NAP NT Election Update 2

The Napatistas have had another great week of campaigning for the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly election that will be held tomorrow.

We ran in the election campaign for three main reasons:

1. To use the election campaign as a vehicle to promote drug law-reform and human rights in the NT and beyond,

2. To use the election campaign to raise the profile of the NAP and in particular, Scott White’s Parliament Invasion court case, which starts on July 18 in the NT Supreme Court, and

3. To expose the reality that we only have the illusion of democracy in Australia.

We have certainly achieved these objectives and all of the Napatistas and our support people should be commended for the work they have done over the past few weeks.

Exposing ourselves

Despite the fine from the Darwin City Council that the Napatistas received last week, the crew continued to have an information stall in the Smith Street Mall every day this week. Council backed off and left us alone, but we now face another court battle over this ‘permit’ issue.

Over the past two weeks the Napatistas have spoken to hundreds of people in the mall about drug law-reform and about the harmful impact of drug prohibition. We have handed out hundreds of leaflets and hundreds more have been letter-boxed across Darwin by our supporters.

Posters exposing the ‘drug house’ laws and others promoting our next smoke-in have been stuck up around the streets of Darwin. Our posters are still available from our website here.

We have had some great media hits over the past week.

On Monday, the Queen’s birthday, our Nightcliff candidate, Stuart Highway, did an excellent interview with Vaughn Williams over two hours on the local indigenous community radio station, Radio Larrakia 8KNB. This is Stuart’s second radio interview during the campaign; he did an interview with Melbourne community radio station 3CR late last week.

We had two great hits on the local ABC radio, with a report on Scott’s Wednesday court appearance and an excellent interview by Scott on Annie Gastin’s show on Thursday morning. We didn’t get a transcript of this but you can see some of what Scott said in this media release here.

On the same day, Napatista Michael Barry did a NAP NT election special on community radio in Canberra.

Keep an eye out for tomorrow’s Sydney Morning Herald. With any luck we will get a grab somewhere in there.

As you can see we have certainly achieved our objectives in terms of media coverage. It demonstrates the effectiveness of our media releases. The whole election campaign has cost us around $1400 so one way of looking at it is that we paid $140 for 10 media hits. This is the best advertising rate we can get. We certainly can’t afford to pay for that sort of publicity in the NT News or on commercial radio or television.

To read all of the media releases we have put out during the campaign click here.

In an extra bit of exposure, the NAP was approached by the Chairperson of the Chief Minister’s Youth Round Table to explain our position on some key policy areas that affect young people. This was a great opportunity for NAP to promote our message and to improve our links with local young people. You can read the NAP statement to the Youth Round Table here.

Vote 1 NAP

For the voters out there, these are the electorates we are standing in and our candidates:

Casuarina - Scott Richard White

Fannie Bay - Fiona Bronwyn Clarke

Johnston - Gary William Meyerhoff

Millner - Robert Inder-Smith

Nightcliff – Stuart Highway

For more information on our candidates click here.

Preferences

We are not issuing preferences in the election. If you do decide to vote, and why would you bother anyway, we just ask that people in the electorate of Nightcliff give their second preference to the other independent candidate, Andrew (Legs) Arthur.

The NT Greens are at it again, rubber-stamping the status quo. In a shock move, they preferenced Labor candidates over the NAP candidates in Millner and Johnston. See our media release about Green preferences, “NT Greens prop up racist, homophobic regime” here.

The struggle continues

Despite the lack of support from the Greens, running in the election has been very positive for the NAP in terms of support we are receiving from the community. It has provided great momentum for the ongoing NAP campaign in the NT. To change the status quo is going to take years of hard work and determination.

The Napatistas will now move their focus on to some major NAP events being held this year. On July 9, we will have our 23rd Smoke-in at Darwin’s Raintree Park. This will be a Christmas in July special and we will be joined by Santa on the day. You can download the smoke-in poster here.

July 18 will be day one of Napatista Scott White’s trial by jury for the ‘Parliament Invasion’. This will be our biggest court case yet and we are hoping that some of you will come along during the two week trial to show your support and solidarity for Scott.

The NAP crew are already working on September’s 4th Darwin International Syringe Festival and the anticipation is building. For more information on the Syringefest click here.

Don’t forget that you can get all the law and order election news on the NAP website. There are some great articles from the National Indigenous Times.

You are invited to join us on election night from 6pm onwards at the Groove Café in Nightcliff for a post-election shindig and we encourage anyone with an interest in drug law-reform and human rights to join us at one of our regular NAP meetings. Our meetings are fortnightly at the Groove Café in Nightcliff. The next meeting is at 7pm on Wednesday the 22nd June and they will be held fortnightly after that.

In light of the recent issuing of a ‘Drug House’ notice in the Bagot community, it seems fitting to finish with today’s media release:

Media Alert

17th June 2005

Remember the racist ‘Drug House’ laws

Fiona Clarke, the Network Against Prohibition candidate for Fannie Bay in Saturday’s Northern Territory election, has called on Territorians to remember the draconian ‘Drug House’ legislation when they vote tomorrow.

Ms Clarke said: “This week’s announcement by the NT Police Drug Enforcement Section that they have issued a ‘Drug House’ notice in the Bagot Community confirms fears that the law continues to be used to target the indigenous community.”

In August 2001, the Northern Territory Labor Government implemented the draconian “Drug House” laws.

The first person to have their house signposted as a ‘drug house’ was Margot Laughton, a member of the Stolen Generation.

The police can have your house declared a “Drug House” if there are certain indications of supply or if police reasonably suspect that the supply of drugs is taking place at the premises and police find dangerous drugs on the premises on three separate occasions within a twelve-month period.

If your house is declared a “Drug House” a notice is affixed at the entry of the premises stating it to be a Declared Drug Premises and any attempt to alter or tamper with the notice will be treated as an offence, punishable by imprisonment.

If your house is declared a “Drug House”

• The premises may be searched by a member of the Police Force at any time without a warrant;

• A person on the premises may be searched and an order may be sought authorising the performance of an internal search of the body of the person;

• A person who is found on the premises at the time a dangerous drug is found on the premises may be charged with possession of the drug;

• An object on the premises that relates to an offence against the Misuse of Drugs Act that may have been committed on the premises may be seized;

• A restraining order may be issued to a person who breaches the peace on the premises; and

• A person who is on the premises or within 200 metres of the premises or a person suspected to be associated with the premises will be required to provide the Police Force with their name and address.

The Darwin-based human rights group the Network Against Prohibition is running five candidates in tomorrow’s election. Scott White vies for the seat of Casuarina, Fiona Clarke – Fannie Bay, Gary Meyerhoff – Johnston, Robert Inder-Smith – Millner and Stuart Highway – Nightcliff.

For more information about the NAP election campaign see: http://www.napnt.org/election2005.html

For more information on Margot Laughton’s case see:
http://www.napnt.org/pages/free_margot.html