Take a Tropical Holiday to Darwin & Experience Rich Abo "Culture" ???

[Br.IanVonTurpie]

http://www.ntnews.com.au/realestate/rosy-future-for-notorious-kurringal-flats/story-fnk4wt05-1226805659426


THE most notorious Housing Commission site in the Territory is now on the 'for sale' block. 
 
Housing Minister Matt Conlan is calling for expressions of interest from the private sector to buy and redevelop the Fannie Bay site, which was once described as one of the worst public housing blocks in Australia by National Shelter head Adrian Pisarski.

In March last year the NT News revealed that Kurringal Flats in Fannie Bay would be demolished along with other Housing Commission sites such as at Runge St, Coconut Grove.

In December the NT Government said that Kurringal would be replaced with a mix of 200 private and public houses.
Mr Conlan said the site was zoned to accommodate double the current number of dwellings "from 84 to up to 200" but proposals must include a minimum of 15 per cent affordable rental and home ownership options.

"It will be a condition under the EOI that this percentage be set aside for affordable housing, with 15 per cent for affordable rental and home ownership opportunities," he said.


How can a coon get a mortgage if they don't work? When they move house you know because they are carrying either a carboard box or a sheet of galvanised tin!

He also said that any proposals must include strategies for the replacement of public housing.

Mr Conlan said the project would help ease housing cost pressures. But he did not say how many dwellings were zoned for the site nor how many public housing dwellings would be provided.

"The successful developer will need to provide a reasonable amount of public housing dwellings options," he said. He also did not state what the affordable options would be. Expressions of interest close on February 28.

What word starts with "N" and ends in "R" and you never want to call a black man?

NEIGHBOUR!

[Br.IanVonTurpie]

http://www.ntnews.com.au/news/national/bess-nungarrayi-price-has-lost-10-of-her-12-siblings-and-talks-about-life-in-an-aboriginal-town-camp/story-fnjbnxug-1226911875908


BESS Nungarrayi Price has only one younger brother left out of 12 siblings. All the others are dead. 
 
It's a shocking statistic for a family that has not suffered through war, famine or disease. They did, however, grow up as Aborigines in the Northern Territory.

Ms Price, 53, the Country Liberals member for Stuart in central Australia, lost her sister Rosalie Nungarrayi through a stabbing in a Katherine town camp a fortnight ago.

Rosalie, aged 46, was a mother of five and a grandmother to 10, with another grandchild on the way. She had fallen into a life of roaming, drinking and sleeping in some of Australia's most dangerous addresses — the Territory's town camps.

She stopped over in Katherine's Warlpiri Camp, while waiting for a lift west to visit one of her daughters in Lajamanu.

Warlpiri Camp is used by Warlpiri people — Australia's largest tribal group — as a kind of halfway house, a place to sleep it off after savage drinking binges. A 31-year-old woman has been charged over Rosalie's death.

Ms Price took the unusual step of naming her dead sister, normally prohibited for cultural reasons. She said she did not want Rosalie to be another unnamed statistic.

"I know that people will think that I shouldn't have said her name, but I want to make sure that we can talk freely about our loved ones," Ms Price said.

The story of her siblings is a terrible one: four died as babies; three brothers died from alcohol; one from breast cancer; one died in her sleep for unknown reasons; and now there's Rosalie.

Only two of them made it past 50.

"It's not just me who has these stories," she says. "Lots more Aboriginal families who don't have the opportunity to speak encounter all sorts of problems with violence in our people's culture.

"They just think it's the norm and allow it to take over."

The story of Aboriginal violence is an unchanging one, despite attempts such as the federal intervention to force a new direction. Ms Price questioned why indigenous people were not campaigning against the emergency in their own society.

"The activists don't talk it up," she said. "What's wrong with them? They talk about reconciliation, Captain Cook's invasion, which is who they blame for our violence.

"We don't hear from them about the violence in our communities, the women that get killed. You just don't hear about it."

Ms Price grew up in Yuendumu, a large Aboriginal community northwest of Alice Springs. She says she has watched her home community, and others like it, deteriorating.

"I think it's worsened," she says. "The communities are unstable, people just don't believe in themselves any more.

"When I grew up in Yuendumu in the 70s, everybody had a job. Everybody had a role to play, or went to school. That's all changed. People are now free to move about, people now have this word we call 'choice'.

"They decide they can do whatever they want to do."

But even then, Yuendumu was not a safe place for Ms Price. After entering a marriage and having her first child by the age of 14, she made a very deliberate choice to get out, with the backing of her parents.

"I was sick and tired of being beaten up, for no reason," she says. "I had to leave and find a better life for myself, without violence. And I have done that."

Ms Price joined the Country Liberals, winning the seat of Stuart in a massive swing in the 2012 Territory election. It was an unusual political path given Labor's history of wrapping up the indigenous vote.

She is now the widely respected Minister for Community Services, Statehood, Women's Policy and Parks and Wildlife, but she found it hard to get through to her sister Rosalie.

"We encouraged her to stay put in Yuendumu or Old Timer's Camp (in Alice Springs)," Ms Price says. "We tried to explain to her, 'Look, settle down, ground your feet and stay put. You're at that age you need to settle down.'"

But she says there is a constant movement among Aboriginal people of the north, who travel from one place to the next, finding relatives and partying till it gets ugly.

"If you don't have a job, you can do that," she says. "You're free to travel wherever.

"I've got a job. And I think without employment, no jobs for our people, and education, Aboriginal people don't exist, more or less. Jobs create stability, family togetherness. But that's not the way Aboriginal people live."

She recalls Rosalie as her "smiling sister". And her last sister.

Ms Price wants her people to know it doesn't have to end that way. "You have a choice," she says.

[Br.IanVonTurpie]

http://www.ntnews.com.au/news/national/bess-nungarrayi-price-has-lost-10-of-her-12-siblings-and-talks-about-life-in-an-aboriginal-town-camp/story-fnjbnxug-1226911875908


BESS Nungarrayi Price has only one younger brother left out of 12 siblings. All the others are dead. 
 
It's a shocking statistic for a family that has not suffered through war, famine or disease. They did, however, grow up as Aborigines in the Northern Territory.

Ms Price, 53, the Country Liberals member for Stuart in central Australia, lost her sister Rosalie Nungarrayi through a stabbing in a Katherine town camp a fortnight ago.

Rosalie, aged 46, was a mother of five and a grandmother to 10, with another grandchild on the way. She had fallen into a life of roaming, drinking and sleeping in some of Australia's most dangerous addresses — the Territory's town camps.

She stopped over in Katherine's Warlpiri Camp, while waiting for a lift west to visit one of her daughters in Lajamanu.

Warlpiri Camp is used by Warlpiri people — Australia's largest tribal group — as a kind of halfway house, a place to sleep it off after savage drinking binges. A 31-year-old woman has been charged over Rosalie's death.

Ms Price took the unusual step of naming her dead sister, normally prohibited for cultural reasons. She said she did not want Rosalie to be another unnamed statistic.

"I know that people will think that I shouldn't have said her name, but I want to make sure that we can talk freely about our loved ones," Ms Price said.

The story of her siblings is a terrible one: four died as babies; three brothers died from alcohol; one from breast cancer; one died in her sleep for unknown reasons; and now there's Rosalie.

Only two of them made it past 50.

"It's not just me who has these stories," she says. "Lots more Aboriginal families who don't have the opportunity to speak encounter all sorts of problems with violence in our people's culture.

"They just think it's the norm and allow it to take over."

The story of Aboriginal violence is an unchanging one, despite attempts such as the federal intervention to force a new direction. Ms Price questioned why indigenous people were not campaigning against the emergency in their own society.

"The activists don't talk it up," she said. "What's wrong with them? They talk about reconciliation, Captain Cook's invasion, which is who they blame for our violence.

"We don't hear from them about the violence in our communities, the women that get killed. You just don't hear about it."

Ms Price grew up in Yuendumu, a large Aboriginal community northwest of Alice Springs. She says she has watched her home community, and others like it, deteriorating.

"I think it's worsened," she says. "The communities are unstable, people just don't believe in themselves any more.

"When I grew up in Yuendumu in the 70s, everybody had a job. Everybody had a role to play, or went to school. That's all changed. People are now free to move about, people now have this word we call 'choice'.

"They decide they can do whatever they want to do."

But even then, Yuendumu was not a safe place for Ms Price. After entering a marriage and having her first child by the age of 14, she made a very deliberate choice to get out, with the backing of her parents.

"I was sick and tired of being beaten up, for no reason," she says. "I had to leave and find a better life for myself, without violence. And I have done that."

Ms Price joined the Country Liberals, winning the seat of Stuart in a massive swing in the 2012 Territory election. It was an unusual political path given Labor's history of wrapping up the indigenous vote.

She is now the widely respected Minister for Community Services, Statehood, Women's Policy and Parks and Wildlife, but she found it hard to get through to her sister Rosalie.

"We encouraged her to stay put in Yuendumu or Old Timer's Camp (in Alice Springs)," Ms Price says. "We tried to explain to her, 'Look, settle down, ground your feet and stay put. You're at that age you need to settle down.'"

But she says there is a constant movement among Aboriginal people of the north, who travel from one place to the next, finding relatives and partying till it gets ugly.

"If you don't have a job, you can do that," she says. "You're free to travel wherever.

"I've got a job. And I think without employment, no jobs for our people, and education, Aboriginal people don't exist, more or less. Jobs create stability, family togetherness. But that's not the way Aboriginal people live."

She recalls Rosalie as her "smiling sister". And her last sister.

Ms Price wants her people to know it doesn't have to end that way. "You have a choice," she says.

[Br.IanVonTurpie]

http://www.ntnews.com.au/news/northern-territory/tough-love-for-youth-offenders-in-northern-territory/story-fnk0b1zt-1226912801644

JAMES is 16 years old; he hopes to finish high school, get reasonable grades and join the police or army – he explains he doesn't have "that much of a record".   
 
He agrees he's been up to mischief. Only recently he was caught by police on a supermarket roof, but no big deal.

Most of his conversations with law enforcement have been as witness to 12 years of horrors growing up in the Kurringal Flats – Darwin's sorry refuge for the desolate amid the well-to-do townhouses of Fannie Bay.

"I've seen that many people bashed and stabbed – I'm just used to it," he says.

The flats will be torn down soon for new apartments.

These days, free of the flats, James spends nearly every afternoon at the Casuarina bus exchange with friends, where fights happen most days.

"If someone wants to talk big, I ask why," he says.

"If they don't have a good answer, I hit 'em in the jaw".

He says he doesn't hang around with the kids doing really bad things – break and enters, stealing cars – but he knows who some are.

And there are many.

This week alone, the NT News has reported on teen girls arrested after punching a great-grandmother in the chest and stealing her purse; 14-, 15- and 17-year-olds arrested after a break-in at Ludmilla; and, yesterday, a 17-year-old charged after stealing $6500 worth of property across Darwin.

"They're just drunk and stupid", James says. "I only drink at home".

Children as young as 10 fill the releases of police media with such regularity it seems barely noteworthy and has many on social media screaming the cliched catchcry of "young people out of control".

But that is too simple.

Offending rates of those aged 10-19 have actually been falling nationally since a peak in 2009-10.

The Northern Territory has followed the trend, dropping from 6905 youth offenders per 100,000 in 2009-10 to 4839 per 100,000 in 2012-13.

But it still tops the nation – rates per 100,000 in Western Australia and Victoria were 1812 and 2867, respectively.

Nationally, across age groups, the figures are significantly higher among indigenous populations.

Detective Senior Sergeant Mark Stringer heads up Strike Force Trident, NT Police's taskforce taking a zero-tolerance approach to property crime.

Much of his team's work is taken up with chasing down young offenders, many of them again and again – some of them as young as seven.

"Juveniles are an ongoing issue because of the leniency of the justice system," he says.

"They are probably 70-80 per cent of the problem ... you catch them, they get bail and then they're back out on the streets reoffending.


Good luck joining the Army or the Police if you think it is o.k to just belt people without sorting your problems out peacefully, James.

Sick of people trying to make coons look like they are of any worth !
Such dumb arses they never had a number that went over 3!(one , two or many) ....yet now even America wants everyone to think they can count to 5!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsUOqvi2b4M