Issues
The late and great Australian novelist Xavier Herbert described Central Australia as “the stage on which the great themes of Australian life are played out”.
Mandatory treatment plan would cost hundreds of millions
By John Boffa of the People’s Alcohol Action Coalition The NT’s Country Liberals Opposition must build on worthwhile evidence-based alcohol policy put in place by the NT Government in recent years, rather than throw out the baby with the bathwater. It’s easy for the Opposition to indulge in simplistic politicking about the NT’s undeniably high serious assaults rate. The Country Liberals then claim, without demonstrating any evidence or logic, that their proposed ‘new approach’ to...Read more
A future history of the Free Aboriginal Territory
By Blair McFarland Greetings, students and Kowabunga! As can be gleaned from the set reading for this annual lecture, the biohistory of the Free Aboriginal Territory (FAT) is interwoven with its general history. It will be surprising for those who have not made a study of the early colonial history of the FAT that once vast amounts of the land were seriously degraded and incapable of supporting life. Extinctions of native biota were common. This was due to the imposition of inappropriate cultura...Read more
Beer doesn’t compete, say drinkers
By John Boffa, People’s Alcohol Action Coalition A study funded by the NT Government has provided yet more evidence of the need for a floor price on alcohol that would see at least some drinkers choose beer over strong, damaging fortified wines. The ‘Message in a Bottle’ survey of 103 ‘long-grassers’ by the Larrakia Nation Aboriginal Corporation, funded by the NT Department of Justice, found that nearly half drank at dangerous levels, six or seven days a week. As The Australian new...Read more
Vote for grog control: PAAC
By John Boffa, Peoples Alcohol Action Coalition (PAAC) . Voters should be aware of which candidates in this Saturday’s Alice Springs Town Council elections are opposed to reforms that would reduce the town’s extremely high alcohol consumption. They should remember that two of the five Mayoral candidates – Eli Melky and Samih Habib Bitar – last July voted to ask Coles, Woolworths and other supermarkets to reverse their decisions to withdraw cask wine and not to sell extremely chea...Read more
Candidates for punishment
By David Havercroft The Alice Springs-based coalition Right To A Home supports the Alice Springs Town Council’s passing last week of a motion to address the need for more supported short term, emergency-type accommodation in Alice Springs. Right To A Home acknowledges this as a positive sign from the Town Council, given the hardships (including financial) that the enforcement of some of its more recent (2009) by-laws has had on people who are homeless. The punitive measures introduced by the ...Read more
Salt mine: Tellus more.
A proposed underground salt mine near the Central Australian Aboriginal community of Titjikala, about 100 km south of Alice Springs, could have a “virtually limitless” life, providing local jobs for “generations”, according to an Australian company. Potentially more controversially, the company is also promoting the prospective mine for use as a waste storage facility, stating on its website that “thick salt beds and salt domes” are regarded by scientists a...Read more
Fracking the Centre
To frack or not to frack? For a post-Gasland public, that may be the question, but not according to the Australian operations head of Canadia-based mining company PetroFrontier, Richard Parkes. The real issue is how it’s done and how it’s regulated. Interestingly, even some environmentalists like the Arid Lands Environment Centre’s Jimmy Cocking seem to agree – essentially. Like others who attended a talk by Parkes and Petrofrontier consultant Larry Franks at Charles Darwin University la...Read more
Town camp housing: “We don’t want disasters”
Territory Opposition Housing spokesman Adam Giles says he’s “not surprised” to hear that 65 of the new houses built in Alice Springs two camps during the past two years need repairs, although Territory Alliance says the faults are “cosmetic” and not structural. It may be too soon for alarm bells, but it’s a reminder of the historically proven need for vigilence when it comes to building on Aboriginal communities. Last week Alice Online ran the first part o...Read more
House-fixing and myth-busting with Paul Pholeros
I and many others were enlightened and inspired by two talks at this week’s Connecting the Dots conference in Alice Springs: one by Nobel Prize winner Professor Muhammad Yunus and the other by Healthabitat’s Paul Pholeros. For two days delegates at the conference, organised by Infrastructure Australia, explored the vexed issues of how to improve the poor state of houses, amenities, roads, communications and just about everything else on Aboriginal communities, especially in remote areas. A...Read more
Close the grog gap
By John Boffa from the People’s Alcohol Action Coalition. Our River of Grog’ 236 two-litre wine casks collected from a small section of the Todd River bed between the Schwartz Crescent and Wills Terrace causeways, Alice Springs, on 27th Jan. 2012. Photo: David Hewitt, PAAC. As the Senate Community Affairs Committee receives hundreds of submissions on Minister Macklin’s Stronger Futures Bills, the Alice Springs People’s Alcohol Action Coalition (PAAC) is calling on the Federal Gove...Read more
A wet Christmas and a fiery new year?
Burning Issues Part 3 Whatever the heavens decide to dump on Alice Springs this summer, when the rain is over, fire will not be far away – and it’s no longer safe to assume that it will keep its distance. The story of how fire has shaped the desert landscape with human help over millenia is a fascinating and sometimes contentious subject, depending how you interpret the evidence of the past. But whatever happened before white men came, the current evidence is clear: What has happened since h...Read more
Frackingly unacceptable
By Jimmy Cocking, Co-ordinator Arid Lands Environment Centre The Arid Lands Environment Centre (ALEC) is gravely concerned about the lax responses by the Territory’s Chief Minister Paul Henderson and Resources Minister Kon Vatskalis, in response to the Central Land Council’s criticism of the lack of regulation for coal seam and shale gas exploration. The Chief Minister’s ‘Don’t you worry about that’ attitude is reminiscent of the Joh-Bjelke Petersen days in Qu...Read more
Recent Features
- The hospital they didn't want
- The secret life of white-plumed honeyeaters
- Crime levels not new: police commissioner
- Mandatory treatment plan would cost hundreds of millions
- Misbehavers "not welcome": police commissioner
- That famous Whitegate mob again
- CASA and the zen of tourism
- Return of the man from Oodnadatta
- The memories are always there
- More truancy officers
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