Minister for Aboriginal Australians Linda Burney said she “deeply” believed that, had a Voice to parliament already been in place, then the crime surge in Alice Springs would not have reached the levels that it had.
Minister for Aboriginal Australians Linda Burney says she has been pushing the Northern Territory government for months to get tougher on alcohol following persistent calls from Alice Springs community leaders to act.
The Central Australian Aboriginal Congress wrote to Burney about violence and alcohol on June 9, shortly after the minister was sworn in, and several other Indigenous groups have been calling for bans ever since. “I’m not going to get into whether they’ve taken too long or they haven’t, but clearly if you talk to people in Alice Springs, the answer might be ‘yes’,” Burney said.Burney said she “deeply” believed that, had a Voice to parliament already been in place, then the crime surge in Alice Springs would not have reached the levels that it had.“It is wrong to think the issue out here is just alcohol, there has been neglect for 10 years,” she said.
But the territory’s chief minister, Natasha Fyles, told Radio National Breakfast she potentially wanted to hold a formal election on future alcohol bans in the territory, adding she wanted to make sure “we have all voices heard”.
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