The Northern Territory News and the ABC reported this month that the Central Australian Affordable Housing Company (CAAHC) had been unsuccessful in its tender for continuing tenancy services to the Town Camps of Alice Springs. As I read I felt two powerful emotions — outrage followed by impotence.
The Northern Territory government has accepted a lower price tender from Zodiac, a for-profit accountancy business with little experience in managing Aboriginal affordable housing.
The government would save $300,000 by accepting the lower priced tender, so why was I so upset? Surely $300,000 saved for a simple tenancy management service would provide more funds for other essential services to Aboriginal people in Alice like recreation, education and child protection services.
It's all about the Intervention really. John Howard's Mal Brough-inspired Emergency Response to the child abuse crisis in the Northern Territory in 2007-8 led to a military style action across the NT which removed effective responsibility by Indigenous people for their housing services, and inserted imposed control by government business managers in remote communities.
In February 2015 former Northern Territory Chief Minister Clare Martin interviewed Miriam Rose Ungunmerr in Nauiyu (Daly River) for The Saturday Paper. Martin acknowledged Miriam Rose's distress at the disintegration of the life of her community following the Intervention and the simultaneous amalgamation of local community government councils into Shires by the Martin Government.
The Intervention and the amalgamations effectively diluted Aboriginal decision-making, leading to alienation and ennui. According to Miriam Rose, children at Nauiyu were not attending school, with the result that traditional culture was being lost even as whitefella schooling was failing badly.
Alice Springs Town Camps are actually remote communities locked within the town of Alice Springs (Mpwarntwe); white administrative settlements firmly established on Arrernte land.
In the 1970s Tangentyere Council was formed to service the camps, and 18 housing associations, based on parcels of land with connection both to the Arrernte owners of Mpwarntwe and with other language groups from the north, south, east and west, were established.
The housing associations and Tangentyere were funded by the Federal government, which let the NT government off the hook for funding essential services and led to gross inequality in living standards between Aboriginal Town Campers and other residents.
A 'Rates Case' run by Tangentyere in the early 1990s found that there was no effective delivery of services to Town Camp residents for the rates they paid. This led to the development of operational agreements between