Irrkelantye still without water – NT government in disgrace

By Gerry Georgatos - Courtesy of The Stringer - http://thestringer.com.au/ - (Photo of Irrkelantye dwelling by Paddy Gibson) Today, Irrkelantye has been without its water supply for one month. The residents of this open air shanty now walk half a kilometre to collect as much water as they can carry back. The Northern Territory Government is not budging from its relative silence. It appears the Government wants the people to move on from this safe space. It is a dirty tactic of attrition, one that the United Nations has slammed as a human rights abuse wherever it is practiced throughout the world.

People live in Irrkelantye, also known as Whitegate, 3.5 kilometres east of Alice Springs because it is a safe space, afar from the substance abuse and various dysfunction of some of the other town camps closer to Alice Springs. But Irrkelantye is another vivid portrayal of Government neglect, a racialized neglect.

Despite the water supply having been cut off, the traditional owners who live at this unofficial town camp will not leave. It is believed that on August 7, the water supply was cut off by the Government. Water had been run into Irrkelantye from the nearby official town camp of Ilpeye Ilpeye by a water hose pipe. The residents of Irrkelantye would often check the piping hose for leaks and then repair.

One of Irrkelantye’s Elders, Felicity Hayes said the residents “want the water supply put back.”

Ms Hayes also said that governments should stop turning a blind-eye to places like Irrkelantye and instead “come and build houses for us, help us.”

“They make many promises, but they do nothing, we never see them, never hear from them. Their promises are lies. They just lying.”

“It is safe here, we just need some where to live.”

First Nations homelessness in Australia is at 200 per 10,000 persons, five times the overall national rate. In the Kimberley and the Northern Territory, homelessness has reached around 700 per 10,000, with the majority of it First Nations people.

Irrkelantye is the epitome of third-world akin conditions but in one of the world’s wealthiest nations. Australia is the world’s 12th largest economy, second wealthiest nation per capita, and the with the world’s highest median wages. The non-Aboriginal residents of the Northern Territory have the world’s highest median wages. Grinding poverty and affluence starkly contrasted, living side by side.

Alice Springs resident and University of Technology Sydney Jumbanna House senior researcher, Paddy Gibson has visited Irrkelantye many times. He said the community’s residents have nowhere else to go. Mr Gibson said that the “cutting off the water supply” will only serve to make people ill. Without clean water illnesses are born, including the spread of trachoma. Wherever clean or chlorinated water has been introduced subsequently infections and diseases reduce within the local populations.

The Territory’s Minister for Community Services is Bess Price and she told the ABC News that the water supply was cut because of construction in nearby Ilpeye Ilpeye.

“At the moment I am not inclined to make any comments.” Ms Price said she was focused on “a major sub division” happening near Ilpeye Ilpeye and not far from Irrkelantye. But what does this have to do with cutting off the water supply?

But she said to the ABC she would not comment on whether the water supply would be reconnected. Soon after her comments to the ABC Minister Price issued a statement. In her statement she washed her hands of Irrkelantye and passed the buck to the representative native title body, Lhere Artepe. But as a Minister in the least she should bring Lhere Artepe to account if they are singularly responsible for the cutting off of the water supply.

But the most disturbing statement by Minister Price was that "Whitegate camp is on vacant crown land".

One moment she is passing the buck to Lhere Artepe and arguing it as the region's 'native title representative' and in the same statement she pushes the bizarre statement of 'vacant crown land' and that Irrkelantye "is not recognised or funded by the government as a town camp".

So much for native title and the Northern Territory Government! It appears true that there are divisions within Lhere Artepe over Irrkelantye but the Government should step in and not strand the people of Irrkelantye.

Irrkelantye does not have any municipal services but the shire of Tangentyere did provide the water to the residents. Tangentyere Council was funded to fill a water tank for Irrkelantye – 4000 litres – a cost of only $550.

Tangentyere Council CEO Walter Shaw said he believed that the water tank is due for another refill.

“The question is whether or not the Northern Territory Government is going to reconnect the water supply.”

For now the residents of Irrkelantye walk the half kilometre to the tank to carry back what they can to their shanty but soon there will be no water at all.

I left a long message and questions on the mobile of Chief Minister Adam Giles but he has already told the ABC News that his Government is not responsible for services to “Whitegate” and that it “is not a residential area of living.” The residents of Irrkelantye are residents of the Northern Territory and the government should not turn a blind-eye to them and further outcast them.

Mr Giles claims he would prefer to provide the residents “alternate housing options” in Alice Springs. Well, housing options are few in the Northern Territory, state housing supply is at a low, and homelessness in the Northern Territory for First Nations people is the nation’s worst. Do you move on people before you have something to offer them? This disgrace is not limited to the Northern Territory. In the Kimberley, the Western Australian Government closed down the community of Oombulgarri, with the 62 houses to be demolished in November. But the residents finished up homeless, many living in nearby marshes and the rest transported in the back of trucks to Wyndham where two years later most of them continue to live in tents on the outskirts of Wyndham. Earlier this year two of the tent-living residents committed suicide.

There is more to this story than just moving on people. They can find the money for a subdivision and construction but there is too little in the kitty apparently for the people of Irrkelantye – a theme well known from the Top End’s town camps, official and unofficial, to the Central Desert’s.

Painter and author, Rodd Moss, won the 2011 Prime Minister’s award for non-fiction with his book on Irrkelantye – ‘The Hard Light of Day’. Mr Moss said that the history of the region goes back thousands of generations. Felicity Hayes aunt, Myra Hayes secured native title over the region but as Ms Hayes said, “Native title means little, it has little rights.”

If the Northern Territory Government cannot help turn Irrkelantye into a pristine village for its small population, then it does not care about First Nations people in terms of their homelands and cultural integrity. Corralling everyone in urban settings has led to many modernist crises of identity and leading to depressions and suicide.

Cutting off the water to Irrkelantye was a disgrace and is an indictment of those in government.

More reading: http://thestringer.com.au/irrkelantye-still-without-water-nt-government-...

The Stringer’s September 3 story on Irrkelantye: http://thestringer.com.au/the-northern-territory-government-cuts-off-wat...