Congratulations to Julia Gillard and the Australian Labor Party, but more congratulations to the three independents from regional Australia for their unexpected but timely moment of ascendancy — and the sense of responsibility they have shown to all Australians by their considered actions.
I am celebrating the rise of the independents with another walk to the hills at the beautiful centre of this great continent — for too long treated as rubbish country by the coast-clinging majority, and all too often by the people who live in it.
Here I found an old friend, another independent, whom I have not encountered for more than ten years … trichodesma zeylanicum. It is prosaically better known as cattlebush — despite the fact, pointed out by Dr Anne Urban in Wildflowers and Plants of Central Australia, that it is “seldom grazed”.
Cattlebush in my experience does not appear in swathes like daisies or swainsona, but pops up unexpectedly as a single plant. I found this cattlebush a week or so ago and went looking for it again, sure I would be able to locate it. It took me two trips and several hours to find it again, but now I have marked my trail and will be able to monitor its fortunes over coming weeks.
With showers becoming almost a regular weekend event in Alice, it will be interesting to see how long the spring lasts. – D.R.

Photo Justin Brierty, The Centralian Advocate.

Police have charged three men over a riot at an Alice Springs football game at the weekend, reports ABC News.

The Country Liberal candidate for the federal seat of Lingiari says he will pursue defamation action over claims made about him in the final days of the Federal Election Campaign.

Leo Abbott became the focus of a media storm when it was reported he was in breach of a domestic violence order, and senior CL figures including parliamentary leader Terry Mills called for his disendorsement.

Mr Abbott recorded a statement at the ABC  Alice Springs radio studio on  Friday and spoke to ABC morning presenter Maria Tetlow.

Mr Abbott said he did not drink alcohol or take drugs and had  ”never and would never hit a woman in my life.” He said that domestic violence orders did not mean that any violence had taken place in the lead-up to an order being made by a magistrate.

He said that in the case of his breach of the DVO, the magistrate had found there ahd been “no abuse. no threats .. and no demonising of the protected person.”

But Mr Abbott said Terry Mills had chosen to demonise him and seek his disendorsement.

He said he was worried that Terry Mills and some of his supporters “were happy to discard me as political fodder due to my geographical dislocation outside of Darwin and I believe the colour of my skin.”

While yesterday’s awful events at the Under 17 football grand final have predictably attracted national attention, Friday’s march against violence in Alice Springs was disappointingly overlooked by the media. It was indeed “historic” as Alice Springs police commander Anne-Marie Murphy described it.

As Sunday’s brawl illustrates, the challenge facing the marchers is huge. While domestic violence, with all its tragic consequences, is obviously the number one target, the riot illustrates some of the most trenchant characteristics of the broader culture of violence: the lack of control over anger, and the shared maintenance of grudges between groups to name a couple.

The need for Aboriginal leadership in the problem has been crying out for years. Murphy’s grim statistics explain why: Last year in Alice Springs police recorded 1522 violent assaults, more than in the same time for Darwin, a city of several times the population. In the last quarter alone, there were 455 offences. Most of those offences – but not all – involved violence by Aboriginal people to Aboriginal people.

The day before the rally,  the ABC reported on the extreme but sadly typical case of Joachim Golder, a 45 year old man who beat his wife to death in the Todd River last year.

According to the ABC, Golder punched his wife in the face, cut her foot open, dragged her along the ground, ripped off her underwear and repeatedly dropped heavy rocks on her. Golder had previously been convicted of the manslaughter of his brother in 1993.

The day after the rally, Peter Sutton was awarded the $20,000 Button Prize for political writing The Politics of Suffering: Indigenous Australia and The End of the Liberal Consensus.

Sutton’s book was in part a clarion call to Australians of all political and skin colours to address the pain and suffering of Aboriginal people in 2010 in practical ways, rather than focusing myopically on a highly politicised and selective reading of the history that created it.

By documenting the evidence, it convincingly challenged the widely held perception that the roots of  violence lay solely in colonisation and dispossession. It showed how Aboriginal culture has a heritage in which violence was sanctioned at the deepest levels.

Why should that have shocked anyone? What culture in the world has not been determined and defined by its violence?

Sutton’s arguments, as some critics have claimed, do not let non-Aboriginal people off the hook. More, they actually lead us to question what “the hook” actually is, and how it works, at a universal level.

By taking responsibility for the violence in their society, the organisers and participants in Friday’s rally invite us all to take responsibility for the violence in our cultures at all levels, from the personal to the military-industrial. It’s a concrete, grass roots approach, rather than an abstract and top-down approach. It says that whatever pain and suffering we experience, we are individually and collectively obliged to deal with it in a way that doesn’t compound that pain and suffering for others.

In the first place, that “simply” means saying No.

Dave Price’s moving personal account of the violence in his non-Aboriginal family of origin and his Aboriginal extended family shows us how the imperative applies to all of us, regardless of  our personal or collective histories.

Four people are in custody after an attack on police and an umpire during a riot at a teenage football match in Alice Springs on Saturday, reports ABC News.

Written and illustrated by Nelen

Slava wrote to her in his best English:

“I’m thinking of you every day. Sorry to hear you were ill, I thought that in desert it’s always hot. Hope you have some warm things to wear. Take care of yourself please.
My dear Wanderer, don’t frighten me by saying that I need to decide anything, I had decided long ago. I am not sure my life is worth living without hope to be with you. You are everything for me. Everything, understand? And I am waiting despite how much time it takes for you to find whatever you’re looking for.
Vova is with me. We are falling asleep and waking up to singing of nightingales under balcony. Forest is full of the valley’s lilies. Northern summer is coming and the livin’ will be easy, know what I mean? I found a lake where I can swim.
My flat is great. Stupid Slava should have been thrown out from his balcony the very first day of his first uttered complain. For now every morning, he’s sunbathing in his private balcony.
So don’t think about supporting me or making a decent life for me. I have all I need. And I’ll be waiting and will stop doing that only if you said you don’t need me any more.”

Udjerlah’s Song is an adult fairytale set in Moscow and Central Australia.

More than a hundred men and boys wearing bright yellow T-shirts that said “Stop the violence” brought cross-town traffic in Alice Springs to a standstill today in a public rally against domestic violence.

Most of the participants were Aboriginal, but the Alice Springs men’s health service that organised the march had invited all males in Alice Springs to take part in the march, which was followed by a series of spirited speeches on the Alice Springs Town Council Lawns.

Senior traditional owners of Alice Springs also created a picture in sand to represent a tradititional structure that would emphasise the importance of non-violence to other men.

“We need to get across to the world, our community, black and white, that we are against violence,” Mr Liddle told the crowd.

“What these T-shirts are saying is we don’t want to condone it, we don’t to put up with it , we want to stop the bloody violence.

“We’ve got very strong cultural men here today. they are our leaders. They are right behind this programme we’ve got going now.”

Mr Liddle described the origins of the march, which developed  from a 2008 meeting of men at the Ross River homestead near Alice Springs, held after the Federal Government intervention.

“A lot of our men thought they were wrongly accused of being pedophiles and other things. That actually created anger among men in the community. We felt ashamed to walk down the street because of those great big signs that all of us have got around our communities. We don’t want to see that anymore. We want someone to say, shit, there are some good men out there. Let’s support them.”

Calling for Government support, Mr Liddle said the program would go out to Central Australian communities with a violence intervention program that included two psychologists.

“We’re going to show people how to control their anger, so that we don’t react in the wrong way. We all get angry sometimes, and we have to find a way to deal with it and make it easy for our families to cope with us.”

But he also emphasised the importance of men intervening in violent situations with a personal anecdote about how he had stopped a man from attacking his wife at a football match by telling him to “Stop.”

“We’ve got to be seen doing something,” Mr Liddle said.

“We can’t be scared.  We might get punched in the head because we confront people. We’ve got to be not scared to confront the things that all of us see in this town.”

Ingkataja cultural officer Baden Powell delivered a message in language to non-Arrernte people to keep “payback” between families out of Alice Springs.

“Make everyone sad when you bring your payback into town,” he said.

“If you want to finish up your payback you do it in your community. Everyone lives in Alice Springs. Black and white are born in Alice Springs. This is our home. You don’t separate white people from black people. We’re born here.  We live here in Alice Springs. They’re part of us Arrernte people in Alice Springs.”

Alice Online will present some filmed highlights from the rally in the coming days.

ABC NEWS: Man gets life for riverbed murder.

Some of the offending "weeds" on Memorial Avenue

The Alice Springs Town Council has admitted poisoning stretches of brilliantly coloured wildflowers on the verge of a prominent Alice Springs street, claiming the spraying was in the interests of ‘public safety”.

Yesterday I contacted the Council after a report from horticulturist Chris Brock that Council workers were spraying swathes of swainsona (a wildflower that appears in Central Australia after good winter rains) on footpaths in Memorial Drive  on the perimeter of the Alice Springs High School.

I received the following response from acting Town Council CEO Greg Buxton:

“Alice Springs Town Council does have a weed and grass control program designed to minimise growth and this is especially important around schools.

“Public safety is Council’s first priority and so public areas that contain weeds, such as this area, are sprayed to prevent growth.

“With the unprecedented recent rains, Council is working diligently to control weed growth and will continue to work proactively on this matter.

“Council has received one compliant (sic) on this issue.”

According to Dr Anne Urban’s Wildflowers and Plants of Central Australia there are 16 species of swainsona in the Northern Territory. The type that appears on our streets is a groundcover. In the three pages to which Dr Urban devotes to various forms of the flowers, I could find no suggestion that they constituted a health hazard, except to cows.

NT Alcohol Policy Minister Delia Lawrie

The Alice Springs-based People’s Alcohol Action Group has backed new NT Government laws which would enable courts to ban “problem drinkers” from buying or drinking alcohol for up to a year.

But PAAC called for the Government to take further steps to reduce alcohol related problems in the Territory by introducing a volumetric tax on wine.

The Government’s new plan will mean that people who have been determined problem drinkers will be placed on a computerised list. When people try to buy alcohol, their identification will be scanned to determine if they areon the banned list.

The Government also announced it would create a “Substance Misuse Assessment and Referral for Treatment” (SMART) court, through which offenders could be required to undergo mandatory treatment for alcoholism. It would also expand treatment facilities for alcoholics.

A statement by PAAC, a group which has lobbied for greater restrictions on alcohol availability, said the group was encouraged that the Government’s accepted the need to “create consequences outside the criminal justice system for people who have a major drinking problem and who hurt themselves and others.”

PAAC said a proposed Alcohol and Other Drugs Tribunal and the broader use of individual bans would permit such actions without re-criminalising drunkenness.

PAAC said banning problem drinkers from buying or drinking alcohol would  ”create an incentive for these people to engage with treatment”, adding that it would need to be ”rigorously evaluated to ensure that it is effective”.

But the group said for the new measures to work they would have to be accompanied by “an equally tough focus on minimum pricing, reduced take-away hours and the way in which some licensed premises operate”.

PAAC spokesman John Boffa appeared recently on the ABC current affairs program Lateline, in a segment which focussed on three Alice Springs Hotels which open bars at 10 am and shut them at 2pm when takeaway alcohol becomes available.

Mr Boffa said: “It would be a shame if Minister Lawrie’s reforms focus on the individual heavy drinker who harms themself and others, to the exclusion of dealing with supply reduction.

“We were heartened however by the Minister’s express support for a national volumetric tax at a briefing with her today. PAAC will continue to contribute to the debate in the hope of achieving further changes that have proven effective internationally in reducing consumption.”

Swainsonia on Memorial Drive

From reader and horticulturalist Chris Brock comes an astonishing report this morning.

Noticed the carpets of swainsonia that have suddenly appeared this month to grace our footpaths?

In response to a recent post, Chris says:

”If you want to see wildflowers – go no further than Memorial Drive in Gillen next to the School – be quick though as council staff has just sprayed them today. I may have convinced the sprayer to think again about spraying this beautiful carpet of purple Swainsona,( the best I have ever seen in town) but only time will tell.”

Close-up view of swainsonia and daisies on Memorial Drive

Thanks for the tip-off, Chris.  I immediately took your advice. It’s hard to believe that ratepayers would approve of  any move to poison any wildflowers, let alone a flourish as stunning as this. Sadly, however, it’s all too easy to believe that it can happen.

I have asked  the Council for a comment and when I receive it I will update this post. Maybe it was a joke.

To give Council its due, it dose appear to be planting native trees along Memorial Drive, which will provide welcome shade in some places. But there is no doubt Council urgently needs to develop a holistic policy on verges. It’s bad enough that residents who spend laborious hours getting rid of buffel on their footpaths are rewarded with a ground zero policy when native groundcovers and grasses spring up in response to their efforts. But to destroy such a generous and unsolicited gift from nature is simply incomprehensible.

Central Australia is experiencing a rare event this year, and Alice Springs is a part of it. This year’s Alice Springs Desert Festival will be enhanced by a display of natural colour and biodiversity we haven’t seen in years. The whole town should be celebrating. Killing wildflowers is just out of the question.