The Disaster That Is Alice Springs

In the Australian media, there’s an unwritten rule that you don’t mention the skin colour of somebody, unless of course it meets certain other unwritten rules. For example., in 2020, the taxpayer-funded ABC who are purportedly against racism reported, “Will the death of George Floyd at the hands of white police officer Derek Chauvin mark a turning point in the US?”. Well, apparently that’s okay to refer to the police officer as “white”. Race-baiting at it’s best, right? But when it comes to Alice Springs, the third largest settlement in Australia’s Northern Territory plagued by violence, you’re not allowed to speak the truth.

While the ABC seem to think it’s okay to label Derek Chauvin a “white police officer”, or they’re happy to refer to honorary doctorates as “six white men”, for whatever reason, they refuse to give a detailed description of the people committing copious amounts of crime in Alice Springs. For example, just a few days ago, four off-duty police officers — three women and one man — were approached from behind by a gang of roughly 20 youths and were bashed and robbed. The Police Minister said it had been a “horror 72 hours” with another police officer being run over outside a bottle shop, and a stabbing occurring in the CBD. The government had no other option but to essentially lock down the town for three nights.

Although this small outback town has essentially become a war zone, the media refuse to mention who is committing the violence. We all know who is committing the violence. There’s not one Australian who isn’t aware who’s responsible, but as I said, there’s an unwritten rule in the media that you’re not allowed to say it. So much for truth-telling. According to Reconciliation Australia, “Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples have long called for a comprehensive process of truth-telling”. Well, I think we need to start here and start calling out what’s going on in Alice Springs. The ABC will simply not comment on who commits the violence. In this article, for example, they’re happy to refer to the perpetrators as “youths”. Actually, the only mention of ethnicity is at the end of the article, “We acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Australians and Traditional Custodians of the lands where we live, learn, and work.”

And it’s not like the ABC are afraid to mention Aboriginal Australians. For example, in this article about a boy being beaten in a police watch house in Brisbane, they explicitly state, “CCTV shows an Indigenous teen being beaten in a police watch house.” So they don’t mind referring to people as Indigenous when they’re the victim, but when they’re perpetrating the violence, suddenly all we hear is crickets.

When I searched the ABC for a reason for all this violence in Alice Springs, the first thing that popped up was, “Entertainment needed in Alice Springs to prevent youth violence”. Okay. But another one I found rather amusing, “Alice Springs young people say lack of affordable housing a driver behind youth crime spike”. A lack of affordable housing? Oh, that’s right, a couple of years ago when I was having trouble finding a house to live, I decided to go out and throw a rock at an old woman’s face, and run over a police officer in a stolen car. Obviously, that’s not what happened, but that’s what’s happening in Alice Springs.

And where’s our Commander-in-chief, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese? Where’s the Minister for Indigenous Australians, Linda Burney? Apparently the PM visited earlier this year in April, although it doesn’t seem like anybody has any confidence in him solving this issue. Shadow Indigenous Affairs Minister Senator Jacinta Price has accused Labor for being ‘utterly removed’ from issues in Alice Springs. Indigenous advocate Warren Mundine has called on Indigenous Minister Linda Burney to resign after remaining silent on the issue for days.

Look, I don’t know how to solve this, but we don’t solve this by pretending we don’t know who the perpetrators are. The ABC are clearly willing to pick on white people, but suddenly keep silent when anybody else is committing the crime. That’s not right no matter how you look at it.

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Allégro by Emmit Fenn