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 the Alice Springs Town Council and Tangentyere, and the gradual integration of municipal services in the Camps at a commensurate level across the town.
Then came the Intervention and allegations of failure by Tangentyere. Tangentyere was backed into a corner; it resisted, fought, argued and eventually succumbed, being forced to hand over the houses on the Special Purpose Leases to the Commonwealth government for 40 years.
Housing management services were transferred to an independent body, CAAHC, to continue a culturally appropriate service to Town Camp residents.
The new body has worked hard to retain a measure of cultural sensitivity in the delivery of housing services to marginalised Aboriginal people in a contested space. Its 2014 annual report indicates the progress made by the company and the issues of cultural sensitivity that it faces.
It seems the government has read the annual report and decided it does not like the direction CAAHC was indicating. Despite being a product of the Intervention, CAAHC had developed a powerful model of community housing and had the support of both the Central Land Council and the wider Aboriginal community. It appears that these are not attributes the NT government admires.
The invasion of Mpwarntwe began with explorer John McDouall Stuart followed by a telegraph line, and Spencer and Gillen, who filmed Arrernte ceremonies. Soon followed prospectors, miners, missionaries, a railway line and pastoralists.
When the headquarters of the Australian Defence Forces were established in Alice Springs during the Second World War, the Arrernte were shipped off to a deserted gold mining settlement at Arltunga, 100 km east of Alice Springs.
More recently, ATSIC came and went, and the Indigenous Housing Authority briefly controlled the funding and decision-making relating to Aboriginal housing before also being dissolved.
Then the Intervention.
Throughout this timeline, Arrernte people particularly and Aboriginal people generally have been like flotsam and jetsam carried before the invading non-Indigenous tide which, like the periodic floods of the Todd River, washes everything away in a moment.
My sense of impotence is derived from a recognition that the emergence of Malcolm Turnbull with his justification for 'disruption' and his sponsorship of laissez faire, free-wheeling liberalism means that the Arrernte, when they look at the past, can clearly see the future mapped out for them.
Ironically, the very first Arrernte fringe camp in Alice Springs, now one of the 16 Tangentyere Council affiliated Town Camps, was established in the Charles Creek. The Arrernte name for which is Anthelke Ewlpaye: 'the rubbish carried down in a flood'. Flotsam and jetsam in the path of progress.
Mike Bowden has worked as a teacher and community worker in Alice Springs and Aboriginal communities in the Top End.