By Dr Liam Campbell

In 2019, Warlpiri elders from Yuendumu called for the reinstatement of their local council as a key change that would improve their lives.

They raised it with the then-federal Indigenous Australians Minister Ken Wyatt when he visited Alice Springs in the aftermath of the Kumanjayi Walker shooting. In response, the minister said he would visit Yuendumu to continue the conversation, but he never did. During the trial and the inquest, these calls continued. They have been largely ignored.

I don’t believe we will see much long term positive change in remote communities until governance structures are reinstated and supported at the community level. More investment can be put into education, training and work opportunities, but this will do little to address the immediate needs of young people living in poverty in remote communities.

If those needs aren’t addressed then what will those programs achieve? They’re not new ideas. They’re not really new programs. They might turn out to be worse than the previous ones.

The impact of local decision making agreements in remote communities in Central Australia remains to be seen. The CLP have made an announcement about considering reinstating local councils. Even if they followed through with it if they win the election, it’s not clear how this would differ from LDM.

We need politicians to spend less time collecting selfies with smiling kids for their virtue signalling social media posts, and spend more time standing up and speaking truth to the dire situation in remote communities that everyone else can see with their own eyes.

We need a firm commitment to reinstate local community level governance structures to remote communities. Without it we will continue to see the same problems and remote communities will eventually not exist.

We need to support the establishment of more remote community based Aboriginal community controlled organisations.

Governments need to stop giving contracts to regional councils and non-Indigenous NGOs that used to go to ACCOs. Instead, they should focus on helping to establish and support local governance and government structures, and then dismantle the failed experiment of town-based regional councils that is contributing to urban drift and social breakdown in remote communities.

This would provide some hope that remote communities will not become remotely serviced and fly-in, fly-out staffed detention centres for poor people.

There will be those who say we can’t go back to community councils. They will give examples of how they didn’t work and speak about the advantages of regional councils and economies of scale.

What they won’t talk about is how local councils can be the place that pulls a community together. Regional town-based councils don’t do that.

A local council is where community members can step up and be elected to a real leadership position in their own community that is formally recognised in Australian society; where as a group of elected representatives they can have a strong collective voice.

Of course, if local community government councils were reintroduced there would be challenges. But we are capable of addressing those challenges. The alternative is to continue on the same path, sucking the life out of remote communities for convenience and short term economic savings.

The escalation of youth crime we see in towns like Alice Springs is in part a consequence of the social breakdown in remote communities as a result of removing their local governance structures. We will only change that situation by improving the lives of young people from remote communities by reinstating local governance structures as the foundation upon which remote communities can rebuild into the future.

We won’t do it by punching down on young people and youth workers in the media and on social media.

We won’t do it by replacing the youth programs of Aboriginal organisations with more government run youth programs.

We need to support community controlled and culturally led organisations that focus on creating positive identity and belonging for young people within their own communities.

We can do a lot more to create spaces for young people visiting from remote communities to safely gather in Alice Springs.

Most of our parks cater for young children. Teenagers used to be able to access basketball courts and ovals on school grounds. Now they’re all locked up behind fences. There are very few publicly accessible basketball courts in Alice Springs, but every remote community has at least one. We should have basketball courts or half courts within walking distance of the majority of residents in Alice Springs.

There are many people in remote communities doing great work with young people. But there aren’t enough of them, because youth programs are not adequately funded.

In many remote communities, they no longer have youth diversion or youth development programs in place and they are struggling to even deliver a functional youth, sport and recreation program with their current resourcing.

I’ve seen the real positive impact of a strong, functioning remote-based youth development program that is run by an Aboriginal organisation. I’ve seen it develop from its early days as an outstation-based response to petrol sniffing to include a local community youth program for children and teenagers.

It expanded that youth program to other communities, developed a successful youth leadership and mentoring program, then a client services division, an on country program, a mechanics training workshop, a swimming pool, and a learning centre.

The various iterations of the Warlpiri Youth Development Aboriginal Corporation lasted 30 years, employed over 100 people at its peak, and had a positive impact on hundreds of young people before it was allowed to fall apart. It was based in Yuendumu and much of what it did no longer happens.

But it needs to.

Youth programs in remote communities shouldn’t just be about sport and recreation. Youth programs should work to support and address the needs of young people, particularly those facing challenges in their lives, or those not attending school or not making the transition to work.

Youth programs can support those who find themselves becoming parents at a young age, and encourage those in need of medical and other health professional care to seek it.

Youth programs can work to keep young people out of the detention system, connect them to elders, country and culture, and look for ways to help young people learn to navigate the complexities that they face now being online and connected to social media.

A strong youth program is a place where all young people are welcome and youth workers, whether they have come from somewhere else or whether they are working in their own community, make a real difference in the lives of young people in remote communities.

We need to talk more about how young people in remote communities will have a brighter future.

We can’t leave it to the politicians – we all have a role to play in making our communities better for young people.

As adults we have a responsibility to role model good behaviour, and as a wider community we need to be much kinder to young people who are often in need of adult support, mentoring, mediation and guidance.

How do we bring about positive change for young people in remote communities, so that we can all start to believe in a future Territory that is much better than the one we are currently in?

We could start by re-establishing local community governance structures to provide the foundation upon which remote community residents can reclaim some agency and acknowledgement that they are the ones who know what is best for their children, that they can have some real decision making power about the programs that are run in their communities, and so young people can see their community as the place where there are opportunities that align with their aspirations.

Dr Liam Campbell is the operations manager at the Central Australian Youth Link Up Service. He has lived in Central Australia for 30 years and has worked for Australian and NT governments, First Nations Media Australia, the Mt Theo Program, Warlpiri Media, and Warlukurlangu Artists. He has experience in software and mobile app development, film making, oral history and collaborative art, and media projects. He has a PhD in Australian Indigenous studies from Monash University.