Samantha Donovan: First this evening, after a weekend of violence, a curfew is again being imposed on Alice Springs. The three-week curfew in March applied only to children, but the emergency measure coming in tonight applies to everyone. It'll be in place in the outback town for three nights. As Jane Bardon reports, locals are fed up with the violent offending, and community leaders are calling on the federal and northern territory governments to deliver on their promises to tackle the poverty and dysfunction that's driving crime.
Jane Bardon: The anti-police commissioner Michael Murphy is using the new powers he gained in May to call the snap three-night curfew after a series of violent attacks, including a weekend brawl involving 80 people. A police officer was badly injured after being run over with a car, and four off-duty officers were assaulted by a mob of 20.
Michael Murphy: Cumulatively, those harms aren't acceptable. You know, this is a short-term relief. The longer-term solution is in community.
Jane Bardon: The March three-week curfew just applied to young people. This time, no one can enter the town centre at night without good reason. The commissioner can ask the chief minister to extend it for another seven days, stretching the NT police thin.
Michael Murphy: The command are looking at additional resources to come in. Resourcing is a challenge.
Jane Bardon: The curfew has disappointed Alice Springs' indigenous community leader and head of the Snake Children's Advocacy Body, Catherine Liddle. She feels the $250 million the federal government promised for community support programmes targeting social dysfunction hasn't hit the ground, and NT government supports haven't materialised.
Catherine Liddle: What we don't ever want to see is an environment where it's okay for police just to call the curfew, as opposed to bringing in the interventions that are required to keep the community safe.
Jane Bardon: Both the NT and federal governments have been promising interventions. What have you seen on the ground so far?
Catherine Liddle: What I do know is we haven't had any update around the solutions that the Northern Territory government called for when they got community into room. What I'd like to know is what has happened since then.
Jane Bardon: Young Alice Springs' indigenous leader and youth rehabilitation programme worker, Armani Francois, is also disappointed by the curfew and asking where government investment has gone.
Armani Francois: And I just don't know where that money is. A lot of organisations have been defunded through the NT government, like mental health and new jails and correction centres have been built. So I don't know if they'd rather encage our kids than have things that can support them. So it's pretty sad.
Jane Bardon: She points out the violence happened during the annual influx of thousands of people from remote communities to the Alice Springs show.
Armani Francois: I don't know why they didn't bring in more police officers or had these organisations like Tangantagere or LeRetepe to kind of have a headstart on how we can stop and prevent all of this from happening.
Jane Bardon: But businesses are desperate to stop the violence. The tourism central Australia head, Danial Rochford, says crime is decimating his industry.
Danial Rochford: What we saw in the last curfew was that it worked. On one hand, yes, it stabilises the street, which is something that's welcomed in the town. But on the other hand, it has a negative impact to our industry.
Jane Bardon: He's worried long-term solutions could take generations and says the town needs more permanent police now.
Danial Rochford: What we have is a surge, then that surge will slowly dissipate. And then of course it all happens again. More prominent public policing is really critical.
Jane Bardon: The assistant principal of the independent Yiperinye Indigenous School, Bess Price, says she hasn't seen evidence of any impact from the two governments' funding commitments.
Bess Price: We have not heard which organisations were to benefit from that funding. And we'd like to know if we will be benefiting out of the funding to be able to help us with our students in order to create more programmes for them. Some of our students, when we ask them, why do they walk the streets at night? Is it because we don't have anywhere safe?
Jane Bardon: Federal Indigenous Australians Minister, Linda Burney, responded with a statement saying her government will fund more police and better domestic violence, youth and remote school services. The NT chief minister, Eva Lawler, says governments can't do everything.
Eva Lawler: It's not just government. We need to have the NGOs as well, continuing to step up, continuing to put additional resources in Alice Springs as well.
Jane Bardon: Catherine Liddle says in a town of just 25,000 people, fixing problems shouldn't be this hard.
Catherine Liddle: What the community were asking for was for all governments to step up and say, who needs a home? Who isn't going to school? Who doesn't have any money? Who is hungry? And then brought in the services that were able to respond to those needs. These things are vital.
Samantha Donovan: Catherine Liddle is the chief executive of the Secretariat of Aboriginal Child Care. Jane Bardon with that report.