How a crime wave in Alice Springs grew into a national political crisis

Anthony Albanese may have only been in Alice Springs for a few hours, but his whirlwind visit in the face of growing political pressure over the town’s soaring crime rates catapulted the issue to the top of the national agenda this week.

The underlying causes of the spike in property crimes and alcohol-fuelled violence are complex — and different depending on who you ask. So far the federal government has focused on restricting the availability of alcohol in the township.

Speaking to ABC Radio on Wednesday, Minister for Indigenous Australians Linda Burney described the measure as a “first step in what is a very complex problem, or set of problems, really”.

This reality is all too apparent to local residents and community leaders, who have spent months desperately calling for something to change.

Here is how the current situation developed.

Alcohol bans lapse after 15 years

Federal laws banning alcohol in remote Aboriginal communities across the Northern Territory quietly lapsed in July last year, making liquor legal for the first time in 15 years.

The widespread bans were introduced in 2007 as part of the controversial NT Emergency Response — more commonly known as the intervention.

The Howard government intervention-era laws were then replaced by the so-called Stronger Futures legislation in 2012, which continued the alcohol bans and increased penalties.

Neither the Coalition nor Labor committed to extending the bans as their expiration approached, despite warnings from Aboriginal health organisations that rushing through the change without proper consultation could lead to an increase in alcohol-related harm.

In May, the NT government passed its own laws to replace the federal legislation, establishing an “opt-in” system in which individual communities, town camps, and homelands could choose to remain “dry” for a further two years.

Concerns raised over alcohol-related harm

Weeks after May’s federal election, Northern Territory parliamentarians Marion Scrymgour and Jacinta Nampijinpa Price used their maiden speeches to highlight concerns around alcohol-fuelled harm and rising crime rates. 

“When a government puts a protective regime of that kind in place and leaves it in place for that long, you can’t just suddenly pull the pin on it without any protection, sanctuary or plan for the vulnerable women and children whom the original measure was supposed to protect,” said Scrymgour, the Member for Lingiari — a massive electorate covering all of the territory outside of Darwin.

“To do that is more than negligent; at the level of impact on actual lives, it is tantamount to causing injury by omission.”

Price, a Country Liberal senator, argued that such neglect would not be “accepted in the prosperous suburbs of any of our capital cities”. 

“It is not good enough that the streets of our Northern Territory towns — and other towns across regional Australia — have gangs of children aged from 6 to 16 wandering around with no adult supervision in the early hours of the morning,” she said.

“It is not good enough that almost all of these children have witnessed or been subject to normalised alcohol abuse, domestic, family and sexual violence throughout their young lives and is the reason for their presence on our streets.”

The lifting of the bans was also of concern to the Central Australian Aboriginal Congress, which reportedly wrote to the new Minister for Indigenous Australia shortly after the election.

“At a stroke, many Northern Territory communities, town camps and Community Living Areas will lose their legal protection from alcohol abuse,” a spokesperson said in a statement in May.

“The ‘rivers of grog’ will once again flow through our communities — the effects on the broader community through increased crime, antisocial behaviour and violence will be of great concern.”

In 2022, according to NT Police data, property damage offences in Alice Springs were up by almost 59 per cent on the previous year, commercial break-ins by 55 per cent, alcohol-related assault by 55 per cent, domestic violence assault by 53 per cent and assault by 43 per cent.

The removal of the bans has been labelled one of the key drivers of the surge, but community leaders have also pointed out that many of the underlying issues go back decades.

In a statement on Tuesday, a group representing the town’s Arrernte traditional owners said the crisis was the result of intervention policies and decades of “chronic and systemic neglect” of remote communities.

“This is not new,” Pat Anderson, an Alyawarre woman and chair of the Lowitja Foundation, told ABC News on Wednesday. “This powerlessness and poverty, disengagement and neglect, and [lack of] access to appropriate services, that’s the history of many of the towns in our communities all over Australia.

“It’s not just black fellas drunk in Alice Springs, it’s a much bigger problem than that.”

A series of dangerous incidents

When a dangerous driving incident involving five children in stolen cars prompted police to take the unprecedented step of issuing a warning for residents to stay out of the Alice Springs CBD, attention turned to offending by children and teenagers.

Within two weeks in November, a second warning was issued to residents after more stolen vehicles were used to joy-ride through town and ram police cars.

When another group of young people targeted police vehicles with stolen cars in the smaller outback town of Katherine, police described it as an example of a “very concerning” social media trend plaguing northern Australia.

“This isn’t limited to the Northern Territory or Katherine alone. We see these instances across the Kimberley as well, and across Townsville,” Deputy Police Commissioner Michael Murphy said at the time. 

“The sad reality is it’s communicated across social media platforms as well and people play a game of one-upmanship to try and do better or take more risky behaviours.”

The NT Police Force has been working with the eSafety commission to stamp out the practice. 

During these months the coronial inquest into the police shooting death of Kumanjayi Walker was also underway in Alice Springs, which exposed racism within the NT Police Force ranks — further eroding the relationship between communities and police. 

Meanwhile, as November drew to a close, community leaders and social workers in Central Australia warned at least one remote youth program would have to close its doors and another eight would be forced to operate at reduced hours due to a 2014 funding freeze.

“We are absolutely committed to being part of the solution to crime issues in town but we need to have the resources to do so,” said Sabine Wedemeyer, director of community services at Macdonnell Regional Council.

NT government flags ‘intervention’ on unsupervised youth

Under pressure from business owners and residents, in November Northern Territory authorities flagged they were exploring the option of removing at-risk children from their families if they were found unsupervised late at night.

At the time, Police and Territories Families Minister Kate Worden described the proposal as an “intervention”.

When details of the “circuit breaker” plan were released the following month, it was revealed any unsupervised young person picked up would be free to leave the safe house at any time.

An additional 45 frontline police officers were also deployed to the township in what police called “Operation Drina”. At the time, community members questioned the flow-on effects of bringing in extra police, describing it as a “short-term fix to a long-term problem”.

By early January, the number of additional officers deployed to Alice Springs had dropped to around 30.

After almost two months of “Operation Drina” — and more than 300 arrests, according to police — the mayor of Alice Springs, Matt Paterson, said it wasn’t enough and called for the army or Australian Federal Police to be deployed to assist with the crisis. 

“We need more boots on the ground every single day of the year at this stage, until this is addressed,” he said last week.

“Whether that is the AFP, whether that is the army, or whether that is just resources from another jurisdiction, we need them in Alice Springs now.”

The idea was quickly dismissed by the NT government and police force, and later by the Prime Minister. 

New restrictions announced

This week federal Opposition Leader Peter Dutton declared the town’s issues were “beyond the resources of the Northern Territory government” and pressured Albanese into travelling to Alice Springs. 

“If the level of violence, of crime, of sexual assault, of domestic and family violence, was occurring in Brisbane or in Melbourne or in Hobart or in Sydney, there would be outrage,” Dutton told a media conference.

The Prime Minister arrived in town the following afternoon, where he announced new restrictions on the sale of alcohol for all residents, but stopped short of a complete ban. 

Albanese also announced the appointment of Arrernte woman and long-time public servant Dorrelle Anderson to the new role of Central Australian Regional Controller. 

“These are complex problems and they require a full solution, which won’t be immediate, which requires different levels of government to work together to that end,” he said.

Anderson will oversee and coordinate federal and state programs, Albanese said, so they “provide for the best use of taxpayers’ dollars to make a substantial difference”.

She is scheduled to provide an update to governments on whether further restrictions, like moving to an “opt-out” model for alcohol bans, are needed in a week.