Government storekeeper in the bush
Exorbitant prices for groceries in outback stores are often the subject of outrage but are rarely dealt with a great deal of logic ... Why should the public purse kick in $50m over four years from 2025-26 to provide remote stores with low-cost access to about 30 food products?
Government chops grant for ‘economic vandals’ but minister gardens with them
“We will not spend another dollar on activists and economic vandals and their disruptive agendas.” This is how Joshua Burgoyne, NT Minister for Lands, Planning and Environment, announced that his government has axed its $100,000 annual grant for the Arid Lands Environment Centre (ALEC), Central Australia’s peak environmental organisation for over 40 years and with 400 members.
Legal aid copes with pressure
All Territory Aboriginal persons facing criminal charges since August last year received high quality legal representation unless they chose not to use the North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency, or it had a conflict of interest. CEO Anthony Beven was responding to allegations made anonymously to the Alice Springs News that “there is more chaos at NAAJA”.
Where does all the money go?
How many troubled children in Central Australia fall under the umbrella of the National Indigenous Australians Agency (NIAA)? Surely that was a known number upon which Anthony Albanese’s $250m “special grant” was based.
Cleared for take-off?
Check the thermometer and smile, if you are a glider pilot, that is: Central Australia in summer is the world’s best place for flying without an engine. It’s Alice where world distance and speed records have been set for decades.
How much gas talk is hot air?
Take out the hype and Beetaloo gas is a pretty thin project. The sub-basin, 900 km north of Alice Springs, is “estimated” to contain 500 trillion cubic feet of gas. The NT Government refers to this estimate as being “by industry”.
Saving Alice in 2025: it starts today
My journalistic work in the Territory began early on Christmas Day 1974, looking down from the aircraft of Deputy Prime Minister Jim Cairns onto the Northern Territory capital that had been all but annihilated by Cyclone Tracy.
Youth crime kept in the shadow
The public isn’t going to learn much from official channels about the bashing – alleged – with a blunt weapon of a two months old infant, inflicting serious head injuries. Because the accused are under 18 we will not learn their names ... The known facts in this case are limited to the media release by the police ...
Tourism started as a do-it-yourself venture
Keith Castle, now aged 93, was one of the most influential figures in The Centre’s budding tourism industry. Editor Erwin Chlanda picked some gems from his 164 page memoir about the people who devoted their lives to developing the region’s visitor industry. They are only a handful of men and women but they all had skin in the game ... Governments barely get a mention.
DIY welfare group puts numbers to its proud record
The Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Women’s Council is a bit of a mouthful, so just call them NPY and be amazed at its achievements since 1980, spreading across 350,000 square kilometres in the south-west of the NT, the Top End of SA and a big patch of eastern WA ... As the airwaves are full of talking from politicians, activists and coroners, mostly about dollar figures with lots of zeros, Alice Springs based NPY is putting real numbers to its accomplishments in 2024.
