend charges, including a proportion of people who will successfuly defend the charges and end up being found not guilty, spend very significant periods on remand. It’s not all that unsual for people to have to wait for over a year to go to trial. I recently had a case where the fellow had been in custody for a year and half and then the Crown decided not to proceed and withdrew it.
“In another case, a bloke did almost two years on remand, went to trial, was found not guilty and went home.
“I’m not saying either should have necessarily have got bail, they’re just examples. The decision to grant bail needs to be exercised judicially but it’s being affected by laws which have created all these presumptions against gettign bail for a very broad range of offenders. That’s bad.
“We advocate that the most recent raft of reforms Labor introduced a few years ago should be wound back. They mean that a whole lot of peope are on remand who may well be innocent and will end up serving many months of gaol for no good reason. The County Liberals want to extend that, even to include fraud cases.
“And this when the gaols are chronically over-crowded, absolutely strained to capacity, with people on remand often having to stay in their cells for 17 hours a day or longer.
“The over-crowding is only getting worse to the point where, as was highly publicised earlier this year, people serving short sentences were serving them in the Alice Springs police watchouse. There was not enough room in the gaol to take any more prisoners at all.”
 
Pictured from top: The Alice Springs Courthouse. • Criminal lawyers Jon Tippet QC and Russell Goldflam leaving the courthouse last year. From the Alice News archive.

Thanks for more 'us and them', Ms Macklin and Mr Snowdon

COMMENT by ERWIN CHLANDA
 
The West MacDonnell Ranges National Park, which belonged to all of us, which for many of us underpins our livelihood, and for quite a few of us is the very reason why we’re here, will today pass into the ownership of a minority.
Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin will be presiding at the ceremony. Warren Snowdon won’t be far. We’ll hear the usual litany of reasons, about rectifying dispossession, maintenance of culture and lots of new job opportunities (as opposed to new jobs). But can we rectify dispossession with another kind of dispossession?
Today, with roughly half the landmass in the Northern Territory handed back to traditional owners, can we really argue that the further handover of public assets like a national parks will ameliorate traditional owners’ condition?
Public ownership of certain assets provides some of the glue that holds our society together. If it’s virtually wiped out in Central Australia what’s left to do that?
Well done, Ms Macklin and Mr Snowdon.
Some media will dutifully report this “event”.
What we are unlikely to hear are the answers to the following questions:-
Why has the handover continued in the face of vigorous opposition from people of Alice Springs – until they realised that yet again, their voices would not be heard, their questions, not answered? (Google this site for extensive coverage of the NT Government’s and the Central Land Council’s roles.)
Why has the handover to Aborigines of other parks, and previously half the landmass of Central Australia,  failed to halt the relentlessly worsening of their condition?
What have they done to enhance, for the benefit of the region’s people and its economy, the amenities of their newly acquired properties? (We have asked the parks service’s media section and will report the reply.)
Why is the taxpayer still paying for the running and the maintenance of what is now their priceless property – for which they receive rent? Is this rent being used to create for themselves and their children a stake in the economy, some kind of enterprise, or is it yet another form of sitdown money?
Why are former cattle stations converted to Aboriginal freehold mostly run down and unproductive, except when non-Aboriginal cattlemen lease them? Ms Macklin will hand over two more of them today.
And perhaps most distressingly, why have these exclusionary and constantly failing policies been allowed to scuttle what could have been a great opportunity for black and white, as the joint owners, working hand in hand, developing the magnificent West Macs into an even greater source of pleasure and commercial opportunity, making the park a symbol of harmony and mutual respect?
Instead Ms Macklin and the Territory government have created yet another “us and them” situation.
It’s a sad day for Central Australia.

What's in a name?

By KIERAN FINNANE
 
The Town Council’s discussion of street name proposals for the new Mt Johns subdivision was a revealing little snapshot of inter-cultural dynamics in Alice Springs.
The developers, Lhere Artepe Enterprises, a business related to the native title holders’ Lhere Artepe Aboriginal Corporation, proposed two Arrernte names, Irrampenye Street and Werlatye Court, both of them after traditional owners born in the mid-19th century near where the Old Telegraph Station came to be built.
Deputy Mayor Brendan Heenan objected in particular to Irrampenye as very difficult to pronounce and spell (thinking of having to spell it when calling police or for a taxi). There was “no way” he could support it. He suggested further that it is too close to another Arrernte name in the Stirling Heights subdivision (which also involved the native title holders).
It was not clear, due to Cr Heenan’s difficulty in pronouncing the word, which one he meant. The three marked on the map are Mparntwe, Irlpme, and Antulye, the names of the three estate groups of the native title holders. Mparntwe (sometimes spelt as Mbantua) is also often used as the Arrernte name for the place where Alice Springs came to be built. The name Undoolya, a road in Alice and a nearby cattle station, is derived from Antulye.
Council’s Director of Technical Services, Greg Buxton, suggested that the pronunciation difficulty could be overcome by having a phonetic version under the name on the street signs (as is often seen in Parks & Wildlife signage). He said he had already spoken to the developer about this.
“They probably say some of our whitefeller names are pretty confusing,” he added.
Cr Eli Melky, who is proud to speak English as a second language (Arabic being his first), urged people not to be lazy: “If you can’t spell it, learn it!” he said.
Cr Jade Kudrenko also commented on the scant information about the two traditional owners to be honoured in contrast to the several biographical details supplied for Maconochie as the name proposed for the extension of the existing Maconochie Road. (John Maconochie was a former longtime government botanist in Alice Springs, later killed in a car accident in Somalia while serving with the UN).
More information will be provided for councillors before they make up their minds on this issue.
 
COMMENT: It’s probably worth remembering that Arrernte names such as Yeperenye and Tangentyere are now household names in Alice Springs. If they are heard and read frequently, people soon learn.
And councillors, in particular, can be expected to have a grasp of the basics, such as the names of the native title estate groups, as they strive to build community harmony.

Council plays swings and roundabouts

The intersection of Undoolya Road and Wills Terrace, looking towards the causeway across Todd River. Photo by Alex Nelson.  

By KIERAN FINNANE
 
Is there really a case for a roundabout at the Undoolya Road – Sturt Terrace intersection? And how much support is there for it from the residents of Eastside?
Mayor Damien Ryan is having his doubts.
Papers presented to councillors at last night’s meeting revealed that only four replies had been received in response to council’s 1500 invitations to comment.
Three of the four opposed this expenditure of $300,000 of taxpayers’ money.
“Better spent elsewhere”, said one.
“Expensive option” and better “to reduce the speed limit to 40kph across the causeway and through the intersection”, said another, also pointing to the need for guard rails to protect the child care centre on the intersection.
It won’t alleviate the main issue at the intersection, argued another, which is to do with sight-lines impeded by the Wills Terrace footbridge. This resident also argued that Alice Springs drivers don’t know how to use roundabouts and so contribute to traffic congestion, something councillors agreed with and will look to an education campaign to address.
The sole letter in support deemed the intersection “dangerous” at busy times of day and also talked of wait times to turn into Undoolya Road from Stuart Terrace of “up to four minutes”.
Mayor Ryan’s conclusion was that, with only four responses to 1500 invitations and with three of those against, the people of Eastside did not seem to want this roundabout. This was reinforced by views he had heard by callers to local radio.
Council’s Director of Technical Services, Greg Buxton, countered that non-response indicated “acceptance”.
“A very bureaucratic answer, with respect,” said Mayor Ryan, speaking to the meeting by phone.
He was also shocked at the low level of response in writing. Had council used its database to address letters to individuals, as should have been done in a “true consultation”, he wanted to know. Apparently not. The letter drop was to anonymous householders.
Mr Buxton said the whole process was started three years ago in response to residents’ concerns about the intersection. Mayor Ryan asked that he produce the letters from that time.
“Are you happy with that, Mr Buxton?” asked Cr Liz Martin, in the chair.
“I’m happy to follow instructions,” said Mr Buxton crisply.
The upshot is that a decision on whether or not the roundabout will go ahead has stalled at least until the next council meeting. (If rejected, the $300,000 would have to go back to the Commonwealth.)
Mayor Ryan did not get support from his fellow elected members on avoiding “another concrete roundabout” as have proliferated in the CBD in the past few years. He wanted something more pleasing to the eye.
Mr Buxton said landscaping of roundabouts contributes to deterioration of the roads around them because of water usage.
The drainage should be built so that that doesn’t happen, countered Mayor Ryan.
That would increase the cost, said Mr Buxton.
But the decider for the councillors was that the proposed roundabout should be “mountable”, that is, by heavy vehicles. So if it goes ahead, concrete it will be.
There was some discussion about an alternative to the roundabout, as proposed by a caller to Radio 8HA yesterday. This was to put a median strip on Sturt Terrace, forcing drivers travelling south towards Undoolya Road and wanting to turn right, to instead turn left and go up to the roundabout at the Lindsay Avenue intersection.
However Mr Buxton said that would not take account of concerns over traffic travelling through the causeway, heading east, one of which is that if the vehicle is moving at speed, it could become airborne.
 
COMMENT: According to the meeting papers, funding was first applied for in the 2010-11 financial year. That was unsuccessful, but a second application in 2011-12 hit the jackpot. This was announced at the end of May.
The consultation, such as it has been, was done subsequently.
If such decisions are to be guided by the community, is this not a case of cart before the horse, as appears also to be the case, on a grander scale, with the regional waste management facility (see separate story this issue).
 
See also ALEX NELSON’s comment piece: The Magic Roundabout of Alice in Blunderland.

Town council's 'regional' landfill: cart before the horse?



By ERWIN CHLANDA
[The report below the updates brings together all reports prior to July 19.]
 
UPDATE 1pm July 23: Rob Kendrick, from the Department of Local Government, said today the Alice Springs Town Council will administer the construction of the facility, “a state of the art waste management center”.
He says the council will spend $768,000 in addition to Federal and NT government funds (see below).
Although Mr Kendrick says the new dump will “service the region for the next 30 years” he does not make reference to suggestions by the town council that rubbish will be transported to the town from centers throughout the southern half of the Northern Territory.
Neither does Mr Kendrick make comment to the reaction from the two shires surrounding Alice Springs, MacDonnell and Central Desert, which would be the sources of the rubbish.
He says the facility will be “economically viable and environmentally sustainable”.
The council’s application for the funding is “commercial-in-confidence [but] can be provided at the discretion” of the council.
 
UPDATE 5pm July 19: A spokesperson from the Department of Regional Australia, Local Government, Arts and Sport said this afternoon: “The Alice Springs Regional Waste Management Centre was funded through the Regional Development Australia Fund, round one. The department understands the project is tracking well and first payment of the Australian Government’s overall contribution of $3.5 million has been recently made to the Alice Springs Council.”
The department declined to provide the Alice Springs News Online with a copy of the town council’s funding application.
 
UPDATE 8pm July 19: The Alice Springs Town Council’s Director Technical Services Greg Buxton provided the following statement: “The $5m upgrade is for the provision of new infrastructure, as shown on the drawing in your article. It is for the existing landfill site owned and controlled by the Alice Springs Town Council (ASTC).
“The existing facility is not a Regional Landfill.
“Council has had very preliminary discussions with the NT Government (NTG) in regard to the block of land at the back of our existing facility, which would enable ASTC to expand the life of the existing facility by approx 50 years.
“In line with these discussion, the proposal includes an ability to offer the NTG a facility that could service the Central Australian region.
“If these discussion prove fruitful, and in line with the aspirations of the Local Government Regional Management plan, discussions with all concerned parties (including the Shires), will take place in regard to any feasibility and schematic design plans.
“At this stage those discussion are a bit premature.”
 
The Town Council’s plans for a $5m upgrade of the tip, turning it into a “regional” landfill servicing the southern half of the Territory, is showing troubling signs of putting the cart before the horse.
All centers which would be carting rubbish to Alice Springs would be in one of the two shires south of Tennant Creek.
MacDonnell Shire CEO Diane Hood says while there are talks about a regional waste management action plan “this has not yet been discussed in any detail” and “no budget has been assigned for this purpose as it will form part of future discussions”.
And Roydon Robertson, CEO of the Central Desert Shire, said when asked for a comment: “I don’t know anything about this story. I doubt its accuracy.”
Prominent councillor Steve Brown says the dump and the adjacent sewage treatment plant, run by the NT Government’s Power & Water, should be moved from their present location where they are a smelling eyesore in the iconic Gap, the entrance to the tourist Mecca Alice Springs wants to be.
Under the proposal communities such as Docker River and Lake Nash would have round-trips of 1500 kms to deliver their garbage.
The scheme is reminiscent of the Alice town council’s $850,000 glass crusher, which can meet the town’s estimated annual requirement in just four days, and which seems to have been bought for no reason other than the availability of a grant from the NT Government.
The Town Council’s Director Technical Services Greg Buxton last week described the proposed facility as being for all Territory communities south of Tennant Creek to dispose of their rubbish – including household garbage – in an “environmentally friendly” fashion and in “strict compliance” with the requirements of the Territory’s Environmental Protection Authority.
At the moment there are only two licensed landfills in the region, Alice Springs and Ayers Rock Resort.
Landfills in communities with populations of less than 1000 people are not required to be licensed, but their tips need to comply with the Waste Management and Pollution Control Act and other regulations (see, for example, the Central Desert Shire’s Waste Management Strategy).
Mr Buxton says the upgrading of the tip will also bring up to speed that part of the landfill which is used by the population of Alice Springs.
He says, for example, the weighbridge is nearly 30 years old and “struggles to comply with Commonwealth weight and measures legislation”.
The council is hoping to obtain at no cost land to the west of the present site from Power and Water, which also owns the sewage ponds adjacent to the tip.
 The ponds land is freehold and not encumbered by native title, but the land on which the council has its eye would require an Indigenous Land Use Agreement with the native title body Lhere Artepe.
Mr Buxton says the existing landfill will be adequate for another 15 to 18 years, after which the dump will need to be moved or further expanded to the west. That will extend its service for 50 years.
This would mean the landfill would extend about two kilometers from the highway, but not further west than the sewage ponds.
Mr Buxton says servicing remote communities would increase the volume of garbage by only about 20%: Alice Springs has a population of some 30,000 and there are about 6000 people in the region.
Mayor Damien Ryan says the project – announced with fanfare last year – will be using $3.5m in Federal money from Regional Development Australia (RDA), and $775,000 from the NT Government.
He says there will be major changes to the landfill for local users, better opportunities for recycling and a “save and salvage” store.
“The public won’t need to go to the tip face any more,” he says.
Mr Ryan is the chairman of RDA in the Northern Territory.
He says over two years Federal Minister for Regional Australia Simon Crean approved projects worth $14.25m in the NT. This includes the landfill in Alice; the remainder are in Darwin, including $7.5m for the Michael Long Leadership & Training Centre announced last week.
Cr Brown says the landfill should be moved now, with just a transfer station, where people can drop off their rubbish, remaining in the present location.
He says it is “disgraceful and short-sighted” to have the landfill and the sewage treatment works – which should also be relocated – at the iconic entrance to the town.
“This is prime real estate for hotels and other facilities for visitors,” he says.
“The Ilparpa Valley and the southern flank of the MacDonnell Ranges are among our greatest assets.”
Cr Brown, who gained the highest number of councillor votes in the recent elections, says he will spend a great deal of effort during his term on the council pushing for the relocation.
He says for years the government refused to move the power station from the middle of town to Brewer Estate, but in the end it “had to be done”.
With the development of Kilgariff, the Blatherskite Park area will be much closer to the center of the town, he says.
Ms Hood, responding to questions from the Alice Springs News Online, said: “Our tips are all for less than 1000 population and as such do not need to be licensed (or meet the conditions attached to licensing).
“That said, we do adhere to the requirements in the Regional Management Plan and Local Government Act.
“MacDonnell Shire Council also has documented Waste Management Guidelines which have been derived from the Waste Management Guidelines for Small Communities in the NT, developed by the Local Government Association of the Northern Territory (LGANT) in 2009.
“The information included in the guidelines focuses on improving the delivery of waste management services for all communities in the Shire, for example reducing the hazards associated with waste in small communities and working towards improved environmental management of waste.
“We are continuing to work with other councils, LGANT and government agencies to develop more strategic plans to guide the future direction of waste management in Central Australia.
“The current draft Regional Management Plan has a goal to jointly identify areas of waste management [where] cost, compliance and effectiveness can be improved through a regional waste management action plan,” says Ms Hood.
“However this has not yet been discussed in any detail nor have the areas been identified at this time.
“We understand that Mr Buxton’s comments relate to a possible outcome of the Regional Management Plan.
“As such, no budget has been assigned for this purpose as it will form part of future discussions.
“We look forward to discussing relevant areas for regional improvement and identifying where cost, compliance and effectiveness can be improved.”
 
IMAGES: Sketch of the entrance of the proposed upgraded landfill. • The dump (centre of the photo) is a blight on the beautiful Ilparpa Valley, says Cr Steve Brown.

Hell or high water

COMMENT by RUSSELL GUY
Updated July 18, 2012
 
In the wake of the Victorian Auditor-General’s report into that state’s drinking culture and its range of damning observations that point to its $4.3b p.a. and growing alcohol-abuse problem, there have been a number of other reports this past week, echoing concern about Australia’s dependence on alcohol. In Western Australia, evidence given to the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs, revealed that one in five students at a Kimberley high school (20%) is believed to suffer from Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD), where the mother’s alcohol consumption during pregnancy causes brain damage and other birth defects, similar to autism. Teachers are having to deal with this in the classroom.
 
Other evidence given to the Committee by the National Drug Research Institute (NDRI) backed a floor price, claiming that “pricing was a big factor” in reducing problem drinking. It pointed out, yet again, that the tax on alco-pops was insufficient because many young people shifted to a cheaper source of alcohol, a move which would have been prevented had a suitably aligned floor price been in place. This problem has a close parallel with Alice Springs with the availability of cheap cask wine, etc. remaining on the shelves of two hotels’ bottle shops at a price below an agreed price per standard drink of beer, recommended by Alice Springs’ People’s Alcohol Action Coalition (PAAC).
 
There is a voluntary accord in existence in Alice among some alcohol suppliers over a floor price, but this is regularly in need of independent scrutiny to ensure bottle shop staff continue to adhere to the agreement. There is a call for the new Stronger Futures licensing inspectors to take on this task, along the lines of similar criticism found in the Victorian Auditor-General’s report.
 
Following similar calls in Newcastle earlier this year, the Sydney Morning Herald (July 13, 2012) reported that the head of trauma at St Vincent’s hospital has called for new strategies to limit drinking in inner-Sydney suburbs, saying that doctor’s were “reaching the limit of their capacity” to treat seriously injured victims, after a fatal assault on a young man in King’s Cross this week. The same doctor claimed that alcohol availability and lower pricing were strongly linked to higher alcohol consumption, concluding that they were seeing an increase in violence and alcohol related injuries.
NSW and Victoria are not the only states with increasing alcohol-related problems.  Alcohol  accounts for 50% of all substance-abuse treatments in WA, increasing from 33% in 2004, to 49% in 2009/10. Statistics reported in the Alice Springs News Online earlier this year pointed to a separate study which revealed that alcohol content in wine products had increased over the past 20 years and marketing of the popular one litre Hardy’s Chardonnay featured a sticker which spruiked “over 33% more than a regular 750m bottle”.
 
The Leader of the NT Opposition, Terry Mills appeared on ABC TV last night stating that in terms of his party’s alcohol policy, he considered “behaviour to be the problem rather than the substance.”  What is so far known about the Country Liberals’ policy is that “drunks will be taken off the streets and forced to undertake rehabilitation before being released back into the community.”  As alcohol-related violence continues to increase in NSW and Victoria, the Country Liberals’ focus on a Law and Order solution recommends that “people convicted of serious assault will not be eligible for a suspended sentence, and genuine jail time will be imposed for repeat offenders as follows:
• Where the second offence is any assault, a minimum sentence in one month
• Where the second offence is an aggravated assault, a minimum sentence of three months.
• Where the second offence causes serious harm, a minimum sentence of one year.
The Country Liberals will toughen the Bail Act to include any crime that poses a risk to the general public.  This will include home invasions, house breaks, motor vehicle theft, arson and fraud.
 
Mr Mills, in a media release (10 July 2012), said: ”We will introduce a new section into the Criminal Code which will establish a minimum three-month prison sentence for an aggravated assault against anybody who serves the public. This will include taxi drivers, bus drivers, public servants, bank tellers, retail and hospitality workers.”
Whilst, Mr Mills considers “alcohol isn’t the problem – irresponsible drinking is”, he will allow the alcohol supply tap to continue at full bore, funding expensive “prison farm” type rehab centres, rather than focus on welfare reform which is at the root of the problem and has been since the 1970s when Aboriginal people were forced off cattle stations and into welfare by the Equal Rights Movement.
 
Mr Mills has also said that “Labor’s ‘Banned Drinkers’ Register’ simply does not work. Assaults are up.”  If he was to spend any time hanging around roadhouse take-away counters, he would have to eat his words.  He also states that  “law-abiding (sic) Territorians are tired of having to pay the price for the actions of a small group of re-offenders.  Under a Country Liberals Government you will NOT have to show your license to buy take away alcohol.”  As a Liberal politican, rather than a Socialist, he doesn’t say that taxpayers have to foot the bill for his Law and Order policy, a policy already under strain according to the NT Police Association submission to the Briscoe Inquest, or for the construction and management of a chain of additional, secure, Rehab options.
With the current alcohol-related cost to the NT Community running in excess of $640m p.a., Mr Mills is perhaps hoping to rob Peter to pay Paul, while shuffling the root of the problem into prisons.  He has learnt nothing from the evidence-based data, gathered at the expense of many alcohol-related, and often violent deaths in our Community.
Where there is more alcohol, it’s reasonable to assume that there will be an increase in alcohol-related violence. That should be a warning that calls to turn the tap down are being ignored at our own peril. The NT, along with Qld and WA, collects data that surveys alcohol consumption, however, rather than act on available data and trend, it’s often “a case of placing the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff”.
The president of the Uniting Church in Australia, Alastair Macrae released a statement recently in which he reiterated their call for a floor price in the NT. Given the strong recommendations in the recent Northern Territory Police Association’s (NTPA) submission to the Briscoe Inquiry seeking alcohol supply reform, it can be argued that Australia’s drinking culture is in need of urgent restriction at all levels of availability, and that here in the NT, where our own consumption is twice the national average, a floor price and a take-away sales restriction should be implemented immediately. However, with the NT election in August, political parties are sending mixed messages.
 
Our Brave New World tasks its police and doctors with a certain responsibility, but when it comes to alcohol policy, both, at least in the NT with the former and in Australia’s largest city with the latter, are saying that they are up against it this incoming king tide. After another violent assault on the Gold Coast, Victoria’s police superintendent has joined with forces in NSW and the NT to voice the same message.
One of the salient quotes to emerge from the Victorian Auditor-General’s Report is that, in terms of alcohol reform, “what works is unpopular, while what doesn’t work is popular”.  Australians can be fairly accused of having their head firmly stuck in a bottle when it comes to the urgent need to support the unpopular call to curb an increasingly grog-related, violent society.
 
In the 1980s, the Italian magic-realist author, Umberto Eco published a collection of essays called TRAVELS IN HYPER REALITY. Attaching the name “Thirsty Camel” to a chain of take-away alcohol outlets is a sign that we have lost our footing and are travelling on a tide of psycho-babble towards a place that has a substantially increased acreage reserved for use as an alcohol killing field. Conversely, “Come Hell or High Water” is no longer a folksy cliché. We can’t afford, literally, to play politics with alcohol reform. This is a high water mark in Australian social policy.
 
Photo: A traffic jam at the “Thirsty Camel” last Sunday afternoon in Alice Springs.

What a Week! Comment by Erwin Chlanda.

Some hoped with the advent of a Labor government in 2001 the management of residential land, including public land, would cease to be an issue handled behind closed doors. No longer would it be the domain of the high and mighty, and be manipulated principally for their benefit. Disappointed hopefuls will no doubt revisit these issues before they cast their vote on August 25.
First we had Clare Martin making a hash of native title policies, setting its compensation value at 50% of freehold (in WA native title compensation is worth around 5%).
Not learning a thing from what they did at Stirling Heights, Labor repeated the strategy at Mt Johns. Just as housing prices were driving people out of town and strangling the economy, the government further stubbornly refused to assist Ron Sterry, who had spent a great deal of his money beginning to develop a huge housing estate in Ragonesi Road, his life’s dream: no helping hand for him with headworks, such as Lhere Artepe received in Mount Johns.
When Max Ortmann earned his reputation as a bully from north of the Berrimah Line by giving Denis Hornsby permission for small blocks in blatant disregard of the neighbours’ wishes, Peter Toyne and other ALP figures vowed such a thing would never happen under a Labor government. Mr Toyne of course has long gone. This year the Labor Minister for Lands and Planning Gerry McCarthy has done exactly what Mr Ortmann did. Mr McCarthy’s advice from the Development Consent Authority, which supposedly represents the public, has never been made public. The Lands Minister then acted with the acquiescence of the so-called Minister for Central Australia, Karl Hampton, violating the expectations of people who bought land in the adjacent Rangeview Estate (the author is one) on the understanding they would live in a two hectare minimum neighborhood.
And now both McCarthy and Hampton are mute about vital aspects of their plans for Kilgariff. If democracy involves people casting their vote based on sound information, then sure as hell we haven’t got it here.
• • •
An acquaintance of mine has an interesting theory: Alice Springs expels to south of The Gap what it doesn’t want.
Warning: some may find the following disturbing.
Included are feces, urine, garbage, dead aeroplanes.
Some speculate that Kilgariff is being developed as a domicile for undesirable people. (Details about the new suburb are scarce – see above.)
Food for thought?
• • •
A bouquet for the cops for cracking down on alleged drug dealing in a town camp, with five associated arrests so far. Those familiar with the dope scene say marijuana has a huge market in town and bush despite its cost here being a multiple of that interstate. If the effort of getting it here and distributed were applied to legitimate pursuits, this would take care of many of our social woes, one observer says. And if you think that dope is still what it used to be in the good old days, making you giggle and love everybody, giving you the munchies and soon dispatching you into a peaceful slumber, think again: today’s hydroponically grown stuff hits you like a hammer, and mixed with booze can turn you into a mongrel.
• • •
When nationally known artist Pam Lofts was struck down by motor neurone disease it was a blow for The Alice and Australia whose attention she had drawn to the social complexity and magnificence of her beloved deserts around this town. She was remembered on Friday in a ceremony at the wonderful Olive Pink Botanic Garden. In the winter light we listened to her friends talking about a life full to the brim of a place – as one speaker put it – she thought that though she might never “belong” here, nevertheless she could connect, and remain connected. It was an event confirming the diversity of the town, and that each particle of it is capable of being extraordinarily intense and touching.

Kilgariff: housing for the people or a motza for developers?

The Territory elections are six weeks away. The price of real estate and housing, although falling, is still among the main issues.
Yet the development of the new suburb of Kilgariff, up to 1200 blocks south of The Gap, is still little more than sign by the side of the Stuart Highway.
The head works – power, water, sewage etc, have been taken to the edge of the planned suburb by the government. But what happens inside seems set to remain up in the air until after the elections.
And that includes the main question: Kilgariff is public land unencumbered by native title. Will the people’s land be made available to them just at the cost of its development, inside and out, or will a developer, and the government, make a motza out of it?
MLA Robyn Lambley raised that question when she successfully stood for by-election in Araluen two years ago.
The Minister for Central Australia, Karl Hampton, dodges the question – as he does most.
So this is where we stand, according to the Department of Lands and Planning:-
Q: Will the department be in charge of selling all the land?
A: Land in Kilgariff will be offered to the development industry for the detailed design and construction of internal roads and services required to create individually titled residential allotments, under a development agreement with the Northern Territory Government.
Q: Who will the developer be?
A: The government has not yet determined who the developer will be.
Q: Will the developer be charged for the land? If so, how much?
A: Developers are typically invited to compete for development rights. These proposals consider land value and any other conditions or improvements.
Q: How much will the developer sell the blocks for?
A: We expect the end value of the blocks will be determined by market forces.
Q: Will the developer carry out the subdivision work (internal roads, power, water, sewage, etc)?
A: Yes.
Q: Is the government going to charge the developer for the head works? If so, how much?
A: These improvements are considered in a commercial proposal to Government for development rights.

Man sought after alleged sexual assault

Alice Springs detectives have released a comfit image of the man they would like to speak with following an alleged sexual assault in Alice Springs.
Detective Senior Sergeant Travis Wurst said a 21 year-old woman was attacked at about 11.30pm on Friday, July 6 near the Bloomfield drain way.
“It is alleged the woman was walking south along Bloomfield Street towards the footbridge.
“Adjacent to the main pedestrian lights on Telegraph Terrace, she turned left onto the footbridge passing the alleged offender who was walking in the opposite direction.
“The alleged offender turned and followed the woman, catching up with her on Telegraph Terrace where he allegedly forced her back into the drain way where she was assaulted.”
Det Wurst said the assault occurred over 20 to 30 minutes before the woman was able to break away and flag down a passing vehicle who took the woman to police.
“The offender was last seen fleeing on foot in the direction of the skate park.”
The offender is described as being of Aboriginal appearance, medium build with a goatee beard and mustache.  He was wearing blue jeans, black bandana with a white design on the front and a black jumper with a white and black design on the front.
Reports can be made on telephone 131 444 or 1800 333 444.

Can Bess Price wrest Stuart from Labor?

Bess Price on the campaign trail, talking with Laramba resident Ronnie McNamara and Napperby pastoralist Janet Chisholm.

By KIERAN FINNANE

“We tried Karl Hampton and before him Peter Toyne. Nothing happened. We need someone who can help us.”

Is a swing on in the vast Northern Territory electorate of Stuart? It’s been held by Labor since 1983. Can well-regarded and outspoken senior Warlpiri woman Bess Nungarrayi Price wrest it from Labor for the Country Liberals?  One voter doesn’t make up the 15% needed but Ronnie McNamara in Laramba is eloquent.
When Janet Chisholm from nearby Napperby Station introduces Mrs Price, he is initially diplomatic: “We won’t be voting for anybody,” he said, swinging out of the front seat of his car, where he was sitting facing his wife, Rita Nangala (below), enjoying the winter sunshine on the front verandah of their home. Then he decides to be more forthright: “We vote for these governments and they don’t help people. We might vote for that Country party.”
“Bess is standing for the Country Liberals party,” stresses Mrs Chisholm.
Mr McNamara has a story to tell, about land acquired in his name but over which he feels he has lost all control.
The land is the former pastoral property of Central Mount Wedge, bought on behalf of traditional owners with money from the Aboriginal Benefits Trust Fund in 1995. It was then successfully claimed under the Land Rights Act, with the title handed over in 1999 as Aboriginal Freehold. This is a communal title and is “inalienable”, meaning it can’t be bought or sold. It is held as an Aboriginal Land Trust and the Central Land Council has a formal role in consulting with the traditional owners over all proposals for its use.
The trouble is, Mr McNamara tells Mrs Price, once it was handed over “I never saw anyone again”. He wanted to keep the land in pastoral production: “I know the cattle business, fencing, yard building, bore running.”
But he needed help and none was forthcoming: “Go and have a look, everything is falling down, nothing ever happened.”
Roy Chisholm joins the group. “Tjupurrula!” Rita Nangala cries, waving to him with a big smile.
“About seven or eight years ago” Mr Chisholm wanted to lease the land at Mount Wedge – the kind of arrangement now promoted by the Central Land Council as lifesaving “for pastoralists trying to cope with drought”. But on this occasion the move was blocked by them, says Mr Chisholm. The attitude was “Chisholm will never get near it” although there would have been “a benefit to the traditional owners, to me, and to the economy”.
“That’s what we’re looking at,” says Mr McNamara, “but I don’t see the land council coming across to talk to me or anything.”
The place is now “a wreck”, he says. With no functioning bores, “I can’t even go there for one day”.
It’s the kind of situation affecting people on the ground that Mrs Price wants to help with.
“I come from the bush myself,” she tells Mr McNamara, “I’ve grown up there, seen the waste, for the people and of the land itself.”
Earlier, sitting on the lawn outside the homestead at Napperby, waiting for the Chisholms to return from their morning’s work, she had spoken of her dreams for her family’s land near Yuendumu. Years ago, “in the DAA days”, they put in a pit toilet and a tank with a roof to collect rainwater. More recently, her sister, now deceased, used royalty money to pay for piped water from the borefield.

“I’d like to get people back on country, to make a living out of it,” Mrs Price mused.
She’s been encouraging her nephews to acquire the skills needed to set up an outstation and there’s a good supply of bush tucker available – bush raisins, dogwood seed – that could be the foundation of a small enterprise. This is but one of the ways in which her people could become more “self-reliant”, a key part of her political message. But this visit to Laramba, population 300+, is more about meeting, greeting and listening to people, reminding them about the forthcoming election, urging them to enroll.
‘Meeting and greeting’ is where the Chisholms (pictured with Mrs Price below) can help. The life members of the Country Liberal Party are engaged neighbours of the community, which is just a couple of kilometres from the homestead; they’ll be pleased to make the introductions.
If they expect anything from government for themselves, it’s some kind of sign that government cares. Mrs Chisholm says there was not a single government member at the cattlemen’s dinner, attended by some 400 on Show weekend, the first time she can remember that to be the case: “They’ve just given up, they don’t care.”
Although Alice Springs is some 200 kms to the south-east, it is the regional hub and she also expresses a lot of concern over law and order in the town, especially the large numbers of young people on the streets at night: “I’m ashamed of Alice Springs,” she says, referring in particular to the recent alleged rape of two international tourists.
Otherwise the conversation, over cups of tea and roast beef sandwiches, is mostly about Laramba. She laments the state of the children’s education: “None of them can read”, she says, and apparently that’s not from want of attendance. (NAPLAN results on the MySchool website for Laramba are scanty, with mostly no reporting for Years 3 and 5, but a disastrous score for Year 3 reading in 2009. The attendance rate for 2011 is reported as 82%.)
“Everyone says education is the key – if it is, then give everyone a chance,” she says. Laramba children won’t be able to break through in the Territory system, she argues; their only hope is to be sent away to boarding school.
Again it’s a theme close to Mrs Price’s heart. She has a background in education and training and wants all children in the NT to receive the same high standard of education as other Australian children, one of five main points made in her election material. At the lunch table she argues against bilingual education: “I’ve spoken to parents all over the place. They all want mainstream education for their children.”
She points to herself as an example. She grew up speaking Warlpiri at home and had English-only schooling, at the end of which she found she could read in Warlpiri if she wanted to.
Another topic in the lunchtime conversation is employment. Once upon a time Napperby employed Aboriginal workers like Ronnie McNamara, seasonally. It worked well, says Mr Chisholm. After two months’ work people could go off to attend to their cultural business and then after six weeks away, they’d come back, ready to work again.
“Now we’re trying to say to people they have to get ‘real jobs’ and work regular hours, nine to five”, which is a tall order after generations of unemployment. He sees the mining model of two weeks on, two weeks off, as more culturally suitable.
The so-called super-shires also come up. “A disaster”, according to Mrs Chisholm. She suggests that elected members mostly don’t have an adequate grasp of the matters they’re dealing with, including budgets worth millions of dollars.
Shire reform is on the CLP agenda. In Mrs Price’s election material the aim is expressed as “to give back real, accountable, local control”. At lunch her campaign manager, Jenny Lillis, is blunt: “We’ll get rid of the super-shires and introduce smaller regional shires.” And head offices will be located within shire boundaries. Mrs Price qualifies: “It won’t happen straight away. We’ll take time to look at what works best.”
Mr Chisholm says that the advent of the shires has driven something of a wedge between the station and the community. He’s lived alongside Laramba all his life (it’s on land excised from the pastoral lease) and it’s been “a good relationship” until now. The difficulty doesn’t come from the Aboriginal residents of the community, he says, but from shire staff, who are suspicious of pastoralists.
When the Chisholms accompany Mrs Price to the community, there is no apparent tension as they approach various senior men to introduce her as the Country Liberals’ candidate.
The community is quieter than usual. It’s school holidays; some people have not returned from Alice Springs after the Show; others are at ‘sorry camp’ following the recent killing at Ti Tree.

Janet Chisholm introduces Bruce Brown to Bess Price .

 

Senior man Huckitta Lynch draws Mr Chisholm aside to talk with him quietly. Mrs Chisholm introduces Mrs Price to Bruce Brown who is sitting by a small fire with a countryman. He’s friendly but clearly has something on his mind to talk to Mrs Chisholm about. She explains later that he wants to sell his paintings through the roadhouse at Tilmouth Well, which the Chisholms own. She’ll sort it for him.

Further down the road Mrs Price meets her old uncle, Teddy Briscoe, and his wife, Seal Pangata. They too are enjoying the winter sun, sitting on the verandah, with a little fire burning on a sheet of iron beside them, and their dog wagging its tail dangerously close to the hot coals. They are visitors to Laramba, normally living at Desert Bore, an outstation Mr Briscoe set up between Laramba and Yuelamu. While Mrs Price chats with the old couple, Mrs Chisholm talks to the younger generation inside, encouraging them to get on the electoral roll.
“It’s all about being around, seeing people,” Mrs Chisholm tells Mrs Price as they walk away. She urges her to come back before the election, so that people can start to feel more familiar with her. That’s already arranged. After the school holidays Mrs Price and Jenny Lillis will bring morning tea out to the women’s CDEP activities program when it’s in full swing again. The program has a new, if small and still incomplete studio, where the women are sewing and painting and expanding their skills through the Certificate II in Visual Arts and Contemporary Craft offered by CDU.

At Laramba’s women’s CDEP activities studio. Eileen Gorey standing at left, Mrs Price speaking to program coordinator Kathy Derrin, campaign manager Jenny Lillis at right.

 
They sell their wares – skirts, pillowcases, cushion covers, paintings, pottery – from time to time at the Todd Mall Markets in Alice Springs. They also do projects in the community, such as restoration works and religious paintings for the small church in Laramba. Mrs Price chats to the program coordinator, an old friend, about future plans for the program.
A final port of call is to introduce Mrs Price to Amy Stafford (below) and her husband, important in the community not only because of their traditional ties, but also their active roles, as somewhat younger people, in the community’s functioning.

“Karl, he never comes to visit us, only at sports time,” says Mrs Stafford.
The expectation is clearly more than just being noticed: “We need representatives out here to help us develop our community.”
The conversation continues in Warlpiri. Time for the Chisholms to return to their work but they’ll be there again to help when Mrs Price returns.
Next stop on the campaign trail will be Tennant Creek for the Show this weekend, which will draw lots of people from the electorate. From there, she’ll head into the northern reaches, to Mataranka, Katherine for its Show, then out to Burunga and Beswick (return visits). Jenny Lillis will travel with her.
“It’s too far and too lonely to do by yourself,” says Ms Lillis. “You need company, someone to keep your spirits and morale up. I’m like a spare leg in some of the communities, the people are interested in talking to Bess, not me. She introduces herself as Nungarrayi and they spend 10 minutes working out who they’re related to before the discussion moves on to anything else. They seem very comfortable talking to Bess.”
“Sometimes they’re people I’ve been to school with, or teacher’s college, or we’ve been on committees together. And there’s usually someone on the community who’s married into my family,” says Mrs Price.
She doesn’t under-estimate the size of the challenge. The physical distances alone are daunting (the electorate covers over 300,000 sqkm, stretching into country north of Katherine). The support she’s getting is buoying. All sorts of people, including her family members, are donating money for fuel; one supporter has loaned her a 4WD; people are helping out with accommodation and food. This kind of help is vital as the party provides only a shoe-string budget for the campaign.
Sometimes, to maintain visibility, she sits out on the corner of the Tanami Road and the Stuart Highway: “The yapa, they all know my vehicle, they all know it’s me, they all wave and smile and yell out. My family are all really proud of me. I’m enjoying it, it’s exciting, I don’t have meetings or appointments, I just go and sit down with people and talk.
“My understanding is that people want change. Karl hasn’t done enough. He hasn’t been out to see them enough, to talk them. Promises have been made but not delivered. People want to see things happening, with roads, shires, settling issues like the feuding at Yuendumu. They want someone who understands the bush.”

Bess Price talking to Amy Stafford.

 
Interestingly, she says the Intervention and its update as Stronger Futures don’t rate highly among the issues people bring up with her. She says key features like income management are now widely accepted or, better still, seen as helpful. However there is still a lot of confusion over changes and understanding the roles of different players – the Central Land Council in negotiations over leasing, and the various levels of responsibility within the NT and Australian governments. And people are frustrated at being told to “do this and do that in their community and on their land”, she says.
If she gets in, she’ll prioritise visiting throughout the electorate for at least a year: “We won’t be able to fix everything but I’ll be talking to people about what needs fixing most urgently.”
And if the CLP wins government she’ll resist portfolio duties if offered them, at least for the first term.
“I just want to be a good local member.”
And her take on that is working with people to help them help themselves.
 
Note: When sitting MLA for Stuart and Minister for Central Australia, Labor’s Karl Hampton, sees fit to respond to the many questions and requests for comment put to him by the Alice Springs News Online in recent times, we will talk to him too about his election campaign.

All household garbage south of Tennant Creek to be dumped in Alice Springs


JULY 13: UPDATE OF REPORT BELOW.
 
By ERWIN CHLANDA
 
The Alice landfill (in the centre of the photo) to be upgraded at a cost of $5m will provide a facility for all Territory communities south of Tennant Creek to dispose of their rubbish – including household garbage – in an “environmentally friendly” fashion and in “strict compliance” with the requirements of the Territory’s Environmental Protection Authority.
So says the town council’s Director Technical Services Greg Buxton.
He says tips in most remote communities do not have lined landfills which prevent leaching of pollutants into the soils.
The “regional” landfill in Alice Springs will fully address these communities’ needs.
He concedes there will be major transport issues which will be considered by the shires and the NT Government.
In Central Australia only Alice Springs and Yulara have licensed landfills.
Landfills in communities with populations of less than 1000 people are not required to be licensed, but their tips need to comply with the Waste Management and Pollution Control Act and other regulations (see, for example, the Central Desert Shire’s Waste Management Strategy).
The Alice Springs News Online has asked the two shires in The Centre whether all their tips are in compliance, and we will publish their replies as soon as they are available.
Mr Buxton says the upgrading of the tip will mostly bring up to speed that part of the landfill which is used by the population of Alice Springs.
He says, for example, the weighbridge is nearly 30 years old and “stuggles to comply with Commonwealth weight and measures legislation”.
The council is hoping to obtain at no cost land to the west of the present site from Power and Water, which also owns the sewage ponds adjacent to the tip.
The ponds land is freehold and not encumbered by native title, but the land the council has its eye on would require an Indigenous Land Use Agreement with the native title body Lhere Artepe.
Mr Buxton says the existing landfill will be adequate for another 15 to 18 years, after which the dump will need to be moved or further expanded to the west. That will extend its service for 50 years.
About moving the facility away from its present site – avoiding the visual and other pollution so close to town – Mr Buxton says: “Find me 50 acres somewhere else, at no cost to the ratepayers.”
 
REPORT POSTED JULY 11:

 
The Alice Springs landfill is set to become the repository of all household garbage in the southern part of the NT, south of Tennant Creek.
The Alice Town Council is about to call tenders for the expansion of the tip to fulfill a “regional” role, subject to final discussions with the NT Government about stage two of the project.
The council’s Director Technical Services Greg Buxton says this would put an end to the current situation where the only licensed landfill in the region is Alice Springs, and all other communities are dumping rubbish illegally.
The rubbish would be carted to Alice Springs from the bush communities – but this is also something yet to be negotiated with the NT Government and the shires.
Mr Buxton says the council is looking to acquire from Power and Water land west of the present tip.
This would mean the landfill would extend about two kilometers from the highway, but not further west than the sewage ponds.
Mr Buxton says the volume of the garbage would only increase by about 20%: Alice Springs has a population of some 30,000 and there are about 6000 people in the region.
Mayor Damien Ryan says the project – announced with fanfare last year – will be using $3.5m in Federal money from Regional Development Australia (RDA), and $775,000 from the NT Government.
The RDA round one funding was $150m which was divvied up between 34 projects around Australia. Mr Ryan is the chairman of RDA NT.
He says there will be major changes to the landfill for local users, better opportunities for recycling and a save and salvage store.
“The public won’t need to go to the tip face any more,” he says.
Mr Ryan says the rules for the current RDA round two have been changed, requiring that at least half the costs for each project are covered by funds not coming from Canberra, such as state or local governments or private contributors.
It is expected that Federal Minister for Regional Australia Simon Crean will this week announce Territory projects for round two.
Three have been put forward, this time none from Central Australia.
 
UPDATE July 12, 2012:
Minister Crean this morning announced funding of $7.5m for the Michael Long Leadership & Training Centre in Darwin. RDANT has now had three successful projects worth $14.25m over the two funding round, says Mr Ryan.
 
UPDATE July 14, 2012:
 
We asked Diane Hood, CEO of the MacDonnell Shire, for a comment. She provided the following statement:-
“Our tips are all for less than 1000 population and as such do not need to be licensed (or meet the conditions attached to licensing).
“That said, we do adhere to the requirements in the Regional Management Plan / Local Government Act.
“MacDonnell Shire Council also has documented Waste Management Guidelines which have been derived from the Waste Management Guidelines for Small Communities in the NT, developed by the Local Government Association of the Northern Territory (LGANT) in 2009.
“The information included in the guidelines focuses on improving the delivery of waste management services for all communities in the Shire, for example reducing the hazards associated with waste in small communities and working towards improved environmental management of waste.
“We are continuing to work with other councils, LGANT and government agencies to develop more strategic plans to guide the future direction of waste management in Central Australia.
“The current draft Regional Management Plan has a goal to jointly identify areas of waste management that cost, compliance and effectiveness can be improved through a regional waste management action plan.
“However this has not yet been discussed in any detail nor have the areas been identified at this time.
“We understand that Mr Buxton’s comments relate to a possible outcome of the regional management plan.
“As such, no budget has been assigned for this purpose as it will form part of future discussions. We look forward to discussing relevant areas for regional improvement and identifying where cost, compliance and effectiveness can be improved.”
 
UPDATE JULY 16:
Councillor Steve Brown says the landfill should be moved now, with just a transfer station, where people can drop off their rubbish, remaining in the present location.
Cr Brown says it is “disgraceful and short-sighted” to have the landfill and the sewage treatment works – which should also be relocated – at the iconic entrance to the town.
“This is prime real estate for hotels and other facilities for visitors,” he says.
“The Ilparpa Valley and the southern flank of the MacDonnell Ranges are among our greatest assets.”
Cr Brown, who gained the highest number of votes in the recent elections, says he will spend a great deal of effort during his term on the council pushing for the relocation.
He says for years the government had refused to move the power station from the middle of the town to Brewer Estate, but in the end it “had to be done”.
With the development of Kigariff the Blatherskite Park area will be much closer to the center of the town, he says.
Meanwhile Roydon Robertson, Chief Executive Officer of the Central Desert Shire, said when asked for a comment: “I don’t know anything about this story.  I doubt its accuracy.”

Three arrested in town camp drug raid



 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
By ERWIN CHLANDA
 
About 30 police officers including drug squad detectives and a sniffer dog handler raided the Palmer’s Camp in Basso Road this morning.
They arrested three men in three separate houses and confiscated drugs as well as cash.
The Aboriginal town camp has been under police surveillance for some time and was known by users as “the Maccers Drivethrough”.
Police are expected to make a statement soon.
They arrived at the camp about 8am in 12 vehicles and “secured” the area, stopping residents from leaving it.
Houses, yards and vehicles were searched as residents and their children looked on.
Some of the police officers were wearing bullet proof vests and all were armed with pistols.
A female officer and her sniffer dog checked houses and vehicles.
When they emerged from one house the dog had a white cloth in its mouth – the reward for finding drugs.
The News understands that the buyers of drugs included local teenagers and visitors from bush communities in town for football matches.
Some residents of the camp have told the News they were concerned about the dealing and the effect it had on their children.
One resident this morning expressed relief about the police action.
 
UPDATE JULY 12:
Detective Senior Sergeant Travis Wurst said today: “As a result of an operation which spanned several months, Police have arrested several people and seized thousands of dollars worth of cash relating to drug offences in Alice Springs.
“The federally funded Southern Substance Abuse Intelligence Desk (SAID) has taken decisive action against the supply of cannabis into Alice Springs town camps, launching Operation Caesar.
“Up to 32 Police Officers were involved in the operation, which included members from Southern SAID, Southern and Northern Dog Operations Units, Southern Investigations and Alice Springs General Duties.
“Police executed four search warrants simultaneously yesterday in Palmers Camp and one at a residence on Todd Street.
“Following the search, four people were arrested for supply and possession of cannabis in an Aboriginal community. Another man was summonsed to appear at a later date for possessing a controlled weapon.
“Police also seized $4,500 worth of cash, believed to have been obtained from the sale of drugs.
“The Substance Abuse Intelligence Desk will continue to work closely with other sections of the Police Force to dismantle these networks of offenders who try to profit from selling illegal and harmful substances in remote communities.
“I urge anyone contemplating trafficking drugs or alcohol anywhere in the southern region of the Territory, to think again. Police will continue to be out in force and you will more than likely be apprehended,” Detective Senior Sergeant Wurst said.
 
UPDATE JULY 14:
Police have arrested another person, a 43-year-old male, for drug offences. Det Wurst said yesterday the man was arrested during a search on a house in Anuera Place. He was charged with supplying cannabis 9three times) and possession of cannabis.
He said: “Police urge anyone who may witness any suspicious drug related activity to contact them on 131 444 or Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.”


 
 
 
 
 

Questions about Snowdon as Congress CEO quits

By ERWIN CHLANDA
 
Congress CEO Stephanie Bell (left) resigned yesterday as claims were being made that Indigenous Health Minister Warren Snowdon (right), the Member for Lingiari, declined to fund another indigenous health service unless it operated under the control of Congress.
Bess Price, who is now the Country Liberals candidate for the Territory seat of Stuart, says she acted as an interpreter about two years ago in a conversation between Mr Snowdon and Yuendumu resident Matthew Egan.
Mr Egan was instrumental in setting up the Willowra Yuendumu Nirripi Health Service (WYN).
She says Mr Snowdon told Mr Egan that Federal funding would be approved for WYN only if it submitted to the control of Congress.
Mr Egan declined, says Ms Price. The organisation has since been closed down because lack of funding, according to a long time Yuendumu resident who did not wish to be named.
As reported by the Alice Springs News, a Federal investigation is now under way into a string of alleged wrongdoings by Congress.
In part, it is alleged that Congress improperly diverted into a special fund 20% from grants and paid it into a special fund, as a fee for administration.
A letter to Congress from the Department of Health and Ageing, leaked to the Alice Springs News, says “a major concern [is] that the amounts deducted from the grants … are allocated to a Core Services budget [which] makes it difficult to identify how these funds are used”.
For example, “interest earned on Funds for other purposes is a breach of the funding agreement”.
The letter from the department says that Congress may have to repay up to $2m in funds used improperly, including air fares and unauthorised use of Ms Bell’s corporate credit card.
In June 2009 Mr Snowdon became the Minister for Indigenous Health, Rural and Regional Health and Regional Service Delivery. He did not respond to a request for comment from the Alice Springs News.
The many still unanswered questions in the Federal investigation notwithstanding, the statement by Congress announcing Ms Bell’s resignation is effusive in its praise of her work.
It quotes Congress board president Helen Kantawara: “On behalf of the Board, I would like to thank Stephanie for her hard work and contribution to Congress throughout almost 30 years of service – the last 11 of which were in the role of CEO.
“We would like to acknowledge Stephanie for her dedication and commitment to the Aboriginal health sector as an advocate for the development and delivery of Aboriginal community controlled primary health care services across Central Australia, the NT and across the nation more generally, including as a long term board member of the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation.”
Ms Bell’s continuous period of service to the Aboriginal community throughout this time is acknowledged as an important and unique contribution to primary health care in a remote area, the statement says.
“Ms Bell was the 2011 recipient of the Menzies Medallion, in recognition of her outstanding contribution to primary health care and to Indigenous health in the Northern Territory. The Menzies Medallion is awarded annually by the Menzies School of Health Research to honour individuals who have made a national contribution to health, in areas which have benefited the Northern Territory,” says Ms Kantawara.
As reported by the News, the board has appointed Ms Donna Ah Chee to the position of Acting CEO.

Council landfill tenders soon

The Alice Town Council is about to call tenders for the refurbishment of the landfill using $3.5m in Federal money from Regional Development Australia (RDA), and $775,000 from the NT Government.
The RDA round one funding was $150m which was divvied up between 34 projects around Australia.
Alice Mayor Damien Ryan is the chairman of RDA NT.
He says there will be major changes to the landfill, better opportunities for recycling and a save and salvage store.
“The public won’t need to go to the tip face any more,” he says.
Mr Ryan says the rules for the current RDA round two have been changed, requiring that at least half the costs for each project are covered by funds not coming from Canberra, such as state or local governments or private contributors.
It is expected that Federal Minister for Regional Australia Simon Crean will this week announce Territory projects for round two.
Three have been put forward, this time none from Central Australia.

Our very own two speed economy

By ERWIN CHLANDA
 
Mining vs the rest isn’t the only two-speed economy scenario in Australia: the Northern Territory has its very own. Here it is Darwin vs the rest, and the numbers are striking.
So, for example, when Treasurer Delia Lawrie trumpets the “strong growth in the number of residential building approvals in the Territory” we need to ask: “Where, please?” The 2012-13 State of the Regions Report gives some of the answers: in 2012 the per capita value of Residential New Construction in Lingiari (pretty well the entire NT excluding Darwin) was $990. In Darwin it was $2464 – two and a half times as much.
It’s also instructive to look at problems from the perspective of the people at the bottom of the barrel: Lingiari has a great deal more of them than Darwin. For example, Lingiari has nearly double the nation’s average number of people aged 15 to 20 on disability support. For the 21 to 24 age group it’s two and a half times as many. For Darwin both age groups are about line ball with the national average.
Lingiari has nearly three and a half times (338%) as many long term unemployed when compared with the national average. Darwin has fewer (89%) than the national average.
Lingiari has more than three times the national average of non-students on Youth Allowance. Again, Darwin is about line ball with the nation. Lingiari less than a quarter (22%) of students on Youth Allowance when compared with the nation. This is one category where Darwin is also doing badly (34%) – although not as badly as Lingiari. What these two figures show is that we just can’t retain our bright young people once they finish Year 12.
The Alice News requested an interview, at the show, with Minister for Central Australia Karl Hampton. He did not respond to the request.
Member for MacDonnell Alison Anderson (CL) did not hesitate to comment. Firstly, she says the nearly 5% long term unemployed figure, as bad as it is, is misleading because it counts part-time participants on CDEP as employed. And many young people on non-student Youth Allowance are on a futile treadmill of courses that lead nowhere.
“They have lots of white cards, diplomas, certificates,” she says. But few lead to a job: “The money comes from the Commonwealth without making sure of the outcomes.” Ms Anderson says courses should be supplied in consultation with such bodies as the Chamber of Commerce so that students and trainees learn skills for which there is a need.
Ms Anderson says there is a clear need and opportunity for farming and horticulture as was the case in the “mission days”. (Her grandfather, Ukinyi, was in charge of a small farm at Papunya.) She says not only would home-grown food be healthy and cheap for the remote communities, there would be scope for exporting produce to the cities, using low-cost backloading on south-bound transports that are usually empty. Ms Anderson says there’s plenty of land and idle labour. The Ali Curung watermelon plantation (pictured) is a good example that this industry is viable here.
“Bores were sunk in all our communities. We just need some manhours weeding. All the old people worked on farms. Why is it not happening now?”
 
Related article: A remote community where all adults work & kids go to school.

What a week!

COMMENT by ERWIN CHLANDA
 
A massive crowd of 12,000, about 30% more than usual, was at the 53rd Alice Show on Friday, says Show president Brad Bellette. This makes it the town’s biggest social event of the year. And there were more stalls and commercial displays – 250, an increase of 20. Onya, Show Society!
• • •
The unexpected huge attendance caused shortages of food, loose change and dunny paper planned for the two-day event but which started to run low on Friday.
And the mother of all traffic jams occurred on Friday on all roads feeding into the Gap roundabout. The absence of the usual police traffic control created a bottleneck as cars had to turn right, obviously giving way to oncoming traffic, into the landfill road and from there into Len Kittle Drive and the show grounds. The cops were there on Saturday, when there was much less traffic. We asked the police for comment.
• • •
Another absence was Tourism Central Australia. For the last two years they had used one of the major display areas, between the Alice Town Council and the Country Liberals’ stalls, after – inexplicably – the Parks and Wildlife had ceased using the space. Both organisations have obvious links to the region’s biggest private enterprise industry, tourism, and their absence was a puzzle for many.
The Alice News has sought comment from Tourism CA which told Mr Bellette “it is not a tourist event”. What about an event where locals can learn what tourism is doing for the region (and what they can do for tourism)? We were also trying to talk to Minister for Parks and Central Australia Karl Hampton about this (and other issues) but he did not respond to our request. Accountability, Labor Party style?
• • •
The rest of the Show was all systems go. The side show alley was packed, kids squealed with delight – or horror? – being zapped aloft in breath-taking rides.
Cattle station folk were in town in droves after a good season and a big sale on Thursday (see report this issue).
• • •
The Bronco Branding display again showed that handling cattle in the good old days was a fairly exhausting business. Two teams from Strathalbyn in SA did well, after a 19 hour drive. One calf had to be destroyed when it broke a leg. It’s a pity this happened but a vet was on hand to do it humanely. Some may try to turn this into a reason for stopping the Bronco Branding exhibition at the Show. I hope the event stays. It’s no difference to nags getting hurt in horse racing. And it is one of the few days in the year when the cattle men and women are in town in force.
Results were T&R # 1 Team (from Strathalbyn) 4 min 30 sec; Robbie Schmidt’s Team Landmark (pictured) 4 min 47 sec; Mt Riddock Station Team 5 min 32 sec and T&R # 1 Team 6 min 17 sec.
• • •
Picture below: Lucy Doyle on Pseudonaja starred in the ring events. Lucy was the Senior Champion Show Jumper for 2012.

 
 

Brrrr!


 
 
A tree in Siberia? Iceland? No, Neil Ross snapped these pictures on his rural block in Alice Springs, helping nature a bit by keeping his sprinkler on over night on Friday.
The current cold snap started on July 1 with zero degrees, followed by -1.7, -4.9, -4.3, -4, -4.4 and yesterday, -5.2 at 6.41am.
This morning it was -0.7 – we’re on the way back up!
The coldest day ever in Alice Springs – so far as records show – was July 17, 1976 when the thermometer dropped to minus 7.5 degrees.
If you want to be technical, the “terrestrial temperature” yesterday, measured at ground level, was minus 7 degrees.

A heifer called Camel stars at the 53rd Alice Show as cattle sales bring good prices

Brooke Weir, 10, from Ammaroo Station north-east of Alice Springs stole the show when her heifer called Camel was judged the champion female.
She was one of hundreds of locals entering their exhibits in the 53rd Alice Springs Show.
Brooke (pictured at right) raised the Santa Getrudis heifer she found her as a poddy calf at one of the station’s watering points, abandoned by her mother.
Brook bottle-fed her for six weeks and now Camel spends her days in a paddock near the homestead.
Meanwhile Beef Central reports that the best pens of locally bred milk-tooth steers above 350kg nudged above $1.90 a kilogram liveweight at the annual Roe Creek store cattle sale near Alice Springs on Thursday (pictured below).
Most pens were carrying extra weight-for-age compared to last year’s yarding, ensuring that dollar-per-head returns were firm, despite a slip in rates on a cents-per-kilogram basis.
All told, 30 buyers, including a number of returning bidders, registered at the Bohning Yards for this year’s yarding of 3600, including T&R Pastoral, Murray Bridge, SA; Princess Royal, Burra, SA and Elders’ Charlton Feedlot, Victoria.
Both T&R’s Peter Bond and Princess Royal’s Simon Rowe secured about 400 head each.
There was also a sprinkling of live export demand on appropriate lighter steers and bulls.
Swift Australia’s Cameron Hilton was also prominent in his purchases, among them the standout pen of 126 Poll Hereford milk tooth, EU-accredited steers in from the Cadzow family, Mt Riddock Station.
The pen, averaging 366kg, sold for the top yearling price of $1.96/kg, with a second draft of 40 steers at 331kg selling to Princess Royal.
Steven Cadzow said his family’s 166 steers were second-round weaners aged between 12-18 months.
“We’re very happy with their condition and the way they’ve sold,” he said.
Another standout sale was the sole pen of pure Angus cattle, in from the Smith family, Tieyon Station which sold for $1.92/kg. The draft of 60 steers, 14 – 16 month old, averaged 371kg.
Vendor Paul Smith said he was very happy with his calves, especially on a weight-for-age basis.
“These steers are one of the heaviest lines of weaners we had ever offered at the sale. At the end of the drought we got down to an average of 244kg for the sale steers,” he said.
Territory Rural McPherson Alice Springs director Jock McPherson, said healthy competition from a range of buyers ensured prices were in line with expectations.
Mr McPherson’s company sold 1900 head in conjunction with Trailco.
“We were very happy with the sale, prices were where we would have wanted them to be,” he said.
“Even the lighter cattle were making over $1.90/kg for the better runs of young Poll Hereford steers in that 300 – 350kg range.
“And the heifer job held up well too, with top prices above $1.70/kg, which was quite exceptional really.”
Mr McPherson said a large portion of the yarding was bound for southern feedlots.
“Most of the pens here comprised milk tooth cattle, carrying a fair bit of weight, and these were suitable for T&R, Princess Royal and Charlton Feedlot,” he said.
“As we came down in the weight ranges, there were plenty of Hereford calves also going to the feedlots, mostly for the domestic market.”
Grass fatteners from Queensland competed with some local restocker inquiry for other lines of red crossbred cattle.
“The little bit of local support was excellent, with Alcoota Station buying some good red steers. It’s always very satisfying to see cattle from this sale staying in the district,” Mr McPherson said.
Alcoota Station’s Chris Nott bought four decks of Santa steers at about 350kg for an average price of 185c/kg.
“We’ll grow them out as grassfed bullocks to about 550kg,” he said.
As Alice Springs regional chairman of the Northern Territory Cattlemen’s Association, Mr Nott said he thought vendors had enjoyed a “good sale”.
“I thought it was probably back 5-10c/kg on last year. If you look at those Mount Riddock cattle, they made $2.06/kg last year and this year made $1.96c/kg,” he said.
But considering freight costs of 20-30c/kg and comparable rates from recent sales elsewhere in Australia, the consensus from agents and vendors was that prices were realistic.
Landmark Alice Springs branch manager Anthony Hyland said this year’s sale welcomed an estimated 10 new bidders to the buyers’ gallery.
He said British cross milk-tooth steers in the 320 – 400kg range in particular met strong demand from western NSW and Qld.
Mr Hyland said an overall highlight was the sale of mickey bulls from Wally Klein, Orange Creek, which sold to a live export buyer, believed to be for a Middle Eastern order, for $2.20/kg.
In other sales, 240kg steers from Deep Well averaged $1.80/kg, while a line of Braford/Hereford cross steers from Victory Downs averaged $1.72/kg.
The ‘first pen’ curse struck for Waite River’s 23 milk tooth steers, averaging 381kg, which sold below market rates at $1.79/kg.
Other opening pens included Umbeara’s 90 red steers averaging 372kg and making $1.81c/kg to T&R, with a further 91 at 341kg going to Charlton for $1.86c/kg.
Bond Springs sold 35 milk tooth Poll Hereford steers at 363kg for $1.84/kg.
MLA’s National Livestock Reporting Service analyst Chris Bailey quoted prices for most milk-tooth yearling steers at $1.65 – $1.96/kg. Mr Bailey said overall 2729 steers sold from $1.30 – $1.96/kg or $335.50-$920.80 a head.
“Red Angus steers sold between $1.81-$189/kg, with the British cross $1.73 – $1.77/kg. Santa Gertrudis prices ranged from $1.55 – $1.92/kg, with more than two teeth at the lower end. A few Charolais cross steers sold at $1.79/kg. Droughtmaster steers sold between $1.60 – $1.82/kg,” the NLRS report said.
“The heifers were harder to sell at times with the weaned Hereford heifers from The Garden topping $1.80/kg.
“However most other Hereford heifers sold from $1.64-$1.74/kg, with the British-cross at $1.59/kg. Small lines of Droughtmaster heifers sold at $1.50 – $1.53/kg.”
NLRS said the 990 heifers yarded sold between $270 – $648.70/hd, or $1.20-$1.80/kg.

Labor candidate in Braitling puts community harmony at top of agenda

By KIERAN FINNANE
 
In her first foray into politics, tourism operator Deborah Rock is standing for Labor in Braitling. Not previously a member of the party, she first came to Labor’s attention as a result of penning letters to the editor. Their theme was to reject the idea of widespread fear and insecurity in Alice, asserting that the town was a beautiful and mostly safe place to live.
That remains a key message. The magnificent landscape drew her to Alice in 1998 but what has kept her here – and she thinks this is true for many people – is the sense of personal freedom and community.
“You can be yourself and still be successful,” she says, “and you can get to know a wide range of people. I love that small town thing of going to the shops and running into lots of people I know.”
Not surprisingly then, community harmony is at the top of her agenda: “We need to address our problems without creating division, without talking the town down.”
Youth at risk
She says law and order issues are raised regularly when she is door-knocking “although they are by no means the only subject and a lot of people are perfectly happy and love living here”. Those who are worried are aware of break-ins in their neighbourhood, hooning in cars on the local streets and are particularly concerned about “kids mucking up”.
Ms Rock says “discipline and welfare” have to go hand in hand when dealing with young people “who are not just a risk to the community but are at risk themselves”.
She says the Territory Government is kicking goals here, naming the Youth Street Outreach Service and the Youth Hub as examples.
More could be done in providing more supported accommodation for at risk youth and more activities for youth generally, but everything costs money and governments have to work within their budgets.
Residents are also raising alcohol issues, with views split on whether tightening or easing restrictions is the way to go. She says she is interested in listening to everyone’s thoughts on the matter, although she subscribes to Labor’s policies on maintaining current restrictions and the Banned Drinkers Register.
Hope and opportunities
Ultimately she’d like to see restrictions eased but only when progress is made in the areas which feed people’s alcoholism: “Until we’ve raised people’s standard of living, given them hope and opportunities, we’ll continue to have alcohol issues. And to turn up the tap in these circumstances would be pouring fuel onto the fire.”
So, how will the necessary progress be made?
Ms Rock commends the Alice Springs Transformation Plan for improving housing for Aboriginal people.
She says the Aboriginal people she has spoken to want to work, want education but express “frustration and resentment” at being targeted by specific policies. The only way through is to continually consult them in identifying the problems and their solutions, she says.
After 25 years in marketing and sales positions in the tourism industry, Ms Rock this year took up the study of psychology through the University of New England. This has stimulated her interest in improving mental health services in Alice.  In her door-knocking she has come across families with autistic children who need greater support and services. It’s also clear that children affected by foetal alcohol syndrome need greater support.
She welcomes the opportunity that the election campaign is giving her to raise these issues and intends speaking directly to Health Minister Kon Vatskalis about them.
Alice and the region could also do with more counsellors and she is interested in exploring the possibilities of local training being delivered by Charles Darwin University.
Self-help in tourism
In her own industry she promotes self-help (see her comment piece published earlier this year). Tourism may be down but certainly not out. Operators may need to be clever about delivering the right products. She runs, in partnership, an upmarket bed and breakfast which continues to do very well. It is promoted directly into European markets where people are seeking “niche experiences”.
What about government investment in the industry? Is it well targeted?
Ms Rock says her operation is well supported by Tourism NT offices in Europe and the USA. On its promotion campaigns, she says most of them target the domestic market which is not an important market for her.
“But people in the industry do look to government for help, as they do in all industries.”
If elected, is this an area where she would focus her energies?
She says that would be up to the Chief Minister. She has a strong interest in tourism but is also interested in education, health and housing. In terms of the local economy, she would like government to look at what can be done to help support up and coming entrepreneurs.
What about on the housing front?
“The Kilgariff subdivision is coming and that will make a difference.”
She has heard arguments for a large number of blocks to be released inexpensively but says government must be mindful of the repercussions that could have on the market and people’s existing investments.
Angela Pamela an issue if CLP wins
Her campaign posters, like those of her colleagues in Greatorex and Araluen, highlight Labor’s opposition to a possible uranium mine at Angela Pamela just south of town.
How much of an issue is this amongst people she has door-knocked?
She says it as been raised specifically only by two people, but while it may not be a hot issue now if the Country Liberals were to win government, it would be.
The Alice News asks her if Labor will act to definitely rule out a possible mine on the tenement, by reserving the land in some way.
She says she would love to see “a guarantee for the future”, but the pros and cons would have to be carefully weighed up.
 

$20m gated community proposed for Pine Gap staff


By ERWIN CHLANDA
 
The Department of Defence is making an application to build a gated community with 40 three-bedroom “multiple dwellings” worth $20m, not counting the cost of the land off Stephens Road.
If approved the complex will be built in several stages (see plan above).
It is understood the proposed complex, on land developed by Lhere Artepe Nominees Pty Ltd, which is linked with the native title organisation Lhere Artepe Aboriginal Corporation, is for Pine Gap staff.
The land, at the foot of the MacDonnell Ranges and not far from the convention centre, has a frontage to Maconochie Road of 89 metres and 171 metres frontage to a new road yet to be named.
The application, to be heard next week, says the proposed units will have a maximum building height less than 8.5 metres and all 40 units will be double storey.
About 2,442 square meters of communal open space will be incorporated into the development and a proposed perimeter fence will provide screening to “avoid undue overlooking of adjoining properties”.
The fences (pictured) will be about two metres high.
Meanwhile, Tahlia and Thomas Smith Property Investments Pty Ltd have purchased for $1.85m the G’day Mate caravan park in 31 Palm Court, Ross Highway from Alexander Theodor and Jeanette Sue Muir.
The Central Land Council bought industrial land in Sargent and Cameron Streets for $1.79m.
 
UPDATE ON MONDAY 3.30pm
The Australian head of Pine Gap, Margaret Larkin, says the project is part of an ongoing “modernising of the housing fleet”.
She says some homes in other parts of Alice Springs will be sold but it is not yet clear how many.
The number is likely to be “in the tens,” the replacement will not be one for one (there are 40 dwellings in the proposal) and will depend on the turnover rate of the base workforce and the composition of the families.
Ms Larkin says creating a gated community is not a response to the law-and-order conditions in the town, but rather to “create a sense of community” and to prevent children becoming victims of accidents on the busy Stephens Road.
The complex will be surrounded by something that’s more a fence than a wall but the gate will be locked at all times – not unlike it is the case with apartment buildings.
Ms Larkin says the owners and developers of the land, Lhere Artepe Nominees Pty Ltd, had accepted an offer from the Australian Department of Defence and the sale is now being processed.
Ms Larkin said she did not know the price to be paid.

The Desert Knowledge upstairs-downstairs dilemma

By ERWIN CHLANDA with additional reporting by KIERAN FINNANE
 
Second story of two. See the first here.
 
Discovering the “underlying drivers of problems to achieve long term systemic change”.
“Creating new ways for Aborigines and others to work together.”
“Building capacity and innovating new approaches.”
It’s all part of an impressive agenda, but will Desert Knowledge Australia (DKA) get its hands dirty and apply its objectives on the ground, where they are most desperately needed, right on its doorstep, here in Alice Springs?
That would, of course, require naming names – elected people not doing their job, highly funded yet inadequate or corrupt NGOs, incompetent government departments. Will DKA have the bottle?
On the day this week when the Alice Springs News Online spoke to CEO John Huigen about DKA’s long-term plans we also visited Hidden Valley, one of Alice Springs’ notorious town camps: there have been two recent attacks on police, with rocks and sticks; there was a stabbing killing late last year; camp dogs were eating people in 2008. Alcohol abuse is rife although its use is prohibited.
As we were talking to prominent camp dwellers Mark Lockyer and Patrick Nandy (pictured above)  in one house about overcrowding and unwelcome visitors, next-door police were taking away in handcuffs a man suspected of sexual assault.
Yet in that same camp is a “cluster” – a concept of which DKA is very fond – of people whom most would consider to be leading normal lives.
 
Mark Lockyer and a niece live in a new duplex. He works for the Territory Department of Children and Families. Another niece lives in the adjoining duplex.
 In a house on one side lives his sister Delvine, who is married to an African American. They are expecting their first baby. He works as a security guard at the Aherlkeme Village, a complex of small dwellings where Aboriginal people are taught life skills.
On the other side are two houses where Mark’s brothers live with their families.
 Nigel Lockyer is the eldest and works for the Central Land Council servicing its car pool. He is 40 years old, still plays footy for Souths and is the president of the Hidden Valley Housing Association.
Mark’s aging mother, May, lives in a separate house in front, cared for by Delvine.
May’s children’s dwellings are all new and well looked after. The yards are fenced and tidy.
From Mark’s carport hang flower baskets and flowers are growing by the front door. He’s planted trees along the fenceline.
“I want to buy this house,” he says. 
His car parked in the yard has a rear window broken: “It was unlocked but they still smashed the window,” he says.
 He locked the rear gate so people wouldn’t take a shortcut through his yard, but Mark says by and large, life in that corner of Hidden Valley is fairly quiet and on the whole things in the camp are on the up after coming through a rough patch. And despite recent problems with the police, he welcomes their greater presence as well as a security patrol in the evenings by Territory Housing.
He says people are more willing, since the Intervention, to report crimes to the police, such as the sexual assault that allegedly occurred the night before.
“When I was a kid police hardly ever came into the camp,” he says, and this even though terrible violence was part of his daily life.
 All tenants at the camp pay rent.
The Lockyer children’s dwellings were built under the $150m Federal program to upgrade town camp housing and infrastructure. Much of Hidden Valley is still dug up as roads, drains and power are being upgraded.
Mark looks forward to the day when that work, together with mail delivery and street signs, is completed, about two months away.
Across the road two old houses, like May’s, have been refurbished and a little further along a new house accommodates elderly Mark’s aunty, “Mum Judy” and her grandchildren. One of the old houses has been allocated to her daughter, Sarah, who cares for her. The other has been allocated to a family from the fringe camp, White Gate.
Sarah’s husband Patrick Nandy, a man of impressive stature and bearing, works with Mark in the Department of Children and Families.
He complains of a broken door knob which means that people can enter his house uninvited at night. A washing machine, bolted to the floor, has broken down.
 Tangentyere Council supplied the washing machine but has not responded to his requests to fix it or remove it, he says. It is full of stinking water – and has been for a year.
 Why does he not just syphon out the water?
 This doesn’t seem to be an option he has considered.
 
Meanwhile on the other side of The Gap, in the immaculate Desert Knowledge precinct, Mr Huigen is mapping out what DKA will be doing in its next five years.
He wants to consolidate and expand the business network across Desert Australia – 1330 businesses and individuals so far, a way commercial operators in the bush can become more effective.
Mr Huigen says because of the inland’s sparse population, spread over vast distances, enterprises are smaller and have less capacity for change, improvement and growth.
 The web-based meetings facilitated by DKA, largely the brainchild of Mike Crowe, have fostered partnerships and alliances that created “a critical mass to get things done as in large businesses,” says Mr Huigen.
The network also ropes in government instrumentalities and NGOs, giving all players in what’s needed to develop the desert regions – a meeting place, physical or – more often – virtual.
Mr Huigen says getting the most out of the national broadband network into remote areas is a major objective, pursued with great enthusiasm by staff member David Nixon.
Mr Huigen says it’s not yet obvious what all the applications of a greater bandwidth will be (telemedicine may be one of the uses).
“The very nature of how commerce and service delivery is changing as we speak because of the digital revolution. It’s difficult to predict exactly what opportunities could emerge for remote people but the way things are looking a growing digital divide is very much a possibility.”
This begs the question: Should objectives such as lifting education standards and creating industries have higher priorities than creating the medium for downloading movies and video games?
 
In Hidden Valley, too, communications is an issue, except here it is a life and death matter, every day: can a householder refuse hospitality to a couple of dozen rellies from bush descending on his place and demanding accommodation?
The short answer, says Mr Nandy, is: “No. That’s too rude for us. They’re family.” But he recognises the problem: one night can easily turn into a week, a week, into a month and so on. It’s difficult.
Overcrowding – 30 or so people in a normal house – has been blamed over decades for violence, sometimes lethal, sexual assaults, drunken brawls, children’s inability to get to school, get a good night’s sleep, get adequate food.
 Territory Housing, now in charge of the rental system in town camps, clearly still hasn’t got a handle on the problem. 
Mr Nandy says he would call the police if things got out of hand, yet that would be a measure of last resort.
 
Mr Huigen leaves no doubt that DKA has a role in acting on the “Balkanisation” of the community, the many splinter groups jealously guarding their power and money, the publicly-funded clan fiefdoms, incapable of or unwilling to talk to each other, organisations without whose cooperation the town has no chance of survival: the search for remedies has been futile for decades. Can DKA help?
Mr Huigen says DKA has three core approaches:-
• Look at the whole system – tackle the root causes not the symptoms.
• Innovate: find new ways of tackling problems; tap into smart people; learn from what you have done.
• Find new ways for Aborigines and others to work together to create a shared future.
One problem that needs to be tackled is that service providers who need to cooperate are forced to compete against each-other for public or philanthropic money: “This undermines collaboration,” says Mr Huigen.
He says criticism of providers is sometimes expressed in an aggressive manner (often with very good reason), putting the providers on the defensive and making them disinclined to engage in dialogue.
“As a first step we need to get people to the table,” says Mr Huigen. “Results may well flow from that.
“It’s very useful to have an independent broker to create conversations and develop new approaches,” says Mr Huigen.
It’s not yet a rounded approach, let alone proven, but it’s an honest bid to deal with the town’s underlying woes.
DKA is working with a “cluster” of NGOs in Alice Springs and Philanthropic Collaborators, the Menzies Foundation and The Ian Potter Foundation to develop new ways of collaboration, innovation and investment.
And the next chapter may well be written – as we speak – by board member Bruce Walker, founder of the Centre for Appropriate Technology which, with Batchelor Institute, makes up the Desert Peoples Centre housed in the DKA precinct. Dr Walker is the director of the Desert Knowledge remoteFOCUS project “that is working to create better ways of governments governing, engaging and administering remote Australia”.
 Dr Walker has decades of experience mediating – successfully, as demonstrated by substantial grants he obtained – between The Centre and the powers that be in Canberra and Darwin.
 
Almost everyone agrees that one thing that would make Alice Springs a better place is fixing “the alcohol problem”. No doubt DKA would agree that getting people at the coalface to the table would be a good idea. On this issue Mark and Nigel Lockyer and Patrick Nandy are all on the one page. The ban on grog in town campers’ own homes has to go. It has made not the slightest difference to the problem in Hidden Valley, except for putting camp residents on the wrong side of the police.
It’s one reason why many of the camp residents are in gaol.
Meanwhile, nothing has been done about supply, says Mark: “That’s what they need to cut back on.”
Both Mr Nandy and Nigel enjoy a drink and want to be able to do so in the peace of their own home without interference.
“I drink in moderation,” says Mr Nandy. “But if you carry on and carry on, you’ll end up either in hospital or dead.”
“I pay my taxes, pay my rent like anyone else in the mainstream,” says Nigel. “I like to be able to unwind with a drink after a hard day’s work or after playing footy. Me and my little family don’t annoy anyone, unlike some of my countrymen.”
He supports a case by case approach: “I don’t want to see the whole camp drinking. The courts and the police know who the troublemakers are.”
He knows all too well what’s at stake, having fought for custody of a little relative whose parents were drinkers. The child now lives with him and his family. He wants her to go to school and grow up to get a good job, like that of his daughter Lauren, who works for Life Without Barriers: “She’s got a good education, reads and writes, speaks her mother’s [Aboriginal] language.”
On the work opportunities that don’t necessarily require much education, he says a lot of other girls of Lauren’s age are drawn into looking after family members, whether they are younger children or aging parents and relatives.
He also says a lot of organisations don’t give Aboriginal people a chance to prove themselves, but equally Aboriginal workers can be at fault themselves for “not turning up every day”.
Mark says some Aboriginal people will criticise others for working, accusing them of thinking that they’re “white” because they’ve got a job.
The two brothers say the focus for improvement should be on the next generation – the kids who are still at school or about to start: “Start with the future.”
 
Money is a worry for DKA. Mr Huigen is expecting the $890,000 annual grant from the NT Government will continue. The precinct real estate may become a good little earner as other instrumentalities lease land. DKA is an organisation equally concerned with Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people and this puts it outside some funding guidelines, “which is challenging,” he says.
Philanthropists are welcome any day – more money is likely to flow as the DKA brand gathers recognition. And there could be money in consultancy work.
But Mr Huigen says chasing dollars detracts from the core mission DKA has itself: making Desert Australia a better place.
 
PHOTOS (from top): Patrick Nandy outside his mother-in-law’s new house in Hidden Valley. • An old house in need of TLC. • Mark Lockyer gearing up to buy his house. • Housing shortage? This new home under the control of Territory Housing has been empty for some time. • Man under suspicion of sexual assault is arrested. • This tap in a Hidden Valley house has been running … for a whole year, says Mr Nandy.

Pamela Lofts, 1949 – 2012

For every bird there is this last migration;

Once more the cooling year kindles her heart;

With a warm passage to the summer station

Love pricks the course in lights across the chart.

– A. D. Hope

 
Pamela Lofts, well-loved Alice Springs artist and children’s book illustrator, died yesterday. She leaves behind important legacies in both fields.
The desert has been at the heart of her life and art since 1980. She loved its beauty as much as anyone, as evidenced in her work, but more importantly,  she saw the desert as “a storied place” and its stories were the matter she worked with. They told not only of what can be found there, but also what cannot; they were full of the haunting presence of lost possibilities  – the lost way of life of the original inhabitants, the lost opportunity of another kind of settlement too.
This kind of awareness may have equipped her all too well to address the matter of her own dying in an exhibition held at Watch This Space in Alice Springs in July last year. In a series of drawings of migratory birds who have breathed their last, fully expended at the end of life’s long journey, she expressed the sorrow of death at the same time as a profound acceptance of it as a state intimately connected to life, one shared by all living things. The series was remarkable for its meditative beauty (achieved in a sublime display of the artist’s drawing skill) as well as for its unflinching courage.
Much more is to be said about Pamela Lofts’ contribution to art, to children’s literature, to the community – and we will bring a more complete obituary to our readers. Today the Alice Springs News salutes a fine talent and an exemplary spirit who has left this life too soon.
 
Recent articles about the work of Pamela Lofts:
 
Paintings and poems take you by the hand
Antics and elegy
Last migrations

Giles takes a regional perspective in his Braitling election campaign

By KIERAN FINNANE
 
Perhaps it’s because of his shadow portfolios – Indigenous Policy, Transport and Construction, Regional Development – that the Country Liberals’ Adam Giles takes a regional view of issues affecting his electorate. “I’m pro-development, we’ve got to grow the economy, create jobs for the future,” says the sitting Member for Braitling. But he links the old conservative mantra with a certain logic to the specific ills of the region.
He recognises the social issues that are the preoccupation of many – “especially our outrageous law and order issues” – but, beyond what is already being done in a raft of programs and measures, he believes they “won’t be fixed until the economy is fixed”.
“When we have more people in more jobs then we will see some of our social issues subside. With greater participation in the economy, more kids will go to school, people will be healthier, the imprisonment rates will drop, and social issues will have less relevance and impact,” he says.
The Alice Springs News Online puts to him that there are job vacancies across the region right now. “There is an issue about getting locals into jobs”, he agrees, rolling his eyes about what he sees as the Australian Government’s failure to adequately address welfare reform so that able-bodied adults take work if it is available. He has ‘form’ on this issue, conducting his campaign for the Federal seat of Lingiari in 2007 under the naively pitched slogan, “No more sitdown money”. It went down like a lead balloon in the largely bush electorate with high levels of welfare dependence. But he went on to win handsomely the Legislative Assembly seat of Braitling in the following year, with 58.2% of the primary vote. His nearest rival was the Greens’ Jane Clark, with 14.9%. (Also running were Eli Melky as an independent (14.1%) and Charlie Dick for the ALP (12.7%). After distribution of preferences Mr Giles had 70.3% of the vote.)
So, Australian Government action on welfare reform aside, what could a Territory Government do to stimulate the economy?
Affordable residential land
If we are to be competitive as a region the cost of living has to come down and government can make a difference here by ensuring there is adequate supply of affordable residential land, says Mr Giles. It should cost no more to buy land here than it does in other comparable locations. In Alice Springs in the immediate term, that means releasing enough blocks at Kilgariff to keep their cost as low as possible.
“I’ve never been a big fan of Kilgariff but now that we’re as far down the track as we are, it should be speeded up and not drip fed off, just a few blocks at a time. A solid number will keep the price down. This will bring work to the construction industry and contribute to a more affordable environment to attract people to work here.”
He says he asked Lands Minister Gerry McCarthy in the recent Estimates hearings about when land would be turned off at Kilgariff and was told not till the end of 2013.
“Why does it have to take so long?” he asks.
A Territory Government could also help our existing industries, he says, naming mining, tourism, the pastoral industry and horticulture as where the opportunities exist. He suggests the welfare sector is “winding back a little”.  His most focussed propositions are with respect to tourism and horticulture.
He says the tourism industry should look after its own promotion.
“The tens of millions being spent on marketing by government employees are not getting an adequate response. Sure, the industry is affected Australia-wide but we are below par with the rest of the country.”
What does that mean with respect to Tourism NT (formerly the NT Tourism Commission)?
Policy specifics will be released later, he says, but “an industry-led approach would get better outcomes”.
On horticulture potential, he says the NT should be part of the Australian and Asian food bowl, with markets in Indonesia, Timor, China and Japan, whether it’s developing the NT’s Ord River region or growing oranges at Finke, expanding production at Ti Tree and Ali Curung, developing crops at Yuendumu and Alpurrurulam (Lake Nash).
Alice Springs should become “a key link in the logistical chain, a logistical support centre for the region”.

Works in progress at Kilgariff subdivision. From the Alice News archive.

Infrastructure investment 

Ali Curung’s problem with getting local labour is because “the Feds aren’t keen to bring about mutual obligation agreements”. But meanwhile, the Centrefarm project there, “outsourced to a private provider”, has another problem: power supply.  There is insufficient capacity to take production to its full potential, says Mr Giles.
“Government has to work out what can be done about that.”
“The inertia in Central Australia around economic development really concerns me. Labor has no plan for Central Australia’s economy, it has no plan about anything at all for Central Australia.
“Its own Economic Development Committee has not met since June 2010, despite the people who ran it here [clearly a reference to former Mayor of Alice Springs, Fran Kilgariff, who has since left the public service to take up a position with Ninti One]. What sort of confidence can we have in the government’s intentions for Central Australia if they can’t even get the Economic Development Committee to meet?
“They look after Darwin and Darwin only. The faux pas they make is to not only neglect Alice Springs but also Tennant Creek and the remote areas where they rely on so many votes.”
He says the NT Government’s failure to invest in infrastructure in Alice Springs is the clearest example of its neglect.
So what are the Country Liberals promising in this regard?
It’s not about election promises, he says, it’s what the CLP does: “We built this town.”
He gives as examples the Alice Springs to Darwin railway, the Ayers Rock Resort and the then Sheraton Hotel in Alice, the Palm Valley gas pipeline.
“Labor has not built a major structure in Alice Springs in 12 years.”
What has been built has relied on Federal investment, he says. Again, he declines to be specific about what a CLP Government would do, but says there would be “a greater emphasis on roads and power infrastructure to support economic development”.
The state of roads is the “the biggest concern” he hears expressed “right across the Territory”.
In his electorate he took matters into his own hands, successfully applying for Black Spot funding to improve the intersection of Larapinta Drive with Lovegrove Drive. He’s disappointed that the Territory did not match Federal funds to install a roundabout at the intersection, limiting the works to widening and upgrading.
The ‘Indigenous problem’
Returning to the big picture, he says, “Seventy percent of Australia is an arid zone. If we support development of that 70%, we need a strong Central Australia and Alice Springs is poised to be the lynchpin in that development, a logistical centre. We cannot sit on the welfare tit forever. And we can’t keep going to Canberra to solve our problems.
“Labor was gong to fix the ‘Indigenous problem’ but all they have done is double the Indigenous prisoner population. That signals a massive failure.”
Is he saying that the Country Liberals, renowned for their ‘tough on crime’ approach, are going to stop sending people to prison?
“We want people working, leading happy lives,” he says, “but of course we don’t want criminals and drunks on the streets. But Labor has got policy so wrong that all they can do is lock people up.”
His broadbrush attack is aimed at both the NT and Australian Labor Governments. Local government reform “has disenfranchised remote area populations”. Inadequate servicing of the so-called Growth Towns, communities and outstations has driven people into urban centres, including Alice Springs. Income managing CDEP participants has acted as a disincentive to work. While CDEP must be a program which transitions participants into real jobs, income-managing those participants is “absurd”: “You do nothing and your dole gets income managed. You do something and your CDEP gets income managed. That drives people into unemployment.”
There need to be broader scale mobile renal dialysis services so that kidney disease patients can stay in their communities instead of coming to Alice Springs as “refugees in their own country”.
Managing drunks
How can he reconcile the CLP alcohol policy, which will turn up the tap, with his concerns?
He argues that people won’t be able to get more grog because they won’t have more money.
“We need to manage how they get drunk, have it happening earlier in the day, rather than at night.”
He says earlier opening hours for take-away liquor trading would allow responsible people to purchase their alcohol “when and as they see fit”, while the “chronic drunks” would get drink earlier in the day and be easier to manage.
On the controversial take-away license at Northside, he has door-knocked in the area and says “a consensus view” is that earlier opening hours and earlier closing hours would improve the situation. He says the most pleasant day to go shopping at Northside is Saturday, when the bottleshop opens at 10am (on other days, it opens at 2pm.)
A license buyback there should only be considered if the police and government can’t better manage the situation.
He says having police stationed at bottleshops throughout the town is having a “good effect”.
On a take-away free day, he says non-one has ever lobbied him about that, except John Boffa, of the People’s Alcohol Action Coalition.


Pictured: Mr Giles door-knocking Braitling resident Alison Box.