On-the-spot report from central Australia Conditions of Aboriginal people in Alice Springs and the town camps

Few have any conception of the harsh conditions endured daily by the central Australian city’s Aboriginal population, or the real social and political impact of the federal government’s 10-month old NT intervention, now being expanded under Rudd Labor. The brutally anti-democratic character of the intervention is being systematically suppressed, as is its negative effect on the already scandalous levels of poverty confronting Aboriginal people.

This is hardly a surprise. Alice Springs is located thousands of kilometres from the east-coast cities of Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. Australian or foreign tourists rarely get to see the more than twenty town camps surrounding Alice Springs. Mainstream media reportage of the ongoing crisis facing the camps’ residents is generally lurid, sensationalised and cynically designed to blame the Aboriginal population itself.

According to the corporate press, the NT intervention, initiated by the Howard government in June last year, was, and continues to be, motivated by concern over the plight of Aboriginal children. This claim is bogus, as any discussion on the streets of Alice Springs, or a short visit to one of the town camps, quickly demonstrates.

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