Line up the usual suspects

JUST over a fortnight ago, Clare Martin stood before a group of indigenous leaders in Darwin and promised to create 2000 Aboriginal jobs every year during the next decade.

The Northern Territory Chief Minister said indigenous people had been excluded from the territory's economic development for too long. "My Government considers turning this around as one of its highest priorities," she said.

A week later, Martin was out talking about Aborigines again. But this time, her tone had changed. This time it was about "habitual drunks", jail time and anti-social behaviour. In response, Martin, a former ABC journalist, has been predictably accused of bashing Aborigines. "How am I playing the race card?" she responded. "Can you explain that to me because I'm struggling to understand."

But in the space of a few days, Martin's rhetoric on Aborigines had shifted from visionary to hardline. What changed? Well, she called an election. And it wouldn't be an NT election without a relentless campaign on law and order, a time for politicians to talk tough about protecting the territory's "unique lifestyle" and pretend it has nothing to do with Aborigines.

Martin, who four years ago led Labor to its first election victory in the territory, has tried to neutralise the Opposition Country Liberal Party's zero-tolerance approach to anti-social behaviour in her bid for a second term. Her tough stance may annoy some people, but in the territory - particularly in Darwin's crucial northern suburbs - the growing concern about drunken itinerants seems to demand nothing less. "No one likes being humbugged by drunks in our streets," Martin says.

With the results of an exclusive Newspoll in The Weekend Australian today showing Labor well ahead for next Saturday's election, it seems the strategy is paying off.

Under Labor's policy, anyone taken into police custody for grog-related reasons six times in three months will be issued with a prohibition order and labelled as a habitual drunk. If they break the law while drinking in public again, they will be ordered to seek treatment or face jail.

"If you won't take the treatment, then you can face jail. Now tell me how that's racist. It is not," Martin says. But in the territory cracking down on anti-social behaviour has always been understood to mean cracking down on drunk Aboriginal itinerants.

Kimberley Hunter, chairman of the Yilli Rreung Regional Council of the recently abolished Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, is highly critical. "We are dismayed that the ALP, who our mob have voted for all our lives, would take us back to those days," he says.

June Mills, president of Darwin's Long Grass Association, warns Labor it can no longer rely on the indigenous vote. "We are totally dissatisfied with both Labor and the CLP," she says.

Remarkably, Opposition Leader Denis Burke has taken a softer line, emphasising a "health intervention" for drunks. This week, he travelled to the Aboriginal community of Wadeye, 300km southwest of Darwin, where he told traditional owners that Labor was chasing the "redneck white vote". He also told them that the CLP's days of Aborigine-bashing were over, but didn't mention how the CLP wants to criminalise petrol sniffing.

The debate has left Burke, a former army commander, looking off balance. For 27 years, the CLP won election after election. This was the party that ran race-based elections like no other, introduced mandatory sentencing, tried out the nation's first case of push polling and directed preferences to One Nation ahead of Labor in 2001. Now in Opposition for the first time, it's unfamiliar territory. Certainly, it doesn't need headlines such as this in yesterday's Northern Territory News: "Blind man in punch-up at CLP launch". Apparently the blind man won.

There even has been speculation that a CLP loss could mean the end of the party as a separate conservative entity, but outgoing federal Liberal Party president Shane Stone, a former NT chief minister, says the CLP will not be absorbed by the Liberals if it loses on June 18.

Describing the CLP as the "most successful party in contemporary political history", Stone says there is room for only one conservative party in the territory. "The CLP is a very good model for conservative politics in the territory and I would lead the charge to defend it," Stone says.

The focus still remains on Darwin's northern suburbs, where territory elections are always decided. Of their 13 seats in parliament, Labor holds seven in the northern suburbs. Today's Newspoll suggests they will probably retain most of them.

Since Martin's announcement on anti-social behaviour, Burke has tried to reclaim ground on law and order. He's proposing a three-strikes mandatory sentencing policy for property crime and night curfews for juvenile offenders. The CLP has also promised to force juveniles guilty of vandalism to wear bright orange T-shirts emblazoned with the words "name and shame".

But the centrepiece of the CLP's campaign is a plan to connect the territory to the national electricity grid. Burke says the $1.3 billion project will be funded almost entirely by the private sector.

The Opposition Leader says the 3000km line from Queensland via Mount Isa will cut local electricity prices by more than 30 per cent, but others aren't so sure. The mayor of Mount Isa says he isn't interested, and several energy analysts claim the line will drive up local prices, as happened in South Australia when that state joined the national grid. They also question the logic of building one of the longest power lines in the world to service such a small population. Whether Burke's power plan ends up like the Liberal Party's failed West Australian canal election pledge remains to be seen.

For her part, Martin hasn't made much of her biggest project to date: Darwin's $1.1 billion waterfront development, along lines similar to Sydney's Darling Harbour or Brisbane's South Bank. When the waterfront is finished, it's unlikely drunken Aboriginal itinerants will be welcome there either.

Newshawk: Empower Activists http://www.napnt.org/donate.html
Pubdate: Sat, 11 June 2005
Source: Australian, The (Australia)
Copyright: 2005 The Australian
Contact: letters@theaustralian.com.au
Website: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/35
Author: Ashleigh Wilson