A plan to close off the Alice Springs CBD to traffic at night using bollards, has been put to the Alice Springs Town Council by the Fyles Government, the mayor has said, while an independent MLA has gone further and suggested heavy duty gates and concrete road blocks need to be used.

Wednesday morning was the second time in two weeks NT Police issued an alert at night to residents telling them not to go into the CBD, or to leave if they were already there, because of people allegedly driving stolen cars dangerously, including trying to ram police cars.

Mayor Matt Paterson told the NT Independent the idea of closing the CBD with bollards had been raised with the council by Police and Territory Families Minister Kate Worden, but that council did not support the idea.

“We don’t support bollards in the CBD,” Mr Paterson said. “We recently asked for a private dog patrol for the CBD at night but Minister Worden said it is like squeezing a balloon and it would send people out into the suburbs.

“I think closing the CBD with bollards will have the same effect. I think a bigger thing than bollards, is trying to strop people stealing cars, which is a lot easier to say than it is to do.”

Neither Ms Worden, or Chief Minister Natasha Fyles would answer questions about the proposal, including how it was conceived and what evidence was behind it.

NT Police Commissioner Jamie Chalker also did not answers questions, including if the Minister had discussed the plan with him or other senior police.

Bakery owner Darren Clark, who also runs the Action for Alice Facebook page which documents reported crime in the town, said he did not want bollards either, and went further, saying the recent effective shut-downs of the CBD by police were done to condition people to the idea the CBD needed to be closed at night.

He said he had never heard of a situation where police had warned people not to enter an entire town centre. He said there was also another case – which happened days before the first CBD alert – where police had pulled out all of the officers from the CBD during another dangerous driving spree.

Ms Worden and Mr Chalker did not respond to his claim that the alerts were part of a strategy to build a case for the closure of the city at night.

“What the idea shows again, is the government is not willing to go to the crux of the problem,” Mr Clark said.

“They are just going to shut down the CBD…limit the service to the community in order to control the problem they can’t solve.

“Every time, there are always these stop-gap measures.

“If they are stealing cars and going mad in them, and they can’t get into the CBD, they are just going to find something else. What happens when they start driving dangerously in front of the hospital? Are they going to close that area so people can’t get treatment? Where does it stop?”

However, independent member for Araluen Robyn Lambley said cities throughout the world commonly use heavy concrete road blocks to control crowds, protests and other potentially dangerous or violent behaviour.

“I’ve just come back from the UK and seen concrete blocks commonly placed on main thoroughfares with steel gates ready to close off streets,” she said. “If that is what we have come to in Alice Springs then so be it. It is not unusual in Edinburgh, London, etc.

“Bollards will not be enough in Alice Springs. My recommendation would be to use big concrete ‘stop blocks’ with heavy duty gates that can be shut when necessary. From what I have seen it would literally take an army tank to push through them. For these national capital cities this is about national security.

“Let’s get serious. A couple of bollards will not be enough to deter these culprits in Alice Springs.

“However, prevention is always better than cure. A curfew would stop these kids from being in the CBD and on the streets at night”

Mr Paterson said he welcomed the 40 extra officers Mr Chalker announced he was sending to the town yesterday, and had been asking for extra police for a long time.

“We are hopeful we can see a change when we get them on the ground. Forty police will make a difference. I think once they leave, and if we see the stats have gone down, the will show that we don’t have enough resources,” he said.

“Our police do an incredibly hard job and I don’t envy their job.

“One of the issues I have is the things that are happening in Alice Springs are effectively a national embarrassment. And it is not getting the national media coverage it deserves.

“If the CBDs of Melbourne or Sydney were getting shut down it would be on the font pages of every newspaper. And if they had the levels of domestic violence we have it would be considered a national crisis.

“The only way we will get national attention is if someone dies, once someone dies.

“It is complex. I have said specifically the streets are not a safe place for a child. And if you have a child on the street and night it is neglect.”