Samantha Donovan: The Northern Territory and federal governments are defending their efforts to reduce crime in Alice Springs. The outback town was quiet last night after the police commissioner imposed a snap three-night curfew for both adults and children. But some Territorians are accusing the governments of using the curfew laws for political gain while offering few long-term solutions. Jane Bardon has more.
Jane Bardon: The NT Police Commissioner Michael Murphy blamed weekend brawling and attacks for his curfew decision. Some of it was caused, he said, by an influx of people into Alice Springs for the annual show. Many of them sleep rough around the town. But some rough sleepers, including Pintinjarra man Hartley Clothler, who stays at the railway line, say public housing shortages leave people with nowhere else to go.
Hartley Clothler: Everybody's sleeping everywhere. Up here, they've got a lot of blankets here. People need house, you know, homeless people.
Jane Bardon: He sees kids roaming the streets regularly because parents are busy drinking.
Hartley Clothler: All the little kids, they're running around, stealing cars, breaking into shops. Because their mother and father, they're drinking, fighting, and the kids run away from the mother and father and they fight in the town.
Jane Bardon: The NT Labour government is determined to show it's getting tougher on crime in the lead-up to next month's Territory election and that it can control Alice Springs. NT Domestic Violence Prevention Minister Kate Wardon.
Kate Worden: We've seen an increased police presence in Alice Springs and we have passed the legislation to enable curfew to be called by the police commissioner. It's not just a curfew by itself. There's a lot of work that's going on behind the scenes to make sure that we can maintain law and order.
Jane Bardon: She rejects accusations the NT government has politicised the curfew move.
Kate Worden: Absolutely not. We made a very strong decision to support curfew to enable the police to have the powers when they see fit.
Robyn Lambley: They have squeezed every little political juice they can out of it. People in town are still highly anxious about crime. They're highly suspicious of the government and what they really will deliver over a longer period and if they are even capable of turning this around.
Jane Bardon: That's Alice Springs Independent NT MP Robyn Lambley, who's also questioning the rule-out of the federal government's $250 million rescue package committed to Alice Springs 18 months ago.
Robyn Lambley: It was sprinkled around. A lot went to education, a lot went to programs to assist children and families. We're not feeling it yet.
Jane Bardon: But the federal Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney says the money is flowing.
Linda Burney: Looking at night patrols, safe houses, boarding facilities and really important, investing in the health service in Alice Springs to address issues like fetal alcohol syndrome.
Jane Bardon: Dr Chay Brown, who designed some of Alice Springs' few anti-domestic violence programs, hasn't seen any impact from the federal money, insisting big service gaps remain.
Chay Brown: My understanding is that a lot of it has not been allocated and a lot of it has not hit the ground. I think we really needed a community-led, co-designed approach to where that money should go and that never came, that never happened.
Jane Bardon: She thinks the curfew was an overreaction and questions why it was called for the town's quietest days of the week when the bottle shops are closed.
Chay Brown: Alice Springs becomes a political football. When it's politically expedient, that's when we will see the application of these curfews. These really kind of punitive, short-term measures that do not address the underlying drivers and causes and we know these problems are being driven by things like domestic family sexual violence and they're being driven by poverty.
Samantha Donovan: That's domestic violence program designer Chay Brown. She was talking to Jane Bardon.
