Albo in dark on ‘carnage’ at Alice
Anthony Albanese has been called out for not knowing how much “carnage” youth crime has inflicted on Alice Springs.
Anti-crime campaigner Darren Clark met with the Prime Minister on Monday when Mr Albanese returned to the outback town for the first time in more than a year.
He visited organisations in Alice Springs after a spate of social unrest led to the Northern Territory imposing a threeweek youth curfew. The riots occurred after an 18-year-old died in a car crash.
Mr Clark, a bakery operator, is the founder of the Action for Alice Facebook page, which has drawn national attention because of its coverage of crime.
Speaking on Sydney’s 2GB, Mr Clark said he told Mr Albanese “what we’ve been through” in the past five years.
He said that included people having “machetes held to their throats in their beds”.
“He actually didn’t know how bad this was,” Mr Clark said. “This place is absolute carnage and it continued all last year, and it hit a peak again a few weeks ago.”
In March, the Northern Territory government declared an emergency and imposed a curfew on children under 18 in central Alice Springs between 6pm and 6am.
Mr Albanese said while the curfew had worked he did not think it was a “one size fits all approach” when asked if it could be used in other towns.
“We need to not be ideological about this. We need to look at what works and if it works we’re up for it,” he said.
An additional $14.2m was pledged on Monday for policing and community safety in Alice as part of an extension of an agreement between the federal and NT government.