Attached to failure?

Picture: Gerry Hand at Barunga in 1988

Article by Bob Durnan | September 02, 2009

This article was also published in The Australian on September 2 with the sub-heading: WHY do the problems in Alice Springs' town camps seem to defeat every attempt to solve them? Here's a large part of the answer.

The Federal Court is considering an injunction against federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin's attempt to bring change to the largely dysfunctional and violent town camps. Macklin is trying to gain control of 16 camp leases, invest $100 million in infrastructure development and put $38m into social, health and alcohol services for the town's Aboriginal population.

Twenty-one years ago, Bob Hawke's second Aboriginal affairs minister, Gerry Hand, announced a similar initiative to salve a running political sore in Alice Springs. To alleviate the problems of the frontier zone's urban centre, where traditional Aboriginal desert social and cultural practice encounters the regional headquarters of modernity, Hand's department came up with a $20m solution.

It was called the Town Camps Housing and Infrastructure Program. Hand proposed to deal with the town camp problems by bringing up to suburban standards the infrastructure on the 16 leases: widening roads, adding kerbing and guttering, increasing street lighting and upgrading essential services. Most important, TCHIP would help resolve the overcrowding and social problems by building new houses in the camps.

Rather than simply embracing this proposal, the town camps' Tangentyere managers commissioned experienced social anthropologist Mike Heppell to evaluate the first decade of town camp development and make recommendations about the best ways forward. Unsurprisingly to Tangentyere's management, Heppell's Town Camp Development Evaluation report did not recommend new houses be built in the camps. He thought other rapidly increasing problems should be targeted first.

Heppell recommended addressing eight priorities. These included the need to foster adequate leadership, dealing with endemic interpersonal violence and habitual binge drinking, welfare dependency and joblessness, low education outcomes and worsening health, as well as overcrowding in many of the houses.

The Tangentyere management concluded that any new housing should be built mainly away from the camps, sprinkled around the mainstream sections of the town. There tenants would be safer and could avoid some of the demand sharing that was disrupting most households and causing many problems in the usually drunken conditions on the camps.

Marcia Langton's landmark report Too Much Sorry Business, written soon after when she was Northern Territory co-ordinator of the black deaths royal commission, examined the same themes from a broader NT perspective. Her analysis confirmed Heppell's findings but on a much wider scale.

Hand's department declined to fund the social intervention, economic development and cultural adaptation programs that were needed, instead forging ahead with the expensive town camp infrastructure development.

Some of it was useful but, under the prevailing social conditions, much simply contributed to the consolidation of existing problems.

For example, the Karnte camp south of the town was developed for a group of Pitjantjatjara people who had migrated into Alice Springs with hopes for them and their children. They sought education, jobs and a healthy future as well as the houses being developed around the town camps. Tragically, they found mainly death and despair as their extended family groups descended into an alcohol-fuelled hell. Many others who made the move from the former missions and cattle stations into Alice Springs met the same fate, experiencing similar family devastation.

In the following years we made further attempts to persuade Tangentyere's governing committee, public servants and politicians to try radical alternatives to the existing policy trajectory, including shifting Tangentyere's emphasis from welfare to economic development, and bringing the worst of the camps under Tangentyere's direct control, with strong security measures to protect residents and visitors.

Vested interests within the town camp leadership soon purged those who were trying to achieve these radical changes, seeing them as a threat to their political base and growing power within the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission. Successive governments took the view that it was all too difficult politically and acquiesced in the continuation of business as usual at Tangentyere and in the town camps, despite the ever mounting toll of lives destroyed and wasted.

Catastrophic dysfunction was regarded as normal by some key players until Mal Brough sounded his clarion call for intervention and change.

To this day, Tangentyere in its opposition to the Rudd government's proposal to take control of the Alice Springs town camps tries to defend its bad practice by pleading that it has never been granted sufficient money to solve the camps' problems.

This is also the mantra chanted by the disparate array of supporters who barrack under the banners of the Intervention Rollback Action Group and the Sydney Stop the Intervention Collective. They advocate for Tangentyere's continued autonomy and increased funding, and against Macklin's attempts to rectify some of the town camp problems through land title, regime and program change.

However, Tangentyere has long received at least $8000 for each town camp resident each year.

Even if some of this money were for programs outside the camps, it still should have provided a solid basis for addressing many of the problems within, if there had been commitment and disciplined leadership.

Tangentyere was originally established as a resource and service agency for the Alice Springs town camps in the 1970s, to provide training and employment for residents (who were mainly people who had been displaced by the development of the pastoral industry). Incorporated under the NT Associations Act, it has failed for years to make detailed accounts of its spending available to the Aborigines of Alice Springs, so it is difficult to know what really has occurred.

Some of its programs are inspirational, but that is largely beside the point. The point is, why hasn't the Tangentyere governing committee used some of its considerable resources and moral authority to address directly more of the pressing needs and central issues? Tangentyere puts most of its available resources into ameliorating the effects of bad behaviour but little into directly challenging or preventing that behaviour.

Why has Tangentyere failed so spectacularly to demonstrate the leadership needed to address the irresponsible and often violent behaviour of so many town camp people towards each other, in particular of men towards women? Why has it not articulated any challenges to the negligent treatment of many children and old people in the camps?

In particular, why has its leadership failed to confront the habitual excessive drinking and self-destructive behaviour of so many town camp residents? Why has it consistently rejected the offers from other responsible Aboriginal organisations for collaboration to address these and many other issues?

Answers to these questions must be demanded of Tangentyere's dominant elected officials, past and present.

Bob Durnan helped establish Tangentyere Council and worked on the development of the Alice Springs town camp leases and services between 1977 and 1993.

SPEECH BY MARY VICTOR O’REERI – Monday 17 August 2009

National Museum, Canberra ACT

Good afternoon everyone

UN Special Rapporteur on Indigenous Peoples Professor James Anaya

Hon Jenny Macklin, MP - Minister for Indigenous Affairs

Members of the Australian Government

Distinguished guests and friends

I am truly full of wonder and excitement to be here today in Canberra.

In standing here on this ground, I thank the Ngunnawal people for welcoming me. I have

been called to this place this week and I promise to respect this land for the duration of my

stay.

I thank also my family including my daughter Tasha who accompanies me here today, my

countrymen and my close colleagues for their ongoing support.

I’m a long way from home here in Canberra. I live and work on the Central Dampier

Peninsula in the remote North West Kimberley region of Western Australia.

I am also a traditional owner of the place where I live. This means that I was born into a

distinct language group – Nyul Nyul – which informs my understanding of who I am and

my relationship to others.

This includes the natural environment. At home we are blessed with many springs which

are reflected in our community’s name – Billard Burr – which means ‘spring country’.

I’m fortunate because as I say, I live and work on my country – this is the way it turned out

for me – and as the sun comes up each day, my good fortune in this way never leaves my

thoughts.

My community of Billard is about 3kms from a township called Beagle Bay. Beagle Bay

was a home to many Aboriginal people who, as children, were separated from their

families as a result of past government policies, including my own mother Dorothy.

I’ve come to Canberra this week fresh from a very significant event in my community of

Billard called the Blank Page Summit on Suicide.

Together with my father, Stephen Victor Snr and the rest of my family, we invited 150

people from across Australia to Billard to sit down with us on country to find ways to stop

our people taking their own lives and not dying in the proper way.

The Summit came from our own journey as a family. We lost our two brothers – Stephen

Jnr and Vincent – to suicide a few years ago. We found them hanging from the same fan in

the same room in the same house in Beagle Bay within three years of each other.

Stevo and Goodie as we called them, were young men who couldn’t see their way clear to

keep on living. They chose to die by their own hands in their early twenties.

Unfortunately my brothers were not the last to die from suicide in our part of the world.

In the past two years the rate of youth suicide in the Kimberley has soared. As one of our

countrymen puts it, ‘We are living between suicides.”

In February 2008 the WA State Coroner Mr Alistair Hope reported his findings into 21

deaths by suicide including a 9 year old boy over the previous two year period.

In those findings Mr Hope spoke about the dramatic increase of 100% in suicide rates, the

‘appallingly bad living conditions for many Aboriginal people in the Kimberley’, the

‘pathetic plight of the little children with bleak futures’ due to widespread foetal alcohol

syndrome and the ongoing grim prospects for adequate education, improved health

profiles and job readiness for coming generations.

When our family read Mr Hope’s findings, we were keen to find out what the WA

Government planned to do about the situation.

We got nowhere. Our communications were ignored. There was a sad silence.

So we decided to take the matter into our own hands and hold a summit on suicide which

we called a Blank Page Summit because a blank page is what we needed to start with.

There was no point starting with pages of problems or tinkering around the edges. That’s

what we all normally do with our hard problems. I mean all of us, not just Indigenous

people.

So our Summit started with a blank page open to new ideas and the collective wisdom of

the people we invited.

Three weeks ago we brought that powerful group of people together at Billard to help us

fill up the blank page.

We left no stone unturned in the range and depth of people we invited to join the Summit.

We were delighted that almost 100% of the people we invited said yes.

It turned out to be 147 people, all of whom arrived with the will and capacity to do

something about this ‘unnatural’ disaster of suicide amongst our people.

We were joined at the Summit by the State Coroner Mr Alistair Hope. Present also were

WA Chief Justice Wayne Martin, WA Deputy Premier Kim Hames and Federal Minister

Jenny Macklin. But importantly we also had individuals from government, NGO’s,

community folk and professionals in the field, so as to cover every aspect of the problem.

Today in the presence of the UN Special Rapporteur I am pleased to launch the Blank Page

Summit on Suicide Communique – it sets out the work we did as ‘summiteers’ over those

few days that we lived and worked together on country.

The Summit was a transformative event – it was not a bunch of talking heads going

around in circles saying what’s already been said. Nor was it a series of presentations

from experts telling others what to do, or a one-way download of information. This was a

strategic gathering where we started with the highest ambitions for individuals and

communities across the country.

What we learnt early on in the Summit is that more people die in the state of Western

Australia from suicide than road deaths and that suicide is an emerging national

phenomenon.

To make serious progress, we needed to walk together in trust very quickly. By doing so,

we were able to look at Australian society in its entirety and acknowledge that both our

cultures are weakening. We asked ourselves - “What is our best way forward?” We

realized that it was by a call for action on the fundamental principles that are central to a

successful Australian society.

Therefore as a direct result of the Summit, on behalf of Billard Aboriginal Community I

now issue a call for action - some elements are relevant to the Kimberley and other

elements apply to all communities where individuals and families are in trauma.

Our fundamental message is that suicide is preventable.

To ensure suicide is prevented, we need to be doing three things as soon as possible:

Number 1 – In the Kimberley, we need to create suicide-proof communities

This involves zero tolerance of those things that are killing people, either by ‘slow suicide’

or self-destruction on the spot.

The slow killers are grog, illegal drugs, child neglect and abuse and pornography.

We need three more things in this zero tolerance environment:

i. a Community Code of Conduct to stop the rot and humbug;

ii. a formal way of resolving our differences that works on the ground (at the Summit,

Coroner Alistair Hope spoke of feuding as a trigger for suicide); and

iii. better social inclusion in our communities through shared recreational and cultural

activities open to all

Now the critical distinction we make here is that a zero tolerance situation must be self-

imposed. This is not a call for laws to ban grog – it is about waking up as individuals to

what is causing members of our community to kill themselves and adjusting our

behaviours accordingly.

If I have a heart attack and the doctor says, “you’ll have another heart attack if you keep

doing x, y or z” then it’s actually up to me to do whatever I can to avoid that next heart

attack.

Our community at Billard is a self-imposed alcohol, drug and humbug-free zone – we have

set this standard and it works every day of the year without compromise.

Can I just tell you about humbug? It is about our every day dealings. “No humbug” means

to live and work with honesty and integrity – it applies to any and all communities where

people co-exist.

Looking more broadly now beyond the Kimberley – for all the talk about families being the

centre of our communities and our lives, I believe we actually need to be honest. Families

don’t just happen.

So the second part of our call to action is training families to be families.

This is a message about ‘first principles’ – let’s start with a blueprint for a family. What is a

family? What does it uniquely do? What are its characteristics? How is a family created

(i.e. not just by birth)? What does it mean to be a member of a family? How do families

plan their lives, their futures, their housing, their schooling, their leisure time and their

retirement? How do families interact with each other to make communities?

The beauty of the Summit is that this aspect within the call to action applies to anyone.

My family has an action plan. We don’t guess about the future. We are planning our future.

Every family can do this if they have access to the tools.

Turning now to the final part of our call to action - it is concerned with healing and self-

care based on staged support.

We must have a means of saving the lives of the most distressed and acutely troubled

individuals in our communities. Let me be clear, this means that when we know people are

suicidal, we must act.

It also means that we need to see dramatic changes in the way services are delivered at

every stage in the continuum from the moment a person presents as vulnerable through to

marked suicidal behaviour.

In my community, this also includes our own healing processes based on Aboriginal

spirituality.

So to sum up – these are the three key messages which make up our call for action:

Creating suicide-proof communities;

Training families to be families; and

Healing and self-care through staged support

This is a call to action that compels us to walk together – I will now explain why.

As a primary school teacher, I’ve taught children suffering from the irreversible impacts of

foetal alcohol syndrome. I’ve also read the Productivity Report about my people’s

disadvantage, especially as it relates to children.

I have seen children grow into teenage drug addicts in homes where parents smoke

marijuana for breakfast.

I have also seen the enormous energy put into land and native title meetings compared

with the low investment into strategies to strengthen family life and develop individual

resilience.

I have lived through the ebb and flow of government policy making, the waves of hope and

the expectation that this new program or that new policy would change things for the

better. The results have been uneven, no doubt about it.

People such as me don’t need to read the newspaper to know how cheap life has become

in Aboriginal communities. We see it literally every day of the week.

To be truthful, I am tired of seeing a sad Aboriginal child, a mangy dog and a filthy

mattress on the front page of the national print media on a regular basis.

I know housing is a continuous problem and right now, it’s an issue of main focus for all

of us. At the Summit we identified the issue of poor housing as a significant suicide risk

for Indigenous people. But there’s a piece of this housing dilemma that doesn’t get talked

about. It’s the one that no one really wants to confront and the one we decided as a family

to deal with. I’m talking about how it’s been an excuse in many Indigenous communities

that overcrowding is acceptable, normal and part of our culture. We let everybody and

anybody into our homes. It may sound harsh but we contribute to the housing problem in

this way too.

We’ve got to stop talking about housing and start talking about homes. I’m very particular

about who comes into my home because this is where my family lives and creates its

future every day. In fact, I turn away my own siblings if they arrive intoxicated. Some

would say this is a rejection of my family. I say it’s a strengthening and educating of my

family. I will not put my family and our plans and dreams at risk. I believe every family has

this aspiration. But if all that’s on offer is a house without the means to create a home and

a safe family, then is it any wonder the whole program is stuck and unnecessarily

wasteful?

If you accept our call to action to train families to be families, then we must stop talking

about housing and start talking about homes and give ourselves the chance to create

functional families and suicide-proof communities.

None of this is easy. It saddens me to say that when I was growing up, we were

surrounded by alcoholics and perpetrators. My parents were good people who greeted

everybody in good faith and allowed them into our house in large numbers. What they

didn’t know at the time – they know now – is that as a 12 year old girl, I was living a

chaotic and frightened life where I was often defending myself against the sexual

advances of drunken relatives, pushing beds against the bedroom door and protecting my

younger siblings from the same sort of attacks.

I had to wise my parents up in later life about what we’d been through and teach them that

there’s a difference between an open house and a safe home.

I’m so pleased to say that both of my parents are today the architects of our alcohol, drug

and humbug free community that is Billard.

I’m raising difficult issues today. We raised these difficult issues at the Summit and we

demonstrated that there are solutions. But it requires all of us to have a hard yarn. It’s

about the truth of our ways. It’s about how we’ve neglected each other and made up

excuses. It’s about what we need to be doing to build a whole and functioning society.

We need a new conversation where we can talk honestly about these things. We at Billard

started this process with a blank page on the specific issue of suicide.

As a nation we could start with a blank page about how we create healthy and functional

homes and families, caring and well run communities and support for the vulnerable

among us.

Frankly this is our golden opportunity – we must do it together. It involves all of us.

In the presence of Special Rapporteur James Anaya, I make this important point – we can

only start with a blank page, if we are indeed going to have a new conversation. A blank

page is what we must offer to ourselves and others. There is a great power and joy in us

filling up those pages together.

It has been my privilege to stand before you today as a person from a tiny community in

this vast country - I believe the strength of our humanity is what will transform Australian

society now and in the future.

“We are the people we’ve been waiting for”.

The Tangentyere Debate

Yesterday (August 15) Alice Online presented a letter by Bob Durnan that was originally sent to The Centralian Advocate raising issues about both the Federal Government's Intervention in the Northern Territory and its plan to take over the housing functions of the Alice Springs-based provider for residents of town camps, Tangentyere Council. Today we present a response to Bob Durnan's letter from Tangentyere Council. That's William Timouth on the right of this photo, with Tangentyere's first director Geoff Shaw (centre) and son Walter.

The Editor

The Centralian Advocate

5 August 2009

Dear Sir

I write in reply to the issues relating to Tangentyere Council that were raised by Bob Durnan in your newspaper on 31^st July 2009.

Tangentyere Council runs a wide range of programs primarily for the 2-3000 Town Camp residents, but in some cases for the wider Alice Springs population and the whole of Central Australia.

All of the programs that Tangentyere runs are grant funded, mostly by various departments of the Australian and Northern Territory Governments with some grants from philanthropic bodies. The number of grants that we receive, and therefore the funds received, varies from year to year and may comprise up to 140 different grants. Despite the fact that many of these grants are used for important services, the large majority of them are for one year or less. Most grants have to be applied for each year, and reported on usually four times a year with both financial and progress reports. All programs are audited each year, and closely scrutinized by funding bodies, as Bob Durnan would be well aware.

Tangentyere Council receives little credit for the successful programs it runs. These include:

Drum Atweme, a drumming program for Town Camp kids that plays at almost every major event and conference in town, requires participants to attend school and teaches budgeting and social skills;

CAYLUS, which worked hard for the introduction of non sniffable opal petrol across Central Australia, and which has made a huge difference to the lives of many young people and their families;

After hours and weekend sporting activities for Town Camp youth, winner of a crime prevention award;

Tangentyere Artists, with 400 participating Town Camp artists, enabling them to earn income within an ethical and transparent framework;

Approximately 400 meals-on-wheels provided each week to Town Camp residents who are elderly or who have disabilities;

A banking service for Town Camp residents and their many visitors from remote communities, which also runs a voluntary food voucher program;

Day, youth and night patrols for the town of Alice Springs as well as Town Camps.

There are many other programs run by hard working staff who get little recognition for the skills and commitment they bring to their jobs. Many of our programs run in conjunction with government departments or other non government organizations, so that services operate collaboratively to meet the needs of clients, without duplication.

There are also successful enterprises under the umbrella of Tangentyere Council, including Tangentyere Design, winner of a number of awards, Tangentyere Constructions and the Alice Springs Employment and Training Services (ASEATS). These enterprises compete against private companies on the open market and enable work experience and training for Aboriginal staff. Indeed, Tangentyere Council employs 175 Aboriginal staff, 70% of its workforce. Their language skills and family and cultural knowledge enable many services to be delivered sensitively and effectively to a client group that is often wary or shy in using mainstream services.

We have been telling governments for a long time that conditions on Town Camps are unacceptable. In submission after submission we have written of domestic violence, overcrowding and the danger of young people ending up in the criminal justice system.

Because of this, we have welcomed the Australian government’s offer of substantial funds for Town Camps and the town of Alice Springs. A year ago Tangentyere Executive agreed to sub lease to the Australian government for 40 years, We believed then as we do now that including the Housing Associations in a true partnership would be more effective than a model where government makes all decisions.

To this end, Tangentyere Council established the Central Australian Affordable Housing Company (CAAHC). The CAAHC presents a new approach to housing management for indigenous housing in Australia. It aims to capitalize on the strength of the environmental health based philosophies, policies and procedures developed by Tangentyere Council and other indigenous housing providers over the past 30 years of self determination, whilst embracing a new professional governance arrangement, a new social business model and new mixed funding arrangements pioneered by the not-for-profit mainstream community housing sector. This model includes representation from the Australian and NT governments, housing industry experts and Town Camp residents, providing skilled and open governance.

The model offers a new professional approach to affordable housing management and development, whilst still empowering indigenous people to have agency in their lives. It offers a pathway to less rather than more welfare dependency through a range of housing options from low cost affordable rental accommodation, shared equity home ownership and full home ownership.

This is not a continuation of the community housing model that has been operating for the past 30 years, as the article asserts. This particular community housing model is now considered best practice in the rest of Australia. Indeed, 70% of the Australian Government's $6.4 billion mainstream Social Housing Initiative will go towards this model of community housing, but Aboriginal people don’t appear to have this option available to them. By electing to place management of Town Camp housing with the Territory government, the Commonwealth is acting contrary to its own policy of developing community housing business models afforded to mainstream housing. Tangentyere too believes this is a more cost effective and sustainable model than management by Territory Housing. To this end we proposed a joint venture between CAAHC and Community Housing Limited (CHL) a national, well established and successful affordable housing company to be given the job of managing Town Camp housing, but this option was refused.

The fact that it is now recognized that at least $100 million is needed to bring Town Camp housing up to acceptable levels, shows how inadequate the level of housing funding has been. Tangentyere housing has prioritized its repairs and maintenance work along recognized environmental health guidelines. Despite only $2,200 being provided by the NT government for maintenance per Town Camp house compared to the $5,500 to $7,500 being paid for the maintenance of remote housing, the private company Healthabitat found that Town Camp housing scored higher against most health and housing indicators than did the rest of the Northern Territory (refer Late Night Live, Radio National, 2 June 2009).

We are proud of the services we provide. At the end of the day, what Town Camp communities want is the same as everyone wants, a decent life for families, a say in the matters that affect their lives, and a sense of hope for the future.

William Tilmouth

Executive Director

The Tangentyere Debate

Tangentyere Council in Alice Springs has developed a cult following over the past thirty years, lionised by sections of the media and patronised by artists, filmmakers and even billionaires Richard Branson. Swimmer Ian Thorpe has portrayed the organisation as a not only a champion of the oppressed, but as oppressed in its own right, by successive federal and Territory governments trying to take land and rights away from Aboriginal people.

Others say Tangentyere has had money enough and years enough to make a significant different to the lives of town campers but has failed. While others have presented the story of Tangentyere as a struggle against racism , vested interests and even cultural genocide, they say the town camps have become ghettoes; black holes where it is impossible to escape from the gravity of alcoholism, violence and welfare.

Black and White Town has been created a forum to honestly explore issues vital to the future of Central Australia as it deals with issues that have perplexed and challenged residents since the arrival of the Old Telegraph Line. To begin, we are reprinting two letters recently published in The Centralian Advocate, the first in its unedited form, and written by BOB DURNAN. Your opinions are welcome.

Once again the Alice Springs “Intervention Rollback Action Group” and Sydney-based “Stop the Intervention Collective” are rolling into action, ramping up another propaganda campaign with inaccurate claims in their publicity (http://rollbacktheintervention.wordpress.com/town-camp-housing-takeover/ )

At the same time, Rollback lawyer George Newhouse’s campaign to embarrass Rudd and Macklin internationally by placing the world's spotlight on the Australian government's policies over the Intervention is proceeding apace. His vendetta-like activities are likely to peak in the next week, coinciding with the ALP National Conference.

The Rollback people claim that "The NT Intervention has ... led only to increased discrimination and hardship."

In fact, the NT Intervention has led to significant improvements in safety, health services, nutrition, education and wellbeing for many thousands of people, particularly children and women living on remote communities in the NT. I work in several of these communities, and I see the evidence in front of my eyes every day.

The Intervention’s failings are predominantly in the areas of poor bureaucratic performance on strategy and program design of the NTER (particularly DEEWR’s input on employment and training reform), the political and bureaucratic clumsiness evidenced in the Intervention’s initial implementation phase, the cumbersome Alliance housing model, and excessive emphasis on the child sexual abuse and community dysfunction issues. Most importantly, it failed to develop and implement an evidence-based approach to addressing alcohol misuse.

The over-emphasis on child sexual abuse and corporate governance failures partly obscured the more general need to address the extraordinary rates of individual and family dysfunction demonstrated by a whole range of indicators - endemic violence, welfare dependency, demand sharing, substance abuse, crime, incarceration, the wholesale failure of training and employment projects, widespread child neglect and very high rates of school non-attendance.

The Rollback group's claim that years of inadequate funding and support have left many Aboriginal organisations and programs struggling to survive ignores certain important facts.

While many organisations have not received all the money they would like to have gained over the decades, some organisations such as Tangentyere Council in Alice Springs have received very large sums. Tangentyere's accountant told the Sydney Morning Herald that it received around $12 million in 2007 - this equates to about $8000 per person each year that it had to spend on the town campers (“The other side of the Alice”, SMH 21^st August, 2007).

But Tangentyere for many years has neglected to publish audit reports and failed to make detailed accounts of its funding and spending available to the Aboriginal people of Alice Springs, let alone to the members of the wider public.

The real issue is whether the considerable monies which Tangentyere has received have been spent wisely, productively and effectively for the benefit of its members and the other needy persons who use the Alice Springs town camps.

It is fairly apparent that in Tangentyere’s case there have been major problems associated with setting sensible priorities and implementing effective programs to meet the needs of the members and their visitors for safe and hygienic living conditions.

As for Rollback’s claim that Tangentyere has been a “spearhead for the establishment of other organizations as the need arose, such as Central Australian Aboriginal Congress (medical services), Central Australian Aboriginal Alcohol Planning Unit (alcohol rehabilitation), Institute for Aboriginal Development (educational institution), Central Australian Aboriginal Legal Aid Service, Yipirinye School (independent Aboriginal school), outstation resource centres and so on”: somebody is having a lend of the usually better informed Rollback spokesperson, Paddy Gibson.

IAD, formed by Jim Downing with a number of local Aboriginal leaders in 1969, was the spearhead of this movement. It led to the creation of CAALAS (Aboriginal Legal Aid) and the Aboriginal health service, CAAC (Congress) in 1973. Charlie and Neville Perkins were instrumental in the formation of these organisations as well. These three groups in turn helped organise the first meetings of town campers, discussing the early plans to form Tangentyere in 1973/74.

Tangentyere was clearly not the spearhead – it did not yet exist. In fact, IAD’s Cross Cultures Group made the first successful application for a town camp lease, at Little Sisters camp, in 1973.

It is true that once established in 1977/78, Tangentyere then went on to sponsor the formation of Yipirinya School in 1978 and, together with the CLC, the Ingkerreke Outstation Resource Service in 1984; and, in partnership with Congress, the alcohol rehabilitation organisation, CAAAPU, in 1991. But Rollback’s portrayal of Tangentyere as the sole heroic spearhead of all these organisations is just plain wrong.

An honest and accurate approach by Rollback would also concede that a major reason the Intervention’s new housing construction hasn’t yet commenced is because the governments have acceded to demands for training and employment of local people to be included in all construction, and this is an exceedingly complicated policy to implement via contracts. It requires large scale education and training programs to be developed and integrated with the construction program, along with apprenticeships, qualified trainers, and contracts which can be administered to require the builders to perform these tasks credibly.

If somebody has told Paddy that Tangentyere “wants to embrace the move taking place nationally towards community housing models”, they are failing to explain to him that Tangentyere has in fact run a “community housing model”, based on 17 government-funded, self-managing public benevolent housing associations, for more than three decades. It is true that community housing models generally hold much hope for the future development of low cost housing in Australia – they are generally less bureaucratic and more efficient than state welfare housing bodies. However ideology, idealistic complexity, lack of adequate management skills, personality politics, and the huge wastage of lives and assets associated with the endemic alcohol abuse and violence on the camps, have combined to undermine the viability of Tangentyere’s particular community housing model, and it has proven to be far from successful.

Further, it is also untrue that Tangentyere “has been the only service provider to the Town Camps since their inception”. Tangentyere has unfortunately tried to be “all things to all people”, because Tangentyere insisted on being funded to provide all its own services as an expression of self-determination and as a means of securing jobs for the town campers. This objective failed to appreciate that certain forms of self- determination were already being expressed in terms of other specialist organisations in certain areas.

For example, Congress has provided health services to the town camps since well before Tangentyere was formed, and IAD and Yipirinya have provided education services to town campers for over 30 years, so Tangentyere has not been the only service provider.

It is almost an impossible ask for one organisation to expect to have sufficient expertise in health, education, employment and housing but this was the vision Tangentyere tried to pursue to the point where it ended up trying to be too many things to too many people. It also tried to duplicate services provided by others, which was an inefficient strategy.

And if “for decades Tangentyere has called upon governments to address overcrowding and poverty in their communities. But their demands have been ignored”, then how does Rollback explain the granting of 16 town camp leases in perpetuity by governments, and the investment in around 200 mostly large, strong, well built, fully furnished, individually designed dwellings on the town camp leases? (By the way: the figure of 2000 people living in these camps is quite fanciful. The ABS Census and several detailed surveys by Tangentyere itself in recent years have consistently revealed less than 1500 people, including visitors, at any one time).

As well as these houses on the town camp leases, 160 houses on around 50 outstations within 75 km of Alice, serviced by the Ingkerreke Outstation Resource Service, have been built, mainly to house town campers and to assist them to move away from the dreadful conditions on the town camps and onto their traditional country.

These 360 houses and their accompanying infrastructure indicate government expenditure well in excess of $200 million in current valuation. Hardly evidence of demands having been ignored, you might think.

Unfortunately, Tangentyere is not the successful organisation that the Rollback lobby are trying to portray, and this may be why they have to resort to misinformation to try to make their case.

Bob Durnan

Hermannsburg NT

(Bob Durnan helped establish Tangentyere Council, and worked on the development of many of the Alice Springs town camp leases and services between 1977 and 1993).