Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has dealt his leadership a catastrophic blow on Tuesday when he proved – beyond all reasonable doubt – that Australia does not need a racist clause inserted into the Constitution to listen to Indigenous voices.

Albanese was able to manage this with a quick hop on his private jet, landing in Alice Springs to meet with community leaders and elders, ‘listening to their voices’ and making a decision far quicker than any gene-tested Canberra bureaucracy.

As it turns out, all Parliament needs in order to listen to Indigenous voices is, well, a set of ears. (And maybe a private jet.)

It was in large part thanks to Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s nagging that Albanese went to Alice Springs to address the crime wave. This means that when it comes to ‘listening to Indigenous voices’, it was Dutton who rounded Albo up, snapping at his heels until he went through the correct departure gate.

Anyone watching the week play out might feel a bit seasick from all the wobbling.

Albanese spent days insisting that he wouldn’t be intervening in the deteriorating situation because ‘the best solutions come from local communities themselves’. Although he did his best to ignore the Indigenous voices in his ear, Albanese inevitably back-flipped under public outrage and intervened less than 24 hours later.

The media circus was much worse for the Northern Territory government, who went ‘all-in’ on the journey of re-embracing alcohol in Indigenous communities as a vote-winning exercise.

Struggling to hold onto the untenable position of ‘social justice’, the Chief Minister of the Northern Territory Natasha Fyles dismissed repeated calls to reinstate the alcohol ban, insisting that she would not support ‘race-based’ intervention.

Articles from July of 2022 showed signs proudly hanging around communities that read, ‘If sorry is what you mean, don’t intervene.’ That sentiment has turned to desperate pleas for outside help under the watch of the Fyles’ government (which has been busy creating a rather pathetic and unfinished ‘dashboard’ for alcohol-fuelled crime).

Ms Fyles told Sky News Australia ahead of Albanese’s visit:

‘The Northern Territory government has given a view they don’t think there should be those bans. Wait to see what the people on the ground say to our federal representatives when they’re there. I think the issues will be more than just alcohol though.’

Obviously her voice wasn’t the right voice because it was immediately overruled by her superior, the Prime Minister.

Late on Tuesday afternoon, Albanese announced a range of measures to control the horrific crime spree in Alice Springs. Let’s not forget that it was the ‘loving’ Labor government who ran a soft campaign praising the lifting of the alcohol ban during the lead-up to the federal election which appealed to inner-city commentators rather than terrified women in remote communities.

The former Chief Minister of the Northern Territory, Michael Gunner, said at the time:

‘Changes are going to happen, we’re prepared for it. People will be allowed to drink in certain parts of the Northern Territory where they’re currently not allowed to drink … we’re not going to be racist, we’re going to work through that.’

One is left to wonder if Gunner believes Albanese’s intervention is ‘racist’ – or is it only ‘racist’ if a Liberal government is trying to help?

Any notion that dropping the bans would ‘encourage self-determination and healing’ from intervention appears long dead.

Included in Albanese’s new measures (which are so new they haven’t even been sketched on the back of a napkin) are extensions to trading hour bans, dry periods, and transaction limits. Albanese made it clear that this was only the beginning of more measures that would be put in place in the coming weeks and months.

‘I’m here in Alice Springs to meet with community groups, [the] council, the [Northern Territory] government, and frontline service groups.’

Albanese appeared to be contradicted immediately by the First Minister who said, ‘I don’t believe we need federal intervention from the police or the military.’

The conflict regarding whether or not to intervene in Indigenous affairs may prove to be the first of some very large cracks in Labor Party thinking where reality hits the road with ideology.

If bickering politicians weren’t bad enough, the situation in Alice Springs has not been helped by The Project’s Waleed Aly who referenced Northern Territory Police Commissioner Jamie Chalker’s skin colour during an interview, implying that his voice wasn’t as effective due to his race.

Aly shamefully asked:

‘The community will probably note that here we are asking you, a white Police Commissioner, his thoughts. Do you understand how some people might bristle at that whole situation?’

The Commissioner replied, ‘A lot of people who I hold very dear are Aboriginal … I feel that we come from a pretty good place.’

He could have also said that he was Australian, just like the people in Alice Springs. Channel 10 should apologise for posing questions that imply a person’s race has an impact on their ability to perform a role. Shame on you.

Commissioner Chalker went on to add:

‘It is a harsh reality that the involvement of police in families due to alcohol-related harm and family and domestic violence is fairly present, but to all the communities that we tend to visit, they all ask for us to continue our presence there.

‘Certainly when I was walking the street on Thursday night, I engaged with nearly 100-odd people who were keen to come up and have a chat, including the youth on the street.’

Never one to miss an opportunity to create more bureaucracy, Labor has shied away from resurrecting the old successful policy and is instead creating a new body to coordinate partnerships between the Northern Territory government and the federal government – which sounds a bit like, a voice…?

Dorrelle Anderson has been appointed to the job. ‘She will have the responsibility to make sure that we get federal and state programs coordinated in the best possible way,’ said Albanese.

There are other factors at play, according to the Chief Executive of the Alice Springs traditional owner group Lhere Artepe Aboriginal Corporation, who said:

‘The men, women, and children on the streets of Alice Springs are rarely Arrernte people. They are almost all from bush communities where they live in third-world conditions with no future and little hope.’

The problem is, as soon as anyone tries to liberate those bush communities from their third-world lifestyle, they are accused of racism, colonisation, and the destruction of culture. If they do nothing, they are similarly accused. Indigenous welfare is a Catch-22.

At some point Australians have to decide, do we leave Indigenous children locked in cycles of poverty, unable to access education because inner-city activists like the idea of the ‘Eden myth’ of tribal culture? Or should all children be offered a chance to decide what sort of life they want and have a genuine equal opportunity through access to education?

When migrant children are harmed or abused by the cultural practices of their parents, there is no question – that child is taken to safety. They are seen as individuals – as Australians. Children in remote communities are more commonly seen as Aboriginals – part of a racial collective first and an individual with rights and needs second. The enormity of this issue is only being further entrenched by the intensely race-oriented victim culture perpetrated by inner-city educators who use this rhetoric for personal gain – particularly if there is government funding involved.

There are many difficult questions ahead for remote communities. If Indigenous children choose to leave tribal areas, is that their choice or do we allow a system of shame and accusations of being ‘race traitors’ to continue? After all, I don’t see the Melbourne latte class abandoning their mansions to live out in remote communities. Truly, if there is racism, this is it – deciding that one class of people, born into a remote area, must stay there. Civilisations are not museums and it is not reasonable to ask anyone to live in the past if they do not wish to.

These children are Australians. These communities are Australian. Equality of opportunity would mean an end to the bigotry of low expectations. It would also mean, as many community leaders have been calling for, personal responsibility enforced by security to keep residents safe.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has taken a stand against the tide of alcohol-fuelled criminal activity, calling it ‘the biggest issue in our country today’.

‘There are reports of kids running around with machetes, children not wanting to go back home because they feel it’s unsafe to stay there so they’re out committing crimes. It’s a law and order and crime problem.’

He’s not wrong. Commercial break-ins have risen 56 per cent, property crime 60 per cent, and domestic violence 54 per cent since the lifting of the alcohol ban – and that was from already dangerously high figures.

Leniency is a big part of the problem. If you or I run around with a machete threatening people, we get sent to jail for a long time. For the most part, this behaviour is given a slap on the wrist or excused. It shouldn’t be.

It is not only violence that is treated lightly.

In 2007, Australians were shocked to learn of a female judge who did not jail nine men aged 17 to 26 who gang-raped a 10-year-old Indigenous girl because she ‘probably agreed’ to have sex. Children cannot agree to sex. The assault took place in Cape York in a community with a history of alcoholism and violence. In another case, six Indigenous men were charged with raping Indigenous girls aged between 11 and 14. The 13-year-old gave birth to her attacker’s child and contracted a sexual disease.

According to Women’s eNews, in 2002 (also reported by the Herald Sun):

‘A state judge defended an Aboriginal man’s right to have sex with an underage girl as a 40,000-year-old traditional practice and has set off a national debate over the role of culture in practices that deny women autonomy.

A Northern Territory judge ruled in October that a 15-year-old Aboriginal girl “knew what was expected of her” and “didn’t need protection” when a 50-year-old man committed statutory rape against the girl and shot a gun into the hair when she complained. The man was later revealed to have been convicted of slaughtering his former wife. Expert testimony submitted by an anthropologist in the case called the man’s arrangement with the girl “traditional” and therefore “morally correct”.’

These are not isolated incidents. The Northern Territory has the highest rate of child rape and domestic abuse in Australia – and it is a lot worse when alcohol is added to the mix.

The Little Children are Sacred report started from the position that sexually assaulting children is wrong. It seems that the courts and ‘Woke’ activists are drifting away from this position to placate ‘experts’ who favour historical abuse over modern safety protections.

One of the most disturbing parts of that particular report was the exposure of very young children to sexual content – either through pornography or adults engaging in sex acts around them – leading children to abuse each other from as young as three.

The problem of promiscuity, violence, substance abuse, and sexual assault is so widespread in some communities that the elders have simply given up. It is almost total anarchy where the historic sexualisation of children has crashed into modern women’s liberation leading to gangs of 11 to 15-year-olds prostituting themselves or chasing sex with each other. Young boys are also raped by older men, causing victims to become offenders in a terrible cycle.

The Little Children are Sacred report is full of harrowing accounts that show how deep this abusive behaviour goes. In one, a man explains why he raped a girl. As disturbing as it is, how can people hope to understand the gravity of the situation if they never take a proper look at what’s happening?

‘When I was six, my old man shot my mum, yeah f-ing shot my mum, bank in the head. They had been blueing all night. He made me clean her brains off the floor. When I raped that girl, I felt like all my pain was going into her, when she screamed that was me screaming, I know that sounds f-d up but that’s what it felt like. I looked at my hands after, the blood on my hands and the shit, it was all slimy, I thought I was cleaning up my mum’s brains again, it felt the same.’

The sexualisation and marriage of girls from the moment they grow breasts or bleed – promising them to (much) older men in tribal marriages – has presented an enormous problem for those trying to address abuse. Sexual activity with minors is not seen as ‘wrong’ by large sections of the Indigenous community. When some of the arranged marriage systems broke down (because it was illegal to marry children), those children continued to engage in sexual activity with adults.

Even international human rights bodies, who like to side with ancient practices, cannot bring themselves to accept this scenario. Worse, many questioned in the inquiry were not aware of the concept of an ‘age of consent’. At some point, remote cultures will have to abandon the abuse of children and find a cultural mechanism to stamp out the behaviour, just as other cultures around the world have done. Public money cannot close this gap. Communities have to do it for themselves and take control of themselves and their children.

As for the alcohol, the ‘voices’ on the ground knew it was going to end this way from the beginning.

Alice Springs stores rushed with customers as intervention-era alcohol ban expires in NT, wrote the ABC, on July 22. They noted an immediate rise in disorderly behaviour as residents rushed to stock up on alcohol.

‘To be frank, it’s a cause for concern … the safety of our staff is very important,’ said one bottleshop owner at the time.

The wider media barely touched the story because it contradicted the image curated by those who ran the campaign to lift the bans. Police immediately reported state-wide surges in domestic abuse, with Labor Member Ms Scrymgour saying that the situation was playing out ‘as we feared’.

In July of 2022, Ms Scrymgour, an Indigenous voice and elected leader, made a prescient speech:

‘We have to call out and act on what is a level of dysfunction that is clearly a crisis issue on the ground in communities like Alice Springs … and it won’t just be Alice Springs. Having worked in the health sector, seen firsthand the impact of alcohol and what that can do – not only to individuals but to families – we can’t ignore this substance.

‘Yes, it may be legal, but it’s a known fact that Aboriginal people and the impact of alcohol is one that creates a whole lot of dysfunction and problems.’

During another speech, she added of Labor’s decision to lift the bans:

‘You can’t just suddenly pull the pin on it without any protection sanctuary or place for the vulnerable women and children whom the original measure was supposed to protect. To do that is more negligent at the level of impact on actual lives.

‘It is certainly not self-determination for an Aboriginal child to be constantly exposed to alcohol abuse in the home and to the violence which results from it.’

At the same time, Senator Jacinta Price said in her maiden speech:

‘We cannot support legislation which fails to acknowledge the true causes of why Indigenous Australians are marginalised or false narratives which suggest racism is the cause when it has proved over and again that this is not the case. We cannot support legislation which supports freedom of the perpetrator over justice for the victim in an attempt to reduce rates of incarceration. The same standard of law and order must be upheld for all Australians regardless of background.’

At least Albanese allowed himself to be guilted into listening and making some fast decisions. He has proved the point that our system of elected government is faster and more responsive than lumbering race-based bureaucracies.

Imagine, for a moment, how long it would take to sort out the violence in Alice Springs if the issue had to go through layer upon layer of inner-city Indigenous committee? No doubt they would make the same catastrophic error as Labor, advocating in favour of ‘liberating Indigenous people’ by handing them back the ability to purchase alcohol. Privileged ‘feel good’ politics has very little to do with the reality of remote communities and endemic abuse.

Alcohol is not the source of the problems in remote communities. What alcohol does is make a bad social situation unmanageable. There is no hope for the next generation to ‘close the gap’ if they are being beaten, raped, and pressured into crime as children by their intoxicated peers.

These bans on alcohol are meant to create breathing space for the next generation. They are the best chance these Aussie kids have, if only we can keep the bleeding-heart inner-city activists away.