A prominent councillor says if necessary, the police taskforce should be deployed to keep the peace in town camps: “We must not return to the situation where police are kept out of the camps after dark and needed permits to enter,” says Cr Steve Brown (pictured).
Cr Brown, who had the highest vote in the recent council elections, was commenting after a riot in Hidden Valley Town Camp on Wednesday, when it was alleged rioters attacked police, released prisoners from a paddy wagon and smashed police vehicles.
Cr Brown says full access by police to the camps was re-introduced when the Federal Intervention started in 2007.
He says it cannot be tolerated for the peaceful majority in the camps to be “bullied, beaten and bashed by drunken thugs.
“We must not back away and leave the law abiding people exposed.
“If we need to send in the taskforce night after night for the message to get across to the thugs, then so be it.”
This is how the police reported, in part, the events on Wednesday:-
Four people remain in custody following a melee at an Alice Springs town camp last night when officers attended the Hidden Valley Town Camp at about 8.30 to investigate the report of a fire.
They allegedly found two highly intoxicated people, a 44-year-old man and a 30-year-old woman, and took them into protective custody. [Possession of alcohol is prohibited in town camps.]
While police were attempting to find a person of interest in relation to the fire, they found a further two intoxicated men aged 54 and 25.
While officers were taking those men into protective custody, they began to violently struggle with police.
At this time, other persons around the vicinity allegedly became verbally abusive towards police and allegedly armed themselves with rocks and began to throw them at police, forcing officers to release the 44-year-old from their control.
This man allegedly opened the caged police vehicle and released the original persons.
These persons joined in the melee and allegedly began attacking the police vehicles with logs and rocks smashing windows and light bars.
Officers deployed Tasers, which were ineffective.
The 54-year-old man allegedly armed himself with a box cutter and threatened officers, who then used batons to gain control and arrest the man.
Other officers arrived and further arrests of the rioters were made.
The 54-year-old received injuries to his leg and knee which will require surgery.
Three men aged 25, 44, 54 and a 30-year-old woman have been charged with criminal damage and assault police.
Police reported a similar event, also in Hidden Valley, on May 25:
Two officers attended a disturbance at the camp at about 4.30am.
“Whilst at the camp the officers allegedly identified offences against the Liquor Act occurring at another location.
When the officers began seizing the alcohol they were allegedly set upon by an angry group of intoxicated people. A further three police officers arrived at the incident to provide assistance.
The officers were allegedly pelted with rocks, chairs and other improvised weapons.
Two male officers were injured during the incident and have received treatment at Alice Springs Hospital. One of the officers has a broken hand.
At this stage, two people have been arrested.
Send in the taskforce: councillor
Local Labor always opposed u-mine at Angela Pamela: Araluen ALP candidate Adam Findlay
CLP incumbent Robyn Lambley says it’s a non-issue: she also opposes a u-mine ‘on top of the water table’
Adam Findlay: his campaign trailer makes clear what he thinks the central issue is.
KIERAN FINNANE speaks to the two contenders for the seat of Araluen in August’s Legislative Assembly election.
The Labor Government might have a credibility problem with its stance on a possible future uranium mine at Angela Pamela, but the local branch of the Labor Party does not: “We were always at odds with the government over their support for the exploration process on that site so close to town,” says Labor’s candidate for Araluen, Adam Findlay.
“It was the lobbying of the local branch that brought about the decision to oppose any future mine there. It took a lot of hard work. The branch never ever accepted the granting of the exploration license.”
He says his recent door-knocking reveals that it is still a “hot topic”: “After what happened in Japan [the catastrophe at the Fukushima nuclear plant] a lot more people will be against it.” And there remain the issues that a mine would pose for the town’s water supply, air, tourism industry, he argues.
“I’m not anti-mining – there’s a lot of good exploration going on in this region – but I can’t accept that mine in that location.”
The Country Liberals’ Robyn Lambley, who won the seat against Mr Findlay in the by-election of October 2010, says Mr Findlay will struggle to make this an issue in the campaign as there is “no point of difference” between them.
No way in the world!
“There’s no way in the world that I could ever support a uranium mine on top of the water table in Alice Springs unless its safety could be demonstrated beyond a shred of a doubt.”
What would it take to do that?
“The evidence and information required to prove that the environment is safe – the town, humans, animals, plants. I’m no expert but I just don’t agree with a uranium mine over our water table. It would take a lot to sell it to me.”
Do the Country Liberals (CLP) accept the existing process for assessing proposed mines?
“If you grant an exploration licence, you agree to due process. The Labor Party don’t care for due process. The Country Liberals believe the mining company should have been afforded due process but at the end of the day the decision to approve a mine is not ours [the Territory’s], it’s the Feds’. We support uranium mining but not this mine until it is deemed safe.”
Why did she vote against the motion put up by Labor in the last Alice sittings of the parliament to oppose the establishment of a uranium mine at Angela Pamela?
“The motion was devious. It was presented by Labor as a way of dividing the opposition. There had been a leadership spill and the motion was a set up to demonstrate that we were not unified.”
Robyn Lambley: in government the Country Liberals would get more capital works projects underway. Here she is in front of the private sector Asbuild project in Bath Street, producing a welcome buzz of activity in the CBD.
Mrs Lambley will be hard to beat. She got 68% of the vote in the by-election, on par with the primary vote for the former member, Jodeen Carney, in the 2008 general election.
Mr Findlay is not fazed. The 2010 by-election fast-tracked him into candidacy and, although he had only three weeks, he enjoyed the campaign. He says there are similar concerns in the electorate this time around, he’s well-prepared and has three months to build his case with the voters. He says he achieved an 11% swing at the Gillen booth, which he attributes to his door-knocking in the area.
“As an aspiring politician that’s the most valuable thing you can do,” he says. “I’m encouraged by the engagement I’m having with people. They are not dismissing anything I’m saying, and at this stage a lot are telling me they are not committed, they are swinging voters.”
However, Mrs Lambley has a big head start. In the 18 months since the by-election, she has maintained her door-knocking. Her electorate officer prints out a running sheet and away she goes, ticking off the households, recording the issues people raise with her, following up.
She sees herself as a ‘hands on’ local member, not “a career politician”. She wants to make a difference. Obviously being in opposition limits that. But if the CLP wins government in August, she’ll give herself four years: if by that time she’s not seeing results, “I would have to question how effective I’ve been”.
Unsafe in Gillen
In the meantime, even in opposition there are things a local member can do. Among residents of the streets surrounding the Flynn Drive supermarket in Gillen there’s been a lot of concern over property crime and anti-social behavior, often involving public drinking in the vicinity of the supermarket. She sent a letter to the residents asking them to tell her their stories and they responded: “I got a lot of emails, letters and telephone calls. People had been suffering, sitting silently in the suburbs, feeling scared. Some had been physically attacked, some had been broken into. They felt unsafe in their homes, they were disturbed by the noise, some felt they could no longer send their children to the shop by themselves.”
She says she has met with police “numerous times” over the 18 months, and for the residents of one particularly troubled street, she hosted a breakfast attended by Superintendent Michael Potts and Commanders Michael White and Michael Murphy.
As a result, she says, police said they would increase their presence in the area. They also gave the residents advice on how to better protect their property, for instance by having see-through fencing, low hedges, external lighting.
Perhaps more importantly, though, the residents of this street have come together in an informal neighbourhood watch. The situation didn’t immediately improve, but in recent months, especially after the police began stationing their mobile van at the supermarket as they have at Northside shops, Mrs Lambley is hearing that things are settling down: “It’s a start.”
Law and order: top of the agenda
Mr Findlay’s comments confirm that the situation has improved. Law and order concerns generally are at “the top of the agenda” for voters, he says. Specifically around Flynn Drive supermarket, “after a concerted effort by the operators, police and security”, the situation has been “tidied up”. He is now comfortable to let his two primary school age children walk there by themselves in the afternoon.
But that’s not the only hot spot, he says. Residents in Bloomfield Street are concerned by people “hooning in very nice souped-up cars”, and by “too many young people in the streets, day and night”.
And Mrs Lambley says some parts of the electorate are becoming inured to behaviour that elsewhere wouldn’t be tolerated. What she hears from residents in Gillen is that “this used to be a safe area, kids could go to the park and be safe”, but in the Gap area, when she has door-knocked, she has found a greater resignation. Residents spoke of the break-ins but seemed to accept that’s just the way it is – “they know they have to shut the door and wait it out”.
Although these messages are somewhat similar, there are differences in how the two candidates propose governments should deal with them. The takeaway liquor licence at the Flynn Drive supermarket puts the spotlight on alcohol policy.
“The CLP will trash the Banned Drinkers Register, putting 2400 people back on tap, and they’ll have alcohol flowing from 10am,” says Mr Findlay. “Robyn Lambley’s approach is to get them drunk early, before the sun goes down. But if the adults are all drunk, who’s looking after their kids?
“I do believe we are getting traction with the alcohol reforms and there’s a greater acceptance of them. Showing ID is quick and painless, and the restricted trading hours, it’s like anything in life” – essentially, some pain is worth the gain.
Closing loopholes
He says alcohol regulation has to be “a work in progress”. It’s important to close loopholes, as was done for instance around cheap bottled wine and to keep “all options open”.
“It’s a long-term problem, the government is fair dinkum in its approach but it’s not a quick fix.”
If the CLP wins government, there will be an overhaul of alcohol management policy. The party recognises that alcohol abuse is a major contributing factor to many of our social ills, says Mrs Lambley, but they don’t “believe” the current package of reforms is working. “Getting drunks off the streets” will be achieved by mandatory rehabilitation.
“We’ve costed it,” says Mrs Lambley when pressed on the expense of such a program. The details will be released by Shadow Minister Peter Stiles in the course of the campaign .
The success rates of rehab programs are not great. Will money be poured in for only a tiny benefit?
Good rehab programs have higher success rates, she says, and this has got to be tried: “We’ve gone down the track of limiting supply, now we have to focus on the people who actually have a problem.”
Learning to live with alcohol
And abstinence is not the only measure of success: “Building people’s capacity to live with alcohol and drink responsibly is harder to measure but could be very successful.”
She says there is “no strong evidence” that the current reforms have made a difference. In a now familiar argument, she says the cited decreases in consumption don’t take into account “the burgeoning online and mail order sales”. If these could be measured, “it would be a different story”.
Increasing police numbers is also something of an article of faith for the CLP and Mrs Lambley says the experience in Gillen “reinforces existing Country Liberals policy, that we need more police and a greater police presence in areas like the Flynn Drive supermarket and Piggly’s in the Gap too, that’s a bit of a meeting point.”
But the NT already has four times more police per capita than any other Australian jurisdiction – how far does it have to go?
“We also have double the national average in some categories of crime, double the national average in violence against women, incredibly high levels of child abuse and neglect, property offences have gone down a little over the last 12 months but during the by-election they had gone through the roof! We have always said that Alice Springs needs at least another 20 police officers.”
Services under pressure
She acknowledges, as Police Commissioner John McRoberts has recently said, that policing is not the entire answer, but as long as police are playing catch-up and only just managing to address immediate problems, families and services – health, education – remain under an unacceptably high level of pressure.
Mr Findlay says government should be guided by what the force itself says: “I manage a catering service. If I need more resources, I stick my hand up. If the head of the force said he needed more officers, then it would probably be warranted.”
The review of policing, announced by the Chief Minister last week, may also “demonstrate that the force can work with the numbers they’ve got, focussing on how they police”. He notes that police do solve most of the crime around Alice – “I take my hat off to them” – and points to the effective work between them and the Youth Hub, where after hours they can take young people to be dealt with by the Youth Street Outreach Service: “This was a fairly big part of my campaign in the by-election and I’m really happening to see that it’s working – it frees up police.
“The important thing is to also deal with root causes, the long-term issues. I’m getting that from my door-knocking as well. People are very keen to see young people going to school every day.”
Truancy laws are working
He says the government is onto this with their “Every Child Every Day” campaign and their support for truancy officers (there are three in Alice with more promised for The Centre next year). Mr Findlay is deputy chair of the school council for Ross Park Primary, where his children go (they had started school there before the family moved into the Araluen electorate) and he is encouraged by what he hears of the truancy laws working: “In the short term we treat the symptoms but in the long-term we want to see the next generation get a decent and full education.”
Mrs Lambley also makes the connection between education and law and order issues and is not afraid to give credit where it is due. She pays tribute to the work of principal Andrew Leslie at Centralian Middle School, situated in the heart of the electorate: “I’m hearing good things about a much more disciplined approach, I’m seeing the students in uniforms, reflecting the stronger identity of the school. It reflects better on the neighbourhood and the community, helps the neighbourhood feel better about itself.”
But she says boosting school attendance is an on-going struggle. When she’s door-knocking during the working week she often gets school age children answering, who appear to be perfectly healthy yet they are not going to school. (My School shows the CMS attendance rate in 2011 as 79%, a one percentage point improvement on the previous year when it was established. Gillen and Bradshaw, the local primary schools with somewhat similar profiles – though of course with younger students – had attendance rates of 88% in 2011.)
On the economic front, Mrs Lambley is heartened by some developments in the electorate, with the prospect of construction on the Melankas site, expansion of the Gap View Hotel, a possible expansion of the Quest apartments, the extension underway at the hospital (a new emergency department and 24-hour medical imaging service) – “but then there’s the Memo Club”, she sighs (after being in administration since March, creditors have voted to put it into liquidation).
Alice Springs needs a greater injection of capital works from the government, she says, describing as “appalling” Alice’s 6% portion of the NT infrastructure budget.
“We are the Territory’s second largest population centre – it’s clearly inequitable,” she says.
“We need a far greater commitment from government, in terms of infrastructure spending, to get Alice Springs out of the doldrums.”
Is the CLP making promises in this regard?
No promises, yet
“We have got some infrastructure projects that we are looking at now,” she says, without being more specific. However, a pet project for her, “my personal vision”, would be a new hospital.
“We have got to stop trying to fix an antiquated building, pouring millions into patching it up.
“The Labor Government hasn’t got a long-term vision for Alice Springs, it really just wants to maintain the status quo.
“How long are we going to wait for revitalisation of the CBD? We were talking about it in 2005 when I was on council, we are still waiting in 2012. It’s been in decline as long as I’ve lived in Alice Springs.”
It sends a very poor message to residents and visitors alike: “The mall is still attractive to me but when you go elsewhere – like Coffs Harbour where I went to visit my parents recently – you realise that what we’ve got looks very tired. The centre of town needs to reflect our iconic Outback identity but also needs to offer a clean, modern, serviceable amenity. We need to look like a town that is spending money on itself. The $5m or $6m that’s proposed – we need to be talking double that.”
Mr Findlay acknowledges that this year’s NT budget was “lean”, but it was “responsible”.
He says Alice will always struggle with the Berrimah line but the town would “probably get more if it had representatives as part of the Labor Government”.
Yet doesn’t the Labor Government always claim that it governs for “Territorians”?
“I appreciate your scepticism but my prediction is that Labor will be returned to government with an increase of two or three seats. It would be a travesty for Alice Springs if again its three local members are all in opposition.
“After 38 years of CLP representation – and for 27 of them the CLP was in government – it’s fair to say that a lot of the situation in Alice Springs is down to the CLP.”
Is Labor making any promises to entice local voters?
“It’s early days, there will be a time and place to make some announcements.”
He’s got some ideas: one is “sensible affordable housing for younger residents”. Some thinking “outside the square” will be in order for the new subdivision of Kilgariff.
“If it’s done in the usual way, it will be very unaffordable”, but any initiatives have to be carefully thought through: “We don’t want to damage the equity of existing home owners.”
Check out what the two candidates had to say last time:
Candidate’s strong views on housing, grog abuse. By ERWIN CHLANDA.
Findlay: Listen first, talk later. By ERWIN CHLANDA.
Araluen by-election: Questions on notice. By ERWIN CHLANDA.
Native Title to become national path to indigenous land acquisition?
By ERWIN CHLANDA
After years of bitter conflict there’s no place in Australia where changes to the Native Title legislation and management are more relevant than in Alice Springs.
On the 20th anniversary of the Mabo High Court decision, the main bullet points for the Federal Government are:-
• The management of the Indigenous Land Use Agreements (ILUAs) will be transferred from the Native Tribunal to the Federal Court. This was announced in the Budget. Shadow Attorney General George Brandis told the Alice Springs News Online that the Coalition, if elected, would return the responsibility to the Tribunal. ILUAs result in the lifting of Native Title from land in exchange for compensation, so that the land can be used for other purposes, as it was the case in Stirling Heights and Mt Johns Valley.
• The onus of proof will remain with the claimants: governments on behalf of the public will not be required to prove that Native Title does not exist on public land over which Native Title is being claimed is. In other words, it’s not assumed that Native Title exists everywhere, unless proven otherwise. Activists are pushing for this to be changed.
• There will be a review of Native Title organisations. That, clearly, is nowhere as pressing as in Alice Springs where the actions of Lhere Artepe, under its past management, have caused massive upheaval amongst native title holders and have had a significant impact in the town generally.
• Parks and reserves can be claimed under Native Title (and can be subject to ILUAs).
• Both Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin and Attorney General Nicola Roxon, in speeches celebrating the Mabo High Court decision 20 years ago, made links between Native Title, which does not necessarily convey possession of land, and landrights, which conveys inalienable freehold title. (Inalienable means the land cannot be sold or mortgaged but there is now broad recourse to long-term leases.)
The Alice News has chronicled for years the consequences that have flowed from the recognition of Native Title over substantial areas in Alice Springs (google our archive). Here is a potted version.
Soon after the formation in 2002 of Lhere Artepe, the prescribed Native Title body corporate, it did a deal with the NT Government (Claire Martin was the Chief Minister) for residential land at the western edge of the town, now called Stirling Heights.
The negotiations were protracted while land and housing prices skyrocketed to Sydney levels.
Ms Martin, in an apparent move to reward Aboriginal interests for electoral support to the ALP in the preceding two decades, agreed to give Lhere Artepe 50% of the publicly owned Crown land in exchange for the extinguishment of Native Title over the other half.
That put the value of Native Title at 50% of freehold. In WA the value has been put at around 5%.
In Alice this deal was not meant to be a precedent – but it sure turned out to be.
The same formula was applied in the Mt Johns Valley development, now nearing completion, a subdivision of some 30 blocks.
Suddenly, Lhere Artepe was swimming in money or rather, assets or future assets, with block values around $300,000.
Through its then CEO Darryl Pearce, Lhere Artepe became a player in the real estate business, using a string of “related” entities, such as Lhere Artepe Enterprises Pty Ltd, to do deals.
It took on the development of its half of Mt Johns.
To do this it bought a civil engineering company, with money borrowed in part from a lender who is not part of the mainstream banking system.
Lhere Artepe also talked the Feds into giving them a $6m gift to buy three small supermarkets, including liquor licenses, for $14m.
The engineering company went broke, owing local businesses an estimated $2.5m.
At least one of the supermarkets, Federal funding notwithstanding, had been mortgaged to pay for the subdivision development.
The subdivision is now nearly completed but sales are slow, in part because of the local economic downturn to which extortionate land prices have contributed: things are coming full cycle.
All this proceeded mostly in strictest secrecy, with Lhere Artepe staff – mainly Mr Pearce – not communicating multi-million dollar decisions to the native title holder membership of Lhere Artepe.
Lhere Artepe Enterprises Pty Ltd has nothing to do with Lhere Artepe Aboriginal Corporation (the prescribed body), was the standard response.
All this led to sustained, virulent and personal conflict within Lhere Artepe itself.
Some of its members were on the boards of the various commercial “entities” that had been set up, but were kept in the dark about the decisions being made on their behalf. Some may now be liable for paying the debts, while some others still live in tin sheds with hardly any services, on the fringes of the town.
And Alice Springs as a whole is in its most serious economic crisis, with productive people leaving town, unable to afford accommodation for themselves or their staff, and unproductive people from outlying communities “urban drifting” into town, overcrowding public housing.
Parallel to all that, also driving people out of town and keeping tourists away, are escalating crime and anti-social behavior which – according to the script – the granting of Native Title should have helped relegate to the past.
So, in its Native Title reforms, how is the government going to go about creating “economic and social opportunities for Indigenous Australians”?
Statements by Ms Macklin and Ms Roxon make it clear that they want there to be more than symbolism.
Ms Macklin: “Reforms … will also help Indigenous people to unlock the economic benefits of their Native Title.”
And: “As the Native Title system has matured, the role of Native Tile organisations has changed. Now is an appropriate time to review how they can best work for people in the future.” (Many people in Alice Springs, including native title holders, would applaud that.)
And: “We know there is work still to be done. The realisation of the economic potential of property rights remains out of reach for many Indigenous people.”
Ms Macklin says an objective needs to be “to drive economic opportunity and prosperity, including from land, for Indigenous people”.
Although a conference in Townsville that Ms Macklin addressed on June 6 had Native Title as its subject, she made significant reference to landrights. (Native Title, with its source in Indigenous law, applies across the nation, while statutory landrights, where communal title is recognised by government, are significant mostly in the Northern Territory and South Australia.)
Ms Macklin said in part: “We must continue to respect the communal and inalienable basis of traditional lands and, at the same time, ensure pathways through which Indigenous owners can make that same land attractive for commercial investment where they choose to do so.
“In the context of statutory land rights, we have approached these issues by pursuing voluntarily negotiated long term leases … the beneficiaries of [lease agreements over land held under landrights legislation] are the land owners who decided to grant the lease so that they could benefit from investment, and so that their communities would have more choices and better services as a result.”
This is a process currently relating to landrights, not Native Title.
Is Ms Macklin’s raising of both concepts in one breath a sign that Canberra will allow Naive Title claims to become a path to land ownership, this time across the whole nation?
MHR for Lingiari Warren Snowdon did not reply to a request for an interview.
Shadow Attorney General Senator George Brandis says the government has already gone ahead with reforms without adequate public consultation.
“We remain to be persuaded that the Native Title Act needs to be re-written,” says Senator Brandis.
“We are concerned that this top down revision will create confusion, cost and delay.”
He and Territory Senator Nigel Scullion would “closely observe the process” and announce the full Coalition policies closer to the election.
Meanwhile, around the country the subject seems to be a yawn: the telemovie Mabo, directed by Alice Springs’ own Rachel Perkins, flopped on the ABC, according to The Australian, rating 544,000.
(The Pommie soap Downton Abbey rated 1,345,000 on Seven in the same time slot. The other two commercial networks scored 700,000 and 439,000.)
PHOTOS: A story about a battler who doesn’t give up is always a fascinating yarn and Mabo is a great example.
Jimi Bani (The Straits) as Eddie and Deborah Mailman as Bonita are an appealing couple. The sometimes dry legal cases in Queensland and finally the High Court – changing Australia’s history – are lightened by the touching love story between the two.
The low TV ratings are a surely not reflection on the skills of Alice Springs raised director Rachel Perkins (Bran Nue Dae) but show that Native Title is not uppermost in the mind of the average Aussie citizen.
Shires: either revenue must go up or expectations, down
By KIERAN FINNANE
Revenues either have to go up or expectations of shire councils have to go down. If neither happens, shire councils cannot achieve financial sustainability. That’s the broad conclusion of the Deloitte review of the NT shire councils, released today by Local Government Minister Malarndirri McCarthy .
The situation regarding roads within the shires is one illustration of the immensity of the task facing the councils and the paucity of current revenues to help them achieve it.
As always, the interest of the Alice Springs News Online is particularly in the two shires surrounding Alice Springs and having their headquarters here, Central Desert Shire and MacDonnell Shire.
What would it take to bring the roads in and around the Growth Towns in those shires up to a standard expected elsewhere in regional Australia?
There are two Growth Towns in Central Desert Shire – Lajamanu and Yuendumu. Yuendumu is better off than Lajamanu, for which over 90% of the roads with a 50km radius are deemed in poor condition (about 15% for Yuemdumu).
The review estimates an expenditure of $205.12million – a sum many times the entire shire budget – would be required for upgrades and major repairs, with a further $4.57million required annually for the ongoing repairs and maintenance. The review stresses that this backlog estimate does not include all communities within the shire, only the Growth Towns.
It’s worth remembering too the roads allocation for the Central Australian region in this year’s NT Budget: $21m, $2m of which will be dedicated to sealing just another four kilometres of the Tanami Highway.
As CEO of Central Desert Shire Roydon Robertson said at the time, “You can’t have Growth Towns without decent roads to the get to them.”
MacDonnell Shire has two Growth Towns, Ntaria (Hermannsburg) and Papunya. Upgrades and major repairs to their roads within a 50km radius would require expenditure of approximately $183.15million, with a further $3.95million annually for ongoing repairs and maintenance.
Limited information meant that the review could not undertake a more comprehensive estimate of the renewals backlog for the shires’ assets, but it noted that many of the assets inherited by both shires were “past their useful life” and in need of upgrade or replacement.
The review deems this issue as one of the “critical” ones for the shires. Others include:
• councils being unable to derive a level of own source revenue, making them overly reliant on grant funding (more than 80% of their funding, much of it tied, limiting councils’ discretion to direct it where it may be most needed);
• planned changes to leasing arrangements that may result in paying higher leasing costs that will in turn reduce funding available for core service delivery;
• the costs associated with policy initiatives introduced by other levels of government, transferred to the councils without an equal transfer of funding;
• inadequate budgeting and accounting policies, procedures, systems and reporting leading to a high risk of materially misstated financial reports that may result in councillors and management making inappropriate decisions on the allocation of scarce resources;
• onerous reporting requirements imposed by funding providers, causing inefficiencies, additional costs and administrative requirements that reduce funding available for core service delivery.
These issues were among those leading the review to its conclusion that the current finances and financial policies of the shires it reveiwed are “financially unsustainable based on current practices”.
“This does not mean these Councils are in imminent danger of defaulting on their debt service obligations or that their immediate financial viability is being questioned, however the long term financial sustainability of these Councils will only be achieved through substantial or disruptive adjustments to revenue and/or expenditure,” says the review.
Pictured: Google earth view of ‘Territory Growth Road’ Lajamanu: over 90% of its roads within a 50km radius are in poor condition. The price tag to fix: over $200m.
Related article: Vast geographic scale dwarfs shire budgets
It's official, the dingo did take and kill Azaria Chamberlain: Coroner
After 32 years it’s official: a dingo or dingoes took baby Azaria Chamberlain from her family’s tent at Ayers Rock on August 17, 1980, and the cause of her death was “the result of being attacked and taken by a dingo.”
This was the finding of Territory Coroner Elizabeth Morris this morning, with mother Lindy Chamberlain Creighton and father Michael Chamberlain – now separated – in the Darwin courtroom for the fourth inquest into the sensational case.
It was flawed by faulty forensic work, and had seen Lindy convicted and jailed for murder of her daughter.
She was exonerated, but officially the cause of Azaria’s death remained open until today.
Coroner Morris, after handing down the finding, her voice shaking, gave her “sincere sympathy” to the family, for the loss of their “special and loved daughter and sister, Azaria. I am so sorry for your loss.”
Recent evidence, especially dingo attacks elsewhere in Australia, moved Coroner Morris, on the balance of probability, to come to the “adequate, clear, cogent and exact” finding that “a dingo or dingoes took Azaria,” a conclusion further supported by finding dog or dingo hairs in the tent at the base of Ayers Rock.
The full text of the coronial finding is here.
The photos are from an ABC Four Corners documentary produced and filmed by Alice Springs News editor ERWIN CHLANDA. This included a re-enactment, at Ayers Rock, by the Chamberlains from which these photos are taken. Chlanda was the first reporter on the scene, and then covered the case for television and print in Australia and around the world for several years.
NT Attorney General Rob Knight did not apologize to the Chamberlains.
All he could say this morning, as an affair came to an end that had put the Territory’s legal and police processes in disrepute the world over, was to thank Coroner Morris for “bringing this matter to what should be the end of the legal process.
“My thoughts go out to Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton and Michael Chamberlain and their families and hope that today’s decision helps deal with the tragic loss of their child.”
FINDING
FULL TEXT
Inquest into the death of Azaria Chantel Loren Chamberlain
Ms ELIZABETH MORRIS SM:
EXCERPTS
Mr and Mrs Chamberlain and their three children, Aidan, Reagan and Azaria, arrived at Uluru, generally known then as Ayers Rock on Saturday 16 August 1980, setting up their tent in the top camping area on the east side of the rock.
They were not alone, with six families in the camping area on the night of 17 August; the West’s, the Dawson’s, the Haby’s, the Lowe’s and the Whittaker’s.
A common barbecue area was about 20-25 metres from the Chamberlain’s tent.
Mr and Mrs Chamberlain were in this area shortly prior to 8.00pm, preparing their evening meal. Aidan and Azaria were with them, but Reagan was already in the tent asleep in his sleeping bag. Mrs Chamberlain was nursing Azaria, speaking to Mr and Mrs Lowe. Mrs Chamberlain then took Azaria and Aidan back to their tent area. She placed a sleeping Azaria in a bassinet in the rear of the tent and then went to get a tin of baked beans from their car for Aidan.
Mrs Chamberlain then went back to the tent, and then returned to the barbecue area with Aidan.
Shortly after Mrs Chamberlain returned to the barbecue, Mrs Lowe heard a baby cry from the tent. Mrs Chamberlain went immediately to check on Azaria, and moments later cried out either “That dog’s got my baby” or “My God, My God, a dingo has got my baby”.
Both Mr and Mrs West heard the growl of a dingo or dog from the direction of the Chamberlain’s tent fairly soon before they heard Mrs Chamberlain cry out.
Mrs Chamberlain initially ran in the direction she thought the dingo had gone, but then went back to check the tent. Others, including Mr Chamberlain and Mr Lowe then began an immediate search of the area and the surrounding sand dunes.
At around 8.25pm Mr Derek Roff, the ranger in charge of the area arrived. He, along with Constable Morris, who arrived shortly thereafter, organised a search party consisting of some 250-300 people, who search the areas east, north and south of the tent until about 3.00am.
Mr Haby found tracks on the sand dunes east of the camp, along with a mark or imprint on the sand as though an object had been put down.
Mr Roff also saw this imprint or drag mark, which he likened to a crepe bandage or resembling a knitted garment. Constable Morris also saw drag marks in that area, as well as tracks close to the rear of the tent.
Mr Roff and Mr Nui Minyintiri tracked a drag mark on the crest of a sand dune to the east of the tent. In Mr Minyintiri’s expert opinion the tracks of a dingo that he saw showed that “it walked as though it had some load on it … when I was tracking the dingo I knew, or I thought that it was carrying the baby for sure.”
Mrs Barbara Winmati also assisted in attempting the next day to follow the tracks leading south from the tent, but after a considerable distance, lost the animal’s trail.
Blood was found inside the tent on various articles. This blood was Azaria’s.
Forensic Evidence
A Royal Commission of Inquiry into the conviction of Mr and Mrs Chamberlain was held between 8 May 1986 and 19 March 1987. His Honour, Justice Morling, delivered his findings on 22 May 1987. His Honour heard and received evidence, including evidence that had been heard at the criminal trial, as well as new evidence, including expert evidence, independent of that which was presented at the criminal trial proceedings. Given the thorough nature of the investigation of forensic and scientific evidence, there is little point or weight in further analysis.
Many aspects of the scientific evidence in this case have been either misreported or misrepresented.
Despite their thorough examination at the Commission myths still remain in the public domain in relation to clothing, blood, handprints, dingo hair and other aspects of the evidence. I have attached to these findings as an appendix, the report of the Commission, which formed part of the evidence before me, and which thoroughly and painstakingly addresses each of the forensic and scientific issues, and draws its conclusions from the best evidence available to it at the time.
The evidence before the Commission in relation to dingoes, led the Commissioner to conclude:
“Before August 1980 dingoes in the Ayers Rock area frequented the camping area. At that time there were many dingoes in the area, some 18-25 of which were known to visit the camping area. A number of attacks were made by dingoes on children in the months preceding Azaria’s disappearance. In none of these did any child suffer serious injury.
“About twenty minutes before Azaria disappeared Mr Haby saw and photographed a dingo which walked towards the Chamberlains’ tent.
A few minutes before the alarm was raised the West’s heard a dog growl.
“On the night of 17 August dog tracks were observed on the southern side of and very close to the Chamberlains’ tent.
“The same night Mr Roff and Mr Minyintiri, both experienced trackers and familiar with dingo behaviour, saw tracks of a dog carrying a load which they believed to be Azaria. It was within the bounds of reasonable possibility that a dingo might have attacked a baby and carried it away for consumption as food. A dingo would have been capable of carrying Azaria’s body to the place where the clothing was found.
“If a dingo had taken Azaria it is likely that, on occasions, it would have put the load down and dragged it.
Hairs, which were either dog or dingo hairs, were found in the tent and on Azaria’s jumpsuit. The Chamberlains had not owned a dog for some years prior to August 1980.
The quantity and distribution of the sand found on Azaria’s clothing might have been the result of it being dragged through sand. The sand would have come from many places in the Ayers Rock region.
The sand and plant fragments on the clothing are consistent with Azaria’s body being carried and dragged by a dingo from the tent to the place where it was found.
“It is unlikely that, if the clothing had been taken from the Chamberlains’ car, buried, disinterred, and later placed where it was found it would have collected the quantity and variety of plant material found upon it.
It would have been very difficult for a dingo to have removed Azaria from her clothing without causing more damage than was observed on it. However, it would have been possible for it to have done so.
“Mr Roff, the chief ranger at Ayers Rock and a man of great experience, thought that the arrangement of the clothing when discovered was consistent with dingo activity. Other dingo expert disagreed. I think it is likely that a dingo would have left the clothing more scattered, but it might not have done so.
“The blood found in the tent was at least as consistent with dingo involvement in Azaria’s disappearance as it was with her murder in the car. The pattern of blood staining on the clothing does not establish that the child’s throat was cut with a blade.
The absence of saliva on Azaria’s jumpsuit which was conclusively proved at the trial is made more explicable by the finding of the matinee jacket which would have partially covered it. The fact that no debris from the baby’s body was found on the jumpsuit is also made more explicable by the finding of the jacket.
“There is great conflict of expert opinion was to whether the damage to the clothing could have been caused by a dingo. It has not been shown beyond reasonable doubt that it could not have been. There were marks on plastic fragments of the nappy similar to marks made by a dingo on another nappy used for testing purposes. However, there was no blood on the nappy.
“There was a dingo’s den about thirty metres from the place where the clothing was found. There is no evidence that the existence of the den was known to the Chamberlains, or for that matter, to anybody else and in fact it was unknown to the chief ranger and his deputy.”
Available to this inquest was further evidence in relation to attacks on people by dingoes. Coroner Lowndes in the third inquest indicated his approach in these terms:
“Applying once again the ‘belief’ approach to the civil standard of proof to the evidence, I am unable to be reasonably satisfied that Azaria Chamberlain died accidentally as a result of being taken by a dingo from her tent at the camp site at Ayers Rock.”
At page 310 of his report, Commission Morling stated: “The defence asserted that Azaria had been taken by a dingo, an event for which there was no known precedent. It was therefore a novel case”. Of course, one does not expect that human beings, in particular young babies, will ordinarily be taken and killed by a dingo. First, that circumstance is a factor which may itself be relevant to the question of probabilities.
In Queensland a 9 year old boy died as a result of an attack by dingoes on Fraser Island in April 2001. In New South Wales a 2 year old girl died in December 2005 from blood loss and shock from cranio-cervical injury from dog attack, being a part dingo crossbreed. In Victoria in February 2006 a 22 month old girl died of chronic respiratory failure with contributing factors of blood loss from dog bites (the dog being described as a dingo/Labrador cross). Apart from these deaths, there were reports of various attacks and injuries, including records obtained from the Department of Environment and Resource Management in Queensland, regarding reported dingo incidents on Fraser Island.
The further investigation of this Inquest has not found any disappearance exactly like that of Azaria. However it is clear that there is evidence that in particular circumstances a dingo is capable of attacking, taking and causing the death of young children. Some of these attacks occurred prior to the disappearance of Azaria in Central Australia and were considered by the Commission. Others have occurred since and form part of the evidence before me.
In considering now all of the evidence, I am satisfied that the evidence is sufficiently adequate, clear, cogent and exact, and that the evidence excludes all other reasonable possibilities, to find that what occurred on 17 August 1980 was that shortly after Mrs Chamberlain placed Azaria in the tent, a dingo or dingoes entered the tent, took Azaria and carried and dragged her from the immediate area.
Mrs Chamberlain, upon being alerted to Azaria’s cry, returned to the tent area to see a dingo near the tent. Raising a cry which alerted others, Mrs Chamberlain
then ran for a short distance after the dingo and then back to the tent, confirming that Azaria was missing.
The findings are:
The name of the deceased was Azaria Chantel Loren Chamberlain, born in Mount Isa, Queensland on 11 June 1980.
She was the daughter of Michael Leigh Chamberlain and Alice Lynne Chamberlain.
Azaria Chamberlain died at Uluru, then known as Ayers Rock, on 17 August 1980.
The cause of her death was as the result of being attacked and taken by a dingo.
Mid-field placing for Chinese racers, and big win for Alice
“Where is the dunny?”
This was the first question asked by Chinese Rally Champion Xiao Fa Guo when he arrived in Finke.
He had to use sign language because he doesn’t speak a word of English. He thought the Finke Desert Race would have a toilet stop half-way.
Alice Mayor Damien Ryan later explained, through an interpreter no doubt, that the local custom out bush is to have a dingo’s breakfast: a pee and a good look around.
A swag and billy tea were subsequent local discoveries for the driving champion.
Anyway, that’s how Alice photographer and businessman Steve Strike tells the story.
Mr Strike has an office in Guangzhou, southern China, and it was his brainchild to invite Mr Xiao and navigator Xie Jin Lin, plus a crew of around 15, to the Finke.
Their performance in the tough race was nothing short of outstanding, especially sitting on the wrong side (for they) of the car: driving a 6 litre Chev V8 truck after just 20 minutes of practice they came 29th outright and third in their class.
The vehicle was borrowed from Top End pollie Ross Bohlin, MLA for Drysdale.
Mr Xiao announced he wanted buy a top-of-the-line buggy and was told they go for around $450,000.
“No worries,” replied Mr Xiao – or whatever the Chinese equivalent is.
While the visitors finished mid-field, The Centre had a great victory: a TV crew for a Guangzhou sports channel with an audience of 100 million is tagging along, says Mr Strike, shooting not just the race but the competitors’ visits to the full gamut of local attractions – including the Reptile Centre, Flying Doctor, hot air ballooning and the School of the Air in town, and Glen Helen, Palm Valley, Hermannsburg and Ayers Rock Resort further afield. Photos STEVE STRIKE. L- R Navigator 46 yr old Xie Jin Lin and 52 yr old Driver Xiao Fa Guo from Gaungzhou in Southern China. It was their first attempt at an international race and said they will be back next year with more experience.
A powerhouse of endeavour with a very human face
By ERWIN CHLANDA
It’s a place where none of us wants to be.
Every day it fights battles of life and death.
It is one of the town’s biggest employers, a $150m a year operation of extreme complexity, drawing its highly skilled staff from all corners of the globe.
Last week I got a first-hand look at the Alice Springs hospital, getting a new left hip (that’s me pictured, getting back on my feet a couple of days later).
It was the small things that touched me most: “Hi, I’m Annie, I’ll be looking after you for the next few hours. Do you need anything? OK, if you need me, just ring the bell.”
To a person, the nursing staff start their shifts in this way. It takes around 30 seconds to say these or similar words, but they make all the difference: I wasn’t an object having things done to it. I was a person and I was with people who cared.
Stripped down to a gown, a plastic head cover and slippers, I walked into the operating theatre where I was going to surrender my body, my control over it, my consciousness – everything – to people I hardly knew, for three hours of my life.
The head of the team, Dr Bandula Palapitege, whom I’d seen three times before in the lead-up to the procedure, shook my hand and gave me his brilliant smile.
The anesthetist put his hand on my arm, saying: “We’ll look after you. Don’t worry.”
And a little later: “That’s the only pain you’ll feel.” A small prick as the needle went into my left hand.
Walking into the operating theatre was so much better than being wheeled in, which was how it was done 15 years ago when I had a minor procedure. As it was unnecessary, I found that demeaning.
I also remember on that occasion looking at a poster of Ayers Rock stuck to the ceiling above my face.
Last impressions this time ’round were immeasurably better suited for making me want to wake up again: beautiful nurses, one from Africa, two from Asia and one Anglo Aussie. (I’m sure the blokes looked great as well.)
Before it all went black I made a mental note to organise a photo of this team for this story, in their brand new operating theatre (much better than one of me).
As it turned out, that was a no-no, the hospital’s media spokeswoman made it clear to me in no uncertain terms: the Minister hadn’t officially opened the hospital extensions as yet and – being an election year – a photo out of turn just wouldn’t be right.
There is nothing usual about the Alice hospital. I saw it for the first time in late 1974.
My family and I had just arrived in The Alice and the massive building was nearing completion. It was much bigger than the hospital in any town of a comparable size.
The Alice’s population was around 15,000 and about 3000, tradies and laborers left town when the job was completed.
The size of the building was a puzzle: Do we really need something that big?
The answer, over the years, came to be: You bet.
It’s not just that the facility is catering for a vast region where illness is at alarming levels.
It is the variety of ill health: a doctor elsewhere might experience some exotic illnesses half a dozen times in his or her working life.
In Alice they’re likely to see several cases a week.
Crime related trauma – stabbings, broken bones, bashings – occur daily in Alice, giving it a caseload like war zone field hospital.
Nearly 70% of the patients are Aboriginal.
The hospital is often in the firing line. This was decidedly going to be a “good news” story, but we got no support from the NT Government’s inept and paranoid media machine.
I rang the hospital spokeswoman with some simple questions of fact.
She asked me to email them. I did. When I heard nothing from her more than 24 hours later I rang again. A person in Darwin answered. Does she have the answers? No. The Alice PR person has gone on holidays. I can ring her in three weeks’ time. Yeah, right.
A well informed source tells me the hospital has 185 beds and a staff of 950, and will from July 1 become part of the Central Australian hospital network, together with Tennant Creek, with a new board being formed now, replacing the present Alice Springs hospital board. (The Royal Darwin, Gove and Katherine Hospitals will form the Top End Network, soon to be joined by Palmerston.)
The high number of nominations for membership of the board, 29 for 10 positions, is a good sign of community interest.
A push to have just one network taking in all of the NT was rejected.
The source says the overseas recruiting strategy is preferable to using agency staff which is more expensive and less stable: staff from overseas are more likely to settle down in Alice.
Another objective has been the tightening up of the “credentialling” process after someone was hired as a doctor who did not have the qualifications (he was convicted and jailed).
In the big picture, the hospital is pushing ahead with its “quest for excellence” – providing more care in The Alice and sending fewer cases “south”.
And the very big picture is the more elusive task of reducing demand for its services: stemming the avalanche of misery, triggered mostly by violence and grog.
The source says what’s needed is the collaboration with the hospital of other organisations in the community, which absorb huge amounts of public money but apparently just don’t want to play.
The Magic Roundabout of Alice in Blunderland
Recently installed – at a cost to the ratepayer – traffic islands at the intersection of Undoolya Road and Sturt Terrace will make way for a new roundabout – at a cost to the taxpayer. L’il Antz childcare centre is on the left corner, Casa Nostra pizzeria on the right.
COMMENT by ALEX NELSON
A pair of old sports shoes dangle from a powerline directly over the middle of the Undoolya Road – Sturt Terrace intersection, exactly halfway between Lil’ Antz childcare centre on one corner and Casa Nostra Pizza and Spaghetti House on the other.
The shoes were thrown up there one night during the summer of 2010/11. If you haven’t noticed them each time you pass underneath, you’re not alone – neither, it seems, has PowerWater.
I was bemused to observe a PowerWater crew hooking up power to the new units at the rear of Casa Nostra on May 30 but never bother to move their cherry picker the few metres over to remove those old shoes. After some 18 months they’re still up there.
Eventually the laces holding those shoes aloft will fray to a point when they’ll snap and plummet to the ground. The chances are that they will fall harmlessly; but there’s a small chance they may drop onto a pedestrian or vehicle passing underneath, and (in the latter case) may sufficiently startle a motorist to swerve and cause an accident.
However, the solution to this vexed problem is at hand!
Recently we were informed: “Alice Springs is getting a new roundabout at the intersection of Undoolya Road and Sturt Terrace.
“Federal Infrastructure and Transport Minister Anthony Albanese and Member for Lingiari Warren Snowdon announced $300,000 for the project yesterday.
“The roundabout was recommended by a panel of independent road safety experts and construction is scheduled to begin in (sic) after June 30” (Centralian Advocate, May 29, 2012).
On the face of it, if the construction of this new roundabout proceeds as planned, it should be completed before those shoes fall down; and when eventually they do, they’re unlikely to fall on any vehicle.
Initially the announcement of the new roundabout was low key but quickly elicited considerable public attention, judging by the talkback and Facebook responses on ABC Alice Springs radio that same day.
A follow-up story was published on June 5 (“Pollies in traffic spin”), in which a number of local political identities and hopefuls gave their take on this project.
Braitling MLA Adam Giles commented, as one of many, on the notorious intersection of Lovegrove and Larapinta Drives still requiring a roundabout despite the Federal Government’s $200,000 funding for new turning lanes in 2010.
The Member for Greatorex, Matt Conlan, in whose electorate the proposed roundabout will be built, claimed “he had been lobbying since 2010 to have the Sturt Terrace roundabout installed near Lil’ Antz childcare centre”; and that he had “raised this issue on a number of occasions and [has] held deep concerns that another accident on that corner could result in tragedy”.
Equally, “Mayor Damien Ryan said the council has applied for the roundabout at the federal and local government co-owned intersection for the past two years” although he added a caveat that “the council would consult the community before work started, in case the town’s needs had changed since the application was first made”.
However, Mr Ryan also stated on ABC Radio that the roundabout will proceed now that the grant of $300,000 had been obtained – essentially a case of take the money and run.
This reflects a prevailing attitude with which I fundamentally disagree, as it is symptomatic of what is wrong with the governance and administration of Alice Springs and Central Australia. On this basis, the proposed roundabout for the Undoolya Road – Sturt Terrace intersection warrants careful analysis and scrutiny.
I’m a resident in Renner Street, living only four house blocks away from that intersection. I’ve been at that address since February 2006, and reckon I have crossed that corner each way at least once daily in that time, with some short periods of absence. This is my third time in the Old Eastside of Alice Springs; I’m familiar with this area over a long period of time.
Panel of experts?
Who are the members of the “panel of independent road safety experts” who recommended the roundabout, and upon what basis did they make their decision?
There’s been no formal long term study of traffic flow on Undoolya Road; for example, there’s been no traffic counters on any road in the vicinity either now or in recent years.
Undoolya Road is an important arterial road in Alice Springs; indeed, it is the original link between the East Side and CBD of the town.
From my own long term observations and experience, Undoolya Road is periodically busy during normal work days of the week. Yet traffic flow during these “peak” periods is steady and measured, consequently the road is fairly safe. I’m unaware of any accidents in this vicinity occurring during these times as a result of normal traffic movement.
Otherwise, for most of the time Undoolya Road is comparatively quiet; it’s certainly no trouble to cross in a vehicle or as a cyclist or pedestrian.
The basis of the proposed roundabout lies with a single vehicle accident in 2010, when a drunk driver emerging from the Wills Terrace Causeway onto Undoolya Road lost control of his car and ploughed into the corner of Lil’ Antz childcare centre. This accident occurred during business hours.
I’ve no difficulty appreciating the anguish of parents to this potentially catastrophic event but the fact remains this is a highly unusual event.
This can be gauged from a story published 38 years ago: “Last week’s long holiday weekend was not all fun for at least one Alice Springs resident on the Eastside.
“Mr Glen Thomas, Alice Springs District Officer, had one or two unexpected visitors calling in on him.
“Three cars smashed into a large tree or into his fence on the corner of Sturt Terrace and Undoolya Road all within a few days.
“Mr Thomas said that in the 25 years he had lived in the house only four cars had previously smashed there.
“One of the cars which smashed on Monday morning narrowly missed the tree and completely demolished a couple of gate posts.
“The car ended up on its roof in the next door front garden” (“A smashing weekend”, Centralian Advocate, June 20, 1974).
Glen Thomas’ home is the same premises now occupied by Lil’ Antz.
This is probably the worst sequence of car accidents recorded at that intersection; nevertheless it was reported in a short story on the back page.
Accidents at the site are rare
There are still rare occasions when speeding drivers crash into fences or power poles along Undoolya Road. All such incidents I’m aware of have occurred at night, and none have affected the premises of Lil’ Antz.
It’s interesting to note, too, that the Ciccone Building (home of Casa Nostra) on the opposite corner, built in the late 1940s and hard up against the footpath, has never suffered a vehicle impact to my knowledge.
In Glen Thomas’ time the area now known as the Old Eastside was all there was of urban Alice Springs east of the Todd River; however, there was rapid suburban expansion from the late 1970s onwards with the construction of the “new” Eastside and Sadadeen subdivisions and the education precinct along Grevillea Drive.
It wasn’t going to stop there – in June 1987 the NT Government formally announced the decision to proceed with the Undoolya subdivision to facilitate the further eastwards expansion of Alice Springs, approving an initial $10.5 million to commence development (“Curtain falls on town planning controversy – $10m approval for Undoolya plan”, Centralian Advocate, June 10, 1987).
This led to surveys and planning to convert Wills Terrace and Undoolya Road into a “four-lane highway” to the Sadadeen Roundabout.
“Transport and Works Department roads engineer Richard Galton said the road was one of several arterial roads being studied for possible development.
“We’re in the advanced planning stage but there (are) people we have to consult before we go ahead with anything’, he said.
“Mr Galton said the early planning work would save time when the road came to be widened” (“Four-Lane Highway”, Centralian Advocate, October 30, 1987).
The “people we have to consult” Mr Galton referred to included owners and residents along Undoolya Road between Sturt Terrace and Lindsay Avenue, who all faced the prospect of partial resumption of their properties to facilitate the road widening.
The severe national economic recession of the early 1990s led to the demise of the Undoolya subdivision plans and its ancillary road-widening projects.
Urban expansion
For over two decades there has been no significant urban expansion of the eastside area serviced by Undoolya Road; and only some limited infill developments in the Old Eastside, mainly on Sturt Terrace.
At no time that I can recall has there been any concern expressed about the Undoolya Road – Sturt Terrace intersection until 2010.
It obviously wasn’t a major concern (if any at all) to the Planning Authority that permitted Lil’ Antz to commence business on that corner in 2004.
The safety of that intersection has actually been improved with the construction of traffic islands by the Alice Springs Town Council a few years ago. This work, paid for by ratepayers, will have to be ripped up to make way for a roundabout.
It was that solitary accident in 2010 of a drunk driver running up onto the footpath next to Lil’ Antz that has apparently prompted the belated realization that this intersection is a “black spot” requiring significant taxpayers’ expenditure for the construction of a roundabout.
Initially this wasn’t the case; for Greatorex MLA Matt Conlan first called for bollards to be installed on the Lil’ Antz corner.
It was also in 2010 that the Alice town council was considering the possibility of replacing the Wills Terrace Causeway with a bridge; this prompted my article in the Alice News of July 22, ‘Todd River: A bridge too late‘. Is this proposal still under consideration?
View from the intersection to the Wills Terrace causeway – is bridge across the river at this point still on the cards?
If a bridge is built to replace the causeway, a roundabout at the Undoolya Road – Sturt Terrace intersection (having cost taxpayers $300,000 to build) will have to be removed or replaced. Contrast this with the roundabout at the intersection of Leichhardt Terrace at the west end of the Stott Terrace Bridge – the bridge was built in 1978, the roundabout a decade later.
Would a roundabout at the Undoolya Road – Sturt Terrace intersection achieve the objective of improved safety? Evidence suggests strongly that the opposite will occur.
Witness the experiences of residents nearby the Larapinta Drive – Milner Road roundabout 15 years ago: “Neighbours Terri Laucke and Denise Coach have lost count of how many times cars have narrowly missed running into their homes.
“Over the past month an average of one speeding motorist a week has lost control at the roundabout and run a vehicle onto their properties.
“In an accident over the weekend a car smashed through Ms Laucke’s front fence, narrowly missed her house and garage and was only stopped from racing into the Coach backyard by a tree stump.
“Mrs Coach and her husband Michael are so concerned they have moved their young son to the rear of their home and have strategically placed boulders in their front yard to stop wayward cars.
“Braitling MLA Loraine Braham has raised residents’ concerns with the Transport and Works Department and measures including safety rails at the south-western and north-eastern corners of the intersection will be constructed.
“But Mrs Braham said the most important thing was for people to slow down.
“Unfortunately most accidents are due to high speed often combined with alcohol’, she said.
“Drivers race into the roundabout too fast, lose control and often end up over the gutter and into residents’ front gardens.
“It is impossible to prevent individuals driving in a dangerous manner” (“Near misses: lost count”, Centralian Advocate, March 14, 1997).
I’ve experienced this first-hand when I was a front seat passenger in a car that entered that same roundabout too fast, side-swiping the southwest guard rail. Fortunately the worst damage suffered was to my driver’s dented ego.
There’s no reason to suppose the problem of speeding drivers losing control at this (and other) roundabouts won’t be repeated at the Undoolya Road – Sturt Terrace intersection, consequently the danger posed to Lil’ Antz childcare centre will be exacerbated if a roundabout is constructed at that corner.
In turn this will necessitate further expense with the installation of guard rails on the Lil’ Antz corner to mitigate this increased danger.
Matt Conlan’s original proposal for bollards was sensible and would be far cheaper to install – and perhaps a little of the money saved from not building a roundabout could pay the overtime for a PowerWater crew with a cherry picker to remove those shoes dangling from a powerline over the middle of Undoolya Road on a typically nice quiet Sunday morning.
Move for town council to manage the aquatic centre
By ERWIN CHLANDA
The town council may manage the aquatic center in its own right, according to a well informed source.
This follows the collapse of the arrangement with the YWCA which withdrew from the job, scheduled to run until 2014, saying it had substantially under-quoted.
The source says the council is looking at expressions of interest so far received from organisations around Australia.
The council has been managing the landfill since the collapse of the Subloo contract, and public opinion seems to be that the council staff running the dump now are doing a fine job.
If ratepayers’ money can be saved, keeping the pool management in-house may be a good idea, says the source.
From 'roo tail and damper to fine art and short films
Outside, the scent of woodsmoke and roasted ‘roo meat; inside, editioned etchings and the colourfully stitched soft sculptures that have become the signature work for Yarrenyty-Arltere Artists from Larapinta Valley Town Camp in Alice Springs. Everywhere, excited children and then after dark, as they settle down, the screening of films that give you a glimpse of everyday life at the camp as you warm up with a steamy cup of tea and hot damper and jam.
It’s that time of year again (next Wednesday, June 13, from 4.30pm) when the town camp hosts the annual Art, Film and Music Night at its Learning Centre. There’s always an atmosphere of celebration. That’s partly in recognition of the centre’s achievements over the year, but it’s also a response to the opportunity for the town and camp to come together, people getting to know one another – being shown how to cook ‘roo tail in the hot ashes, talking about the art, laughing at the same jokes in the films, which perhaps contrary to expectations, are often very humorous.
This isn’t the occasion for the art centre to launch new editioned prints – you’ll have to wait until Desert Mob for that – but work from older editions will be for sale. 
Meanwhile, each soft sculpture is unique and it will be an occasion to buy or admire more of their delightful birds and dolls. These works continue to attract serious attention, having been the subject of a number of exhibitions these last 12 months, and a work by Rhonda Sharpe, Nightbirds (a group of three) is a finalist in the National and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards, the first time a Yarrenyty-Arltere artist has been a contender in the awards.
Another staple of the art centre is silk dyed with natural pigments from eucalyptus leaves, native mistletoe, barks, and native mushroom powders (also used to dye the recycled blankets used for the soft sculptures). To date the silk has been presented as scarves but artists are now also working with sarong lengths that can be used as wall hangings.
Larapinta Valley Town Camp is at the end of Blain Street, off Larapinta Drive. The Learning Centre is not far from the entrance, you won’t miss it – it’s where the crowd will be.
KIERAN FINNANE
Pictured, top left: Small circle doll by Constance Robinja. • Top right: Bird by Dulcie Sharpe. • Above: Bird in emu feather nest by Dulcie Ragatt. Photos courtesy Yarrenyty-Arltere Artists.
Angela Pamela u-mine core message in Greatorex campaign?
Rowan Foley and wife Michelle with supporters – Andre Burgess, Sandra Ball, Andrew Ferguson, Barbara Ferguson (obscured), and Paul Acfield – at a community barbecue where he wanted to hear from Greatorex residents about their concerns.
By KIERAN FINNANE
Labor candidate for Greatorex Rowan Foley has chosen a possible future uranium mine at Angela Pamela, 23 kms south of Alice Springs, as the point of difference between him and Country Liberals incumbent Matt Conlan.
Apart from the “I love Alice” tag, opposition to the mine is the dominant message of Mr Foley’s initial campaign flyer, handed out in tandem with a petition opposing the mine, which calls on signatories to “Stop Matt Conlan and the CLP”, who “have committed to proceeding with the mine if elected to government” (an overstretch, given that it won’t be up to them).
As a core campaign message it seems to turn back the clock to the 2010 Araluen by-election campaign when the Labor Government, a little more than a week out from polling day, announced it would not allow a uranium mine to proceed so close to Alice Springs.
Labor candidate Adam Findlay claimed that the government had listened to the views of the electorate but any bounce for him was nullified by the Country Liberals following suit, and their Robyn Lambley going on to win the by-election.
How much currency does the issue have now? Activity at Angela Pamela is at a minimum. And apart from the petition Mr Foley is promoting, opposition to the mine has also gone off the boil. For instance, the latest post at www.stopangelapamela.org.au is dated May 2010.
The Cameco-Paladin joint venturers reduced their activity “taking into account the uncertainty created by” the government’s decision and in mid-2011 the partners agreed that Paladin would assume control of the project.
It is an “active project”, Paladin boss John Borshoff assured the Alice Springs News Online this week. The resource has been confirmed; the next stage will be determined “once the uranium outlook improves”.
To go ahead obviously discussions would have to take place with the NT Government but ultimately uranium mining comes under Federal Government jurisdiction, he said.
If there were a change of government, would he expect a more favourable policy environment with regards to uranium mining?
“It’s been stated as such,” he said.
“Due process” should be allowed and it involves “enough criteria to deal with any concerns”.
Back-flips and u-turns
With the Territory Labor Government on a knife edge, relying on the vote of independent MLA Gerry Wood, every seat counts.
They have obviously judged this as an issue where the Country Liberals (CLP) are exposed in Alice Springs and especially in the seat of Greatorex where Mr Conlan is seen as saying one thing in public, another behind closed doors – famously giving Cameco some very frank advice about how to use the media to “outmuscle” mine opponents, “the Greens and ALEC”. (To his and the party’s credit, these emails have been posted on the CLP website).
Despite his statements in the Legislative Assembly’s Alice sittings in March last year – “There is great concern in the electorate of Greatorex about the Angela Pamela mine – extreme concern about the potential of a uranium mine. I support my constituents 100%.” – Mr Conlan voted with his party, as did the other Alice MLAs, against Labor’s motion to oppose the establishment of a uranium mine at Angela Pamela.
However, Labor can’t really make too much of the CLP’s “U-turn” as they also back-flipped on the Angela Pamela project for purely political reasons. Mr Foley does not demur, but reiterates Mr Findlay’s message: Labor was listening to the people, the majority of townspeople don’t want the mine.
What are the figures, has there been a poll? He believes so, he’s heard a figure of 70+% in opposition, he’ll find out.
So what other arrows are in his quiver?
He says that Greatorex hasn’t had proper representation in the parliament. During door-knocking he’s “hardly met anyone who knows who Matt Conlan is”.
“Sure, he’s probably a good bloke, but he doesn’t seemed suited to the role of parliamentarian.”
The News obviously would have liked to put this to the man in question, and to have clarification of his stance vis a vis Angela Pamela but Mr Conlan (at left, in 2008) did not respond to our invitation to answer questions.
CLP stranglehold on Alice?
The News put to Mr Foley the perception in some quarters that the Labor Government has not done much for Alice Springs.
He counters that the CLP has had a stranglehold on the town for over 38 years and while they haven’t been in government for the last 10, “all MLAs can help their local communities”.
And the Labor Government has responded effectively to the town’s law and order issues, he says, pointing to the much improved last summer compared to the year before and applauding the recent multi-agency taskforce established by Police Commissioner John McRoberts.
He says the CLP’s stance on alcohol would “open up the rivers of grog” – “a complete disaster”.
He says maintaining the current restrictions regime and the Banned Drinkers Register (BDR) is “the way to go”. On the introduction of at least one take-away alcohol free day, he says “all options should be on the table”.
The effectiveness of the BDR should be assessed first but “we also need to keep our minds open to other options”, adding that he lived “alcohol free” at Mutitjulu for six years and “I didn’t miss it at all”.
Mr Foley first came to the Territory in 1989 as a ranger with Parks Australia at Uluru-Kata Tjuta. He stayed three years, enough time for “the desert to get under my skin”, returning in 2005 as park manager.
$21m sunrise on the Rock
He claims credit for obtaining the funds to build the new sunrise viewing area in the park, a $21m development. He brushes aside criticism of the area – “there’s only two months of the year when there’s not a full sunrise on the Rock” – and of the difficulties commercial photographers and filmmakers can experience in obtaining permission to work in the park – “hundreds do get permits every year”.
He was at Mutitjulu when the Federal Intervention began, when six Toyotas full of government officials, including police and army, rolled into the community.
“I was the only person of any official status standing between them and 300 people in the community. It was a very tense moment. I was there to smooth the way and it went well. When the time came, I had the courage, I guess, to stand there and do the right thing. I had known the community over a 20 year period. I wanted to make sure I could help.”
This was soon followed by another big shift in remote community affairs, local government reform. Mr Foley became the first CEO of the new Central Desert Shire: “I enjoy a challenge,” he says, “and you only get so many opportunities to set up a completely new organisation.”
He stayed in the job for two years and gives himself a number of ticks for his performance: managing a $30m budget, putting in place a management structure and a sound financial system, establishing accountability “for the first time”, developing 20 policies, setting up an economic development committee.
He says the shires need to be given time: “Any major reform is always difficult.” A move by the Country Liberals, if they won government, to break up some of the shires would be a waste of resources, he says, arguing that no CEO would accept not having full control over finances and so all of the associated services would have to be duplicated: “More whitefellas in more Toyotas won’t solve the problems on communities.”
What will? As far as local government goes, he says strengthening the local boards (at present advisory), giving them more power and resources is the way to go.
Enrichment options
Since then Mr Foley worked for Centrefarm, an Aboriginal-owned not-for-profit company with close links to the Northern and Central Land Councils (NLC director Kim Hill is its chair, CLC director David Ross is a board member, company secretary is Bob Kennedy, general manager of the Aboriginal investment company, Centrecorp).
Mr Foley’s role has focussed on carbon farming and about six months ago he became general manager of the Aboriginal Carbon Fund, another not-for-profit company looking to engage traditional owners in carbon farming: “It’s another option for them to make money from their land, he says, apart from mining, cattle and tourism.”
Will it also engage people in activity, give them daily purpose, the lack of which so clearly feeds the social malaise in Alice Springs and the region’s communities?
That depends on the kind of project that is developed, says Mr Foley. In wetter areas, fire management is a key activity; in the dryer Centre it’s more about rehabilitation of country back to its former good health. Mr Foley says he is promoting an “enrichment” approach, involving fire management, weed and feral species control, and tree-planting, especially bush tucker species. He says people are still deciding on how they want to proceed.
Of course, if he becomes the Member for Greatorex Mr Foley won’t be there to see the carbon farming projects through to fruition.
Long-time Labor man
He’s been a member of the Labor Party for 20 years and president of the local branch for the last four years. He sees the party as standing for “social justice and fairness”, the right fit for the son of an Aboriginal woman from Fraser Island who grew up in “desperate poverty”.
He was raised in very modest circumstances, at times living in housing without power, remembering his very first can of lemonade when the family celebrated his mother getting a job as a mail sorter with Australia Post.
He’s grateful to his mother for her staunch belief in education, which saw him ultimately studying at the Queensland Agricultural College, laying the foundation for his career as a ranger.
He lives in the rural area off Heffernan Road – he’s at pains to say that it’s just 300 metres from the boundary of Greatorex and that his two sons go to Ross Park Primary, which is in the electorate.
Many of the issues for Greatorex are common to the whole town, of course – the perennials of “health, education, the environment, law and order”. He’s working on ways to make himself available to Greatorex residents so they can let him know what their concerns are. A few turned up to his “community barbecue” last Saturday in Francis Smith Park. “It was a start,” he says. “What’s important is, I’m available.”
It’s an approach he shares with Phil Walcott (at right), who declared his candidacy as an independent two and a half years ago, running under the slogan “Phil the Gap”.
He’s a psychologist by profession, currently in both private practice and under contract to the Education Department.
He intends to resign from the government job at the end of the month and to suspend private practice so he can throw himself full-time into campaigning.
Listening to business
An important part of his CV is that he established a bed and breakfast operation in the electorate in 1999.
Called the Rainbow Connection, it caters for gay and lesbian travelers and in 2008 won Mr Walcott the Tourism Central Australia Industry Achiever Award. The venture gives him an affinity with small business and with the town’s major private sector industry.
The electorate has its share of both, from the Eastside shops to the major hotels and the convention center along Barrett Drive. He’s started talking to the small business operators – some of them telling him that it’s the first time anyone has ever asked them how government could help. One way is for government to address accommodation shortage and high rents, he says, as these have a big impact on staff recruitment and retention.
Meanwhile, people can also help themselves: operators in the tourism industry need to be “more creative”. For instance, the town has the people in alternative therapies and practices and the right kind of environment to promote health retreats, physical, mental, spiritual: “The quality of people in town is tremendous, there’s a broad dynamic, a rich tapestry of people.”
Some creativity in the government and bureaucracy would also be in order: there have got to be ways to reduce the duplication and waste that leads to an expenditure of $1.2m to deliver $100,000 worth of services into a remote community, he says.
He expects “a lot of stuff around social order” to be raised by residents. His answer: “There’s no magic wand. You’ve got to work with people to help them make different life choices. Government needs to work in partnership with agencies who can do this.”
Like Mr Foley, he’s very supportive of the “whole of community” approach recently launched by the police. Unlike him, he has little faith in current alcohol management policy.
Grog ID system has to go
The ID system has to go and with it, in consequence, the Banned Drinkers Register: “The reality is those people can always get a drink, they just can’t buy it themselves from a take-away. It’s the reality that needs to be looked at.”
He moves closer to the CLP in wanting to liberalise trading hours: “By restricting the hours you drive the stuff underground.”
In seeming contradiction, he says “it wouldn’t hurt to try” a take-away alcohol free day, anathema to the CLP.
He also rejects their idea of mandatory rehabilitation for drunks: “I have problems with forcing change. The only thing that makes a real difference is people choosing themselves not to drink.”
On “wet canteens” (for on-premise drinking) in communities, he says communities should be able to choose. He says he has talked to people about it and some say, “No, no, don’t do it, it was horrendous, everybody got really drunk and there was a lot of fighting”. Others have told him that it will help prevent people coming to town to drink and could provide economic opportunities.
He speaks of the “learned helplessness” of many Aboriginal people, which some organisations perpetuate by drip-feeding them money and services. Here he’s thinking more of Aboriginal organisations than Centrelink: “They are disempowering people, keeping them in the welfare trap.”
Their language needs to change, he says, they need to see people as “survivors, not victims”: “We hear too many ‘don’t’ stories rather than ‘do’ stories.”
“Aboriginal organisations need to be more transparent about how much money they’ve got and how they are spending it. I’d like to see partnerships between those organisations and government, for instance in developing homelands. Help people now rather than squirrel away money for the future. If there’s no present, there won’t be a future.”
Informing the debate
These are the kind of perspectives Mr Walcott would bring to the parliament: “As I wouldn’t be in government, I wouldn’t be forming policy but I would be able to inform policy debate,” he says.
Together with staying in touch with his constituents, contributing to health and education policy would be his top priority, “especially early childhood”. He’d like to see early childhood centres created at each of the primary schools in Alice, bringing clinic and school under the one roof.
His key point of difference from Mr Foley and Mr Conlan (‘opponents’ is not a ‘Phil the Gap’ kind of word) is that he would represent the people, not a party. He’s firmly opposed to Angela Pamela although not to uranium mining per se. His stance has been consistent all along unlike the “back-flips” by the political parties.
The Alice News puts to him that he is in a position now, through his professional practice, to assist people to make changes in their lives. Why seek political office?
“It easier to change things if you’re inside the tent,” he says. “I can still have those conversations with people about personal empowerment, but inside parliament would be another way of having an influence.”
Mr Walcott is organising a gathering on August 1 for Greatorex residents to meet their candidates: “I see being a candidate as a job application and the job interview will be conducted by the voters.”
He’s inviting the other candidates to take part. So far Mr Foley has confirmed that he will.
Tourism promoters sit on their hands as Alice feeds Venus transit images to the world
By ERWIN CHLANDA
It appears NT tourism promoters have fumbled an opportunity to capitalise on free world-wide publicity for Alice Springs when Venus transited the sun today.
The American space agency NASA picked The Alice as one of two sites around the globe to record a live feed of images on the internet.
Columbus State University scientist Michael Johnson told the ABC that Alice Springs quickly became the main live streaming site worldwide as the other NASA site, in Mongolia, had clouded over and the sun had set in the United States.
An early glitch caused by a road worker near Mataranka inadvertently chopping the fiber optic cable carrying the signal was overcome by routing the images through the internet system of the Alice Springs school where the NASA observation site had been set up.
Alice Springs was set to consolidate, the world over, its reputation as a reliably sunny place.
In fact Mr Johnson told the ABC: “Actually there are two reasons we picked Alice Springs.
“It has great weather during this time of year and it’s also ideal because you can see the entire transit of Venus from Alice Springs.”
Did Tourism NT (TNT) and Tourism Central Australia (TCA) explore opportunities for hammering home, in connection with the transit, the point about The Centre’s great weather?
It doesn’t appear so. A major chance for “leveraging” – that favorite buzzword – has clearly been missed.
Staff for TNT CEO John Fitzgerald and for TCA’s CEO Peter Solly were not aware of any such initiatives.
Neither of them could be contacted: Mr Fitzgerald was on his way to the airport to fly from Darwin to Sydney, and Mr Solly, from Alice Springs to Ayers Rock Resort.
IMAGE: The black dot is Venus. Photo by Alice Springs photographer MIKE GILLAM. See also his comment below.
Resources boom opportunities for Aboriginal workforce
In The Centre, Newmont Gold Mine is looking to double its intake of Aboriginal workers
Will locals, like Jeffrey Matthews from Lajamanu (above), respond? He’s been at Newmont for nearly three years. He started doing contract work around the mine as part of a program called the YAPA Crew and moved from there into full-time employment with Newmont.
By KIERAN FINNANE
Skills shortages and the resources boom – they’re the mantra when it comes to talking about Australian employment opportunities and all levels of government would like to see Indigenous people responding. In Alice Springs Martin Glass is working on “lining up the ducks”.
He’s a former Commanding Officer of Norforce, northern Australia’s Specialist Reconnaissance and Surveillance Regiment, an Army Reserve unit. That position gave him a lot of experience working with Aboriginal soldiers who are “unbeatable”, he says, “when they’re well trained and operating in their own country”.
The Norforce model is a good one for many Aborigines in remote Australia, says Mr Glass. It’s well paid, attractive work for them and while part-time, they can do up to 150 days a year, which makes a real difference financially for them and their families. It might be something that the mining industry could look at, he says, particularly the new mines coming on stream and the various exploration endeavours.
In the meantime, with the backing of his steering committee, he is looking to double within the next 12 months the number of NT locals working at Newmont Gold Mine in the Tanami Desert. The committee is made up of representatives of the three tiers of government and industry, formed as a result of an MOU signed between the Australian Government and the Minerals Council of Australia. There are four other regional coordinators around the country, with a fifth to come.
Mr Glass says Newmont currently employs some 60 Indigenous workers, male and female, and almost all of them are from the NT, both the Centre and the Top End. The push is on now to draw more workers from the mine’s surrounding areas and in recent months the company has held a career expo in Alice Springs, conducted a presentation at Centralian Middle School and has presentations coming up at Lajamanu, Yuendumu and Kalkarindji. A recruitment officer from Newmont has also been visiting the Central Land Council’s employment unit twice weekly.
Five men from Central Australia are undertaking their pre-vocational training for entry into mining at Batchelor Institute’s northern campus. The intention is to replicate this course in Alice Springs, probably starting February, with another 10 to 15 students. A further 10 to 15 are expected to do the training on site at the mine starting in August. Those numbers, if they all follow through into jobs, will get Mr Glass halfway to his goal.
To do the course candidates need to have literacy and numeracy equal to Year 10 attainment. Mr Glass is a strong advocate of flexibility but there are basic minimum literacy and numeracy requirements to meet safety standards.
Staff at Newmont, as is typical across the industry, work 12 hour shifts for 14 days on, seven off, and are mostly fly-in, fly-out. Mr Glass says the existing Indigenous workforce handles the rigours of this well, and the week off can really suit some workers. With new mines opening up in the Alice region, such as Nolan’s Bore, there may be scope for varying this: “If everything is not already in place, it’s easier to change.”
Exploration activity also offers scope for new arrangements: a labour pool could work extremely well doing this kind of work, he says. The jobs are varied, everything from guides on country to truck driving and sample recording, and they’re well paid. But you do have to put in the hours.
Mr Glass senses a “groundswell of momentum towards more meaningful jobs” amongst the Aboriginal people he’s meeting and hopes that it will be sufficient to counteract the disincentive of passive welfare.
Note: The current figure of 60 Indigenous workers at Newmont is actually lower by eight than the figure reported by ERWIN CHLANDA when he visited the mine in 2004.
Murray Liddle, a mentor for Newmont, with Steve Jungarrayi Collins from Yuendumu, who has worked at the mine for around six years. Both are machine operators with surface works.
Sharona's world of work
Sharona Richardson, Western Arrernte interpreter with the Aboriginal Interpreter Service. Below, back in 2007 when she was staffing the Centrelink Agency at Tjuwanpa.
By KIERAN FINNANE
I first met Sharona Richardson in 2007 when she and another young local woman were staffing the Centrelink agency at Tjuwanpa Outstation Resource Centre, just outside Hermannsburg where she’s from. I couldn’t help but notice her again when she stood up at IAD’s First Friday series of presentations and confidently spoke about the interpreters’ code of ethics, emphasising the professionalism of the Aboriginal Interpreter Service for whom she’s working now.
Back in 2007 I’d been struck by her initiative – a feature of her working life was that at one stage she had gone off to work in a tuna factory in Port Lincoln. And at the time, with the encouragement of the local police sergeant, she was considering taking a job as an ACPO (Aboriginal Community Police Officer).
She told me on Friday that she did begin the training but a five-year-old incident that had given her a record prevented her going further with it. Meantime the shires had been established and their night patrol programs were underway.
“The sergeant looked at me again,” she said. She became team leader for night patrol at Hermannsburg, staying in the position for a year.
She left because she was expecting a baby. She has spent most of her life between Hermannsburg and Alice Springs and moved back to town for the birth. A healthy boy arrived in August 2009 and she called him Mathias.
“I thought, ‘I’ve got a baby, now I need a job’,” she recalls. She had already done six months’ training as an interpreter at IAD (Institute of Aboriginal Development). She heard that the Aboriginal Interpreter Service had vacancies and they took her on as a casual.
Then a full-time permanent position came up as a community-based interpreter. She’s being supported to finish her studies, a Diploma in Interpreting, attending Batchelor Institute two days a week. For the other three days she’s on call to attend wherever interpreter services are needed, including at the courthouse if no other Western Arrernte speaker is available.
That must be difficult, I suggest, you can’t ask the lawyers to slow down …
“We have every right to!” she cuts in. “And we can ask them to explain in plain English when they’re using jargon.”
She finds interpreting the police caution the most difficult task: “It’s hard for the client to understand, and they often ask the interpreter to explain. But we are not allowed to, we can’t take sides, we are just the person in the middle.”
Another challenge is interpreting in the mental health unit at the hospital, “but you get used to it, you’re professional at it.”
So what prepared this young woman for the world of work that she is so actively exploring? Her primary schooling was done between Hermannsburg and Yipirinya in town, and for secondary she went to Yirara, completing Year Nine.
An early, important experience seems to have been helping out, during school holidays, at Injartnama Outstation when it was used for petrol sniffer rehab. Elva Cook, who ran the outstation with her late husband, is her grandmother’s younger sister. Sharona recalls the success of the girls’ softball team from Injartnama when they competed at the Papunya Sports Weekend: “I was so impressed with the softball players. They came second in the grand final.” This was more than a decade ago.
Sharona speaks with great fondness of her grandmother without naming her. Another of her sisters, May Lockyer, made her welcome when she moved into town at the age of 18 and it was May’s daughter Lisa who “pointed out IAD”.
“She told me I should do some studies to get myself a job.”
That’s when Sharona did her first bout of training as an interpreter, but she missed the bush and her big family network and the availability of work for a competent young woman meant that she could easily move around. For a while she lived at Wingellina, with an uncle, and worked in the council office there.
Her family, including the boy’s father, look after Mathias while she’s working. She’ll finish her diploma and stick with the interpreting until he gets a bit older. And then, who knows? It’s a big world out there…
Artist's meditation on the East MacDonnells
Henry Smith’s Slow Burn opened at Araluen Arts Centre last night. Smith has lived in The Centre for 16 years, exhibiting regularly both sculpture and two-dimensional work – paintings and drawings. His venture into abstraction is a new direction for him, or perhaps the next step in a decade-long direction. “There are so many realistic paintings out there already. I challenged myself to come up with something different, a fresh point of view. Each one would start as a landscape. Then I developed a composition of shapes, textures and patterns, using different palettes, depending on the seasons. Play and chance came into it quite a bit and in some cases I reworked a piece three or four times until I felt it was strong.”
Fellow artist and author ROD MOSS shared his thoughts about the work with the opening night audience:
Let me introduce this exhibition of Henry’s by paraphrasing something I wrote about his first show at Araluen a decade ago:
Those of us who have sought inspiration from living close to nature in Alice Springs can no longer make art reflecting its landscape without awareness of the political and spiritual connections that its indigenous custodians express in their representations. The proliferation of these has helped shape ecological debates. The great desert artists need no further endorsement. But there are those, like Henry who have sought political and spiritual connections themselves in relocating to this remarkable place.
For this landscape artist, that general statement remains pertinent. Though Henry has sought to re-invent his ‘picturing forth’ he is still himself. His interests, his curiosities, his devotions and sensibility continue on track. What might seem initially a radical change regards his approach is in essence a deepening of those intrinsic interests as he channels them into freer, more fantastic realms.
You might recall, if you are familiar with his drawings, watercolours and sculpture, how much he was seduced to the topographical qualities of this place. It is usual for artists coming from places very different in aspect to this arid zone, to attempt to understand what is presented to their eyes by describing the country in more or less literal ways. It’s a digestive process. Henry has continually determined to separate out the finer parts of his experience. Bearing in mind the cue given above regards indigenous art and his own spiritual aspirations, it should be no surprise that lengthy affinity with this place should result in the levels of abstraction we witness in the present body of work.
It takes courage to sacrifice literality’s assured path, its ready audience, especially when the hand and eye, as in Henry’s instance, work so happily together. Where to travel from there is a more open quest. Indeed, the prevalence of the palette knife and the presence of scumbled oils are physical options expressing a far bolder embrace.
An altered dynamic has occurred. One feels under the arrest of the artist’s composing, to be advancing into or over the landscape. It no longer sits away from us. Our spectatorship before ‘views’ is surmounted by the need to draw near, to be intimate.
I don’t think it’s too extravagant to say that Henry’s mark-making might have parallels with indigenous sign-making as we swoop across vistas of quilted hues and dip into the pockets and groins of his beloved Eastern MacDonnell ranges to snatch a trace of distant herbage or to be dealt up close with the thud of some rock.
This spatial transformation is accompanied by swathes of colour at times apparitional, at others retaining their literal links. We can share his excitement as he probes these inventive juxtapositions which invite us to look and feel anew about our country.
In keeping with this interiorizing of our landscape, that ‘slow burn’ of the show’s title, I suggest, describes the action that has evolved through Henry’s meditations.
From our archive:
February 6, 2002.
Henry Smith: The land is a mirror of life’s struggle.
Review by KIERAN FINNANE.
In an age of cool, it is not often, in a gallery setting, that we encounter undisguised either expressions of wonder or of personal suffering, both of which are prominent in Henry Smith’s fist solo exhibition in Alice Springs. Opening at Araluen this Friday, Odyssey of Wonder is a show of ink and pastel drawings, a surprise in itself, as Smith arrived in Alice with a solid reputation as a sculptor, with some 20 years of freelance commissions behind him.
Like so many others, Smith fell in love with the landscape of the Centre when he first came for a visit in 1978. He was not able to return until 1997 when he took up a position in the art department at Centralian College, teaching sculpture. In his free time he began a long exploration of country and feeling, traced in these works on paper.
Again like so many others, Smith talks about the special “presence” of the landscape. He sees in it signs of “grace, struggle, survival, desperation”, parallel to the human condition.
Why the exploration led him to drawing rather than sculpture is something he can’t fully explain, but he says he can “cover more ground” with drawing, “put down more, explore more”.
“Sculpture is often two per cent inspiration, 98 per cent hard work,” says Smith.”And at a certain point you become locked into your original idea, it’s hard to change, whereas with drawing you can work through changing ideas and feelings very quickly.”
Yet most of what we’ll see in the gallery is the product of many hours’ work. In the field, Smith mostly makes thumbnail sketches and carefully annotated strip drawings. He may spend a whole day just noting how different forms in a landscape take shape as the light changes.
The large drawings are generally worked up in his living room, which serves as his studio and where I first saw the lovingly evoked “Sacred Place”, a two metre wide charcoal drawing of a valley in the Eastern MacDonnells. Smith opens this space before the viewer, as if it’s at our feet; renders its old textures in delicate detail; infuses it with light.
Interestingly, this drawing came early in the chronology of exploration. Later personal experiences, states of mind and artistic experimentation took Smith off in other directions. Two of the self-portraits show the artist full of anguish, consoled only by the land, particularly its trees. Then, it would seem, Smith emerged from this dark hour, experiencing a transfiguring wonder at nature’s strength and beauty. (It is not surprising to learn that he has practised meditation for some 20 years.)
Such experiences are profound, but are perhaps the most difficult to render with profundity: Smith’s metaphors in this phase of work are somewhat literal; they more describe his vision than enter into it. There is at least one other significant strand of his work that should be mentioned: drawings which blend a Western way of seeing the land – as elevating, awe-inspiring – with a suggested other possibility, playing with the “building blocks” of an Aboriginal visual representation – dots, and repeated lines, not symbols. This has the interesting effect in some instances of cutting the land loose, which may be where Smith is heading, having the courage to make the journey, accepting its ever-elusive goals.
When heating takes more than the flick of a switch
The weather forecast last week predicted some fairly cold weather with nighttime lows down to a terrifying zero. This got me to thinking (perhaps dramatically) about humankind’s development as a struggle against the elements in a constant search for optimal temperature comfort. From palm fronds as fans to campfires for warmth to huts and heaters, buildings and air conditioning, I was entertaining a different paradigm from which to view the history of the whole world through!
Melodramatic, you may think, but picture this: coming home from work one afternoon so cold I found myself sitting on my bed wrapped in a blanket holding my cat. I sat there thinking all this through and wondering how to get some wood.
Now I had earlier in the week phoned around and found prices for wood too expensive. I had been up the back of the hill and gathered what I could that didn’t need a chainsaw. Following that I had a friend drop by and make short work of a branch in the back yard. That lasted all of two nights and then we were back out on a limb, if only it were of the flammable kind. I had even gone so far as to break up some old chairs in the back yard, which got us through another night. But that afternoon sitting with my cat, strategically facing her towards me so as to also profit from her hot breath I had a completely unsustainable temperature situation. Sooner or later Kalua was going to get bored or hungry, in fact sooner or later I was going to get bored and hungry and be forced to move.
I decided on my course of action and looked up Kennards hire. Hire a chainsaw. I hoped they would give me a little 101 Chainsawing for Beginners and I would head back to the hill, get my wood, stoke up that fire and be done with it. The price of the chainsaw hire wasn’t much less than a trailer of wood but anyway it was too late to organize a delivery for that night and the day was fading fast with the predicted temperature of zero degrees fast approaching.
At Kennards I met a bloke who was cutting up a whole load of wood for the Finke. He cut me up some wood to last the next few days till he could do up a trailer load. There is a whole lot more involved with independent heating rather than just flicking a switch. It’s sourcing, splitting, unloading, stacking, getting kindling, stoking and waiting for that warmth to seep through the house. Anyway, I’m stoked and the fire is too.
So I’ve been waking up warm and cosy though I do wince a bit at getting out of bed early in the morning. But as I cross the river on my way into town it’s bloody freezing and mixed in that frozen air is the scent of fires being lit for a billy and warmth and I wonder how the people camping in the river slept. In the summer I didn’t think of them as often unless it rained, and when the river flowed, the hospital and hostels overflowed. I guess as it gets colder that story will be told more often and whilst I’m all tucked up and warm I wonder what I can do if people’s bedding can still be ‘confiscated’.
'Out of date' and 'unpopular' books go as library prepares for a facelift
This part of a library officer’s work will go with electronic tagging of all items being introduced: Felicity Thorne at the circulation desk this week. In the background, visitors use the internet and computer services, one of the ways libraries have changed over the years.
UPDATE, June 4,2012, 4.15pm: Reader comment that up to a quarter of the Public Library’s current holdings has been “weeded” is firmly rejected by Manager of Library Services, Georgina Davison. “No way!” she says, and reiterates that there is no target figure.
The cull is larger than normal in the lead-up to the introduction of electronic tagging and because it has not been done for a while. She says if shelves look a little empty it is because library staff are waiting for the electronic tagging before putting out new items.
New items are ordered all the time and are reported on in the monthly update to the Town Council. One recent month saw 1200 new items arrive; another, 700.
Ms Davision says there is no reduction to the budget for acquisitions.
She says staff shortages can cause delays, for instance in repairing items such as the spiral bound and laminated books in the Akaltye Antheme Collection (“a local knowledge collection intended to give the whole community an insight into contemporary Indigenous issues while addressing appropriately the needs of Indigenous family groups and individuals using the library”). These books get a lot of use and will not be “weeded”. Videos in this collection are also being transferred to DVD but again staff shortages has held this up.
By KIERAN FINNANE
Work at the town’s Public Library is a matter of renewal, not significant change, says the Town Council’s Director of Corporate and Community Services, Craig Catchlove. Redevelopment of the library is a long-term high cost item in the council’s Municipal Plan but to date, council has not been successful in obtaining funds, despite a number of applications. So instead of a $22m new library, the town is getting a $240,000 refreshed library.
Part of this modest overhaul involves moving the front entrance to the garden facing the river, certainly more attractive than the current ‘tradesmen’s’ entrance that takes library visitors straight past the toilets.
In line with its “percent for art” policy when it undertakes capital works, council will commission a concept plan for the new entrance and garden area, ahead of applying for funds to commission substantial public art work.
Perhaps of more interest to library users is what will happen inside. The library’s holdings are currently being “weeded”, always a bit of a worry for booklovers. Will they throw out that precious book that you don’t even know you want to read yet but in years to come will be delighted to find on the shelves? Well, maybe.
Manager of Library Services, Georgina Davison, says all libraries undertake weeding and it is well overdue at the Alice Springs library. She can’t put a figure on exactly how many holdings the library has – it’s somewhere between 46,500 and 49,000; nor can she put a number of how many items will go. She says there is “no target figure”. The cull is “very methodical”, based on the items being out of date or seldom used (criteria which would seem to allow a fair bit of leeway). The Alice Springs Collection is exempt from the cull.
Getting rid of old holdings is the only way to create space for new acquisitions, she says. Off-site storage would be expensive and impractical as the library can always order specific titles through other libraries.
Is there a danger of the library moving towards a lowest common denominator collection? Not at all, she says. Popular taste is only one criterion for acquisitions. The library understands that Alice Springs is a unique place and its readers have very varied interests, which the library endeavours to “understand and nurture”. She says the library is open to customer suggestions for acquisitions: “We can’t hold everything but if there’s a gap, we try to fill it.”
The weeding is being done ahead of the introduction of electronic tagging for all items, so that borrowers will be able to self-serve (just like at the supermarket). Ms Davison denies that the new technology is a motivation for reducing the holdings but “it would be a waste of time and money” if items were tagged and then deleted.
Self-service borrowing means that the large circulation desk will go and shelving will be reorganised, creating a little more room, including better areas for people who like a quiet place to read.
Mr Catchlove says the core business of the library remains “books and reading” and there are no plans to turn the library into a community centre by subterfuge.
However, the library does run a busy program of events and it’s not all “storytime”. Its school holiday program included a drumming workshop, for instance. Ms Davison says there are a lot of demands placed on public libraries, they are supposed to offer something for everybody and they are changing: “They are not quiet places anymore.”
The elusive 'Port Augusta model'
As police continue their law and order blitz in Alice, the Town Council stumbles towards a bigger picture approach.
By KIERAN FINNANE
At last night’s meeting councillors appeared to vote for something they did not want.
Instead of a report on how the Port Augusta council calls governments and bureaucrats to account for their policies and actions in that town, councillors instructed, by formal vote, the Director of Corporate and Community Services to engage a consultant to evaluate the Port Augusta Alcohol Management Group and its community alcohol management plan.
This is despite their determination in the committee meeting a fortnight ago that what they wanted to understand about Port Augusta went well beyond how that town manages alcohol issues.
At that committee meeting Councillor Liz Martin said she was looking for something far more “holistic”. She also identified a number of points of difference between Port Augusta and Alice Springs, one being a much lesser degree of “urban drift”, due to the number of well-serviced communities and towns (with hospitals and sporting grounds, for example) within a 250 km radius of the southern city.
Cr Steve Brown, who originally got the ball rolling on the “Port Augusta model”, also made clear a fortnight ago that his interest was not specifically about alcohol, but rather the overall management of the town. The Alice Springs Town Council does not have a group that “oversees the management of the entire town through all its aspects”, he said.
Cr Martin agreed: “We need to take a leading role in our town”, she said, telling the other levels of government what needs to be done about the issues “they cause in our town with their policies”.
Last night’s instruction to the director stipulated that the evaluation will make comparisons between Alice Springs and Port Augusta and will also provide a desktop evaluation of “similar plans” in Ceduna, Mildura and Katherine, but the fact remains that the two specific points of focus for the consultation were identified in the motion as the Port Augusta Alcohol Management Group and its community alcohol management plan.
The Alice Springs News Online spoke to Cr Brown and Mayor Damien Ryan after the meeting, to ask whether they were concerned that their motion would too narrowly focus the consultation. They assured the Alice News that the director knew what councillors were after.
The Alice News sought further clarification from the director, Craig Catchlove, today. He said in an email: “The consultancy will have a broad focus. If you read the Plan you will see it covers a very broad swathe of issues, and this consultancy will be looking at everything that is relevant even if not in the Plan.”
The Alice News has read the Plan, subtitled “A journey Towards Responsible Drinking in Our Community”. While it does cover a broad range of issues as any alcohol plan worthy of the name would do, it does not go beyond that. It does not resemble in any way the kind of council-convened group with a “holistic” overseeing focus as envisaged by Crs Brown and Martin.
Mr Catchlove has a consultant in mind – someone who has done a lot of work for council before and who has had senior roles in local government in South Australia. That person has quoted $13,280 to deliver a report to council. Let’s hope that it does end up being a report on something council wants to know, because Alice Springs already has an alcohol management plan, as well as a community action plan.
After years of under-achieving, tourism promoters say they are getting cracking
Last week’s Territory deputation, headed up by Tourism Minister Malarndirri McCarthy and including Alice Mayor Damien Ryan, to the Australian Tourist Commission has a familiar ring to it: If something goes wrong we run to the Feds to bail us out.
The Feds’ contribution to the Territory is almost five times the national average, allowing a level of funding for our government tourism body that is the envy of its interstate peers. Yet Tourism NT’s sustained underachieving is still failing to halt the industry’s decline or turn it around.
Tourism Australia, Tourism NT, and Tourism Central Australia – the supposed watchdog – all seem to be the best of buddies, set to do great things real soon, dodging answers as to why these haven’t been done much sooner.
Meanwhile all the NT Opposition, three months out from the election, and some four years after the Global Financial Crisis began to nudge our biggest private industry towards oblivion, still has not disclosed its policy on tourism.
ERWIN CHLANDA spoke to some of the players and looked at some of the numbers. Ms McCarthy did not respond to a request for an interview.
The Mayor’s pitch
Niche marketing its events, such as the Finke Desert Race, is how Mayor Damien Ryan believes Alice Springs can get itself out of its tourism slump.
He’s recently been to China to “drum up publicity” for the race – as well as the region.
Mr Ryan says a five person crew from a sports television station in Guangzhou, China’s third-biggest city, near Hong Kong, will be covering a competitor from China.
“Guangzhou TV has a massive audience,” says Mr Ryan.
“Everybody else is trying to attract the Chinese market.
“I’m not sure our scenery is all that visitors want.
“Our events calendar is what we have to work with.
“Tourism Australia is a marketing company” representing the industry throughout Australia, says Mr Ryan.
“Our concern was, how do we get Central Australia to be a prominent part of that marketing.
Why hasn’t that been done in the past?
“I’ve never met the Tourism Australia board before.”
Did he ask them why they have not given intense promotion to Central Australia before?
“I wasn’t there to ask that question. I was invited, for the first time, to meet the CEO of Tourism Australia, the biggest marketing group in Australia. We asked them to work with our operators here.”
Tourism NT, per head of population, has a budget 13 times greater than its Queensland counterpart.
Per visitor Tourism NT spends 50 times as much as its NSW counterpart.
During his trip, did Mr Ryan ask the Tourism NT executives why they have not done anything remotely successful to halt the slide of the tourism business in the last few years? After all, the Global Financial Crisis started four years ago.
“I’m no expert in tourism. I was given the opportunity of going down there to talk about Alice Springs and the Finke Desert Race. My whole aim is, let’s market our particular event to that Chinese market.
“That’s what we have to do with the Camel Cup, the Henley on Todd, the Mountain Bike event. They are the areas in which we have to become specialists, in the niche markets, to attract crowds.”
Is he saying anything to Qantas about their reduction of services to The Centre?
“No. The government is meeting with Qantas. I wasn’t invited to a meeting with Qantas. That’s something I leave up to the tourism industry.”
Does he think Qantas would say, make Alice Springs a place more people want to come to and we’ll give you the aeroplanes to take them there?
“I’m not really in the game of what Qantas might say.”
Watchdog or lapdog?
“Range of marketing programs in the pipeline … in the new media space, social media in particular … tourism is at a crossroads … partnering … leveraging.”
Jargon and generalities tended to drown out substance in our conversation with Peter Solly, CEO of Tourism Central Australia (TCA) for six months.
What has Tourism Australia (TA) actually done in the last five years specifically for Alice Springs and Central Australia?
“A range of programs … regional Australia and Central Australia are important … developing an understanding of new marketing channels … very keen to work with industry on how to maximise them.”
What have been TA’s five main initiatives since the Global Financial Crisis began to shake the world in 2008?
“That’s a question for them. You need to talk to [Managing Director] Andrew McEvoy about that.”
We’re talking to you about this because Tourism Central Australia represents the industry here which surely would like to know what Tourism Australia has been doing.
“What I am saying to you is that I am keen to look to the future. The industry in Australia has been in decline, there is no doubt about that.”
So, that’s a no comment about what The Centre got from the national body in the last four years. What about the future, then?
Mr Solly, albeit in a very general way, has a broader view than Mayor Ryan whose favoured special events can always only be a tiny a fraction of the attractions: after all, Finke, Henley and Camel Cup, between them, can keep tourists amused only four days a year.
In Mr Solly’s take niche markets include all-year-round opportunities such as the Larapinta Trail and 4WD adventures, cycling, bushwalking, bird watching … “the great landscape”.
But given that all this is hardly news, what has the lavishly funded Tourism NT done for The Centre since the start of the GFC?
“What we should be doing is working with them as an industry to better leverage those things they are doing.”
Have they done a good job for us in the past for years? What precisely have they done for Central Australia?
“Maybe Alice Springs hasn’t had as much ‘destinational’ marketing as they might have in the past … Alice Springs needs to become a destination in its own right. That’s really important. We want to partner with them in some of these niche markets.
“‘Extend your stay by one more day’ is a campaign we’re running at the moment. We want to start working on some of that low hanging fruit. We want to be much more strategic.”
Answer the question, please: what has Tourism NT done for The Centre in the last four years?
Again Mr Solly’s answer is about the future, not the recent past – but this time with a concrete example: there is a major trail symposium in the US next year, to be attended by all the key players in that industry, with a national award “and if we don’t win it we’ll certainly put the Larapinta Trail on the horizon”.
TCA is “right in the middle of developing a strategic plan” for cooperation with Tourism NT.
Amazingly, with the slump becoming endemic, the wheel is still being invented.
In the lead-up to the NT election – just three months away – TCA is developing a 10 point plan to be put to both parties.
TCA is not making details available as yet, and is also calling for an industry task force and an all-of-government-approach.
Of the $40m that Tourism NT gets every year, how much goes to (a) Alice Springs and (b) Central Australia excluding Alice Springs?
Head of Tourism NT John Fitzgerald “is the best person to talk to about that,” says Mr Solly.
Tourism CA is the industry’s watchdog over Tourism NT; what is your knowledge of these figures?
“We’re having significant conversations with John Fitzgerald and the Minister about new ways of working together.”
Since the GFC started, how much has Tourism NT spent in The Centre?
“I haven’t got the number right in front of me. We’re pushing hard to make sure we’re getting our fair share.”
Do Tourism Minister Malarndirri McCarthy (cutting flights “is not good enough for Territorians”) and Unions NT President Heinz Schmitt (“it is difficult not to show contempt” for Qantas) have a point that the airline owes a debt to the Territory?
Says Mr Solly: “Uluru and Kata Tjuta, without any doubt, are one of the key icons used to promote Australia.
“So in that context, just because they exist, there is some leverage and some marketing dollars that Qantas clearly gets out of that.
“So, do they owe us something? In this world of making a profit on behalf of the shareholders, probably not.
“But in a sense that we have one of Australia’s great icons in Central Australia, probably yes.”
Opposition’s deafening silence
Shadow Minister for Regional Development Adam Giles is vocal on the Qantas cancellation of some services to Ayers Rock but his party is still silent on the broad picture of tourism.
With the election ’round the corner the Country Liberals still have not announced their tourism policy.
He says the cancellations “will have a detrimental impact to our tourism industry and our local economy more broadly, but Qantas makes commercial decisions as any business does.
“With every negative you always have to look for opportunities and I think we can put a greater focus on Alice Springs as a gateway to the region.
“I see that there are two important aspects to improving tourism, firstly fixing our law and order problems so we can see positive news and word of mouth stories going around the world; and the local industry needs to be empowered to have a greater say in the direction of their industry, taking control of marketing in particular.
“I’d also say that as a community content renewal and redevelopment is important and increasing our content and types of content will be important to rebuild our tourism industry.
“I know there are many people who support the full services offered by Qantas but I believe as a community it may be time to have discussion and debate about the merits of lobbying for Jetstar services to The Centre to improve the competitiveness of airline prices and in turn attract a greater number of tourists.”
The numbers
A dominant feature of our tourism’s big picture aviation – we’re a long way from anywhere.
And the elephant in that room is cost: our northern neighbors have modern, efficient and safe airlines that are much, much cheaper.
Here are a few random calculations, based on the cost per seat and per kilometer.
AIR ASIA
Darwin to Beijing return 8.2c/km
Perth to Bali return 3.9c/km
KL to Tokyo one way 2.4c/km
Beijing to Kuala Lumpur return 4.6c/km
QANTAS
Alice Springs to Sydney one way 18.4c/km
Sydney to Alice Springs one way 13.6c/km
AIR ASIA specials
Kuala Lumpur to Penang $10
Kuala Lumpur to Siem Reap (Angkor Wat) $47
On the smaller scale are the airport charges: passengers to and from Alice Springs are apparently paying the highest domestic fees in Australia:–
SYDNEY
Terminal $7.41 + GST arrive / depart
Security $1.62 + GST arrive / depart
Runway $3.57 + GST arrive / depart
Total $12.60 + GST
ALICE SPRINGS
Passenger Facility Charges, arriving & departing $8.11 + GST
Airport Services Charges, arriving & departing $7.72 + GST
Safety & Security, departing only $13.00 + GST
Total arriving $15.83 + GST
Total departing $28.83 + GST
PHOTOS from top: The Qantas counter at the Alice airport where the airline has a monopoly. •A valley in the West MacDonnells viewed from the Larapinta Trail. • Ormiston Gorge in flood.
Nature delivers what tourists want: the numbers
But Alice could sell itself better: A third of visitors would have extended their stay had they been aware of the range of things to see and do.
Anzac Hill at sunset: 57% of visitors to Central Australia make Anzac Hill part of their experience.
By KIERAN FINNANE
Why do visitors want to come to Central Australia? The main reason is that it is seen as an iconic Australian destination and it is made so by its natural attractions. This is the case for the majority of the region’s international and domestic visitors. And nature delivers, exceeding expectations for both categories.
The questions are fundamental and the answers clear in the Central Australia Visitor Profile and Satisfaction (VPS) project, undertaken by Tourism Research Australia in partnership with Tourism NT, with its most recent survey conducted in two waves in May and August 2011, to capture both shoulder and peak season visitors.
The local debate is very attuned to international perceptions and responses, but the majority of our visitors – 75% – continue to be domestic. So while experience of the unique natural environment is important for them, they are more likely than international visitors to have other reasons as well for visiting:
• a variety of things to see and do (29%);
• relaxing (22%);
• spending time with others (14%);
• attending specific events (9%).
It’s interesting to see what counts as a ‘natural’ experience. In Alice it’s a visit to Anzac Hill – 57% of visitors to Central Australia do that. That’s more than visit Watarrka (Kings Canyon) – 47% – but fewer than visit Uluru (Ayers Rock) – 76%.
Natural attractions were the most visited attractions in The Centre, with Uluru/Kata Tjuta National Park the most visited attraction for all visitor types.
Drive visitors (37% of total – 49% arrive by air) were more likely than other visitors to go to the Alice Springs Desert Park and the gorges and waterholes, including Glen Helen Gorge, Ormiston Gorge and Ellery Creek Big Hole, while rail/coach visitors (13%) were significantly more likely than other visitors to go to local attractions such as the Royal Flying Doctor Service, Alice Springs School of the Air and Alice Springs Reptile Centre.
Alice Springs is the most visited town in The Centre – 89% of visitors to the region come here, compared to Yulara (69%) and Kings Canyon (49%), with around 11% of visitors stopping in Yulara for a daytrip.
Alice could definitely ‘sell itself’ better as 26% of visitors said “there was a lot more to do in Alice Springs than I expected”, and 23% said “Alice Springs was better than I expected”. Two in five visitors (40%) had not been aware of the range of things to see and do in Alice Springs prior to their visit, and, importantly, a third of visitors (34%) would have extended their stay had they been aware.
The majority of visitors – 61% – were very satisfied with Central Australia’s attractions, natural and commercial, which is 12 points higher than the VPS benchmark (that is, the average for the other regional tourist destinations surveyed). Attractions were a very important attribute of their visit to two in five visitors (39%) – 21 points higher than the VPS benchmark.
Learning about Aboriginal culture was an important reason for visiting The Centre for 25% of international visitors. It was in their Top 5 expectations of their visit, but did not figure in the list of experiences exceeding expectations.
Increasing the opportunity for “Indigenous Australians to share their culture” is a key recommendation of the project. Another is to improve digital marketing and the online distribution of information about the region.
Another Hermannsburg hero acknowledged
Warren H Williams – singer, musician and song writer from Hermannsburg in Central Australia – has won the $50,000 Red Ochre Award for his outstanding contribution to Indigenous arts. This is Australia’s highest peer-assessed award for an Indigenous artist presented by The Australia Council’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Arts Board.
The award was made today at the 5th National Indigenous Arts Awards, held at the Sydney Opera House.
While known widely as a country musician, Warren H brings together many threads of the contemporary Australian sound, merging Aboriginal music with country and rock, bringing these musical genres onto a world stage.
“Warren plays a vital and unique role in the Australian music industry,” says Lee-Ann Buckskin, who was appointed Chair of the Australia Council ATSIA Board this week. “He’s a quiet achiever who not only shows young people the way to have a successful career in the music industry, but also dedicates his energy to issues of health, Aboriginal rights and the environment.
“Whenever he talks, people listen; and when he plays, whether it’s in the laneways of Melbourne, in youth centres in Alice Springs, or live on national television – crowds are mesmerised by his music.”
The turning point for Warren H’s career came when he joined with John Williamson to sing ‘Raining on the Rock’ – the duet became an anthem for reconciliation and one of Australia’s most recognised country songs.
Warren H’s achievements have been recognised through many awards including NAIDOC Artist of the Year in 2006, the Country Music Centenary Medal from the Country Music Association of Australia in 2004, and a Golden Guitar with John Williamson and Amos Morris for ‘Australia Is Another Word For Free’ in 2009.
To date, Warren H has released nine albums. His latest offering is a move away from country music to a language album, Winanjjara, or ‘song man’ in Warumungu language. It was recorded with the song men of Tennant Creek and sung in two of his maternal ancestors’ languages: Warumungu and Western Aranda.
With his Red Ochre prize money, he plans to go to the US country music capital of Nashville to create an album.
“If there is anyone who deserves to be acknowledged for his integrity, commitment and compassion towards his fellow Aboriginal artists and community, it is Warren H Williams,” says Lee-Ann.
Nakkiah Lui, a playwright from Western Sydney won the inaugural $20,000 Dreaming Award, for a young and emerging Indigenous artist.
Two fellowships of $90,000 over two years were also announced, one going to musician Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu and the other to ‘digital native’, Jenny Fraser.
Source: Australia Council media release. Photo at top by Karen Steains. Above left: Warren H with his award outside the Sydney Opera House. Photo by Wayne Quilliam.
The award comes just a week after the finale of the Australian tour of Namatjira, a theatre production by Big hARTremembering the life and times of the acclaimed Western Arrernte artist, Albert Namatjira, and coincides with the current exhibition of contemporary Hermannsburg School watercolour artists.
Do these two people live in the same country?
From two media releases today …
As National Reconciliation Week activities kicked off today across the nation, the Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Jenny Macklin, encouraged all Australians to have a conversation about reconciliation and constitutional recognition.
Reconciliation Week is an important time to celebrate the contributions, cultures and history of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and their place in our nation [and] a great opportunity for Australians to continue the conversation about recognising Indigenous people in the Constitution.
The Australian Government is working to lay the necessary foundations for a successful referendum, including through a $10 million investment to build public awareness and community support for recognising Indigenous Australians in the Constitution.
I encourage all Australians to get involved in this important national conversation and show their support for constitutional recognition.
To our brothers and sisters … we say to you, we are with you and we will stand with you as one peoples against the Australian Federal Government Stronger Futures Bills and Northern Territory Policies.
We call on the Federal Government to scrap the Stronger Futures laws [and] we call for full return of our land rights. We do not want native title in its present form.
We call on our people to reject any meetings or discussions with government appointed bureaucrats, or representatives of government agencies on Stronger Futures laws.
We call on International UN bodies to review the Australian Federal government’s Stronger Futures laws under the human rights charter. And a full scrutiny be carried out against its human rights obligations.
We have been treated and effectively stigmatised as child sexual abusers, drug traffickers, rapist, and murderers under the Northern Territory Emergency Response which treatment continues today under the Stronger Futures laws.
We say no to further mining exploration, and we withdraw support of all new mines.
Richard Downs
Alyawarr spokesperson, Central Australia
Backpackers: beauty of country trumps fear for safety
Backpackers Zoé Mulliez and Maxime (Max for short) Delattre, political science students from Rennes in France, ignored poor advance publicity about Alice Springs and decided to make it part of their Central Australian visit earlier this month. Introduced to them by a mutual friend, the Alice Springs News Online asked them to write a frank account of their experience, why they had come, what they had found, and what they thought about it on reflection. It’s not all pretty but the good news is that they still want to come back.
Comment by Zoé Mulliez and Maxime Delattre
After a one-week journey that had taken us from Sydney to Adelaide, we were getting ready to our next step: Alice Springs. As European backpackers and through our different connections in Australia, we had received several feedbacks about the city which were, to say the least, fairly derogatory. Were we only content with the impressions we had heard, we would have expected to come across a ghost city inhabited by an Aboriginal community believed to be hostile to white people. However, Alice Springs, well known by travelers to be a stop-by city to access the Red Centre, sounded anyway attractive to us. We really wanted to get an understanding of the life-style of the inhabitants of the Outback as well as the Aboriginal culture and this way, be able to form our own opinion.
To get to Alice, we had chosen to take a train-ride and jumped for a twenty-six hour journey aboard the famous and historical train, the Ghan. We enjoyed the whole trip, especially getting to bed watching the sunset in Victoria and waking up surrounded by the beautiful landscapes of the Outback as first sceneries in the morning. We got to be hosted by locals at our arrival, an opportunity that added great value to our jaunt in Alice. Indeed, the prospect of being told about Alice Springs by people who had been living there for years was really exciting and much more attractive than a classic stay in a backpacker hostel.
‘We felt like our safety was not guaranteed’
When we first went for a walk on our own in the streets of the town, we had the strange feeling to be for the first time of our lives, on the side of the racial minority. We also felt like our safety wasn’t guaranteed or, to put it in other words, we felt like we were not welcome at all. Then, throughout the days, we were surprised by how few and how little were the interactions between the Aboriginal and the white communities. The gap appeared to us so wide that we happened to wonder whether the Aboriginal people could speak English.
On the other hand we learnt that many people come to live in Alice Springs, even for a short while, to seek for the jobs that the town has to offer and to enjoy themselves in one of the most gifted areas of the country in terms of landscapes and bush walks.
After those first impressions, we made our way to the beginning of our three-day tour in the Red Centre. Starting it in a local backpacker hostel, we noticed that the room was only half occupied. As well, our tour group was composed of only eight people instead of 24, usually foreseen. These things might also have concurred to make us wonder whether the tourism industry was dropping or if in the other hand the supply was increasing.
‘We much appreciated the commitment of our guide’
Once on the tour, while we had previously feared the itinerary and the activities to be far too touristy, we ended up having a great time enjoying the landscapes surrounding the mythic and color-changing Uluru. Not to mention that we much appreciated the commitment of our guide always ready to teach us about the wildlife, the bush medicine and the Aboriginal traditions. Yet we felt somehow frustrated to figure out why the area dedicated to watch the sunset and sunrise on Uluru was crowded and artificially organized with timetable, boardwalk …
On our way back to Alice, we felt fairly satisfied by the tour and quite excited at the idea of enjoying a last sunset on ANZAC Hill.
It’s a shame that we didn’t get to talk or have any contact with the Aboriginal community while we were in Alice or in Uluru. However we are far from pretending that it was all negative, we just wish we had more opportunity to get in touch with them.
We really enjoyed some galleries along the Todd Mall that feature Aboriginal arts and culture and we had a great time learning about their history and their traditions in the Cultural Centre within the Uluru National Park.
The sight we had through the Simpson’s Gap on the last day reminded us of the beauty of the MacDonnell Ranges that we didn’t get to climb up and thus, deeply made us feel like coming back very soon to a place that will always remain a source of curiosity to us.
See also young German visitor Max Bialek’s account of his working holiday in Alice and surrounds.
Watercolour artists make the country sing
Ormiston Gorge by Douglas Abbott.
By KIERAN FINNANE
The watercolour tradition known as the Hermannsburg School and established by Albert Namatjira is alive and well. An exhibition of current exponents at Talapi in Todd Mall shows their distinct approaches and leaves an impression of artists fanning out into the country in all directions, capturing it in many moods.
A superb large painting by Douglas Kwarlpe Abbott takes you into Ormiston Gorge, in the glow of late afternoon, when the gorge is full of water and golden lighten, the tree tops molten lime and and cliff-faces softly radiant in mauves and reddish-pinks. A feast of colour without tipping towards too much, this painting is so seductive of the senses that you can almost hear the hum of early summer.
Other smaller works by the same artist are all but on fire with the intense reds of sunstruck rockfaces, such as his rendering of Standley Chasm, a subject made familiar by his artistic forebears, Namatjira and Rex Battarbee.
Peter Taylor in contrast captures the bright white light defining the edges of things and structuring his compositions like the bones of a hand (see below). The dazzle becomes more diffuse across the sweeping valleys and dancing ranges rendered by Hubert Pareroultja or Gloria Paanka, while Elton Wirri brings out the shadows that firmly ground the landscape features.
Visitors to the gallery, many of them tourists coming in from their experiences of the Larapinta Trail or the West MacDonnells National park, have responded with enthusiasm. Works by Albert Namatjira Jnr, Douglas Abbott and Peter Taylor in particular have been running out the door. New works will be hung over the coming days.
Talapi, which works with art centres, makes a point of catering to diverse tastes and two other small exhibitions are on display at the same time. One features the work of Bindi Artists including a notable fresh talent, Ginger Conway. Ink drawings with watercolour washes are Conway’s medium. His hand is loose and sure, his eye acute and affectionate. His subjects are mostly dogs and birds (see above right), their character and movement so well observed with just a few fine lines. Even his tap has character. You don’t often see drawing from Aboriginal artists, so these are to relish.
Conway has attracted immediate national attention, having shown this year at Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi and Alcaston Gallery, both leading Aboriginal art specialists in Melbourne. Now you can see him in Alice Springs.
Simpson’s Gap by Peter Taylor.
Interested in Aboriginal art? See our recent report on the future of the Aboriginal art economy.
A glimpse of what it's like living on a handful of rice
By ERWIN CHLANDA
The proverbial handful of rice became, briefly, a reality for students and staff of St Philip’s College in Alice Springs.
By far the largest group, 76% of the 600 students taking part, had nothing else for lunch yesterday: eating just boiled rice, they represented the third world populations who mostly go hungry.
A second group had McDonald’s fare – hamburger and icecream: they represented the well-fed first world. It was the smallest group, 7% of the participants.
And the group in the middle, 17%, had fried rice with vegies.
This World at Lunch initiative was organised by Year 12 students Jessica Sullivan and Caroline McClure and members of the Senior Round Square Committee.
It made us aware how lucky we are, and we should all do more to help, said the students the Alice News spoke to.
Some encouraged other schools to hold a World at Lunch as well.
PICTURED are Ross Cairns, 13, and Round Square Prefect Caroline McClure, 17, with their handfuls of rice.
The many lives of stuff in Alice Springs
I have always loved pre-loved stuff and as a teenager I think I had the cream of the crop of stuff from deceased estates getting put back into circulation. Nice stuff, real stuff made out of really nice materials, from clothes to lamps and bits of furniture. All somehow original in their pre-worn or used character. Nowadays I feel like you’re lucky to get your hands on some vintage Target or IKEA. It does happen though and then it is a quintessentially Alice Springs experience to also bump into the item’s previous owner.
This is OK with me. In fact, one of the first things that I discovered with delight about Alice was the versatility of ‘used’ goods and the creativity and resourcefulness of handy types, particularly heightened in a town situated even further away than usual from the manufacturing place of an item.
What I can’t stand is mass-produced new stuff. Like the time my mum came to visit and bought me a dress from one of the clothing stores in town, a nice dress, nice fabric and cut, and not expensive. Anyway seems at least three other ladies shared that opinion as well as a lad whom I also spotted sporting the said frock. I have since locked the frock away until it becomes vintage or retro or whatever or everybody else has lost theirs or worn it out!
It’s a funny place Alice what with all this reincarnated stuff, not to mention the uncanny lack of a degree of separation with all the connections crisscrossing the continent only to meet in Alice Springs. “Oh you know so and so?”
“I grew up with him next door!”
“Yeah well, his sister is here in Alice.”
“No way!”
A brief interaction I overheard the other day between a couple of strangers waiting for takeaway coffee: “Did you get that at the clothes swap?” Eyeing up the woman beside her.
“Yes I did!” Stretching the fabric out between them to admire.
“Yeah, I loved that jumper! It used to be mine!”
Last year I found a beautiful though slightly broken lamp on the side of the road. This year, using it at a festival coffee stall, a little girl couldn’t help pulling her mum by the hand and with round eyes she asked me where I had got it. The mother interjected knowingly, “on the side of the road”, outside their house! I just loved the little girl’s wonder at these happenings.
At the same festival I sat next to a guy on a couch who looked at me and with a wide smile said, “I’m so happy to be sitting on this couch, I love this couch…” and, though he could have also been blissed out for other reasons, he happily recounted that he had bought the couch seven years previously and had left it to his old housemates when he left town. He too had round eyes at the fact that his couch had come to meet him at the festival, for old times’ sake, he supposed.
I get to thinking about all this stuff most afternoons as I walk home after work and look at a pair of sneakers strung up across a power line. And most afternoons I wonder about the person to whom they belonged and if they also look up at them on their way home from work most afternoons …
Photo: The town’s reading matter gets recycled at the annual Old Timers’ Fete. Alice News archive.
Mall works to start in August but more than bricks and mortar is needed
Make yourself at home: that’s the message to the public in Melbourne’s Federation Square, with deckchairs provided so you can chase the sun, or cushions to make sitting on the stairs more comfortable. Is there a lesson here for Alice?
Report, comment and photos by KIERAN FINNANE
Most of the services located underground in Todd Mall have now been identified and August is the expected start date for the first stage of redevelopment works.
These will focus on Parsons Street – widening the southern footpath, resurfacing the footpaths and road, redoing the stormwater drainage which will feed a water feature, introducing trees.
Pedestrian areas will not be affected in the lead-up to Christmas, with the works stopping short of the bandstand.
The sails and bandstand will be removed starting mid-January 2013, and roadworks will continue, creating the bend that will ultimately connect with the road into the northern end of the mall from Wills Terrace. At this stage public art and shade structures, the design of which has not yet been completed, will also begin to be installed.
Roadworks at the north end are planned to start in mid-February 2013.
The underground services have been detected using ground penetrating radar survey equipment, allowing tender documents to now be drawn up.
But “we could get surprises when we start digging”, says the Town Council’s director of Technical Services, Greg Buxton. Council is the project manager.
Mr Buxton says there are no “as build” drawings for the mall older than about 10 years, to show where everything is.
“That’s the difficulty of it, and everyone knows it’s like a spaghetti factory under there.”
The tender will be advertised this year in June, a contractor appointed in July, with the August commencement date allowing “a bit of wriggle room”, says Mr Buxton.
The public and mall traders will be advised of the timeframe for works in July.
COMMENT:
Meanwhile, Alice Springs will pass through another tourist season and head into another summer. Is there something to do other than wait?
New councillors were keen to take part in the Todd Mall Redevelopment Project Team: four of them are on it – Crs Geoff Booth, Steve Brown, Dave Douglas, Jade Kudrenko – together with Mayor Damien Ryan and Deputy Mayor Brendan Heenan.
It has met once to date, to receive a brief on the location of underground services, says Cr Heenan, and is due to meet again in the next couple of weeks.
They could put their heads together on initiatives other than capital works. People and activity are what will make a true difference in the mall, the town’s premier community space as the fortnightly markets and sporadic festivals and parades make clear.
Council could move, at little cost, to extend this kind of atmosphere on a small scale: what about calling for expressions of interest in running a coffee cart or pancake stall in the evenings (ice cream in the summer months)? Arts and craft stalls, perhaps on rotation, year round?
Should the permit system be revisited to encourage art sellers and buskers, rather than restrict them?
Melbourne City gets this right, and more. They get it that people simply strolling or sitting in the sun – or for that matter sleeping – is all part of the life you want to see in in your public spaces.
Pictured above left: A former newstand converted into a coffee stall, adding to the liveliness and appeal of Swanston Street in Melbourne. Could Alice Springs Town Council call for expressions of interest in running something like this after hours in the mall, when the cafes close? Pancakes in winter, icecream in summer?
Above right: Having fun with public art. Apart from having the guys having their photo taken, someone has also made a harmless addition to the briefcase – the rolled piece of paper, attached with sticky tape, reads ‘Top Secret’.
Below, first three: An ordinary shopping street becomes something much more – economic opportunity for some, simple enjoyment for others, Swanston Street, Melbourne.
Below, bottom two: People relaxing at Federation Square, on their own, in couples, in groups, chatting, reading, eating, waiting, dozing, catching the sun.
Alleged grog running cabbie may lose car; passenger who bought grog fined $120.
UPDATE 1:30 May 28: Police have now disclosed that the taxi’s passenger, described as a 34 year old female, was issued with a liquor infringement notice, an on-the-spot fine. That means the owner and purchaser of the liquor was fined $100 plus $20 victim levy under Section 75(1)(c) of the NT Liquor Act targeting anyone who “consumes, sells, supplies or otherwise disposes of liquor in a general restricted area.”
Meanwhile, forfeiture of the car may be part of the penalty the driver is facing.
UPDATE 10:10 May 24: Police are now seeking legal advice about the responsibilities of taxi drivers carrying passengers who have alcohol in their possession.
The Alice Springs News Online this morning put the following question to Police Commissioner John McRoberts: “If – say – a German tourist and his wife took a taxi, bought a bottle of champagne in a bottle shop, and then went to Anzac Hill to watch the sunset over a glass of bubbly, would the taxi driver be obliged to stop them from doing so?
“What would he be required to do? What would the police do to him if he did not act as the police requires?
Bear in mind that Alice Springs is also a prescribed town where drinking in public is prohibited.”
A spokesperson for the Commissioner replied: “The Police are currently seeking legal advice. Once there is a clearer position, I can let all the enquiring media know.”
Police will be seeking the forfeiture of a taxi whose driver is alleged to have taken alcohol to a “prescribed area” in Alice Springs.
They have seized the taxi under the Commonwealth Emergency Response Legislation and charged the cabbie.
“The 50 year-old man was followed by police after his taxi was observed at a drive-through bottle shop just after 2pm yesterday,” says Superintendent Catherine Bennett.
“The whole community must take responsibility for minimising harm done in the town.
“Police will allege the driver of the taxi was aware the town camp was a dry area and chose to ignore the large sign at the entrance. ”
UPDATE: Samih Habib Bitar, director of Alice Springs Taxis and former alderman (pictured right), says all drivers know that it is illegal for grog to be taken into town camps. He says sometimes people try to hide grog amongst their groceries. “It’s up to the driver to check,” he says, “to make sure their boot is clean. The company tells everyone to check.”
On the possible penalty for a breach, he says “we all must pay for our mistakes” and hopes everyone “learns a lesson” .
Councillor pursues plan to scrutinise performance of government agencies, NGOs
Above: Cr Steve Brown at the turnoff (in progress) into the new suburb of Kilgariff. He says council should make sure the development of affordable residential land there becomes a top priority for the NT Government.
By ERWIN CHLANDA
Publicly funded institutions will be getting marks on a monthly basis for what they are doing – or not doing – for Alice Springs, if newly elected Councillor Steve Brown gets his way.
“We’ll be marking them up or down,” he says, “and the results will be made public.”
This evaluation of “key performance indicators” will embrace Federal, state and local government instrumentalities and departments, as well as the myriad of local non-government agencies (NGOs) funded from the public purse, including Aboriginal organisations.
Performance will be judged from the perspective of the town council “because it is the town’s principal elected body” and would be in charge of the initiative.
Cr Brown says he’s been encouraged to work on the proposal by the success of a similar scheme in Port Augusta, and a more limited version of it by the new council, which has started holding meetings with selected departmental heads.
He says an ongoing dialogue between all the players would encourage their cooperation and coordination – absent for 30 years during which “not much constructive has happened”.
The self-employed electrician will be taking a week off work soon to get a handle on how many organisations there are in town, and what exactly they are meant to be doing.
Cr Brown says the focus should go well beyond alcohol abuse and law and order, which have already been discussed “at ridiculous lengths,” to embrace the town’s future growth, housing and strategic planning for the future.
“There is no overall combined strategy,” says Cr Brown.
“No-one seems to know what exactly everyone else is doing.”
He will be creating checklists so public concerns brought to the council can be matched with the appropriate agencies, and their dealings with the issues can be monitored.
A hotline for the public is part of the plan, a one-stop-shop ranging from expectations about the region’s development, to complaints about illegal camping, drinking and humbugging.
The idea is to identify government and NGO “underachievers” and to get them up to speed in a public process.
Cr Brown is seeking feedback about his idea from the public and his fellow councillors but he’s eager to make progress quickly.
“We cannot have endless consultation,” he says.
“If you have an idea talk to your favourite councillor.
“But we need to make a decision and get on with it, and if the public don’t like what we’re doing, they can kick us out.”