On the back foot over the Voice to parliament plan, Labor has resorted to the kind of knee-jerk top-down decision-making that constitutional recognition is meant to stop.
crested in Alice Springs this week, Pat Anderson couldn’t have been less surprised. After decades of fighting to tackle Indigenous disadvantage, the Alyawarre woman and Uluru Dialogue leader appeared almost at her wit’s end.
Northern Territory Police Commissioner Jamie Chalker called for more therapeutic services on the ground, revealing that about 800 arrests had taken place in the past eight weeks, along with more than 500 fines issued by the police. A big part of the problem, he says, is visitors arriving in Alice Springs from remote communities as far away as South Australia and Western Australia, seeking medical care and government services.
As part of immediate new rules, alcohol sales have been banned on Sundays, Mondays and Tuesdays for the next three months. The locals will also be limited to one transaction per day in bottle shops and all takeaway sales are restricted to between 3pm and 7pm on other days.
The amended liquor laws, which require communities to choose alcohol restrictions, replaced an expired Intervention-era alcohol ban in July last year. he believes the Voice referendum represents the best chance in his lifetime to shift entrenched disadvantage for Indigenous Australians.
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