There’s one good thing, at least, coming out of Alice Spring’s descent into juvenile lawlessness: the whole vacuous, pointless, useless charade of the “Voice” referendum is being shamefully exposed for the onanistic elite power-grab that it really is.
On the one hand, you have a town where one in five of the resident population is Aboriginal, plagued by crime and violence, mostly perpetrated by Aboriginal children whose parents are too drunk or too disengaged to even care. Where crime is so bad that shopkeepers install panic rooms and locals have begun begging for the government to send in the military to keep order.
On the other, you have city-based activists and politicians thousands of miles away, most of them conspicuously white “box-tickers” whose only concern about the alcoholic anarchy in the Alice is that it might derail their push for a racist Constitutional gravy-train.
The Northern Territory’s Labor Chief Minister says she will not back any “race-based” intervention in besieged Alice Springs, despite the town’s two Aboriginal MPs demanding alcohol bans to curb out-of-control violence and calling the crisis a bigger priority than the voice referendum.
After weeks of rising crime and children wandering the town’s streets at night, the Albanese government stood firm on its refusal to intervene and Chief Minister Natasha Fyles is understood to be visiting the town on Tuesday only to consult with locals.
The crime wave in Alice Springs was threatening on Monday to derail the national campaign for a voice to parliament, with two federal MPs making heartfelt pleas for action and a pause in the constitutional debate.
Most telling was the admission from NT Labor MP Marion Scrymgour, who said that the Voice campaign was “challenging for people who were frustrated and felt unsafe in their beds”.
“Absolutely (I support the voice) … but I think that we can’t have these conversations if there are all these issues that are impacting on communities like Alice Springs,” Ms Scrymgour said on 3AW.
The Australian
Which sounds an awful lot like an admission of what we all already know: that a “Voice” would have no practical impact on the ground. Meanwhile, Anthony “I won’t go missing when the going gets tough” Albanese is nowhere to be seen. Albanese flatly rejected an invitation from Opposition Leader Peter Dutton to visit Alice Springs and see the disaster area for himself, until the PR pressure got too much.
Meanwhile, the usual faces of the Aboriginal Industry are growing more shrill and desperate by the day.
Noel Pearson has warned Australia will end up with “a completely useless” Indigenous advisory body if federal parliament legislates a voice after a failed referendum and says the Liberal Party will “detonate” a historic opportunity if it does not provide its support.
We’ll end up with a completely useless advisory body if the referendum passes, too: the only difference is that we won’t be able to get rid of it, like we did the corrupt, nepotistic money-pit that was the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission. Pearson is also pushing the common lie that we “have the detail”.
“Peter Dutton was in cabinet when Ken Wyatt took the detail to them. Did they make any calls on the Calma-Langton report?”
The lie in this is that the Calma-Langton report actually matters. It doesn’t. It’s not draft legislation. It’s not official policy. It’s not even a White Paper. It’s nothing more than a couple of troughing academics’ “I Just Reckon”.
In a weird twist, of all people, Michael “Gimme dat yacht” Mansell is one of the few people talking sense.
Aboriginal Land Council of Tasmania chair Michael Mansell said Mr Dutton’s call for legislation before a referendum in the second half of the year was “rational … constitutional acknowledgment … that Aborigines were here first changes nothing,” he said. “Recognition does not confer rights. Parliaments legislate to change rights, responsibilities.”
The Australian
Strange days, indeed.