The Australian left, like all left-wing ideologues, are all care and no responsibility. A “humanitarian”, as Orwell said, “is always a hypocrite”. The Australian left are hypocrites like no others.
For all that they wring their hands over an “Indigenous Voice to Parliament”, the left turned a deaf ear when a delegation of Northern Territory women travelled to Canberra two years ago in a vain effort to make their voices heard about violence in Aboriginal communities. Not one Labor or Green MP even turned up to listen to them. Only a handful of Liberal and One Nation MPs showed up.
Presumably the left didn’t want to hear what Aboriginal women in violence-wracked communities have to say: that policies like income management work.
And so do alcohol bans.
Incidents of domestic violence and assault have plummeted by more than a third in Alice Springs since alcohol restrictions were put in place earlier this year, following [an] outcry from locals demanding for months that the Territory government implement grog bans.
The alcohol bans were part of the Howard-era emergency response to the shocking Little Children are Sacred report, which detailed the horrific rates of sexual abuse and violence in Aboriginal communities. But the left continually screeched that the bans were “racist”.
When the Albanese government oversaw the lifting of the bans, its Gucci-wearing Indigenous Affairs Minister Linda ‘The Lying Scotswoman’ Burney turned a deaf ear to warnings that renewed violence was inevitable.
The fresh figures – which showed total recorded assaults dived from more than 260 in January to 170 in April – come after The Australian revealed the extent of the crime wave gripping the town following the expiry of alcohol restrictions in July 2022.
The Northern Territory government initially resisted pressure to reinstate the bans because they represented a “race-based policy” that “targeted and disempowered Aboriginal Territorians and entrenched disadvantage, rather than improve it”.
For the battered and abused Aboriginal women and children, “race-based policy” is no doubt a pointless abstraction when they live in fear of the bash.
But, in light of the data showing the decrease in violence since restrictions were restored, an NT government spokeswoman said it was clear the measures did work.
“Over the last three months we have seen these alcohol restrictions work, and support our community and frontline workers,” she said.
“Domestic violence has dropped by a third in the months since the takeaway alcohol restrictions were reintroduced into the Northern Territory town.”
Putting the lie to the city-based box-tickers’ screeching that this is ‘colonialism’, Aboriginal communities are choosing to try and improve their lot by banning alcohol voluntarily.
On top of total takeaway bans on Mondays and Tuesdays, and limits to purchasing of alcohol during the rest of the week, town camps and communities were reverted back to being complete dry zones in February.
While communities can opt out of being dry zones through alcohol management plans, the NT government spokeswoman confirmed not a single plan had been submitted […]
People’s Alcohol Action Coalition spokesman John Boffa said the unravelling of law and order after alcohol restrictions expired had taught the town and the NT government a hard lesson.
“Unfortunately one way sometimes to see just how effective certain alcohol restrictions are is to suddenly remove them and see what happens, and that’s what we’ve seen,” he said […]
Joshua Burgoyne, member for the NT seat of Braitling, which takes in Alice Springs, and the opposition spokesman for families, said the government had not acted quickly enough to put the bans back in place.
“The NT Labor government ignored the voices of Alice Springs residents, the CLP, Aboriginal groups and even their Labor senator when the stronger futures provisions lapsed,” he said.
“Immediately we saw a huge spike in alcohol-related assaults and a crime spree that has further decimated our town.”
Mr Burgoyne also raised concern over the NT government admission that not “one dollar” of the $250m commonwealth “emergency response” package had yet rolled out.
The Australian
Pah, what would he know? He’s not an inner-city, blindingly white activist who might have had a single Aboriginal great-great-great-grandparent, which totally qualifies them to identify as a “Proud [insert obscure tribe] man/woman”.
