Central Australia questions new petrol distribution

KERRY O'BRIEN: Three years ago, the South Australian Coroner issued a blistering finding in the death of petrol-sniffing victim Kunmanara Thompson. The coroner said "the fact that conditions that led to petrol sniffing - like poverty, hunger, illness, poor education, almost total unemployment and a sense of hopelessness - should exist exist among a group of people defined by race in the 21st century in a developed country like Australia is a disgrace and should shame us all". Well, three years later, those conditions are still a disgrace, and presumably should still shame us all, because, as one symptom, petrol sniffing continues to take a devastating toll. The Federal Government's Budget last month provided $10 million to be spent over the next few years to introduce into Aboriginal communities a new mix of petrol which does not give sniffers a high. But in central Australia, there's a growing argument that the new petrol won't be distributed widely enough. Murray McLaughlin reports from Alice Springs.

MURRAY McLAUGHLIN: These two houses in Alice Springs are known as Sniffer Central among youth and health workers and the police. It's part of a small Aboriginal community called Hoppys Camp on a bank of the usually dry Charles River at the north end of town. After a spate of criminal offences affecting nearby businesses, police recently ran night-time surveillance along the riverbed to determine the number of petrol sniffers congregating there. The police were startled by what they saw.

SENIOR CONSTABLE CHRIS BRAND, NT POLICE: We knew the scope of the amount of offences being committed in the area. However, I don't think we were initially expecting the amount of individuals involved. One night we counted 31 people in one area surrounding the camp but it was showing consistency in large numbers of people taking in those things.

MURRAY McLAUGHLIN: The police also kept secret watch over two car yards across the highway from Hoppys Camp. Till the police operation, one yard had been hit 270 times in the past year by sniffers desperate for petrol. Next door, Alan Thorp, too, was a regular target.

ALAN THORP, STUART HIGHWAY MOTORS: Daytime as well - we've been hit in the middle of the day, cars parked out on the kerb. Even this week, we got one car raided this week. We went out to move the car and the fuel was gone. (Laughs) So they're getting cheeky.

POLICE WOMAN IN VIDEO: He's going into the fuel tank. He's starting to suck on it.

MURRAY McLAUGHLIN: This video recorded by police captured a petrol siphoner on the job.

ALAN THORP: They're not taking, like, large volumes at any one time. They're only after about a Coke can-full.

MURRAY McLAUGHLIN: Many of the young people who inhabit Hoppys Camp have come to Alice Springs from Western Desert communities. Blair McFarland, who works for the federally funded Central Australian Youth Link-Up Service, has charted the drift into town from places out west.

BLAIR McFARLAND, CENTRAL AUSTRALIAN YOUTH LINK-UP SERVICE: Older members of the families get sick and might need to come in for renal dialysis and their families sort of come with them as support And people come into town for banking and for going for concerts and often the younger people don't get the lifts back particularly if they fall in with a bunch of sniffers.

MURRAY McLAUGHLIN: And at Hoppys Camp, as at many remote communities in Central Australia, families are intimidated by sniffers.

BLAIR McFARLAND: One of the houses there has got a man who's had a stroke in it. He can't stop the sniffers coming in there, basically, and when he had the stroke, there were sniffers in his house and they basically stepped over his body for a while until somebody else came out, found him and sort of took him to the hospital.

MURRAY McLAUGHLIN: Some of the out-of-town sniffers at Hoppys Camp have travelled to Alice Springs because standard petrol is no longer available in their home communities. In some places, standard petrol has been replaced with Avgas or aviation fuel because its smell is not attractive to sniffers. But that advantage has disappeared as the composition of Avgas has changed. Now the fuel company BP has created a new mix of petrol called Opal, which has no effect on sniffers.

SENIOR CONSTABLE CHRIS BRAND: It's harder to get fuel on communities because they're using more Avgas. Some communities are starting to switch to Opal fuel, and so the kids are also telling us that, yeah, the availability of fuel in a major regional centre is much easier than being out on communities.

MURRAY McLAUGHLIN: Opal petrol is 33 cents a litre more expensive than standard petrol and last month's Federal Budget allowed $10 million to subsidise the introduction of Opal to remote Aboriginal communities. But the scheme will not be universal. It won't, for example, include the community of Willowra, 250 kilometres north of Alice Springs.

TRISTAN RAY, CENTRAL AUSTRALIAN YOUTH LINK-UP SERVICE: People in that community have had on again-off again sniffing for a number of years. Last year a young fellow died there. It was the first time that he'd sniffed. He asphyxiated on the can. He fell asleep and the can locked off on his mouth and he died that way.

MURRAY McLAUGHLIN: Willowra, home to about 200 people, is applying to join the Opal scheme. But while it waits for approval from Canberra, the community has decided to order in the new fuel and will itself subsidise the 33 cents a litre extra cost.

JOHN BENNETT, WILLOWRA COMMUNITY MANAGER: The store has been broken into, the petrol pumps, numerous cars have been broken into by these people trying to siphon petrol out and I think that is why the community has taken this decision - "Let's bite the bullet, let's pay the extra money."

MURRAY McLAUGHLIN: In Alice Springs, the Central Australian Youth Link-Up Service, CAYLUS, which supports community programs to help petrol sniffers, is arguing for a blanket roll-out of the new Opal petrol across Central Australia. Tristan Ray points to the experience at Mutitjulu, the Aboriginal community at Uluru and near the resort township of Yulara.

TRISTAN RAY: Mutitjulu, like Alice Springs, is a place that's near a source of sniffable fuel and it's surrounded by communities that have used non-sniffable fuels. It has meant that, over the years, people have gravitated to Mutitjulu because it's 1km from Ayres Rock and Yulara is a ready source of petrol because at the moment close to 500,000 tourists go through there a year.

MURRAY McLAUGHLIN: The new Opal fuel has only recently arrived in the Northern Territory. The main users are coastal and island communities in the Top End. The Central Australian zone identified by CAYLUS contains around 500 sniffers. 20 million litres of petrol a year are used across that zone and it would cost an estimated $8 million a year subsidy to replace that with Opal.

TRISTAN RAY: We know that we already are covering that cost in property damage, in tertiary health costs with people who are in permanent care from brain damage. We know that we're spending for that region far more than $8 million a year already on just looking after the damage caused by petrol sniffing.

TONY ABBOTT, HEALTH MINISTER: In the end, it's not really practical to convert the whole of Australia's fuel supply to this Opal petrol. In the end, what we've got to do is try to get people off sniffing, and that means that in their home communities, there's got to be a bit of a community campaign, probably led by the elders.

MURRAY McLAUGHLIN: Communities have railed for decades against the scourges of substance abuse. More than 25 years ago, Alison Hunt was leading a march in Alice Springs against grog and violence. Today she leads a program which deals in traditional ways with petrol sniffing and sees a community role in dealing with those out-of-town sniffers who've come seeking petrol in Alice Springs.

ALISON HUNT, WESTERN ARANDA REL-AKA COMMITTEE: We can have the families and the elders to come in and talk about it in town here, if this is where the problem is, and try and find some solutions. I know there are many angry businesspeople in this town.

MURRAY McLAUGHLIN: Fewer are angry in Alice Springs now that the police have clamped down on crime related to petrol sniffing. After their surveillance at Hoppys Camp, police made 11 arrests and referred others to government welfare agencies. Illegal activity has fallen off at Alan Thorp's garage but he's left sad rather than angry.

ALAN THORP: They're kids, you know. It's just sad to see them with so little to do in life that they've got to go and blow their brains. You might as well be putting a gun to your head and pulling' the trigger to sniff petrol. That's not very good for you.

Newshawk: http://www.napnt.org
Pubdate: Tue, 07 Jun 2005
Source: Australian Broadcasting Corporation (Australia Web)
Reporter: Murray McLaughlin
Copyright: 2005 Australian Broadcasting Corporation
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