SORRY STATE

Clearly there is a problem here, but will a new itinerant action plan have the right answers?

INDIGENOUS men and women, often with toddlers in tow, drink day and night in an Ishmael Road park at Earlville.

Up to 40 people can congregate at a time scaring staff and customers at nearby businesses as they engage in anti-social behaviour proving the city’s drunken itinerant problem runs deeper than geography. The scene is offensive, illegal and tragic.

Concerned and fed-up the Cairns Chamber of Commerce has released a 10-point action plan to combat the issue and put an end to the age-old problem.

The response to the plan, which coincides ironically today with National Sorry Day, has been mixed.

While a Far North top cop has welcomed a community-wide conversation about the problem, the plan has been met with frustration from indigenous leaders.

POLICE locked in an unceasing battle to break the cycle of itinerants sleeping, living and drinking rough on the streets of Cairns say a lock-them-up approach is not the answer.

Businesses have become increasingly frustrated about a perceived lack of action on drunken men and women vandalising property and making staff and customers feel unsafe.

Trinity Auto sales manager Brett Dunkinson yesterday told the Cairns Post a steady stream of indigenous men and women had set up camp in the neighbouring Ishmael Road Park for months, drinking day and night, often with toddlers in tow.

Numbers fluctuate from a few up to a few dozen with inebriated people stumbling through the car yard, scaring staff and customers, and occasionally defecating on the property and scratching cars.

“They have some horrendous big blues and domestics out there at the end of the day,” Mr Dunkinson said.

“It’s sad to watch, but it blows me away that they’re allowed to publicly drink and do this damage.

“They’ve got deckchairs and blankets – they live there.

“If we try to ask them to leave the property, we just get abused – we’ve had enough.”

Far North police Superintendent Geoff Sheldon has read the Cairns Chamber of Commerce’s 10-point “itinerant action plan” released this week and was glad the conversation was happening.

He said punitive responses were an option but could not work independently.

“The old days where the paddy wagon would pull up, we’d lock up 15 of them and they’d sleep it off and get out in the morning … it’s not before time that we’ve realised that’s not a way to fix it,” he said.

“If there are kids there, well why aren’t they at school? People appear to have alcohol issues, well what are we doing with Queensland Health?

“It’s a far more productive way to look at it holistically instead of ‘why aren’t the police here arresting these people’.”

Supt Sheldon said officers would continue to move on problem groups but it was a constantly shifting issue.

“People on the Esplanade are worried, so we put policing action into case,” he said.

“Then they’ll often go up towards Dunwoody’s (Tavern) so we do something up there.

“So they go out towards some of the creeks.

“It’s a moving feast.”