The Northern Territory Government has been accused of disproportionately targeting Aboriginal people with a plan announced today to get tougher on antisocial behaviour and unpaid rent in public housing. The Government says its plan to fast track evictions, and give public housing officers more powers, are vital to start to deal with worsening violence, and 39-million dollars in unpaid rent.
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00:00An alleged murder in Alloa last month, one of the worst recent incidents in the NT's
00:08public housing. The government is now promising to get tough on many more.
00:13Loud music, anti-social behaviour, fighting, drinking, keeping neighbours up all hours
00:20of the night.
00:22It's going after $39 million in unpaid rent, fast-tracking evictions and giving public
00:29housing officers new powers, including to ban tenants from drinking.
00:34The days of taking a soft approach to dealing with these tenants, those days are over.
00:40Labor made similar promises, including to give public housing officers paper spray.
00:47It now thinks the government's plan is racist.
00:49We've seen today that the CLP government again is all about punitive approaches.
00:56The Aboriginal housing sector agrees.
00:59These reforms are going to target disproportionately Aboriginal tenants.
01:03And it says big remote public housing rent increases will unavoidably lead to more arrears.
01:10So households who can least afford it are now paying higher rents for public housing.
01:15We don't target Aboriginal people. These policies affect everybody.
01:20Homelessness organisations think the NT's chronic public housing shortage, caused by
01:26successive governments replacing properties with mixed private developments, is a much
01:32more urgent problem. And anti-social tenants should be provided more support programs.
01:38They are adequately funded to intervene early before it gets to that crisis point.
01:44In Parliament, the government also faced accusations its promise of free school swimming lessons
01:50disadvantages Indigenous kids.
01:53The opposition is questioning how the $150 allocated to schools for each child is fair,
01:59when city schools are all near pools, but many remote students would have to travel
02:04hundreds of expensive kilometres.
02:06The government's apparently now backtracking from its original plan that some remote students
02:12would have to travel as far as Queensland to learn to swim.