Alice Springs mayor Matt Paterson wants an audit of all youth social service providers in Alice Springs to find out if these organisations’ work helps reduce crime in the town.

Mr Paterson told the NT News if all the organisations’ programs were working well the town would not be in the situation it was with youth crime, and said service providers who could not deliver results that help reduce crime in Alice Springs should not be funded any more.

“I don’t think that’s rocket science, if you’re paid to deliver a youth service and there’s 100 youth on the street, well someone is not delivering that service,” the paper quoted him as saying.

“I come from a construction background, so if you are paying for a four-bedroom, two-bathroom house and you get a three-bedroom, one-bath, well you don’t get paid.

“It should be treated the same. If you’re paid to deliver a service and not doing it, you shouldn’t be paid.

In 2022, when the crime rate peaked at Alice Springs, Mr Paterson called on the federal government to step in, saying there would be “no Alice Springs left” if the government did not do anything to address the issue.

“Senseless and destructive behaviour is a persistent problem in Alice Springs,” Mr Paterson said at the time, as he asked for federal involvement to help with the policing, involving the Australian Federal Police and the military.

The then-Fyles government was humiliated by a last minute visit by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on January 24 last year, which was due in large part to Action for Alice 2020 Facebook page owner Darren Clark and Mr Paterson speaking out about youth crime as well as alcohol-fuelled violent crime, which gained national media coverage.

Ms Fyles was then forced to reintroduce alcohol bans in town camps and remote communities across the Territory, restrictions which had ended when the federal Stronger Futures legislation lapsed in July 2022, but which the Fyles Government had not prepared for.

More than a year since the return of blanket alcohol bans, violence and youth crime have continued to be Alice Springs’s perennial problem.

The bans have not stopped the flow of alcohol into the region due to black market sales, the NT Liquor Commission said.

Alice Springs-based NT Attorney-General Chansey Paech said there have been “several positive changes” over the past 12 months, but “there’s certainly more work to be done”.