Liz, Brendan and the new town council's balance of power

Erwin Chlanda
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7

 
If the new town council’s Gang of Four – Steve Brown, Eli Melky, Dave Douglas and Geoff Booth – act as block they will need an extra vote to achieve a majority and that vote is most likely to come from Liz Martin (at left) or Brendan Heenan (above).
Both were re-elected, clearly are of a similar mindset to the Four on many issues, and also operate businesses.
In fact they are top performers in the vital yet currently seriously depressed tourism industry: Councillor (Cr) Martin runs the National Road Transport Hall of Fame. While last year saw the shutters going down for many businesses in the CBD, Cr Martin says the Hall had its best year ever. She’s just signed a $1m deal to build a display hall for Mack and Volvo trucks, rivaling the existing Kenworth complex. And Cr Heenan’s MacDonnell Range Tourist Park is like a small, very well run town that wins Brolgas year after year.
At least one council project, spending the $5m NT Government grant for rejigging the CBD, is facing delays not of council making: no-one knows where many of the underground water, electricity and sewage mains are located, so there’s no start date in sight for any digging. How could the new council break though on that front and what else can we expect from the holders of the balance of power in the 12th Town Council? ERWIN CHLANDA talked with them over the Easter weekend.
 
ALCOHOL RESTRICTIONS
 
HEENAN: They are not working, have never worked. All they do is putting a bandaid on it.
People are killing themselves – and other people – in domestic violence. It doesn’t matter what the floor price is. If an alcoholic wants alcohol he will get it, no matter what price he has to pay. He’ll break into a home.
There are statistics that less alcohol is being sold now. I don’t believe them. Go to the post office and watch how much alcohol comes in, pallets and pallets of mail orders [which are not captured in the local alcohol sales statistics] from south now, tonnes of the stuff, every day.
The worst thing was getting rid of the casks. Bundy and Jack Daniels bottles have very thick glass which can be turned into weapons. One of the rangers told me if you drive down the Todd River now you’ve got to be careful not to stake a tyre. There is so much glass in the river now. There is no way you’d walk there in your bare feet. Same with the footpaths. People are just breaking glass and I think that’s the worst thing that’s ever happened with the restrictions.
You remember the flagons many years ago? They were weapons. At least the cardboard casks disintegrate after a while and you can blow up the bladder and use it as a pillow.
Our pensioners in town are relying on their casks to have a glass of wine.
What should be done?
We need a tribunal or a special court, and if you get picked up three times in six months – and I’ve been saying this for 10 years – you go into mandatory rehab. It could be run by an NGO, or by several of them. It’s not voluntary.
These people have to be locked up, but you can teach them horticulture, woodwork, art, a bit like a work camp. A lot of them might be illiterate. We could make them literate.
Confinement could be for up to two years, three months to begin with, but if they’re picked up again it should be six months.
This would take the pressure off domestic violence, police, hospital, courts and gaol.
This way we’re looking after the health of those people. With restrictions they can and will still get alcohol.
MARTIN: Law and Order is firstly an NT Government issue but we also need to take the Federal Government to task. A lot of the issues come from the Intervention and the urban drift it is causing.
Some of these people are beyond rehabilitation.
There needs to be a place for them where they can be safe for the rest of their lives because they have no hope for rehabilitation.
If need be they should they be kept there against their wish?
Yeah, I think so. They really do want to be taken somewhere and looked after because they get sick of wandering around in limboland.
People tend to get themselves into a rut they can’t get out of and they need to have their environment changed.
Trouble is when they come out they are still sleeping rough or on someone’s floor, and nine times out of ten they’re in trouble again three months later. I’ve seen 14 year olds becoming 28 year olds and they’re back and back and back, into the same environment.
 
 
A THIRSTY THURSDAY FOR ALICE?
 
MARTIN: No. In Tennant Creek it put the drunks on the road. They were going down to Wauchope and up to Renner Springs and even down here to Alice Springs to get grog. They were actually drunk and driving on the road. It did give some relief to the emergency services and the nurses and the doctors and police but the mayhem started again the next day. To me it’s like a temporary measure. We need to get much more serious with dealing at a grassroots level.
A floor price I can live with, it doesn’t impact on me at all. But they are not drinking the cheap grog anyway. They are still drinking Jim Beam, Bundy, VB. What a floor price would do is reduce the tax on a bottle of Moet by 800% and reduce it on VB by about 7%.
We should not have gotten rid of casks. We had a lady out here the other day stabbed in the face with a bottle. People are starting to complain to council again about glass in the parks and the river.
HEENAN: No, no way. It didn’t work in Tennant Creek.
What I’d like to see is takeaway opening up at 9am. Why should we be any different to Darwin? We’re all Territorians.
 
 
CURFEW
 
MARTIN: We need extra financial support for strategies dealing with kids on the streets at night, and perhaps for extra rangers.
We need more temporary accommodation for when the one we have already is full, or there are families in there which other families can’t stay with.
Everyone makes a big issue out of grog but we find in just as many instances people are breaking in to get food.
We’ve had $1800 worth of damage done here and all they took was bread and cheese.
Perhaps a soup kitchen is needed, a new thing done by council or added to an existing service. A lot of kids don’t know what services are available to them.
Many of them are from out of town, so they can’t tap into a school. Their parents are down the pub or out in a drinking camp somewhere and the kids are left to free range.
Is there a case for a facility where kids can be confined, not as a matter of choice, but against their will, if necessary?
I think so. I really do believe that, after seeing children here in the drinking camps, exposed not only to physical and sexual harm but also drugs and alcohol, use and abuse. I’ve been horrified at some of the things I have witnessed out here.
It’s something the council needs to take a lobbying role in. There’s been a thing in recent years where people are a bit paranoid about interfering because it’s politically incorrect to do so. But when it’s about protecting people we need to do it.
Would it be a taking children away strategy?
It don’t think it should be in the first instance, but if you play up three times, for example, you’ve got to be accountable.
I don’t like the word institution, it too has a negative connotation, but it needs to be a place where children can be kept while the family gets support.
I don’t like the term curfew. It also brings up negative connotations. I believe we have to get the kids off the streets and we need some sort of night strategy. A curfew for the sake of a curfew without having the programs behind it doesn’t make sense. One of the things I notice out here [at the Transport Hall of Fame] is the second they crack down in town I have 500 times more dramas out here. All it does is force them into another area. And I know it happens on the Northside and the Eastside. We need to cover the whole of the municipality, not just the CBD area.
HEENAN: I don’t believe in a curfew. Who’s going to run it? Who is going to pay the cost involved?
A curfew doesn’t solve the problem of getting the kids off the streets. If they see someone coming to pick them up they just run away. It doesn’t solve the problem.
What would?
The Youth Hub at the old Anzac Highschool, run by Matty Day, will make a big contribution. We need a facility to which the kids want to come along. If they can’t sleep at home we need a facility where they can sleep, where they feel safe and get a meal, and then get them to school the next day.
Half the break-ins in town are kids stealing food.
I’ve mentioned this to Damien Ryan, Steve Brown and a few others, we need a soup kitchen. Council would need to back it and maybe put in a bit of funding. It could be run by people like St Vincent de Paul, the Salvos or the Youth Hub. It could be a caravan. They can tow it wherever the kids are. We need to interact with the kids. Take them to basketball – something the kids want to come along to. It would be voluntary. Interact with them.
For example, the YMCA isn’t used at night. We need a facility like that somewhere.
It’s not a council responsibility but we should back it, or I would, anyway. The council could coordinate it, or certainly lobby the Government for funding.
Supermarkets could donate food approaching use-by its date.
 
 
ROUND TABLE, PORT AUGUSTA STYLE
 
Under Mayor Joy Baluch the Port Augusta council introduced monthly meetings of local state and Federal agencies, NGOs and others engaged in welfare and law and order work, to coordinate their activities and give account of them. The council employed a Safety Officer who checks on what these agencies do – or not do. Mayor Baluch says the council need to control this watchdog function because all that goes on in the town is council business, because council represents the people. Would you favour such a system in Alice Springs?
HEENAN: We have 57 agencies here. Some need amalgamating, so we get them down to eight or 10. There could be some overlapping and some gaps. We don’t really know.
Would the council make the assessment?
The council perhaps would not have the power.
Could it not start a monthly round-table conference?
We could probably do that, but you’d have 57 people ’round the table. It’s just not going to work.
Port Augusta has 15 or 16. You’d pick the major ones.
I’d be happy to do that. Council also has a subcommittee that meets with Tangentyere and Lhere Artepe.
What about the government and the major other NGOs? Some of them have a budget as big as the council’s. Should not the major ones be brought to the table?
That’s probably a good idea, just to see what’s happening, and where the gaps are. And we’d still need to know what the minor organisations are doing. Perhaps there is a great deal of money being wasted, people doing the same thing. What I’d like to see is amalgamate them until there are 10 or 12 or 15, so we can have a bit more control over them.
MARTIN: A round table? Yes, absolutely. It happens now with council staff and elected members doing their own research and monitoring. It would be good to have someone specifically doing it, a researcher.
In Alice Springs, with lots of Federal funding, people get very protective of their own little patches and sometimes they are not very willing to let out the information about what they are doing or not doing. There is a lot of duplication but also some gaps. The trouble I can see is that people may not recognise the need to report back to local government when they are funded by another level of government.
What would you say to them?
This is our town. We represent the town and we are the government closest to the people. And people are on the phone to us when they want to whinge. Yep, that’s something I would really like to see happen.
 
 
SHOULD PARKS BE SOLD?
 
MARTIN: I’m against it now. I would be prepared to look at it again, in view of the current housing crisis, but with Kilgariff and other developments coming up, I say definitely “no” to the sale of parks at the moment.
HEENAN: Selling parks is not an issue.
 
 
ARE LEAKS A BAD THING?
 
MARTIN: What we find that usually gets leaked isn’t the full story. You’d like to correct it but you can’t [because it is in “confidential”].
Cr Martin says matters concerning staff members, salaries and unresolved tenders should remain under wraps.
Most things I supported to be kept in confidential had a personal aspect in it. Sometimes 90% could go out there but it’s the rest that needs to be kept under wraps. That’s something I’m happy to look at with Hal Duell [see his comment on this site that proposes a new approach to matters in confidential].
At times information is kept confidential until the facts are checked.
HEENAN: Unresolved tenders, matters that can be detrimental to other people, personal issues. There is not a lot else that should be in confidential.
What about the pool story the Alice Springs News Online broke after a leak? No personal issues were involved, no tender, it was simply about public money being spent?
There were negotiations going on. That should not have been released.
 
 
SHOULD THE COUNCIL GET TOWN PLANNING POWERS?
 
HEENAN: We want town planning but we’d need $2m a year from the NT Government to run it.
At present two council nominees are on the Development Consent Authority (DCA) – you are one of them – but they are not allowed to take instructions from the council, nor represent it. They are sitting as individuals in their own right. And in any case, the Minister can do what he likes.
At the moment the DCA meets monthly just after the council so the council does not have the information until the Monday after the DCA meeting.
Could the council not be a “submittor”, same as any other citizen in town, who can make a submission for or against a proposal, and the Minister, if he disregarded it, would be seen to be going against the town’s elected representatives?
Yes, he would certainly have to give weight to it.
[Cr Heenan says car parking is a big issue: Developers can make a one-off payment of $6800 for each obligatory car parking space they don’t build. In Darwin that figure is around $20,000.]
MARTIN: I would like to see it as a council responsibility. It is Australia-wide. But to do it all at once it would be a huge burden on the ratepayer. We need to take it step by step and we would need government funding. And I don’t think the NT Government wants to let go of it. Nor would a Country Liberal Government. Ultimately, 10, 20, 30 years down the track, the council should have full responsibility. I would like to see it happen sooner but I can’t see it in the very near future.
 
 
SHOULD THE COUNCIL PAY FOR GRAFFITI CLEAN-UPS?
 
MARTIN: I would have supported Eli Melky’s stand except for the three words he had at the end of his motion: “In its totality”. I believe corporate and national companies need to have some responsibility when they leave an empty building.
Sometimes landlords … when they are not here they don’t care. Council has support in place for removing graffiti, particularly for pensioners and others experiencing difficulties. We need to better promote these mechanisms.
HEENAN: It’s not only youths, adults are doing it, too. We need spaces where people can practice graffiti as an art. There is some really fantastic stuff – look at the Youth Hub and the skatepark. There are little laneways in Melbourne being brought to life with aerosol art, which makes these laneways safer. More people coming to look at it.
What about the mandatory removal of graffiti from private properties: Should the owners continue to have to pay for it?
Yes. It’s costing the ratepayers $100,000 a year now. Homeowners can get a voucher from the council for materials to remove graffiti.
 
 
IS CCTV WORKING?
 
MARTIN: Since it has been monitored in Darwin there have been some charges laid, more than when it was done from here. I’d like to see some more cameras around the CBD but also more lighting. There are some really dark corners. The kids aren’t stupid, they see a cop car and they head straight for a dark corner.
HEENAN: I’d like to see more CCTV in certain hotspots. Police are solving a lot of crime through CCTV now that is being monitored in Darwin. Trained people watching it all the time can recognise behavior and prevent crime. But it must be very frustrating for police to be picking up people and then for the courts to go and release them. I know the jails are full but we can talk about bracelets, for the soft areas of crime. These people can still be working and supporting their families and be under a 6pm to 6am home detention.
We need more lights in some areas currently too dark.
 
 
SEVEN OF THE NINE ELECTED MEMBERS OWN OR RUN A BUSINESS: SHOULD THEIR SKILLS BE APPLIED TO SOCIAL OBJECTIVES?
 
MARTIN: There’s plenty of work and plenty of education but we need to have some sort of transitional thing get the long term jobless into real employment. I don’t know what it should be, maybe a four months support program?
I’m a firm believer in the dole so long as they work for it. We’ve got plenty of rubbish to pick up, lots of pensioners who need their fence painted.
But could the council not be instrumental in providing real work, for example, in horticulture? We have plenty of land, plenty of water and certainly, lots of manpower.
It is outside the square. There are lots of good ideas in the council but Alice Springs has a small rate paying base and whatever we do within the current structure is going to come as a sacrifice from the rate payer, and to the benefit of people who are not rate payers.
The NT Government fumbled the horticultural project on AZRI land. Could the councillors who are in business not apply their talents to making something like this work, as a money making venture?
There is lots of opportunity for council if we were given the manpower and finances. The staff would have to come on board with that. I would be very wary of going into competition with private enterprise. Plus you need to go through the process of meetings. What takes the council 60 days takes me six days here (at the Transport Hall of Fame). I just do it. That part was frustrating for me in the beginning.
The council has enormous powers. And all you need is five votes to have a majority in council.
I’d be happy to look at anything that may get people into work. The council has some very good business brains. I hope people will put issues behind them and work together.
 
 
HOW CAN WE RE-VITALISE THE CBD?
 
HEENAN: We need to bring people into the mall, people living as well as tourism in the CBD. The old Commonwealth Bank and the Melanka proposal, both five stories, should bring people to the town centre. The Melanka project has been altered so much I think it has to go back to town planning. There are no underground car parks now because they are too expensive. There are more single-room apartments. I suppose that’s going to be good for tourism and investment buyers and young couples.
Land is getting too expensive to go to just three storeys.
Cr Heenan says the $5m grant from the NT Government for the CBD revitalisation was received late last year. The major initiatives have been worked out while finer details are still subject to public consultation. But a major hiccup is that the exact location of underground services – water, sewerage and electricity – is not known, and the major road works will have to wait. It is not known how long the survey of the services will take, how much it will cost and who is going to pay for it.
When you start digging you’ve got to know what’s under there. It’s going to take quite a few months.
We will probably do a section at the time but it will be 18 months at least from when we start and we still need to liaise with the shopkeepers.
MARTIN: This is a legacy of how the Territory used to be: “Bugger the paperwork, we’re doing it our way.” When I was a kid and you wanted to build a shed you just built a shed. In the last 20 years we had to play catch-up to the rest of Australia. It’s going to be big dollars. Power and Water will have to pay for it. They have not said yes yet.
 
 
MISCELLANEOUS & WISH LIST
 
MARTIN: The council should be gifted land in Kilgariff, for uses ranging from depots to playgrounds. Sports grounds should be upgraded to engage youth. The library needs an outreach service: Sit in the park and read to the kids. Solar Cities should continue its link with Watersmart. Take the Berrimah Line down a few rungs.
Minister for Central Australia Karl Hampton: I’ve more to do with the other Ministers who are Darwin based, and that does make it hard. I’m not a very sporty person and I believe that is where he has his primary emphasis.
Has Cr HEENAN been buttonholed yet for his game changing vote? No, not yet. We might be surprised who comes up with what!
Cr HEENAN’s wish list (the first three were presented by the council to the current NT Government, and the Opposition Leader):-
• From the NT Government, another $5m for the next phase of the CBD revitalisation.
• Also from the NT Government, $2m for an all-ability park which disabled kids can use as well.
• A big block for a council machinery depot.
• At least 150 blocks to be released in stage one of Kilgariff with at least 20 to 30 for first home buyers “at cost” – around $70,000 each. They would need to be built on within two years or else the land would need to be sold back to the government, for the price paid for it.
• Five to 10 acres for a big rose garden “so we can have a rose festival every year, and encourage people to smarten up their gardens. We have the beautiful climate for roses here”.
 
PHOTOS (from top): CCTV in the mall • Town park sales not on the agenda for Cr Martin and Cr Heenan • Drinkers’ debris on one of the picturesque hills of the Eastside • Cr Martin with a Volvo truck soon to be displayed in a new $1m display area at the booming National Road Transport Hall of Fame • Police rounding up alleged illegal drinkers at the base of Anzac Hill.
 

Two killed in fiery car crash

Erwin Chlanda
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0

Two people died in Alice Springs when a car hit a light pole and burst into flames on Saturday.
At about 11pm a police patrol observed a vehicle entering the Gregory Terrace and Bath Street roundabout in the wrong direction.
Police activated their emergency lights to stop the vehicle, and believed the driver was about to comply. However, the driver chose not to, evading the direction of police and continued to drive on.
At the Stott Terrace and Leichhardt Terrace roundabout, the driver fled the police vehicle at a dangerous speed at which point the police ceased to follow the vehicle. This decision was made in accordance with police policy in order to minimise further risk to the fleeing driver, their vehicles occupants, other road users and the police themselves.
About four minutes later, the Triple Zero call centre received a call regarding a serious motor vehicle crash on South Terrace with the vehicle was reported to be in flames.
Upon police arrival at the scene, the same vehicle that had evaded the direction of police had crashed into a power pole on the opposite side of the road, tearing the power pole from the ground and ejecting a passenger.
Both the male driver and the female passenger who was ejected from the vehicle were confirmed dead at the scene.
Police used their fire extinguisher to attempt to extinguish flames in order to rescue another female passenger who was trapped in the vehicle prior to the Fire and Rescue Service also arriving at the scene.
This female passenger, another female passenger and a young child who is believed to have crawled from the burning wreckage, were taken by St John Ambulance to Alice Springs Hospital with varying injuries.
There were five persons in the vehicle in total.
The identities of the deceased male and female are yet to be formally confirmed however preliminary enquiries indicate the vehicles occupants are all from a remote community, the driver being a 27-year-old male who is disqualified from driving.
The crash will be investigated as deaths in police custody.
Police Commissioner John McRoberts said: “The Police Officers acted appropriately in attempting to stop the vehicle initially before ceasing to follow the vehicle once the fleeing driver sped off at a dangerous speed.”
Police are calling for any witnesses who may have seen this silver Holden commodore sedan with four adult occupants and one child, driving around the Alice Springs town centre in the lead up to this crash, between 10.30 and 11pm last night to contact them on 131 444.
The 2012 road toll now stands at eight compared to two for the same time period last year.
The name of the remote community where the deceased and surviving passengers are believed to be residents of will not be named until identities have been confirmed and next of kin notified.
(Police release.)

Paintings and poems take you by the hand into this country

Kieran Finnane
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0

 

 Three friends – two visual artists, one poet – open themselves to the country around them and to one another. What happens there, like life, is partly elusive, but also partly traced in the work on show at Watch This Space, under the title Beyond Conversation.
Through the work, they take us into the country with them.
Here are Pamela Lofts’ small windows (in oil pastel) onto, mostly, great big spaces, evoking their grand rhythms, their many moods under changing skies, the multiplicity of form and colour that gives the lie to the un-nuanced branding of this place as the Red Centre or the Outback, or even those friendlier common namings – the desert, the bush.
Here are Jenny Taylor’s penetrating studies (in oil on board) that build an architecture between land and sky, where sky and cloud give shape to the land beneath, where hills lose their mass and hang like veils one in front of the other, receding into light-filled space, where smoke fills the air and makes us see another country – poignant in its dimness like a remembered place (or perhaps a remembered way of seeing a place).
And here are Sue Fielding’s affecting poems (as wall texts and in a beautifully produced chapbook). While Lofts and Taylor are well-known, for most this is a first encounter with Fielding as poet.  She finds with seeming ease the word-pictures that situate us on a quartz hill, on the edge of a chasm, in a car driving back in from the west to town.
This is different from what the paintings and drawings do. They imply presence through a point of view, through the artist’s gaze.
The poems enact a presence – the speaker walks, climbs, lies down, watches, takes off her hat.
They also put others into the picture, with great tenderness – ‘Give me your hand’,   ‘I look at you’,    ‘the long form of you lithe / and unencumbered’,    ‘your lungs grabbing at the air’,    ‘you sat away from me’,    ‘I wept in my room for everything I / cannot change for you’.
They articulate the love that is the underpinning of the show. Love between people. Love for this country. Love for art, which is about much more than what we see finally on the gallery walls. It’s about the act of making art – not the marks so much, or the word-images, but the attention brought to the moment that allows them, the artists, to receive experience and then to give experience back.
The show is also about simple companionability and mutual support around creative endeavour. We can forget how generative it can be, to put something else on the metaphoric table other than food, drink and talk – and it is within reach of us all.
This is generous art, loving and open – if only we could administer it as a tonic for our town.
 
Pictured, top: Undoolya, looking west by Jenny Taylor. • Above right, Oil pastel by Pamela Lofts. • Below: From left, Pamela Lofts, Jenny Taylor, Sue Fielding. Photo by Sally Hodson.

 
 
At Watch This Space, George Crescent, Alice Springs, till May 5.
 
This is a version of the talk by KIERAN FINNANE given at the show’s opening on March 30.

Winds to stoke the fire of who you are

Kieran Finnane
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An inter-cultural festival grows deep in the desert. Something like it is mooted for Alice Springs. What can we learn from our northern neighbours? 
 
By KIERAN FINNANE
 
“Fire is the glow of life. The four winds – from north, south, east, west – control the fire, control us. Milpirri is the story that will ignite the fire of who they are.”
‘They’ are the participants in the Milpirri Festival whose fourth manifestation will be staged at Lajamanu, in the northern reaches of the Tanami Desert, halfway between Alice Springs and Darwin, in October this year.
Speaking was the festival’s artistic director, Steve Patrick Jampijinpa (pictured), a son of the community and a former school teacher there, now a research fellow at the Australian National University. Mr Patrick gave the keynote address at this week’s forum on experimentation and innovation in desert arts.
The motto of the festival is “speak to the land, the land will speak back”, he said. The next image he invoked (that I caught from his softly spoken speech delivered as a string of beautiful metaphors) was of “hot air rising, cold air falling” – a metaphor for coming together, possibly in a  thunderhead – a “voluminous cloud full of fury”.
In coming together “there’ll always be a bit of a rough time” but out of the clouds comes “life-giving rain”.
That rain has grown the festival, a joint effort of the community and the Darwin-based Tracks Dance Company which has been working with the Warlpiri people of Lajamanu since 1988. So Milpirri is “an inter-cultural venture”.
The “hot air, cold air” metaphor, anticipating that “sparks might fly”, has headed off fear: “It allows me to stand strong in my culture, and Steve in his, and to see what happens,” said Tim Newth, co-artisic director from Tracks.
The photographs of the last Milpirri, from 2009, included some of boys doing break dancing, in front of a striking backdrop of banners painted with traditional story-telling motifs. The banners were not just “things that are good to look at”, said Mr Patrick, they are “things that are supposed to talk back to us”, reinforcing the Warlpiri sense of self. He represented this with a schematic diagram of the Southern Cross, with the land in the centre, law and language at its northern and southern points, ceremony and skin names at its western and eastern points.
A “skin name”  is much more than a name, he explained: “It is the place where you see yourself starting off on your journey in life.” If you are someone “with your head in the clouds and your feet on the ground”, you are someone “who exists”. Not to know your place is to be “just a wanderer”.
The boys doing break dancing might seem to be wandering in a global culture, but he said their dance was based on a traditional story: “It might seem to be hip-hop but we are trying to interpret it in our own way”.
He gave other examples of youthful fashions in Lajamanu – coloured wrist bands, even coloured plaster casts for footy players who’ve broken their arm – reflecting the wearer’s moiety … the winds of change.
The history of funding for the festival reflects strengthening local support and ownership. Earlier funding came from “a long way away” through Tracks (funded by the Australia Council and the NT Government) and Rio Tinto, said Mr Newth. Now the funding is more local, with the store making a “major” contribution, as is Newmont Mine and GMAAAC (Granites Mines Affected Areas Aboriginal Corporation). The Tracks website also lists as sponsors the Central Desert Shire, the Northern Tanami IPA (Indigenous Protected Area), Southern Cross Television, and the National Institute for Experimental Art (which organised this week’s forum, an arm of UNSW’s College of Fine Art).
 
Photos, top and bottom, Milpirri Festival, 2009 by Peter Eve.
 

'Good men, like the good eagles, bring the meat home'

Kieran Finnane
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By KIERAN FINNANE
 
What really got the weavers going was thinking about the nature of eagles, how they care for their families. They were camped not far from Amata, the home community for several of them, in the APY Lands of South Australia’s far north and were working on a commission from Tandanya, the National Aboriginal Cultural Institute in Adelaide.
Nyurpaya Kaika-Burton’s husband would come along to the camp every day and bring the women meat, including the favoured bush turkey. They ate the flesh and used the feathers in their weaving.  Nyurpaya would think her husband was just like an eagle that goes out hunting meat for his whole family.
Hunting is what the eagle does best, he is an expert hunter and great provider – that’s what the women like about eagles, what they admire in them.
“Our good men are just like the good eagles, they bring the meat home.”
Several of the Tjanpi weavers travelled into Alice Springs, to speak at a forum on Monday about experimentation and innovation in desert arts. The presence of a skilled translator, Linda Rive, and the stimulus of a slide show that documented their artists’ camp and the development of the work, allowed them to relate in rich detail their experience of this commission, with the final work currently  showing at Tandanya.
What was particularly compelling was to hear about the thinking behind the work: their woven birds are much more than objects to delight the eye. They draw on the strength of their ancient culture and its lessons for everyday living, perhaps never so poignantly relevant as now.
Although weaving is an introduced skill in the desert, it has “spread like wildfire” across the APY Lands since 1995. The women spoke of their realisation that the grasses they were collecting for the activity grew on their sacred country, that working with them allowed them to “weave the country” – weave its sacred stories into new things.
They have long taken inspiration for their fibre sculptures from all sorts of animals, but for this commission, a painting by Ilawanti Ken set them in the right direction for responding to Tandanya’s theme, “Deadly: in-between heaven and hell”. The painting showed a single eagle rising in flight with its talons gripping a small ‘roo. The hills around Amata are home to eagles and the plains are rich with different grasses, making for an ideal artists’ camp.  As the women sat and worked on their weaving, they thought a lot about the meaning of Ilawanti’s painting, about the eagle’s hunting prowess, its ancient story and song, about what the land provides, the strength of their culture, and about looking after one another.
Working together made them productive, innovative and able to contend with the challenges thrown at them – wildfires causing their materials to go up in smoke, followed by dust storms and a three day downpour. It was difficult but they were happy – the rain would bring up new grasses.
They expressed their pleasure in younger women watching and learning from them, just as they had learned from older women. It’s hard work, “it kills the hands”, but the only way through is “to keep going”.
This work in its whole process from inception to the forum presentation, is a great illustration of the rewards of putting “art based on stories” at the heart of the art economy. At the forum, Tim Acker, research leader with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Economies project of the CRC for Remote Economic Participation, said that this has been the biggest single emphasis from people right across the industry, surveyed during the first year of the five-year project. There has been an over-emphasis on money and the market and the industry needs to be “recalibrated” to focus on how and why art is produced.
The point is not “how may units you are moving”, he said. The content of work is what drives consumers; they are looking for work that is “genuine, pure, connected, complete”.
Money is nonetheless a day-to-day issue for artists everywhere – it can be the difference between working and not working – and the present downturn is widespread, putting a lot of pressure on art centres and galleries.
But Skye Omeara, manager of the acclaimed Tjala Arts, based at Amata, argued that there are “opportunities in a tight market”, the “doom and gloom can be self-perptuating” and that the job of artists and art centres is to come up with art solutions. She mentioned the frustration of men at Amata with the lack of interest in punu – work in wood, such as spears, boomerangs, shields. Their solution is to develop a multi-media installation featuring the weaponry.  It will need some money to produce but she said there’s keen interest.
This in turn was a good illustration of the point made by a number of speakers at the forum, that the values of traditional culture can provide contemporary Aboriginal people with a rich range of opportunities.
 
Pictured, from top: Tjanpi weavers from Amata with their finished ‘big birds’, from left Nyurpaya Kaika, Yaritji Young, Paniny Mick (obscured), Ilawanti Ken and Naomi Kantjuriny. • An eagle brings home the meat for its young. Painting by Ilawanti Ken. • The weavers’ camp near Amata, in the APY Lands. • Below: The weavers do inma (song and dance) at Tandanya.  Photos courtesy Tjanpi Desert Weavers.

We've seen tough mayoral battles before!

Erwin Chlanda
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0

By ALEX NELSON
 
Mayor Damien Ryan’s triumph over four rivals who had run a concerted effort to unseat him is a considerable achievement, especially in light of the fact that he is the only local government leader of all the NT’s major population centres to have been returned to office following the recent council elections.
Ryan’s victory maintains the pattern of every Alice Springs mayor since 1977 winning at least two successive elections; but it’s also the fourth occasion where the result has been determined by preference distribution.
The earlier occasions were George Smith in 1977, Fran Kilgariff in 2000, and Ryan in 2008. Thus Ryan’s recent victory is unique as this marks the first time an incumbent mayor has had to rely on preferences to cross the line.
Setting aside this distinction, there are marked similarities between Ryan and former Mayor George Smith. Both were small businessmen and both were elected mayors without prior involvement on the town council. Neither had stood for alderman, too.
Similarly, each faced stiff competition in their first campaigns from prominent sitting aldermen. In 2008 Damien Ryan’s most serious rival was Alderman Murray Stewart, out of a total field of five candidates vying for the office.
Ryan initially polled 39.7 per cent of the primary vote but won comfortably with 67 per cent after distribution of preferences. His nearest rival Stewart had won 19.5 per cent of first preference votes for mayor, followed by Alderman Jane Clark with 15 per cent.
Both challengers easily retained their council seats although the final results for the town council had to wait for a recount of the votes for aldermen.
In 1977 George Smith also competed for mayor from a field of five candidates. Smith’s greatest rival was Alderman Luigi “Gino” Marinucci, followed by newcomer Di Byrnes.
Smith maintained a narrow lead throughout the count, initially just ahead of Byrnes until preferences were distributed which then placed Marinucci second.
The final result was very tight, with Smith only 43 votes ahead of Marinucci. There was also a recount of votes except on this occasion it was for the mayor’s position.
Just as Murray Stewart and Jane Clark benefited from the mayoral race in 2008 to win early positions as aldermen, so did Gino Marinucci and Di Byrnes in 1977.
Remarkably, in the town council elections that followed in 1980, in which George Smith became the first incumbent mayor to stand for re-election, there are also several uncanny resemblances to the recent campaign that Ryan has just won.
Both incumbent mayors faced criticism of their performance and stiff competition from four rivals.
In 2012 a sitting alderman, Eli Melky, was one of the four to challenge Ryan; in 1980 it was (by then) former Alderman Gino Marinucci who again sought to challenge Smith.
In 2012 the most prominent opponent of Damien Ryan was Steve Brown, who had previously run for alderman in 2008 and just missed out being elected. Brown was a chairman of the CLP’s Alice Springs Branch but later resigned from the party.
In 1980 George Smith’s most serious opponent was lawyer John Reeves, who had polled second in a by-election in 1979 (triggered by the resignation of Alderman Gino Marinucci). Reeves was a chairman of the ALP’s Alice Springs Branch but was later to have his differences with his party, too.
In 2012 Damien Ryan was also challenged by tyre sales businessman Dave Douglas; in 1980 George Smith was challenged by car sales businessman Wayne Thomas.
Finally, the rank outside fourth challengers for mayor was Samih Habib Bitar and Dawn Riley for the elections of 2012 and 1980 respectively.
Variations of these parallel histories emerge when comparing the results of the 2012 and 1980 campaigns.
In 2012 all four mayoral candidates also sought election as councillors (formerly aldermen). Three of them – Brown, Melky and Douglas – were successful; Habib Bitar was not.
In 1980 mayoral candidate Gino Marinucci did not seek to run as alderman (like Murray Stewart in 2012) but the other three did. Wayne Thomas was successful but Dawn Riley missed out.
John Reeves’ case is a special mention – he polled very high with first preference votes; but the 1980 elections for aldermen were the first to be determined by exhaustive distribution of preferences, and Reeves became the new “block voting” system’s first major casualty – he missed out.
However, he subsequently won a by-election in 1981 to become an alderman of the ASTC.
Another variation of the results between 1980 and 2012 is that George Smith won an absolute majority for re-election as mayor whereas Damien Ryan did not.
This was important as Smith’s first term performance (like that of Damien Ryan) had attracted heavy criticism. At the time returned Alderman John Jenkins was quoted “that as the general competence and overall performance of the previous council was called into question by several candidates during their election campaign, it was significant that the Mayor was re-elected with an absolute majority” (Centralian Advocate, 29 May 1980).
Smith’s election victory at this juncture presages that of Damien Ryan’s predecessor, Fran Kilgariff. As outlined earlier, in 1977 George Smith was one of five candidates running for mayor to replace retiring Mayor Tony Greatorex. Smith won with a narrow majority of 43 votes after distribution of preferences.
In 2000 a similar situation arose upon the retirement of Mayor Andy McNeill. Once again five candidates were running for mayor.
The front-runners on this occasion were Jenny Mostran, Fran Kilgariff and Geoff Miers, all aldermen of the previous council.
Mostran, with 34 per cent of the primary count, had a healthy margin of 724 votes ahead of her nearest rival Fran Kilgariff (27 per cent), with Geoff Miers trailing a respectable third place (23 per cent).
However, Mostran’s margin proved insufficient after the distribution of preferences enabled Kilgariff to come from behind to win office with a majority of just nine votes, the smallest in the town council’s history.
(In light of this experience the speculation that Damien Ryan, with his much higher primary count and wider percentage gap to his nearest rival Steve Brown, was at risk of losing after the distribution of preferences was never realistic. However, Ryan’s overall majority after distribution of preferences in 2012 is 56 per cent, well down from his 2008 result of 67 per cent).
As George Smith had done in 1980, Fran Kilgariff successfully ran for a second term as mayor in 2004, winning with an absolute majority. The similarity of the percentage figures is truly astounding – George Smith won with 50.6 per cent of first preference votes, Kilgariff won with 50.4 per cent.
The extraordinary parallels provide a strong temptation to make predictions about the immediate future of the new council; and if history does provide any guide then the portents are grim.
While the controversies of the recent council are still fresh in our minds and leading some to claim this year’s town council election campaign was the most divisive in the history of the ASTC, history shows otherwise.
The second term of George Smith’s mayoralty was characterized by intense dissension and conflict within the council; and by the time of the next election in 1984 Smith had already long resigned as mayor and left town.
When the new council of 1984 was elected, no alderman from the council of 1980 was present (with the exception of George Smith’s successor, Mayor Leslie Oldfield).
It’s to be hoped the incoming mayor and councillors of 2012 will be mindful of this dark episode and seek to avoid a repetition of history.
PHOTO: Mayor George Smith with photographer Di Calder posing for her calendar featuring prominent locals in the nude – well, almost. Photo by CARMEL SEARS.
CARTOON: “St. George slays the dragon” by BUTCH PEVERILL published for George Smith’s campaign for re-election as Mayor during the town council elections of 1980. Most of Smith’s campaign rivals are depicted in the background; they are John Reeves holding a tree branch (a reference to his chairmanship of the local Australian Conservation Foundation branch), feminist Dawn Riley burning a bra, and Wayne Thomas, a prominent car salesman, bouncing on shock absorber springs. One rival, Gino Marinucci, is missing from the line-up.

Minister's planning decision flies in the face of Alice locals

Erwin Chlanda
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14

Planning Minister Gerry McCarthy has rejected the submissions from the Alice Springs Rural Area Association (ASRAA), which represents about 70 members, and from an undisclosed number of individual objectors, by giving permission to a land owner in Petrick Road to develop blocks substantially smaller than is permitted in the town plan.
ASRAA chair Rod Cramer says he has not been contacted by Mr McCarthy, nor by Karl Hampton, the Minister for Central Australia over the issue.
The minimum block size in the area is two hectares but Mr McCarthy gave permission for three lots of 1.79 ha, 1.8 ha and 1.56 ha, respectively.
The town council commented only on the application’s technical aspects of roads, stormwater and other services, says Greg Buxton, Director Technical Services.
He says while the council was at liberty to comment on other issues it did not, because the NT Government authorities were unlikely to “pay attention” as the council has no role in questions of zoning.
This is a long way from what the new Labor Government, through its Minister Peter Toyne, proclaimed in August 2001: “Labor [will] open up the town planning process, shrink the powers of the Minister to override the Development Authority, make it fully representative, give it a much greater autonomy from the Minister, and link it much more closely to local government.”
Block sizes are a long running issue for rural area residents, which fought – unsuccessfully – a similar exceptional permit granted by the CLP Minister Max Ortmann to the former owner of the land, the Hornsby vineyard.
The residents and the association also fought other applications – always on the grounds that the two hectare limit should not be violated: They did not want their lifestyle, for which they had made significant financial sacrifices, to be tampered with.
At the time of the Ortmann decision assurances were given that allowing smaller blocks would not set a precedent for any future developments, yet Mr McCarthy referred to that development to justify his own ruling.
Says Mr Cramer: “This is the most pathetic of reasons, like a five-year-old saying someone else did it first. He’s arguing to repeat a previous mistake.
“Why does the Minister give as a reason for his decision that the land is ‘the last remnant parcel of the original Chateau Hornsby Winery’?
“What has that got to do with anything?”
Mr Cramer says ASRAA is concerned applications like this may be the thin end of the wedge, and for that reason the association has for more than a decade been objecting to smaller lots “as a matter of principle”.
He wrote in his objection that the proposed blocks were “certainly not ‘slightly smaller’ than the minimum required.
“I am well acquainted with the bizarre circumstances which lead to the half size lots in the ‘nearby Ilparpa’ subdivision, but cannot understand what this at all has to do with this application.
“I cannot understand how the ‘former use as a winery … caused degradation’.
“I certainly cannot understand how the applicant would have any insight into what the “new owners” may or may not want to do.
“I cannot understand how this application ‘fulfills the intent of the [planning] scheme’ in any shape or form.
“It would be a gross miss-application of the Planning Act if this application were approved.”
The Alice News hoped to raise the issue with Mr Hampton but he continues to decline an interview.
NOTE: There are 1512 lots in Alice Springs in zone SD (single dwelling) over 1,000sqm. These are proposed to qualify for a second dwelling.
[Declaration of interest: The author of this report is a rural resident, a long time member of the ASRAA and an objector to the application.]
PHOTO: Approximate outline of the block to be subdivided. Google Earth.

Burns shoots blanks at Anderson

Erwin Chlanda
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0

By ERWIN CHLANDA
 
NT Minister Chris Burns, who will not be contesting the NT election in August, is spending a great deal of time hounding MacDonnell MLA Alison Anderson.
Last week he tabled in Parliament an undated hand-written memo on Papunya Community Council Inc letterhead, advising its accountant, Peter Vroom, that a “Toyota Landcruiser Reg No 4528 254 was exchanged for three cars from A Anderson and S Hanley. This was agreed to at a council meeting 28-6-94. The three cars were donated to Dickie Brown, Sammy Butcher and Tobias Raggett.”
The note is signed by Ms Anderson and the reported recipient of one of the cars, Mr Butcher.
What Dr Burns is seeking to make of this event 18 years ago is this: Ms Anderson was lying when she claimed earlier that she had “never benefited from any transactions at Papunya involving motor vehicles” as Dr Burns quoted her, because she had asserted never to have owned the three cars in question.
Seeing Dr Burns’ allegations coming, Ms Anderson wrote to the Motor Vehicle Registry in Alice Springs on February 29: “Please provide a list of all vehicles ever registered in the Northern Territory in my name,” paid her fee for an Application for Disclosure of Information” and stated on it she required it for her own use and “confirmation of personal records”.
The MVR replied that “according to the records held by it Ms Anderson had three cars: A Holden Commodore from August 1991, a Holden HQ from 1993 and a Landrcruiser from 2005.
Ms Anderson says: “The registration records do not match those tabled by Minister Burns in the Parliament last night.”
We put this to Dr Burns in a email on March 29. We did not get a reply.
As Ms Anderson did not have the three cars in question registered to her, chances are they were owned by her now long estranged husband, Steve Hanley, and it was he who became the owner of the Landcruiser.
Dr Burns said Mr Hanley also “denied owning the three exchanged cars”.
So what does the public get out of all than? Not much.
A Minister about to leave Parliament is engaged in a sustained vendetta against a former trusted party colleague.
Would he not be better advised to get the chronically underperforming Minister for Central Australia, Karl Hampton, up to speed?
With high-profile Bess Price gearing up to contest Stuart, NT Labor may after August not have a single Member south of Tennant Creek.
IMAGES: The memo; Dr Burns (left) and Karl Hampton. Nothing better to do?

Those in a hurry and those who are not

Erwin Chlanda
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6

OPINION by ERWIN CHLANDA
 
I’m going to borrow for this opinion piece from the comments – around 100 – which our readers posted on occasion of the town council election.
The Alice Springs News Online is proud to host an increasingly lively forum for readers’ views, many of them also contributing a wealth of relevant facts. The forum provides an interesting window onto the community  for the nine elected members of the 12th Alice Springs Town Council.
Among our most responded-to stories relating to the election was the interview with Port Augusta Mayor Joy Baluch, explaining her success in fixing problems in her town to which Alice Springs still doesn’t have an answer.
Douglas Pearce wrote: “Please, please, please can we have her?”
The report prompted retired Alderman Jane Clark to comment that she didn’t agree with Ms Baluch’s public drinking ban, and saying: “I also wonder which of her initiatives has not been implemented here?”
And that leaves only this question: If they have all been implemented here as well, how come they work in Port Augusta but not here?
In a further post Ms Clark, who had been on an excursion to Port Augusta by elected members from Alice, commented: “At the time we also met with Mayors of surrounding councils who had ‘inherited’ issues as a direct consequence of Pt Augusta’s initiatives. My personal view is that they mainly shifted their problems rather than solved them. There is no silver bullet and we need to work through this together.”
This prompted Harold Albatross to comment: “Our town council cannot control what occurs outside of its jurisdiction. That is the responsibility of the other councils and the two higher levels of government.
“We deal with our problems and they deal with theirs. I just can’t see any other way for our council to successfully approach our issues.”
There were quite a few “camps” of opinion on the subject “problems,” but the major two were people who say dealing with symptoms (crime, trouble in the streets and so on) doesn’t cut it, and we need to go back to the root causes (lack of housing, education, dispossession, unemployment and so on).
The other camp is that we don’t have time for strategies that would take generations to show results. We need them now. The decline of the town has started with many important, productive people already having left, and people streaming into town who are unlikely to make any useful contributions.
The main proponent of that view was top-scoring councillor candidate Steve Brown and his wife, Janet, while unsuccessful candidate Matt Campbell was at the opposite side of the argument.
This is part of what he posted – the kind of stuff that would have senior public servants at a strategy meeting gravely nodding their heads in thoughtful approval: “For Alice Springs to generate responses that address our problems we need to develop ways to collectively define the problems we face.
“It is only in this process that we will be able to devise cures that address the problems we face. This requires the hard work of finding ways to sit down with all members of the town to understand their perspectives, and then to keep working with them to generate solutions.
“Talking with people to understand problems and generate solutions is not an easy out.
“Rather it rests on the belief that we live together in a community and it is that generating a ‘we’ rather than an ‘us’ and ‘them’ that our safe and happy future lies.”
Mr Brown was a forceful advocate of resolute and immediate action: “The answer is pretty damn simple, those who drink and get out of hand will be dealt with in a zero tolerance manner and subjected to mandatory rehabilitation.
“Those who drink and behave are left to mind their own damn business.
“And those who think it’s their God given right to interfere in the life choices of others are ignored.”
And the new council seems to be pretty well split along those two lines.
Surprisingly, what our Joy Baluch story, which quickly slipped into our Top Twenty list, failed to settle was the question of the council’s powers and responsibilities: Are they just roads, rates and rubbish? Does it matter?
It doesn’t, according to Mayor Baluch: She says her council represents the people of Port Augusta and EVERYTHING that happens in Port Augusta is the business of the council. That doesn’t mean it has to do all things things – just to make sure they are done.
Mayor Baluch did two things: She introduced the council position of Safety Officer “who has opened a Pandora’s Box” by keeping tabs on what government departments and agencies are – or are not – doing.
“Local government needs to have control of this watchdog position, to keep the state government honest,” Mayor Baluch told the News.
And then she introduced a monthly meeting of the local heads of these agencies, state, Federal and NGO, at which they are taken to account.
Would such a system be a good topic for a motion at the first meeting of our 12th council on April 16?
For example, a good question to the NT Department of Children and Families could be, why are there dozens of children – some as young as 10 – allowed to cause mayhem in Alice Springs in the middle of the night?
And if such a monthly meeting were introduced in The Alice, it may well explain to Ms Clark why Port Augusta is on its way up, and The Alice on the way down.
PHOTOS: Port Augusta Mayor Joy Baluch (above left) was a shining example – for some – of how to tackle problems. But she and retiring alderman Jane Clark (above right) were not on the same page.

Ryan re-elected Mayor, Brown heads councillor line-up

Erwin Chlanda
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11

Damien Ryan (pictured), with 43.6% of the primary vote, has been declared Mayor after distribution of preferences last night.
It is his second term.
He will preside over a divided council with three of his four challengers – Steve Brown, Eli Melky and Dave Douglas, heading the count for the eight councillors, and the like-minded Geoffrey Booth being elected in eighth place.
They are former members or sympathisers of the law and order Action for Alice group.
If they can attract the support of another councillor – possibly Brendan Heenan or Liz Martin –  the forces calling for tough measures to end the town’s violence and anti-social behaviour would be in the majority.
The other two new councillors in the 12th Alice Springs Town Council are Jade Kudrenko and Chansey Paech, both very youthful.
Kudrenko, a candidate of the Greens, gave a lengthy interview to the Alice News Online but Paech declined to be interviewed.
Candidates who missed out – in the order in which they were excluded – are Vince Jeisman, Samih Habib Bitar, Matt Campbell, John Reid, Dianne Logan, Edan Baxter and  Aaron Dick.

Conroy's NBN rollout timetable is a guessing game

Erwin Chlanda
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1

Who likes a good old puzzle? Try this one for size.
“The Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Stephen Conroy, today announced 65,200 Northern Territory homes and businesses will have access to National Broadband Network (NBN) fibre services under NBN Co’s first three year fibre rollout plan.”
Yes, but three years from when?
“The indicative three year rollout plan lists the Northern Territory locations where construction of the national fibre network will begin between 1 April 2012 and 30 June 2015.”
That’s a margin between next week and three years plus three months from now.
So it’s just an “indicative” plan, yes?
“Locations where work will begin before 30 June 2015.”
That’s three years and three months from now.
“Alawa, Alice Springs, Anula, Araluen, Bakewell, Bayview, Bees Creek, Berrimah, Braitling, Brinkin, Casuarina, Ciccone, Coconut Grove, Coonawarra, Darwin City, Desert Springs, Driver, Durack, East Arm, East Point, East Side, Eaton, Fannie Bay, Farrar, Gillen, Girraween, Gray, Gunn, Herbert, Hidden Valley, Howard Springs, Humpty Doo, Jingili, Johnston, Karama, Katherine, Katherine East, Katherine South, Knuckey Lagoon, Larrakeyah, Leanyer, Ludmilla, Lyons, Malak, Marlow Lagoon, Marrara, McMinns Lagoon, Millner, Moil, Moulden, Muirhead, Nakara, Nhulunbuy, Nightcliff, Palmerston City, Parap, Pinelands, Rapid Creek, Rosebery, Sadadeen, Stuart Park, Tennant Creek, The Gap, The Gardens, The Narrows, Tiwi, Uralla, Virginia, Wagaman, Wanguri, Winnellie, Woodroffe, Woolner, Wulagi and Yarrawonga.”
“Summary of three year indicative rollout plan.”
Here’s that word “indicative” again.
“This [meaning the map pictured] is the NBN rollout activity in your [Alice Springs] area.”
Note: It seems the farm areas will miss out. Will they?
“Fibre | Work to commence within three years – we will commence work in your area from Jun 2013.”
That’s actually one year and three months from now.
On ya, Steve. Keep ’em guessing.

$4m to expand services for seniors as Frontier turns 100

Erwin Chlanda
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0

 
Care for old people will get a boost with a $6.6m  expansion program at the  Old Timers Village, part of Frontier Services, which is now entering its second century of serving The Centre.
At the Old Timers Village on the South Stuart Highway, Flynn Lodge – at the northern end of the complex – will double in size with a 20 bed extension.
These will be for “high care” occupants.
An administration centre will be built south of the museum.
The Old Timers Home will also undergo extensive renovations to the Rosetta Flynn Wing at the front of the complex.
The Hetti Perkins Home in Percy Court, entirely for Aboriginal people and also run by Frontier Services, will double in size from 40 to 80 beds.
It has the full range of care.
The organisation’s Regional Manager, Sharon Davis, says Frontier Services now covers the full gamut of aged care.
This ranges from supporting people to stay in their own homes, even until they die, to high dependency care.
Both Hetti Perkins Home and Old Timers have the full range of care for people preferring or needing to be in a residential care service.
About one third to half of the patients in the 68 bed Old Timers are Aboriginal.
Flynn Lodge is low-care. It has 10 beds for dementia residents or others “at risk of social isolation”.
Ms Davis says the Old Timers Village has an average occupancy of 97% but once the extensions are completed the town’s need will be fully met.
She says the wish list still includes renovations to some of the present 41 cottages – and building a few new ones.
Ms Davis says the Cottages are run outside the Retirement Villages Act of the NT: “With us you don’t need $200,000 to come into our village. What you have in your bank account doesn’t interest us.”
People are renting cottages, and can claim rental assistance under the Department of Housing NT scheme.
Every level of care is available on the same site, allowing people to receive the care they need without needing to move.
PHOTOS: At top – Margaret Pickard in the showpiece front yard of her and her husband’s cottage. Above right – Jocelyn Rose is tended by Vimbai Macheza.

Funding announcements flow for 'Stronger Futures' in Aboriginal communities

Kieran Finnane
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6

The spectre of outstations and homelands in the Northern Territory forsaken by governments has receded, at least for another decade.
A $221 million “investment” to provide them with basic essential and municipal services over 10 years was announced this week by Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin, joined by Lingiari MHR Warren Snowdon and NT Senator Trish Crossin.
About 9,000 Aboriginal people currently live in more than 500 small dispersed communities in very remote parts of the Northern Territory, according to their media release.
Although the total funding sounds large, in reality it is basically more of the same, as the Australian Government has been providing the NT Government with $20 million each year since 2007 for this purpose.
They are boosting their contribution over the decade by $6m and the NT Government is kicking in $15m.
Today the NT Aboriginal Peak Organisations, while welcoming the longer-term funding commitment, called on the NT Government to increase its contribution. They also called for greater transparency regarding allocation and outcomes of the funding than has been the case over the last five years.
The money, according to Minister Macklin’s release, is also being stretched to support improvements “in the areas of health, job creation and a reliable energy supply”. These include:
• More than $2.5 million for the Urapuntja Health Service Aboriginal Corporation in the Utopia Homelands to deliver primary health care services.
• More than $1.7 million for the Mount Theo Outstation program, which provides substance abuse rehabilitation and support services to young people through the care of Warlpiri mentors and elders.
• More than $3.7 million for the Laynhapuy Homelands Association to support primary, mental, maternal and dental health care services.
• More than $19 million to employ 50 Working on Country ranger positions in the NT, in addition to the 280 existing ranger positions.
Some outstations and homelands in the Northern Territory will also benefit from a $40 million investment by the Australian Government for the Remote Indigenous Energy Program, providing 50 smaller remote Aboriginal communities across Australia, including some in the Northern Territory, with reliable 24-hour power. This builds on the success of the Bushlight program, says the release, which has helped install and maintain more than 90 renewable energy systems in about 80 Northern Territory outstations.
In another announcement, $619 million was allocated to remote policing, community night patrols and legal assistance services.
This will enable the NT Government to continue employing 60 full-time NT police officers in 18 remote communities, and build an additional four permanent remote area police complexes in communities.
It will also support the continued operations of the Substance Abuse Intelligence Desks (SAID) and Dog Operations Unit “which have played a key part in disrupting commercial drug distribution networks from other states into Northern Territory Aboriginal communities”, according to the release.
The figures climbed today, with new announcements in Alice Springs, at the Central Australian Aboriginal Alcohol Prevention Unit and the Kwatja Etatha – Living Waters Playgroup.
There will be $719 million over 10 years for better primary health care and improved access to dental and allied health services for Aboriginal Territorians.
The money will go to both Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations and the NT Government, between them employing more than 250 full-time staff delivering medical, nursing and allied health services in 80 primary health care clinics.
More than 2000 hearing checks and follow up services will be funded, including for children in remote communities, as well as a community education program to educate families about their children’s ear and hearing health.
More than 12,000 children will also have access to preventive oral health services through outreach services, to improve oral health practices, and reduce dental problems.
There will be additional support to help address mental health issues among Aboriginal people, including four new community mental health services in the NT between 2012 and 2014. These will consist of two new Personal Helpers and Mentors Services and two new Family Mental Health Support Services.
Another $443 million over 10 years will continue to fund playgroups, home and parenting support services, youth workers and safe houses to communities for the next decade.
It will also allow for a major expansion of the number of Communities for Children sites in the NT, offering a range of services to help parents provide a safe, happy and healthy environment for their children.
Over the next six years these sites will increase from four to 19, with a focus on remote locations. – Kieran Finnane

Port Augusta's Mayor: When softly-softly diplomacy isn't enough to get a town out of the morass

Erwin Chlanda
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20

 
 
Under the no-holds-barred Mayor Joy Baluch, the Port Augusta council drives the local state and federal agencies, not the other way round. They are held to account in monthly meetings. This has gone a long way towards a solution of what was a near-terminal anti-social behavior and alcohol crisis. Could it be the template for the councillors and Mayor taking the reins in Alice Springs on Monday? ERWIN CHLANDA reports.
 
“Port Augusta is alcohol free. You cannot drink in a public square. If you want to drink you go home, to a pub or a club. You will not drink in the streets and you will not sit on the beach and consume alcohol.
“And you will not create havoc and unsocial behaviour. You piss off back to Alice Springs to the Todd River. That’s where you go because in Port Augusta, City Council rules and regulations must be complied with.”
What about people who contravene that regulation?
“They are dealt with appropriately, are put on a bus and sent somewhere else.”
Who puts them on the bus?
“Our Safety Officer does.”
And that person plays a very major role in the town.
Nancy Joy Baluch – her friends call her Joy – doesn’t mince words. She has served as the Mayor of Port Augusta from 1981 to 1993 and from 1995 till now. That she’s battling cancer wasn’t at all evident in our telephone conversation yesterday.
“In 1981 we had a town square. It would have drunken whites, drunken blacks, fornicating in public, in the presence of tourist buses,” she says.
“It was a deplorable situation.
“Tourist buses left Port Augusta. They just by-passsed Port Augusta. Our tourist trade went down to zero.
“Port Augusta became a place not to be seen in.
“Today we are a tourist destination. We have turned our image around.
“For 90 years the town turned its back on the very quiet waterway that was navigated by Matthew Flinders back in 1804.”
Turning to face it, the town became the second largest SA port (Port Adelaide being the largest), exporting wheat and wool and other produce direct to London.
Once a dirty recess, a haven for vagrants and drinkers, the beach is now the town’s playground: “People who lived here some 30 years ago, are just overwhelmed by the transformation.
“We have altered the face of Port Augusta.
“We have dealt with the people who were creating havoc and who were socially unacceptable.”
How did she manage to do that?
“We developed a series of strategies. It was clear to us that not one single initiative would overcome this mounting problem.
Part of that strategy was to develop an alcohol free environment, which included a sobering-up shelter, a mobile assistance program whereby those affected by drugs and alcohol were picked up by the MAPS van, and taken to the sobering up shelter and tended to in a caring environment.
“They are showered, fed, bedded down and next morning the relevant agencies attend to their needs, i.e. taken to hospital or doctors, given counseling, enticing them to embark upon a program to break the cycle of alcohol dependence.
“Funding and administration for this facility is by the three tiers of government.”
Is it compulsory?
“Course it’s not bloody compulsory. Nothing is compulsory today. When they are admitted to the centre they are normally in a filthy condition. They have peed themselves and are a complete bloody mess.”
The town’s transformation didn’t happen over night.
“Everything was a battle, a hill to climb. There are always the do-gooders from outside the community who say they have civil liberties, and you’re contravening their civil liberties, their rights.
“Well bugger them. They’ve got no rights. They are ruining this community and I don’t give a stuff if you are black, white, brindle with yellow spots. If you do not comply with those rules and regulations, you are not welcome in this community.”
But back to the Safety Officer, an employee of the council which funds the position to the tune of $230,000 a year – a small item in the $28m budget.
“The funding of the Safety Officer, the council believes, is a state government responsibility and should be funded from either the law and order or the health budgets. But local government needs to have control of this watchdog position, to keep the state government honest.
The Safety Officer keeps tabs on what government departments and agencies are – or are not – doing, the roles they are not fulfilling.
Mrs Baluch says the Safety Officer is “a person who has opened a Pandora’s Box” establishing, for example, the number of homeless people, and getting agencies on the weekend to work through those issues.
“It is a state government responsibility to deliver these sorts of services.
“We don’t need more money.”
It’s the council which needs to “keep tabs on where the money is spent”.
(She says there is  a need for a Safety Officer also in Aboriginal communities where “a lot of nepotism comes into play – it should not”.
“In Port Augusta we have 30 spoken dialects.
“Some clans despise each other, and fight each other. Families are appointed to a particular area of activity and families take control which excludes other families within the community from accessing services.
“And until such time that the governments grow balls and address these problems they will continue.”)
As a result of council’s pushing, the town now has a camp, built with state government funding (“it’s not council’s responsibility to fund it”).
Says Mrs Baluch: “The camp was established for people coming into town over the long summer period to access services which in the Pitjantjatjara lands close down over the summer.
“That camp has accommodation that is not overcrowded, is safe, alcohol free. All different types of facilities are there.
“If you want to sleep in a wiltja, next to a campfire, we’ve got it. Motel type accommodation – we’ve go it. Ablution blocks, laundry blocks, a kitchen, two meals a day in the dining room.
“You are charged. It comes out of your welfare payment.
“The facility can be accessed between 6am and midnight.
“And if you’re drunk you don’t get in.
“There is no use coming down to a friend’s place or a relative’s place that has three bedrooms and you’ve got 30 or more people sharing those facilities.”
Mrs Baluch says there is no magic wand to overcome unsocial behaviour.
“It’s been allowed to manifest by the three tiers of government over a long period of time.
“We have overcome these problems by working together with government departments and with the community.
“You’ve got to sit around a table and work through their differences.
“We have come a long way over the last 10 years.”
Mrs Baluch says the key was to bring to the table, in monthly meetings, the state and federally funded services, 15 or more agencies, supplying chairmen in turn, and make them “deliver their services in an appropriate way … working harmoniously.
“They are wasting money. It doesn’t filter down to the people in the marketplace, it’s wasted on trivia, on people who run around in 4WDs, flat out justifying their positions.
“By that I mean that social workers, workers in government departments knock off at 3 o’clock on a Friday, turn their backs on the problems and come back on a Monday morning to see that all hell has broken loose.
“I have still not been able to convince government departments to have their weekends in the middle of the week, in particularly in relation to social workers and others delivering important services.”
She leaves no doubt about her view of  “people in authority who get a bloody pay packet every Friday and don’t give a stuff about our case.”
If she has a soft spot for Alice Springs and the NT generally she hides it carefully.
She is outraged about visits over the years from Alice, Tennant Creek and Katherine elected members, local and NT Government, including former Alice Mayor Fran Kilgariff.
“You could have been on top of these problems if the people with decision making power who wasted my time and energy nine years ago had been doing their job.
“I don’t give a stuff what happens in Alice Springs today because you’ve got nobody with balls and guts to go out on a limb like I did.
“They went back all fired up. It was their intention to go back to government authorities and departments to work together.
“Unfortunately, that never occurred.
“It went back to the bureaucracy. And it shouldn’t.
“I have wasted umpteen hours over the last 30 years talking to people in authority in the Northern Territory who go away with fire in their belly.
“But they don’t listen. They’ve got no guts and no balls.”
What about collaboration with the police?
“You have to get it. They wax and wane. It all depends on the bloody superintendent. They are all dictated to by a central position [in the capital]. That was just as big a battle to get the collaboration of the police.”
How did she get it?
“Be nasty, tell them the truth. And I don’t give a stuff what they say about me. I can sleep at night.”
She says: “I’m about to set up a meeting with the newly appointed superintendent who I believe does not have his fingers on the pulse.”
Mrs Baluch has for decades been a target for national media.
“I suffered physically and if it were not for the Lord Jesus Christ I would have been dead a long time ago.
“I’ve put up with a lot of criticism since 1985, since I tried to introduce dry areas into Port Augusta.
“I’ve been subjected to a lot of personal criticism. Another person would not have stood the pressure.
“I know I was on the right path because I was put on this path by God.
“We now have the young Aboriginal people involved. We cannot allow them to be burned out as we have been.
“We won’t allow that to happen. We now have the three tiers of government sitting together, but the local community has to be in control. It’s all about controlling that great bucket of money.
“Why should we go on for the next 40 years to see it wasted. It’s about honesty and transparency, and someone with balls to initiate it.
“Whether the Mayor has boobs or balls, she or he is still the Mayor. Some people say I have both.
“It is my aim to leave my role having brought harmony to the streets of Port Augusta, making it a role model for the rest of Australia, where the two cultures live and work together harmoniously.”
PHOTOS, from top:  Once a dirty recess, a haven for vagrants and drinkers, the beach and foreshore are now the town’s playground. • Mayor Baluch. • Gladstone Place, once a venue for fighting and fornication, one one of the town’s many beauty sport. Photos courtesy Port Augusta City Council (the Mayor) and The Transcontinental Port Augusta (aerial shot and park).• Alice Springs councillor  candidate John Reid, with supporter Bob Durnan, at the civic centre polling booth last Saturday. It was Mr Reid’s campaign, with its references to the Port Augusta model, that sparked our interest to do this story.

NT's grog policy focus remains on public drinkers and drunk offenders

Kieran Finnane
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9

The NT Government continues to focus its alcohol policy reforms on “problem drinkers”, seen as those who commit alcohol-related crime.
Minister for Alcohol Policy, Delia Lawrie, has introduced legislation to Territory parliament that gives police and the Alcohol and Other Drugs (AOD) Tribunal “additional tools to get problem drinkers out of public places and into rehabilitation”.
Police will have the power to issue an infringement notice to people drinking in a public place within two kilometres of licensed premises and causing a nuisance to other persons. This will be in in addition to their existing power to tip out grog.
The infringement notice will be linked to the Banned Drinker Register, increasing “the ability of police to target repeat offenders and direct them into treatment”.
Problem drinkers issued with these infringements three times in 12 months will be placed on the Banned Drinker’s Register.
The bill extends the definition of “alcohol related offence” to include people who are summonsed (but not arrested) for an offence.
It also increases the power of the AOD Tribunal to force problem drinkers into rehabilitation.
It will also be able to make orders that a person be subject to income management, including making ex parte orders in the absence of the problem drinker attending the Tribunal hearing.
“This means welfare recipients on the Banned Drinker’s Register can have their income managed until they complete treatment,” Ms Lawrie said in a media release on Tuesday.
“By targeting drinking in public places, and giving the AOD more powers to force problem drinkers into rehabilitation we can reduce anti-social behaviour and turn lives around.
“More than 60% of crime is alcohol-related, and the Territory Government’s Enough is Enough Alcohol Reforms have already seen more than 2,100 problem drinkers put on the Banned Drinker Register and drops in alcohol-related crime in the first six months,” Ms Lawrie said.
In the first six-month report on the impact of the Enough is Enough reforms, released in February, only assault statistics were given, comparing the six months from July to December in 2010 to the post-reform period of July to December, 2011. They showed a Territory-wide drop of 5.1%; in Alice, the drop was 8.4%; in Darwin, 12.1%. In Tennant Creek, however, there’d been an increase of 12.9%, with a footnote suggesting that this was related to a more proactive approach by police to domestic violence matters.
There were no statistics on alcohol-related property crime, of considerable concern in Alice Springs.
Meanwhile, in the wake of the Conservative British Government proposing to introduce a floor price for alcohol in the UK, a floor price at least for the NT has again become a hot debating point. Federal Liberal front-bencher Christopher Pyne yesterday told ABC 891 reporter Ian Henscke yesterday that it is “an idea whose time has come”. The Commonwealth has the power to introduce it into the Territory, he said, and he would be an “enthusiastic supporter” of such a move.
The Country Liberals Shadow Minister for Alcohol Policy, Peter Styles, reacted by saying that Mr Pyne is “too far removed from the Northern Territory to be weighing into issues associated with alcohol policy”.
He wants Mr Pyne to contact him for a briefing .
“The fact is that people will still get grog even if there is a floor price, as evidenced by the failure of the Government’s grog bans to stop anti-social behaviour,” said Mr Styles.
“Territorians are entitled to buy an inexpensive bottle of wine without an artificial floor jacking up the price.
“The only winners from a floor price are the large retailers who reap the profit from the higher prices.
“It’s already expensive enough living in the Territory without Government policy making it even dearer.”
Ms Lawrie has previously ruled out moving on a floor price for the NT, with arguments similar to Mr Styles’. – Kieran Finnane

Council poll: Law & order candidates and alcohol restriction opponents top councillor poll, could threaten Mayor

Erwin Chlanda
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16

With 72% of the votes counted sitting Mayor Damien Ryan has scored 43.8% which is short of the 50% plus one vote he needs to be re-elected.
Significant leakage of preferences from his four opponents could get him across the line, but toppling Mr Ryan was their common goal and they all put him last on their how-to-vote cards.
Front-runner of the four, Steve Brown, was not confident that people had mainly followed the cards. He said a lot of people didn’t take them. A scrutineer had observed some leakage of preferences to Mr Ryan from Dave Douglas votes.
This morning Mr Brown said he was a “bit disappointed” with the result so far: “We all thought there would have been a bigger movement for change than we’ve seen”
When counting stopped last night Mr Brown had 21.7%, followed by Eli Melky (17.7%), Dave Douglas (12.1%) and Samih Habib Bitar (4.8%).
Mr Brown was also top scorer in the count for councillor with 14.6%. Fellow mayoral challengers Eli Melky (13.5%) and Dave Douglas (10.6%) followed him.
There are 14239 electors on the roll but as we reported recently, 70% is about the norm of valid votes cast, that’s around 10,000 votes.
The formula for getting elected is the number of valid votes divided by the number of vacancies plus one, which works out at about 1100 votes.
That means on present results Mr Brown and Mr Melky can safely be regarded as elected, and Mr Douglas and the Greens’ Jade Kudrenko are close.
Along with the possible unseating of Mr Ryan, the results so far are a strong endorsement of the law and order faction which is also opposed to some current and any greater alcohol restrictions.
A surprise fourth in the count for councillor is newcomer, Ms Kudrenko (10.5%).
Sitting aldermen Brendan Heenan (8.1%) and Liz Martin (7.6%) are doing relatively poorly.
They are followed by Chansey Paech (7.2%), Geoffrey Booth (4.8%), Vince Jeisman (4.4%), John Reid (4.2%), Matthew Campbell and Samih Habib Bitar (3.5%), Dianne Logan (3.3%), Edan Ross Baxter (2.6%) and Aaron Dick (1.7%).
The Electoral Commissioner Bill Shepheard, says: “Initial count figures represent primary vote counts only and in many cases may not be particularly indicative of the eventual outcome, especially where multiple vacancies are to be filled.”
He says all votes counted on polling night will be rechecked beginning tomorrow and it’s expected that further counts of postal and absent votes will start on Wednesday.
Full results for all vacancies will not be known until after the deadline for return of postal votes on Friday.
Final results of the election are tentatively scheduled to be declared on Monday, April 2, says Mr Shepheard.
PHOTO: Polling booth at the civic centre yesterday afternoon.

Night out on the town, and living to tell the tale

Erwin Chlanda
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6

The Memo Club and the Town & Country Tavern closed their doors because they were not getting enough patrons through the door and that was a consequence of people fearing being bashed by increasing numbers of thugs taking over the CBD at night. Right?
Well then explain this, please.
Monte’s is about half way between the two now closed venues, in the same street.
Last night Monte’s (at right) was chockers – best guess about 250 to 300 people, clearly having a ball.
Many of them came by pushbike, judging by the number of tredlies – certainly more than 50 – tied to the fence, their riders clearly willing on their way home to brave the marauding hordes lurking to pounce upon them in the dark.
Some had made their way unscathed from the exhibition opening at Talapi, Alice’s newest gallery towards the middle of the mall.
As they left the opening they observed some brave souls enjoying the evening on the Sporties terrace opposite (below). Undoubtedly Red Ochre also had a crowd.
At Monte’s gate revelers were greeted by a Mormon bouncer who said “Bless you” and asked for ID (I was flattered that he thought I needed proof of age).
Inside the twenty-something to forty-something crowd was buzzing, not a cross word anywhere.
They were served their drinks and tasty, well-priced food by girls in Austrian Dirndls and blokes in Lederhosen – quirky!
When it comes to alcohol restrictions the place can surely lay claim to have one of the most idiotic conditions imposed by our hapless Liquor Commission: you have to be seated to drink.
End of evening entertainment as we know it? Maybe not. – ERWIN CHLANDA
 
UPDATE: A barricade has been erected in front of Town & Country and there are large signs reading, “Temporarily closed” and “NO alcohol stored on site /premises”.

Same car, two crimes: cooking pot alleged weapon

Erwin Chlanda
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0



 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Alice Springs police say they are seeking information about a silver Ford Falcon confirmed as the vehicle used in both a road rage incident on Wednesday morning and a hit and run incident later that night.
Senior Sergeant Darrell Kerr says the rear back window is broken and had plastic sheeting over it and there is a Falcon sticker on the front windscreen.
“Police would like anyone who saw this vehicle anytime on Wednesday 21 March to contact them on 131 444 or call Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000,” says Senior Sergeant Kerr.
In the road rage incident, the car followed the alleged victim’s car from the Wills Terrace / Stuart Highway intersection and cut them off just before the St Philip’s College intersection at 10.15am.
“Three women got out of the Ford and allegedly started smashing into the victim’s car with car jacks and a cooking pot,” he said.
“Later that night a 58 year-old man was allegedly struck by the same Ford Falcon at the Northside shopping centre carpark at around 8.30.
“The vehicle left the area and was later found abandoned in Priest Street, Braitling.
“Police have no evidence to suggest that the driver of the vehicle was the same person in both cases but investigations are continuing.” (Police release.)

An end to conservative blocks in Town Council?

Erwin Chlanda
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0

By ALEX NELSON
 
Voters going to the polls for the local government elections tomorrow will not notice any changes as they cast their votes; they will still be required to put a number in every square for each candidate on the voting slips.
The major change comes in the method of counting the votes, which will be counted and preferences distributed via a proportional voting system (Alice News Online, March 4).
The new system replaces the notorious exhaustive preferential counting method, long suspected as a form of “block voting” that facilitated the dominance of politically conservative and business oriented aldermen (now councillors) onto the Alice Springs Town Council. (For an explanation of the old system, see Alice News, March 27, 2008).
The exhaustive preferential system is not, however, the original method of casting and counting votes for the ASTC. As you make your choice for mayor and councillors on March 24, spare a thought for your compatriots in Queensland choosing their next state government, because they’re using an optional voting method which was also the system in use during the 1970s for the Alice town council.
This method permits voters to put numbers in squares only for the candidates they favour and can ignore the rest – in Queensland a voter may choose simply to vote for one candidate, regardless of how many are running in that electorate.
For the council elections of 1971, 1974 and 1977, voters were required to place numbers equivalent to the number of positions on the council, plus one more, for the election of the aldermen. The extra vote was required in the event an aldermanic candidate was elected as mayor (the vote for mayor is always determined first).
As there is always only one position for mayor, the counting of votes has always been a simple distribution of preferences until one candidate achieves an absolute majority (50 per cent plus one).
In 1971 that wasn’t necessary, as Jock Nelson (no relation) garnered 75 per cent of the votes; still the record to this day. He was formerly the Federal Labor member for the NT.
In 1974 there was no vote for mayor at all, as Brian Martin was elected unopposed – the only time that’s happened.
However, the situation was very different for electing the aldermen. In addition to optional preferential voting, the method of counting the votes was first-past-the-post, whereby those candidates with the highest tally of primary votes were elected to fill the positions on the council. There was no distribution of preferences.
First-past-the-post is the least democratic of vote-counting systems but its virtue lies in its simplicity. This was certainly an asset in 1971 as 30 candidates had nominated to run for council, still the highest on record.
In 1971 and 74 the ASTC had eight aldermen but in 1977 it was increased to 10. Consequently voters had to choose for 11 of the 17 candidates that were running, in the event that one was successful as mayor. However, this again proved unnecessary as George Smith was elected as mayor (he had not run for alderman).
So how did the optional preferential voting and first-past-the-post counting methods affect the composition of the early town councils? An impression may be gained from the first by-election of March 24, 1973, when candidate Dennis Haddon claimed there are “too many businessmen on the Council and there is a need to represent the workers”. He advertised: “This is Your … ALP Candidate in Saturday’s Council Election”, the first overtly party political campaign for a town council election (the CLP did not yet exist).
Haddon was correct in the sense that the first council was overwhelmingly politically conservative and business-oriented, characteristics that have dominated the ASTC to the present day.
There were some distinctive features of the ASTC in the 1970s. The first three mayors and many aldermen were of a politically high calibre, their names representing a roll call of history – Jock Nelson, Brian Martin, Paul Everingham, Len Kittle, Tony Greatorex, Ray Hanrahan, and Leslie Oldfield, are some that spring to mind.
Another feature was the short duration of the mayors in office.
The first council also included architect Andrew McPhee, who later designed the original Civic Centre, opened on March 14, 1980.
It was also in 1980 that voters went to the polls again but this time there were significant changes. This included full preferential voting, where voters had to put a number in every square on their ballot slips, and the results were determined by the distribution of preferences.
Another major change was the introduction of a four year term for the Alice town council, the first of any elected body in the NT.
George Smith was re-elected as mayor, the first incumbent to do so against competing candidates; and he went on to serve as mayor for six years in total, thereby setting the pattern of relative longevity in office for all successive mayors. (The current mayor, Damien Ryan, is seeking re-election for a second term).
The new voting and counting systems for council elections saw the continuation of the dominance of politically conservative aldermen on the Alice town council; however, there was a marked change in the political aspirations of many of them.
The 1970s was characterised by former political heavyweights, such as Jock Nelson and Tony Greatorex (formerly President of the NT Legislative Council), being elected as mayors. By contrast, the only council member to progress into Territory politics was Paul Everingham; and that was only after he moved to Darwin.
Everingham was elected as a member of the first NT Legislative Assembly on October 19, 1974 (he eventually became the first Chief Minister after self-government, too).
By contrast, Alice mayor Brian Martin hit the headlines when he publicly urged people to vote informal in protest against the lack of clear-cut powers of the new Assembly!
However, from 1980 the ASTC became the launch pad of many attempted political careers – some were successful, most were not.
As usual, it was the ALP that pioneered this trend, in the person of Alderman John Reeves, who was elected as the NT Federal member in the new Hawke government of 1983. Reeves defeated the CLP’s Grant Tambling, himself a former Darwin alderman and a member of the first NT Legislative Assembly.
Reeves tenure was short-lived; he in turn was defeated in 1984 by former ASTC alderman Paul Everingham! (Today John Reeves is a judge of the Federal Court of Australia.)
Another alderman from the 1980 town council to move into Territory politics was Ray Hanrahan; he was elected as the CLP’s Member for Flynn in 1983. The Flynn electorate straddled the southern part of urban Alice Springs and the rural area south of Heavitree Gap. At that time Heavitree Gap was the limit of the municipal boundary of the ASTC.
Hanrahan’s political career was meteoric (bright and brief) but he rose rapidly to become the first born and bred Territorian (and Centralian) deputy Chief Minister.
He was also the local member in 1988 when the NT Government extended the Alice town council’s boundary to incorporate the rural area south of Heavitree Gap. This was not a popular decision for most rural residents.
The council elections of 1984 firmly established the template of the exhaustive preferential voting system favouring the election of politically conservative aldermen yet there was a far greater diversity on the council than had previously existed.
Long-serving alderman John Marriot was the first incumbent to be defeated at the polls (and very few since then have suffered a similar fate). Mayor Leslie Oldfield was now the council’s longest-serving member, originally winning a by-election for alderman in 1978.
No other alderman from 1980 was on the council in 1984; the three previous aldermen returned to council had all won by-elections since that time.
Amongst the new faces on council was Asian immigrant Dr Richard Lim (who topped the primary count) and Bob Liddle, the first Aboriginal alderman in the NT. Three women were elected as aldermen, too – they were Lynne Peterkin (second behind Lim), Michelle Castagna, and Di Shanahan.
Yet this apparent diversity belied the fact that all but two of the aldermen were members of the CLP at the time; Castagna was independent, and Shanahan was a Labor stalwart.
Even the mayor, Leslie Oldfield, though not a party member, was initially still employed as an electorate officer for the CLP Member for Braitling, Roger Vale.
Di Shanahan’s election victory was telling; she was the last to just scrape into tenth position on the council. Yet when Shanahan ran as the Labor candidate for the Araluen by-election in April 1986, she attracted a 16 per cent swing to Labor (likely still to be a record in the NT) although still fell short of winning.
Alderman Shanahan also contested the Flynn by-election of September 1988 for Labor, following the spectacular departure of Ray Hanrahan from politics. This time she topped the primary count but lost on preferences.
Several other council members of the “Class of ’84” sought to launch their political careers from this base – they were Bob Liddle, Bob Kennedy, Leslie Oldfield, Lynne Peterkin, and Richard Lim. Only Lim succeeded when a decade later he became the Member for Greatorex (named in honour of former mayor Tony Greatorex).
The “block voting” effect of the exhaustive preferential system was again demonstrated in the council elections of May 1988. This time 24 candidates ran for alderman, the second highest on record.
The interest was sparked by the council boundary extension incorporating the rural area. The Rural Area Association organised a “ticket” of 10 candidates with the expectation that some may be elected onto the town council to represent rural residents’ interests (I was one of the candidates). Not one succeeded.
In part this result was due to a large number of informal votes. The “rural ticket” had distributed how-to-vote pamphlets listing the 10 rural-based candidates from one to 10 but leaving the remaining 14 squares blank for voters to make up their own minds.
Scrutineers at the count reported many informal votes had exactly followed the how-to-vote pamphlets, leaving 14 blank squares on their ballot slips.
These votes would have been valid in the old optional preference system of the 1970s but on this occasion it was a decade too late!
By contrast the council elections of 1992 attracted a record low 11 nominations for alderman. However, there were some retirements from the previous council so in fact four new aldermen were elected onto the council. The sole luckless candidate to miss out was Aboriginal identity Betty Pearce.
The council elections of 1996 attracted 21 nominations for alderman. One of these was Tangentyere Council president Geoff Shaw, who polled high in the initial primary count; yet in a striking demonstration of the “block voting” effect, Shaw’s position dropped with each successive distribution of preferences and ultimately he missed out.
Nevertheless, council election results from the 1990s have steadily led to more independent and progressive candidates (as opposed to conservative) making it onto the ASTC. Some notable examples are garden guru Geoff Miers, Geoff Harris, former manager of the Arid Lands Environment Centre, and Jane Clark, who was a Greens candidate.
The new proportional vote counting system should enhance the likelihood of candidates with more diverse backgrounds and political persuasions being elected onto council.
But this may not be so simple as the reduction of councillors from 10 to eight, which took effect in 2008, means that each candidate must achieve a higher proportion of votes to be successful. This seems to have been overlooked in the current election campaign.

We need public-friendly public places

Kieran Finnane
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6


 
Over the last few weeks I’ve been amused watching the disabled access steps and walls go up in Todd Mall. I’m not sure how the construction of steps is aiding better disabled access but the Mayor and Co seemed to be very pleased with it all at the launch a few weeks back.
Since, I have noted the unimaginative use of a dull ochre colour to paint the walls, rendering them to almost camouflage, along with the general lack of imagination and the bricks that make up Todd Mall.
People have been placing bets as to when the first tag or graffiti might appear on the walls but I am yet to arrive to work and find any interesting public art or belligerent tagging. I know personal taste divides what is art and what is eyesore. But that’s another spray can of words.
Anyway, yesterday morning a council fellow was busy measuring and pondering and placing little metal brackets along the wall. My first thought? That council was going to erect something similar to those pigeon deterrents for the people that have taken to drinking their coffee on the wall. Or maybe planter boxes – also a sly people-sitting deterrent – but no. What we have are skater stoppers! By late afternoon the dozen or so fittings had been fitted and the job was done. Skaters are now officially stopped.
That may have been a little bit of over kill. I mean do we really see that many people hanging out in Todd Mall?
I have a personal grudge against the relatively new on the spot fine of $137 for riding your bike etc. in Todd Mall. After some time of playing infringement notice roulette with the rangers I have since taken to using the riverside bike path. Which is a good bike path, I’ve got no beef against that track. But it’s a course that is not lined with shops and struggling businesses that could have otherwise lured me in at the end of the day particularly if I’ve got my pay burning a hole in my pocket.
Shame for them and shame for me too, I often remember too late that I was meant to stop in for a coffee and say hi to an old colleague. Friends for an impromptu drink may have hailed me down as I was passing by. Or that I was going to have a browse in the book stores. Anyway.
I was chatting with some folk at the market on Sunday where I remarked on the drastic difference from the previous Sunday. With nothing on in town there simply isn’t much reason for people to come into Todd Mall. Though the pull of the actual market stalls for locals is limited it’s the liveliness of the event that draws people in to watch each other, have a coffee and a chat.
And let’s not get started on the mall at night. With hardly any lighting and nothing going on until later on in the year when the touristy night markets start up, you can just stay home.
Todd Mall is equipped with stages, speakers, grassed areas, sails for shade and a pretty amazing climate in a town full of poets, performers, musicians, travellers and artists.  There is a hugely creative and vibrant arts community in Alice Springs. Maybe what’s missing from the equation is imagination on the business end of town.
A few days out from the council elections I am sure that I am not the only one with bated breath and fingers crossed hoping for inspired and imaginative forces to start operating within council. I would love to see the potential of Todd Mall capitalized on to create a vibrant centre for the town.
 
PS: After I write this on Tuesday I saw two people trip and fall on the disabled access steps and on the same morning, Wednesday, a council fellow cleaned off the first tag on the wall.

Is the town over all the talk?

Kieran Finnane
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21

ABOVE: Room half full or half empty – the small turn-out for the mayoral Q&A suggests the town’s flagging interest in all the talk. A few more than shown did arrive. Councillor candidate Matthew Campbell in the front row is not sleeping – in fact he was the first to arrive – we just caught him during a blink.  BELOW RIGHT: Mayor Ryan and challengers (from left) Steve Brown, Eli Melky, Samih Habib Bitar, Dave Douglas.
 
By KIERAN FINNANE
 
Alice seems to be getting sick of talking. Last night’s mayoral candidate question & answer session was a lacklustre affair and poorly attended. If candidates’ family and friends, councillor candidates and media had been removed, the Andy McNeill Room would have been three-quarters empty.
The five candidates outlined their campaign message with no surprises. Steve Brown, candidate for mayor and councillor, was the one to come closest to making a speech intended to inspire, nominating the town’s biggest single issue as “social inclusion” – a term usually coming from those who would count themselves as his opponents.
To offer residents of remote communities and town camps a way into our community is the “burning issue” for Alice Springs, he said. He said the situation where there would be children “unfed on the streets tonight” was “not good enough”. And all that has been done so far hasn’t adequately addressed the situation.
The only way to build inclusion is to have one set of laws for everybody to live by, he argued.
In his allocated five minutes he didn’t have time to detail what he would do to achieve this but he acknowledged that it would be “very complex”. In his brief conclusion he emphasised the need for a new youth club or centre, a point also made in his campaign materials.
A future biennial festival, Yeperenye style? 
Mayor Damien Ryan in his five minutes said creating community events makes the community more “inclusive”, and that council is not given enough credit for its program of events. In its next term council should work on having more, he said. In collaboration with Indigenous elders they could include a biennial Yeperenye-style desert festival, which could be taken to world tourism markets.
In his speech Alderman Samih Habib, running for mayor or seeking return as a councillor, had criticised (mainly for causing the loss of local jobs) the move of CCTV monitoring to Darwin. Mayor Ryan defended the move, saying that it had led to more convictions in the first two months after the move than it had in the preceding 14 months while monitored in Alice Springs. Mayor Ryan said CCTV needs to be extended and particularly to have wireless capacity so that it can focus on hot spots where they spring up.
He mentioned the development of the Regional Waste Facility as a key achievement of the 11th Council.
Asked from the floor about recycling of wine and spirit bottles, which are excluded from the NT Government’s Cash for Containers scheme, Mayor Ryan said they can be recycled at the landfill now and his aim is to have collection receptacles for them placed around town.
Mayor Ryan promised “good governance” in a future council he would lead, stressing as a final remark the need for people to “work together as a team”.
He was questioned from the floor by councillor candidate Aaron (Charlie) Dick (pictured) about his plans for future youth programs. Mr Dick said he was “very disappointed” by council’s work in this area over the last year.
Mayor Ryan referred to the youth forum three years ago “which didn’t go a long way”. But renewed interest in forming a youth council has come from young people involved in the Desert Knowledge youth leadership program, he said.
Ald Habib Bitar said the town must fight centralisation of government functions and jobs; he said government funding should be on a per capita basis – this would be “fair”.
His claims regarding law and order were certainly broad brush: the police “in this town” have “no power and no resources” and “we pay the price”.
Ald Eli Melky, also having a tilt at the top job or seeking return as a councillor, said council can do more than implement by-laws when it comes to law and order. It could be better addressed with the relevant bodies including the Chief Minister. Council has not been doing this to “maximum” effect, he said.
His position on a “bedtime curfew” for youth had been misrepresented as “ripping them off the streets and throwing them into gaol”, he said without going into further detail.
He was given the opportunity to return to this theme by Paul Lelliott who, from the floor, questioned the effectiveness of the numerous government agencies involved in the youth field.
Ald Melky highlighted the problem of youth services being unable to detain a child if the child wanted to leave and called for the consolidation of services: funding should be channelled to reputable services who get better results, he said.
Mayor Ryan on this issue pointed to the effectiveness of the calendar of activities in the recent summer holidays, organised by youth services and supported by council. The Community Action Plan, which he co-chairs, is pushing to have such a calendar for every school holiday period, he said.
Council must talk with youth
Councillor candidate John Reid said council must talk with youth, not just about them and pointed to the way Port Augusta council has been able to involve its youth in decision-making.
Mr Brown said council has to take a “central role” in youth issues: “Alice Springs has to take ownership of its own children.”
This shouldn’t be left to a bureaucrat in the NT Government, he said, taking  a broad swipe at youth services and police juvenile diversion programs.
Ald Habib Bitar harked back to the days of Aranda House when it was a place where vulnerable youths could spend the night. He wanted to know how many beds are available at the Youth Hub.
Ald Liz Martin, who is seeking re-election, said from the floor while the meeting was on this theme, that the reality is that council will need “to deal more and more with our remote communities”.
“We must embrace that for our future. If we fight it, we’ve got no future,” she said.
Ald Melky in his introductory speech said the pressure on ratepayers needs to be reduced, while council needs more resources to keep up with things as simple as keeping the verges mown.
Judy Buckley (pictured) from the floor challenged the suggestion that rates could be cut, saying she is stunned at what council achieves with its $31 million budget, comparing it with the $33 million budget of Victoria’s second largest high school where she worked before retiring to Alice.
Candidate for mayor and councillor Dave Douglas painted a picture of a much safer Alice 30 years ago when he first came to town. You could leave the Stuart Arms and walk down the street “with no trouble at all – now you can’t do that”.
This was challenged from the floor by Graham Buckley, referring to headlines from the period that showed the same concerns about anti-social behaviour existed then. Kel Davies from the floor made a similar point.
If he were mayor, Mr Douglas would not take “second best from Darwin”. He also complained of government centralisation, with Alice left behind as the “very, very poor cousin”.
He spoke of getting a lot more recycling happening, including of industrial waste, and of having “a go” at getting a second airline into Alice. But he returned to the safety of citizens and visitors as his main concern: you give the squeaky wheel the most oil and he’ll be “squeaking like hell” to government for the funding to ensure more effective law and order.
Tackling alcohol-fuelled violence
Ald Melky was questioned from the floor by councillor candidate Chansey Paech about his stance on alcohol restrictions – he advocates their removal – and how he would fight the violence fuelled by alcohol.
Ald Melky says he starts at home by not drinking alcohol himself but he can’t accept the restriction on trade of a legal product and claimed it does nothing to reduce consumption.
At the same time he acknowledged the problem of alcohol-related crime and said “give me a solution”.
Mayor Ryan in his concluding remarks emphasised the importance of the Todd Mall redevelopment, specifically of council obtaining the funding to proceed with the second and third stages.
Mr Brown urged that voters keep in mind that this election precedes the Legislative Assembly election in August. The lead-up will be an important time to lobby government, he said, to redress the neglect that Alice has suffered.
Ald Melky stressed the importance of elected members raising awareness of issues in the community as they can rely on council’s administration to effectively run “roads, rates and rubbish”.
Mr Douglas said he wants people to get behind the town which he’d like to see prosper and grow to a population of 50,000 over the next 10 years.
Ald Habib Bitar said he likes to be “part of the people and being on council you are” as council is “the voice of the people”: “If the voice is not strong enough, we get nowhere.”
The biggest round of applause  for the night was reserved for Kate McMaster (pictured), a teacher and 5th generation Territorian, speaking from the floor. She said teachers must deal with negative behaviour in the classroom quickly and firmly, but their focus remains on positive behaviour, building it up with endless feedback. She urged candidates in tackling the issues to start with positive as “it’s poisonous out there at the moment”.
Councillor candidate Edan Baxter had also urged some perspective: Alice is a town of less than 30,000 people, he said – “we’re not rebuilding Iraq”.

Nose-diving CBD: it happened on the 11th Council's watch

Kieran Finnane
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8

COMMENT by KIERAN FINNANE
 
When the aldermen and Mayor Damien Ryan now seeking re-election, were standing for council in 2008, law and order and alcohol regulation were at the top of the local agenda and there they’ve pretty much stayed for the four years since. What’s new is the dramatic decline of the Alice Springs town centre. Two weeks ago I suggested it might be a “shuddering readjustment“; now it  is starting to feel like a nose-dive, with the voluntary administration of the Memo Club and the closure of the Town & Country Tavern made public knowledge on the one day.
The picture is one of a town centre being abandoned, even while we talk about its rejuvenation or revitalisation. The term may soon have to be resurrection.
Four years ago we already had CCTV in the mall to respond to anti-social behaviour – a move of the 10th Council – despite having been warned that international and national research showed we could have no firm expectations of it in terms of its impact on crime.
The 11th Council would successfully agitate, led as much by CEO Rex Mooney as anyone, for the NT Government to better fund and extend it (along the way we also got the futile police shopfront in the mall). Imagine what the millions that have been put into CCTV could have achieved if they’d been directed instead towards stimulating business, social and cultural activities in the mall.
Four years ago we were accepting that the Dry Town approach – an additional piece of legislation banning public drinking when we already had the 2km law – was a failure.
At the time Damien Ryan, as mayoral candidate, said in response to questions on this issue that he would do his best to see that “the new council will have the resolve to enforce its by-laws”.
He also said new by-laws may be considered.
Public places by-law furore
This certainly came to pass. The debate around the public places by-laws was one of the most controversial of the 11th Council. Together with some notorious incidents of violence and episodes of anti-social behaviour, it generated a lot of bad publicity for the town, some of it quite hysterical, painting a picture of rangers on freezing nights taking blankets from illegal campers in the town’s creekbeds.
But have the by-laws worked? Taken together with the Cash for Containers scheme and the advent of short-term accommodation, giving rangers somewhere to send illegal campers,  the general assessment by aldermen in council meetings has been that the town is now cleaner and the river clearer of campers. I have heard Aldermen Eli Melky and Murray Stewart congratulate the rangers for their efforts, and their fellow aldermen for their resolve.
A recent influx of people from remote communities meant that the short-term accommodation facility, Apmere Mwerre, was full and there was consequently an overflow of people “sleeping rough”. Council’s Director of Corporate and Community Services Craig Catchlove, who oversees the enforcement of the public places by-laws, suggested an additional facility on the north side of town may be needed. In response, aldermen passed a motion calling on the Australian and NT Governments to address the need for additional short-term accommodation.
But stepping back to look at the everyday experience of public places, has it changed for the better?
I think the consensus would be “no”.
We couldn’t expect that change to arise from by-laws alone, especially as their emphasis is on what can’t be done, rather than on what can. That’s where there’s a huge deficit in the public space. Council has done some good work in developing the night markets and its Christmas parties – which build on the success of the Sunday markets and events like the Alice Desert Festival and time-honoured Bangtail Muster – but these occasions are too few and far between. There appears to have been no thinking about stimulating activity, creating drawcards for people to come into the public space of the town centre for positive reasons on a daily and nightly basis. And where enterprise fails – and in this regard it clearly is failing in the mall – governments need to act!
Council, and especially the mayor as co-chair of the steering committee, has had a key role in the CBD revitalisation process. It’s a fair call to say that council has not grasped this opportunity with the vigor it needed – we are still waiting for the ‘first sod to be turned’ for the physical  infrastructure at the northern end of the mall and in Parsons Street. In the meantime council’s works in the public space, such as the increased amount of concreting right through the CBD, has worked against the spirit of what is trying to be achieved.
Importantly, there is also nobody on council articulating what is to happen and why, despite Mayor Ryan’s early assertions in his term that his role would be “centering on communication”.
Nobody, amongst the town’s elected representatives at all levels of government, has been doing the talking that would build bridges between the people who use the public space or who would like to.  Most of our public discourse – and the current election campaign has been a good example – is reactive, criticism and counter-criticism.
Strong local Aboriginal voice needed
There is no strong local Aboriginal voice with a bridge-building intent. Back in 2008 Darryl Pearce had come to prominence as the CEO of the native title body, Lhere Artepe.  He appeared to have that bridge-building potential. His address to the June 2008 Planning Forum was a standout, acknowledging non-Aboriginal locals as the “additional owners”, recognising the long relationship between the Arrernte and the “historical” non-Aboriginal people of the town, and quipping: “We just don’t want you to turn into the hysterical people.”
In a letter to the editor at the time of Mr Pearce’s ascendancy, Phil Walcott, long-declared independent candidate for Greatorex, welcomed Mr Pearce’s vision for the role and function of Lhere Artepe in turning around what Mr Pearce termed as “anti-cultural behaviour”.
None of this early promise translated into sustained leadership, with the opposite sadly true as the Alice Springs News has chronicled.
The dysfunctionality of Lhere Artepe has no doubt hampered council’s bridge-building efforts, such as they have been. The Arrernte leadership has been hugely distracted and is probably still in shock over the Lhere Artepe fiasco – a fresh, credible voice has yet to emerge.
Early in the 11th Council’s term a strong emphasis was put on establishing committees to deal with council’s partnerships with Tangentyere and Lhere Artepe, but little has come from this. Probably the most positive improvement in relationships between council and Aboriginal people has come about through council’s resumption of responsibility for municipal services to town camps, including dog control, supported by the Australian Government.
Issues around alcohol control will continue to dog the incoming council. There’s no skirting this as the views of local government must be taken into account by the Licensing Commission for all licensing applications in their area, as stipulated by the Liquor Act.
Back in 2008 Mayor Ryan argued that “the layer on layer of restrictions has been ineffective and harks to an era of prohibition” –  which remains a popular view and essentially that of his current opponents. In council since he has taken a more moderate stance, notably reluctant to put his name to council’s letter to the big supermarkets asking them to rescind their decision on the withdrawal of ultra-cheap wine from their Alice stores.
Ryan supports current alcohol restrictions
His moderation reflects his time served on the Alice Springs Alcohol Reference Panel. He now supports the current restrictions regime. If a particular restriction is not working, “let’s see how it can be tweaked”, he says.
“I don’t agree with ‘let’s open the doors’. I’m not an opponent of Enough is Enough [the NT Government’s current packages of alcohol reform measures] and I’m a supporter of the Banned Drinkers Register.”
On a take-away grog free day, he says he is open to discussion but has yet to be shown its “consequences” and “relevance”.  He understands the Tennant Creek Thirsty Thursday was designed around the then welfare cheque payday, but the era of electronic banking has changed that.  “A lot more building blocks need to be in place” for the case for a take-away free day to be made out, he says.
Tourism identities Liz Martin and Brendan Heenan, both elected for the first time in 2008 and seeking re-election, were strong anti-restrictions campaigners, although Ald Martin on this site has indicated recently she also has an open mind – waiting to be persuaded – on the question of a take-away free day. The direction council will go in will depend very much on the make-up of the new council. The block associated with Action for Alice views remains adamantly anti-restrictions – it’s an article of faith with them. The alternative candidates are mostly open to be persuaded, at a minimum, of the merits of a take-away free day. But it’s going to get complicated with someone like candidate Aaron (Charlie) Dick, who is for a take-away free day, taking a stance that is independent from the pro-restrictions lobby.
“We need to convince the Federal Government that remote community Alcohol Management Plans aren’t working for Alice Springs. The bullet needs to be bitten with a return to the Living with Alcohol policies that accept prohibition policies on communities aren’t working and are contributing to a binge drinking culture,” said Mr Dick in a media release this week.
In the 2008 campaign Mr Ryan recognised that “more legislation and rules” were not the answer to anti-social behavior.
He said at the time: “The answer lies in providing gainful objectives in outstations and communities, with structured travel to and from Alice Springs and education of visitors in our community pride. Alice Springs is a town for everyone.
“We also need development of hostel style accommodation for young working people seeking to gain employment in our town.”
These remain outstanding issues. The 11th Council’s contribution to Indigenous employment in town was to raise its target to 20% of its workforce (in the 10th council it was set at 15%). The target is reported on monthly and has fluctuated throughout the term. This year’s figures have not been heartening: 11.8% for February, 13.75% for January.
Four years ago, Mr Ryan as candidate made it clear that he would work to liaise with the other tiers of government: “If the door is shut you can’t do anything,” he said at the time.
Working with the NT government 
His critics suggest this has compromised his leadership. In relation to the CBD revitalisation process I believe it has. He consistently declined to comment on that process as it developed, always deferring to the Minister (initially Delia Lawrie, subsequently Gerry McCarthy) when asked anything about it. What was the point then in having him as co-chair of the steering committee (along with the mute Karl Hampton as Minister for Central Australia)?  Discussions about the process in council were always behind closed doors. This approach left the fate of the most important public space in the town dangling and contributed to the despondent mood that now hangs over it.
A final point about leadership style: that councillors have to be able to work constructively together, despite representing a range of views and approaches, some of them very strongly held, goes without saying. Finding the way through division is the work of a leader. In my observation of council meetings particularly in the last 12 months – and I’ve reported on this before – Mayor Ryan could have done a lot better. The challenges were not easy, coming from Aldermen Eli Melky, Samih Habib Bitar and, at times, Murray Stewart. Mayor Ryan’s approach, particularly to Ald Melky from the get go, was to play hard ball. He doesn’t like criticism (his defensiveness over the Stuart statue debacle is an example) and he can be as antagonistic as the next guy. Sure, Ald Melky on his side was provocative from the start, but he was also naive and inexperienced. Finding a way to working with him to harness his considerable energy for the good of the community should have been possible. Ald Habib Bitar’s  contributions were often anarchic but it has not been a pleasant spectacle to see him patronised and humiliated. The prospect of sharply divided views on the 12th Council is strong. If Mayor Ryan is returned, he will need better strategies than the ones he has displayed to take the new council forward.
 
Pictured: Top and bottom, Alice Springs closed for business? The southern end of Todd Mall around 6.15pm last night. Dead as a doornail. • Drinks are over for the mall’s Town & Country Tavern, which closed yesterday. Centre: The mall is transformed when people are drawn into it. Here, the Town Council’s Christmas Party, 2010.

The Minister for Football

Erwin Chlanda
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3

COMMENT by ERWIN CHLANDA
 
When Mayor Damien Ryan talks proudly and with optimism about his relationship with the NT Government, one cannot but wonder what he’s on about.
For example where, as Alice Springs lurches from crisis to crisis, is the so-called Minister for Central Australia, Karl Hampton, and where is his mind?
This is where they are:–
March 21: “Tickets are now on sale for the Australian Superbike Championship with this year’s event to include a performance by three Crusty Demons, Karl Hampton announced today.”
March 21: “Local Member for Stuart, Karl Hampton, today joined hundreds of people  at Territory Manor in Mataranka to welcome the handing down of a consent determination that will provide certainty regarding native title.”
March 21: “Minister for Sport and Recreation, Karl Hampton, today said Top End Rugby League fans will have the chance to watch a NRL Premiership points match between Sydney City Roosters and North Queensland Cowboys this April on Saturday 14.”
March 21, yesterday, as his minders pumped out these handouts, the people of the town were coming to grips with the closure of the iconic Memo Club, and another CBD pub, and a public meeting was held to meet the mayoral candidates, grappling with the town’s problems which some regard as terminal, voting with their feet.
Where was the Minister for Football? Nowhere to be seen or heard.
On March 8 – two weeks ago – we emailed him with a request for an interview and gave notice of the following questions:-
• The impending council elections raise the question, how much notice does the NTG take of the Alice Town Council? Candidates’ views range from “they should stick to rates, roads and rubbish” to “they are the town’s principal lobby and the government should heed their demands”.
• There is a two-speed citizenship in this town: In the camps, for which the town council now has increased responsibilities, lower standards for housing and roads are accepted. Why?
• Comment on alcohol measures, please.
• Tourism … see our online post today … the “strategy” doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. Where should it be going?
Mr Hampton has not agreed to the interview.

For the leaves of the family tree

Kieran Finnane
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1

By KIERAN FINNANE
 
If you want an injection of joy and optimism, if you want to see leadership in action, then go see Punu-ngura (From the Trees) at RAFT Artspace.
This is the second exhibition curated by artist Hector Tjupuru Burton to show at RAFT within 12 months. Both have had as their focus the future of the young people growing up in Amata in the APY Lands where the senior Pitjantjatjara man lives. The young people are the leaves of the Anangu family tree and each one is touchingly named in the show’s catalogue.
Frank Young, director of Tjala Arts, chairperson of the Amata community council and an artist himself, explains the Anangu concept of the family tree: “The Ancestors are the roots … us middle ones – the men and women who made these paintings – we are the trunk of the tree. The young fellas and young women, the future of our families are the leaves on the trees, and the leaves that are yet to be seen.”
In last year’s show the work presented included collaborative paintings involving some of the young men, an initiative by Mr Burton following the tragic death in a car accident of one of their number. In this show there is collaboration again but, while I understand that the young men are still painting and exhibiting work in group shows, these canvasses come from accomplished artists, some celebrated, some less well known. The power of their cultural conviction, respect for their Law and connection with family, can be felt in the profuse imagery and effervescent energy of the collaborations, in the brilliantly organised compositions rich in colour, in each spirited stroke of the brush or dotted field.
“With this exhibition we draw a line. We pull back and put a fence around our culture,” says Mr Young.
It’s a manifesto of the highest order.
It also is something of a breakthrough in work by weavers: their technique has been deployed with sculptural force, giving their tree forms strong structure and an upward thrusting energy, with the coloured yarns worked in to go in the same direction.
This work is presented as a collective installation, the Tjanpi Punu Story, and a statement from the women weavers claims the same kind of cultural significance for their trees as is evident in the paintings: they are “strong and full of story”.
They also assert their commitment to working together: “When we work together we can do anything.”
You leave this exhibition believing them.
 
Shows until this Saturday, 8 Hele Crescent, Alice Springs.
 
Pictured: Top, Untitled painting by Barney Wangin. • Above, The Tjanpi Punu Story. •  Below: Untitled painting by Tjunkura Ken.
 

Memo Club suspends trading, goes into voluntary administration. Town & Country to close tomorrow.

Erwin Chlanda
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29

 
The Alice Springs Memorial Club has suspended trading,  gone into voluntary administration and “the committee is looking to establish a fighting fund for the people of Alice Springs to contribute to in the aim of reopening the doors as soon as possible,” according to a media release this morning.
And the Todd Mall bistro, Town & Country, is closing tomorrow.
Owner Geoff Booth, who is standing for councillor in Saturday’s election, says on Thursday the popular pub in the heart of the town will be boarded up and secured with razor wire.
Mr Booth says this follows declining trading over two years to now being just

“appalling” and “13 of 14 break-ins” just this year, each causing $800 to $1000 worth of damage.
Mr Booth says his and the Memo Club’s problems are very similar: “People are scared of the nighttime activities. After 5pm the town centre turns into a ghost town.”
He says an application to the Liquor Commission to create a double venue in that location had been withdrawn.
One part would have been tavern-style, and the other offering fine wines and boutique beers with gourmet tapas.
Meanwhile the Memo Club’s administrator, Tim Clifton, of Macks Hall Clifton, says the club was in danger of trading while insolvent, and the move will give it a breathing space of one month.
The debts are “not insignificant, but well less than $1m,” says Mr Clifton.
The main reason for the problem is clearly “not enough people coming through the door”.
During the month a proposition will be made to the creditors, to see if they will “accept some compromises of claims” and if agreed, the club’s management will be returned to the committee.
If not the club may be put into liquidation.
Meanwhile a Department of Justice spokesman says the club has applied to the Liquor Commission for a temporary suspension of its gaming machine and liquor licences.
The club has called a special general meeting for April 1 “and we strongly urge all members and the community to attend,” says the release.
The Memo Club dates back to when the army took over the town in 1940.
The release says: “They established a large camp at the northern end of town. Two Sydney Williams huts were erected at the foot of Anzac Hill. It became the first Memorial Club in 1947.
“The Second World War put Alice Springs on the map. It became one of Australia’s most significant military centres. More than 50 trains a week were coming into town in 1942/43.
“Apart from Darwin there was probably no place in Australia changed by the war as much as Alice.
“The population was approaching 2,000 in 1946 when the town’s ex-servicemen commenced proceedings to form a licensed club. Initially membership was to be restricted to ex-servicemen and the liquor licence granted in the name of the RSL.
“However, they recognised the need to also admit men who hadn’t served with the armed forces in order to trade profitably. So evolved the concept of the Alice Springs Memorial Club made up of exservicemen and associate members. The club was officially opened on Anzac day in 1947 at the foot of Anzac Hill.
“In 1951 the club moved to its present site 127 Todd Street. Over the years the Memo club has helped raise many hundreds of thousands of dollars and now the club needs your help.
“The Memo Club is the only community owned club with the only lawn bowls green in Alice Springs. The Memo Club supports many sporting bodies in Alice Springs, help us SAVE the Memo Club and to help keep the sporting clubs,” says the statement released by the president and committee.
Mr Booth says he bought Town & Country six years ago when it was called Scotty’s and occupied only the southern side of its present complex. He expanded the small beer garden and set up a second bar and large kitchen to take up the entire former courtyard and the former Opal shop behind.
Mr Booth says his other ventures, the Gillen Club and Club Eastside, are doing well.
PICTURES: Top – Town & Country Tavern. Note green sign for extended liquor permit application – now withdrawn. Photo by Hans Boessem, Todd Camera Store. Above right – The Memo Club.
 
From the frontline: Kids thieving for drunks, take-away restrictions nail in coffin of tourism?
 
“I’ve met Germans who have a beer with their cornflakes,” says Jason Adami, licensee of Sporties, the restaurant in the Mall near the sails.
He says overseas visitors are bamboozled and irritated by the town’s alcohol regime which, he says, achieves little anyway.
A local of 26 years’ standing and son of the hospitality identity Pat Adami, Mr Adami says while the global financial crisis is doing much damage to the town’s tourism industry, the “unrest” and the alcohol restrictions are just about finishing it off.
And he says it’s not the drunks that are the main problem, but the kids who are doing the drunks’ bidding: “They send in the kids. For the kids it’s excitement.”
Recently still unknown thieves broke into Mr Adami’s business by breaking loose an airconditioner, and gaining access to the bar through the roof space. They did thousands of dolllars worth of damage. The loot was a few bottles of spirits.
“I leave work at 11pm and I see packs of 30, 40 kids, some of them as young as nine,” says Mr Adami.
He says public drunkenness needs to be curbed. It’s now “way worse” than people just being humbugged for cigarettes and cash: “Now it’s stabbings, bashings.
“I’ve said it for years, jail should be jail, in the sense that you should fear the fact of going to jail. It’s a holiday camp now. That’s a well-know fact.”
Mr Adami says if take-away alcohol is the problem then it needs to be fixed without further hurting the tourist industry. He says he would have no problem with extensive restrictions so long as the “bona fide traveller” principle were applied to tourists.
This could include 24/7 trading for people who can prove their normal domicile is outside – for example – a 1500 km radius from Alice Springs.
He says some of his colleagues in tourism expect a downturn this year of as much as 30% to 50%.
“We hear so many horror stories about the take-aways. We need to go further than that.
“People should be able to have a beer on their own land, their own environment. They come here and all they want to do is drink.
“If they misbehave they get booted off their own land.
“They’re not going to stay in the desert. They have long ago lost the skills for that.
“They come to town, and cause trouble here.”

Rotary scholarship to future doctor in Centre

Erwin Chlanda
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1

The 2012 Rotary Club of Alice Springs – John Hawkins Memorial Scholarship has been awarded to Sam Heckathorn (pictured), the 2010 Dux of OLSH College.
He has this year started a Bachelor of Biomedicine at the University of Melbourne with the intention of becoming a general practitioner in Central Australia.
Chairperson of the JHMS committee, Catherine Maughan, says  the award was given because of “Sam’s obvious intelligence, exemplary community service record and his commitment to invest his future in Central Australia”.
The scholarship is valued at $18,000 paid in six equal installments over three years.
The Rotary Club of Alice Springs encourages local students intending to commence tertiary study in 2013 to apply for next year’s scholarship, says Ms Maughan.
“Money raised from the annual Rotary Club of Alice Springs Melbourne Cup sweep helps fund the scholarship.”

The Devil’s Big Day Out

Erwin Chlanda
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6

COMMENT by RUSSELL GUY
 
Around 7am on Saturday, I pulled up in the almost deserted CBD, but couldn’t get out of my car because 98.7 Gold was playing Stevie Wonder’s  Living for the City, a song about an Afro-American family from  “small town Mississippi” trying to overcome dirt-poor status.  I once stumbled upon Stevie playing a small keyboard at an Aboriginal community on the outskirts of Cairns, in the late 1980s.
While waiting for a café to open in the Mall, I strolled to the back of Adelaide House, where some Port Lincoln parrots gently fed from fallen dates beside a couple of Major Mitchell galahs on the lawn. Further back, under the trees, were five empty bottles of Hardy’s Chardonnay, featuring a little red sticker advertising “33% more than a regular 750ml” in a smoky, green bottle promising “11 standard drinks” with 13.5% alcohol content.  Nearby were three 750 ml Yellow Tail Chardonnay empties at “7.4 standard drinks”.  A couple of Penfolds Rawsons Retreat reds completed the picture among half a dozen VB cans. Ten empty wine bottles laying in the grass, in the middle of the CBD early Saturday morn, an incongruous sight beside the beautiful native birds at the rear of Rev.  Flynn’s old hospital, the first in Central Australia, built less than ninety years ago by public conscription.
It reminded me of recent research that I’d read, stating that the alcohol content and market share of wine had increased, largely unnoticed over the past twenty years (ABC RN transcript, 22/11/10) as a result of increased discretionary income and sophistication demanding a “decent” bottle of wine, which local manufacturer’s met by increasing the alcohol content in the pre-GFC years.  How many more are hooked now that the boom years have subsided and stats are out showing very dangerous drinking rates among young bingers and other high-risk drinkers?   Perhaps, the words “peel off here” on the “33% more” sticker is a concession to bourgeois guilt or shame on behalf of blood money marketeers?
There used to be a vegetable garden where these bottles lay, before cunning marketers who, only a few years ago, introduced the thirty can VB “barbecue pack” with carry handles as more convenient than lugging a twenty four can slab.  “More” is the name of the game.  Cheap casks of Chardonnay are withdrawn in supermarkets around town and out come the “33% more” bottles of glut valley Chardy!
I couldn’t help but think back to Justice Muirhead’s days on the NT Supreme Court bench, circa 1986, when he referred to glass flagons as weapons of death, after a lawyer remarked that “no one could be stabbed with a cask, your Honour.”  From memory, the beak said that vested interest made it difficult to outlaw the glass flagon.  Twenty-five years later, here we are again with the “33% more”, one litre, long-neck, weapon of death, sold through take-away outlets, while some mercenaries who aspire to lead the town describe any attempt at remedy as racial discrimination and support an unregulated, free market for alcohol retailers.  Who can afford these policies?  And yet both NT political parties accept campaign donations from the liquor industry.  It’s all a bit of a tragic joke which makes mockery of well intentioned citizens eager for a solution to the daily misery.  With apologies to Gene Pitney, where is the moral fibre, backbone and responsible leadership in this town without pity?
During the Eighties, I dialed 000 one night as half a dozen young men were left lying, stabbed with flagon shards when a fight broke out on a dance floor that I regularly promoted, so imagine my droll reaction when seated in the Mall last Saturday, as I saw a young bloke carrying one of the new “33% more” empties.  I said to my friend, “he’s carrying a weapon.”  Within seconds and metres from our table, he smashed it over the head of another bloke, who pulled a knife.  Simultaneously, a middle-aged woman came up to our table and held the stump of an amputated hand in my face while chopping at it with the other hand.  Earlier in the day, I’d heard a news report about a new body – the Alcohol Advertising Review Board – stating that “the liquor industry could not self-regulate” and that targeting young people in advertising was about to receive some attention, but it falls on deaf ears in this “small town Mississippi.”
The point is that these bottles came from take-away outlets – the pubs operate seven days a week.   The afternoon’s macabre cabaret proved that, so far, nothing and nobody can stop them from providing this nouveau fascination for a new generation of less experienced observers.  In the early Eighties, CAAMA radio played NYC-based, Grand Master Flash’s proto-Hip Hop, rap, the scratch-mix The Message … “broken glass everywhere, people pissing in the street, don’t .. push .. me, I’m close to the edge.”  Thirty years later, our political leaders still don’t get the message, but I’ve spoken to a couple of newcomerlice Springs Town Council candidates in recent days that support take-away sales free days as do some businesses in the Mall.
It’s time for these and any others to declare their hand against the direction of “zero tolerance law and order – change for the better” policies, which are out of step with the nation on impending alcohol reform.   Let’s do this to prevent the NT continuing to have the highest rate of imprisonment and hospitalisation in the country for alcohol-related abuse.   It’s obvious to any sane observer that the lock’em-up approach is not working and while these insanely liberal policies steer away from alcohol reform, the National Alcohol Action Alliance has released its position statement, revealing that the cost to taxpayers of alcohol abuse is $15billion per year (NAAA policy papers.  March, 2012). Wake up, Australia!
What’s wrong with a take-away ban (naughty word) for part of the week as a major step towards regulating the escalating, alcohol-related violence? It would give the police a break, so they can move on black marketers and property crime, while putting some control into the situation, where responsible consumption in the pubs and clubs is monitored. Rehabilitation and Dry Out Centres  wouldn’t be sending clients back to the battle-lines for more of the same constant take-away psychosis. Demented rampage, anyone?  More death?  More law and order?
If take-away was banned from Sunday to Wednesday inclusive, then it’s a good bet that Thursday to Saturday, in the short term, at least, will be the Devil’s Big Days Out, but more likely curtailed from a Big Night Out if the hours are set at 12 noon to 4pm – you can still get your take-away during lunch hour as a concession to cleaning up the town.
One of the big changes over the past 30 years is that violence is overflowing town camps into the streets.  That indicates that not only are things getting worse, but that, more importantly, these people need help.  The source of this supply is take-away.  Unless something is done to restrict it – law and order tactics will not constrain it, and Alice will continue to be trashed.  That’s the message of living for the city in this urban drift.
There’s an epitaph on the grave of one of the first believers in the faith of the Hermannsburg Lutheran missionaries, dating from the 1880s, belonging to old Moses Raberaba, the subject of a new book by Peter Latz.  Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the firmament, and those who turn many to righteousness like the stars forever and ever.  In those days, alcohol was banned and missionaries got the blame for corrupting the culture.  I have no wish to defend the Church, because in some denominations, the social Gospel is a case of the blind leading the blind into a ditch, but going on present indications in liberal democratic countries, corruption under free market legislation is about as bad as it gets.  The new Alcohol Advertising Review Board refers to alcohol advertising as a “tsunami” and is about to apply some pressure.  In a week’s time, Alice votes for a new Council.  Let’s see some candidates willing to come out on days free from take-away alcohol sales as an emergency trial measure, subject to twelve months evaluation.  It’s up to the community to prevent alcohol-related child abuse and neglect by showing leadership and voting accordingly.
IMAGE: The new “Peel off here” – “33% more” sticker on the trendy new bottle.

LETTERS: How to fix the footpaths. AND: How many more children with foetal alcohol syndrome will be born?

Erwin Chlanda
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1

Sir – I am looking forward to the upcoming council elections.
Along with all the other items on the “to do” list for everyone, could the footpath program be upgraded a bit?
Old Eastside residents have paid rates since 1971 (council’s birth), not to mention other areas of town.
If this is not possible, maybe $2000 could be added to the sale price of houses to pay for a footpath outside the “sold” houses, so that the new residents won’t have to bother the council (when they get ’round to that street).
If this happened a couple of years ago there would be a lot less work for the council (when all the people left town).
This would free up council to spend he rates in a better way.
Could you publish candidates’ phone contacts, please? [ED – you will find them here, Mr Petersen]
(Mr) Kim Petersen.
Resident for 42 years.
Alice Springs
 
Image: Snail mail Letters to the Editor – we don’t get many but we love them just as much as their digital cousins. Erwin Chlanda, Editor.
 
Hal will vote for take-away free days
 
Sir – I can respect an answer of no to the question of alcohol takeaway-free days. I think such an answer is wrong, and ill-judged in not seeing the need to start the process of breaking down our over-indulgence in alcohol. But if it’s an honestly held belief, clearly given, I can respect it.
I welcome an answer of yes to the same question, and will vote for anyone willing to take that stand to help them gain a seat on Council.
But for those who are waiting to be persuaded, who are playing the odds by placing an each-way bet in the election lottery, I can only wonder what are you waiting for.
When I was a teenager, my parents chose to adopt a handicapped child. Without knowing what they were getting, they adopted a three year old girl with foetal alcohol syndrome. All my adult life I have watched this girl, now woman, fail to grow into anything that could be called an autonomous life of her own. And I have often wondered what her mother was thinking, and what the society her mother lived in was thinking, to allow this to happen.
Perhaps they really didn’t know. Foetal alcohol syndrome was a new idea in the sixties, so they may not have. But it’s not new any longer, and we do know.
It is possible to say we all have to make our own choices, and the young mother drinking on the streets of Alice Springs today is doing so of her own free will. The same cannot be said of the child she will carry.
And of course she will get pregnant, as young girls do, and the child will likely be born damaged and never have a chance of a full life, and this entirely predictable outcome will be through no fault of the child’s.
The mother does carry some blame, but coming from poverty and ignorance does allow for a mitigating circumstances, a diminished responsibility, argument. What is the structure in her young life? Who are her teachers, her role models?
We are truly kidding ourselves if we try to argue that none of this can be sheeted home to us, the people who make up the larger society this girl lives in. And unless we want our park benches and Ward 1s to continue to fill with damaged souls, unless we want to go down the road being travelled today in places like Halls Creek, we really do need to start the long process of challenging the prevailing notion that it’s OK if we all go drinking now.
Closing the bottle shops on one day a week is such a small ask and such a small beginning, and it’s so selfish, I think, not to support it.
Hal Duell
The Gap, Alice Springs

Leaked letter casts light on town council pool fiasco

Erwin Chlanda
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13

 
By ERWIN CHLANDA
The YMCA has asked the Town Council to pay it an additional amount of up to $45,000 a month “over and above the existing subsidy” for managing the town pool.
The request was made by Fiona Davies, president of YMCA Central Australia, in a letter in December last year which proposed “a new business model with a new business plan and budget for presentation to Council at its March 2012 meeting.”
The letter has been leaked to the Alice Springs News Online.
The council is dealing with the issues behind closed doors: in reply to enquiries yesterday the News was told by council CEO Rex Money that he is “constrained by confidentiality”. (see posting below).
We have now asked Mayor Damien Ryan whether the council has been and is paying the requested money to the YMCA; if so, for how long has this arrangement been in place and how long will it be; what the council has done to resolve the situation and why has the job not been re-tendered.
 We will publish Mr Ryan’s reply if and when it comes to hand.
Ms Davis says in her letter that the Alice Springs Aquatic and Leisure Centre “has dealt with a range of personnel issues, higher than expected energy costs and much higher staff ratios than was first expected, leading to substantial deficits over and above the subsidy provided by the Council.
“Since April 2011 until October 2011, YMCA Central Australia has funded this deficit to the extent of $280,000.”
Her letter says the appointment of an “excellent aquatic manager” had already made “a major difference” and it’s expected “these positive trends will continue”.
The News reported last month on defects at the pool, revealed in an earlier confidential report obtained by us as a “major problem”.
The council awarded the tender for the “management of the Alice Springs Aquatic & Leisure Centre” to the YMCA of Central Australia for $2,271,500 in 2009/10. (UPDATE.)
The agenda of this month’s meeting indicated there would be a report in confidential by the Director of Technical Services about the aquatic centre. Other confidential reports were to deal with the landfill compactor and the Todd Mall shade structure, destined to be removed as part of the CBD revitalisation project. The director of finance was to report on budget amendments. The News has asked Mr Ryan to comment on these matters as well.
 

 
Yesterday’s posting (March 17)
 
COMMENT by ERWIN CHLANDA
 
OK, guys, why can’t we get a straight answer on this one?
The Alice Springs News Online had a phone call yesterday from someone requesting anonymity. What that person told me prompted me to send the following email to Mayor Damien Ryan and Town Council CEO Rex Mooney.
“I understand the YMCA has under-tendered for its management of the pool. Takings from attendance, and as a result, earnings, are well below expectations. The council is paying them half a million dollars more [in excess of the contract] during the life of the agreement (1 or 2 years?). This bail-out has not been made public. The proper course of action should have been to re-tender the contract. Could you please comment on this?”
Mr Mooney responded yesterday: “Erwin,  thank you for your email. My comment is: I am constrained by confidentiality to comment on the assumptions conveyed in your email.”
Mr Ryan (pictured) replied today: “Erwin … any questions on operational issues need to be directed to the CEO.”
We sought comment yesterday from the YMCA by requesting pool manager Ian Jones to pass a message to Helen Sargent who is apparently the YMCA person in charge of the contract. I made the same request today to a lady who answers the phone at the Y. She told me no comment would be made before “Tuesday when the acting CEO will be at work”.
I left a message on the mobile of the Y’s CEO, Ray Smith. No reply from anyone. (I have since been told he has left.)
Whose attention has it escaped that a week from today will be arguably the most crucial council election in the history of this town?
Have some people not cottoned on yet that transparency and leadership – which includes the judicious spending of public money – are among the key issues?
If this rumor is not true then, Mr Mayor, say so. If it is then let’s have the facts, all the facts, and let’s have them now, not after the voters have been sent to the ballot box in ignorance.

Salt mine a great opportunity for Titjikala?

Erwin Chlanda
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4

Salt deposits in thick beds and domes have been found near Titjikala, on Maryvale Station, 120 kilometers south of Alice Springs.
The deposit is believed to be one of Australia’s largest and and will provide its first underground salt mine, according to the managing director of Tellus Holdings, Duncan van der Merwe.
He says: “The project should also provide substantial research and business opportunities for Alice Springs  business and research institutions, including community development, Indigenous employment and  training, renewable energy and micro-business opportunities, such as bush foods.
“Tellus has used the results of historic oil and gas exploration to identify several extensive salt beds in Central Australia as salt and oil and gas beds tend to occur together.
“The results suggest the Chandler salt bed formation has very high grade halite that can be used for  edible and industrial salt.  It also contains minerals that can be used in fertilisers and industrial  applications,” Mr van der Merwe said.
Tellus is completing a pre-feasibility study and plans to conduct drilling later this year to confirm the resource.
Should the mine go ahead, it would produce high quality rock salt, or halite, which would be  processed on site, trucked to the nearby railway and mostly exported to Asia where edible and  industrial salt are in demand for products such as chloralkali, soda ash, water treatment and  livestock.
Tellus is also looking at a processing and packaging plant for edible gourmet salts and other  specialty salt products that could be in Alice Springs.
Mr van der Merwe said salt mining is a low impact activity that would have a small surface footprint and little visual impact.
“Tellus is planning an initial mine life of 25 years, which is likely to be extended by another 25  years.  However the underground deposit is so huge that the potential mine life is virtually limitless,” Mr van der Merwe said. (Media release)
 
PHOTOS: A salt mine project may breathe some life into the main street of Titjikala. Photo courtesy MacDonnell Shire. “Room mining” in a salt mine in Canada.

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