Issue 19

It won’t be for want of trying if Councillor Eli Melky fails to bring more meaningful discussion of council’s finances into the open. Council’s Director of Finance Paul Della had made an effort to have something for this month’s committee meeting to consider in open, two reports in fact, one requiring no action, the other merely for formal endorsement. Cr Melky was not to be bought off so easily. KIERAN FINNANE reports.

Figures aren't finalised yet, but it looks like the annual Old Timers Fete on Saturday made $70,000. And all of that will stay in town, says Old Timers manager Mary Miles, head of the complex that cares for the town's elderly and frail. ERWIN CHLANDA reports.

… but Cr Paech will fight on!

Cars in the new shared zone of the northern Todd Mall are OK but skateboards are not. Council has installed skateable street furniture there but – for the time being at least – skaters are not to use it. For that to change a majority of councillors would have to support modifying Public Places by-law 53 which bans skateboarding on footpaths throughout the entire CBD. A change to the by-law looks like it will be hard won. Cr Chansey Paech was on his own at last night’s meeting in wanting to welcome skate-boarding in the mall. KIERAN FINNANE reports.

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

The Country Liberals Government is fulfilling an election commitment by introducing a Bill at the next sittings to make changes to the Local Government Act to give people back their voice in local government, writes Alison Anderson (pictured), Minister for Local Government.

Luxury tent accommodation at Ormiston Gorge, a tethered balloon at Uluru and mountain biking in the hills around The Alice are ideas that may attract Federal grants for businesses under schemes that should continue after the elections, says Tourism Central Australia boss Jaclyn Thorne (pictured). AT LEFT: Mountain bike rider Corey Gerdsen on top of the world – well, the Alice hills, anyway.

The local environmental lobby's draft "road map to a desert smart town" can be seen a wish list for the Federal elections, it but goes well beyond that focus – and could do with a robust reality check. In 2033 Alice Springs runs on 100% renewable energy? A local horticultural industry which supplies 50% of local fresh produce needs? And all that whilst not increasing water use beyond the current level? The Arid Lands Environment Centre's Jimmy Cocking (pictured at right with environmentalist and science journalist Tanya Ha at Friday's CoolMob gala dinner) and Mr McClean spoke with Alice Springs News Online editor ERWIN CHLANDA.

... in our hottest year

Walking in the wind shadow at the foot of the southern Mount Gillen range yesterday my face was getting red, my hair, damp on my forehead; the shirt beneath my backpack was sticking to my skin. And this was a winter’s day! Surely a record for August? But no. That was set only a few years back and I’d already forgotten. On August 22, 2009 it reached 35.2 degrees Celsius at Alice Springs airport. Yesterday it only got to 30.8 degrees. KIERAN FINNANE asks the Bureau of Meteorology about our very warm weather and what, if anything, it means about our climate. Pictured: Seeking the breeze high on the range.

Rhonda Napurrula Sharpe, one of the leading Yarrenyty Arltere artists from the Larapinta Valley Town Camp in Alice Springs, has won the Wandjuk Marika Memorial 3D Award, for her work They Come From No Where. The 3D Award is one of five $4000 prizes in the Telstra National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Awards (NATSIAAs). The big prize of $40,000 went to Canberra artist Jenni Kemarre Martiniello for her elegant glass sculpture, Golden Brown Reeds Fish Trap.

Tina McFarlane (left), Country Liberals candidate for Lingiari, has in a media release accused Warren Snowdon of “raiding the NT Aboriginals Benefits Account (ABA) to pork-barrel his election campaign”. And Shadow Indigenous Affairs Minister Senator Nigel Scullion (right), says in a media release that Minister Jenny Macklin’s speech on Labor plans for Indigenous affairs was "underwhelming and more about throwing money around, bureaucratic plans and targets rather than results".

Spot the difference. None? You're almost right – only the page folio is different: July 2, 2009 (the one on the left) and the other, today, August 9, 2013. Yet the ad’s main text says: “Who's reading what in The Centre?” That suggest it refers to the present. In fact it is quoting a Roy Morgan survey of 2008. ERWIN CHLANDA reports.

A new volume of memoir and reflection on his art by Rod Moss has been published this week by UQP. Titled tellingly One Thousand Cuts, it bleeds grief, as violence, disease and death ravages his circle of Arrernte friends and at times leaves Moss reeling. The country becomes his “safety net” into which he leans to find joy and consolation. KIERAN FINNANE reviews.

At right: And dark was the night, 2009. A few days later the candle-bearer would stab his young wife, whom Moss shows here with their young son,  11 times.

The construction of a roundabout at the intersection of Undoolya Road and Sturt Terrace completes an odd example of the management of traffic flow in Alice Springs. There are now four roundabouts in a row – one at every street corner – along Undoolya Road from Sturt Terrace at one end to the intersection of Stott Terrace and Grevillea Drive to the east, in a distance less than a kilometre, comments ALEX NELSON. PHOTOS: Undoolya Road roundabout at the Winnecke intersection. The Alice Springs News Online has asked the town council for a comment.