Chronology of a local disaster

By KIERAN FINNANE

On December 10, 2001 Randal Carey, a builder with a long record in construction in remote areas of the Northern Territory and Queensland, was declared bankrupt. It was the start of an unravelling that led to his conviction of nine counts of deception in the Alice Springs Supreme Court last Tuesday.

He remains an undischarged bankrupt to this day. The Trustee in bankruptcy is still waiting for a statement of affairs from him. One document received was written in pencil – not an acceptable form. The bankruptcy will not begin to run its course until a statement of affairs is provided. This situation has been let slide for almost 12 years.

Above: Among the victims, Trent and Amanda Abbott and their family in March, 2010. The court heard last Tuesday that they paid over $260,000 to Carey Builders for works valued by a quantity surveyor at around $150,000. They had to raise an extra $210,000 (on top of their original loan of $400,000) to have the house completed. They are now in the process of selling the house as they are unable to service its substantial mortgage. 

On August 23, 2006 a company called Carey Builders Pty Ltd was registered in Queensland. Its sole director and shareholder was Bronwyn Carey, wife of Randal Carey for 37 years. Mr Carey was never a director nor a shareholder.

On November 4, 2006, Mr Carey applied for registration as a building practitioner in the Northern Territory. One of the requirements for such registration is that the applicant be a “fit and proper person”. One of the questions on the form asked him whether he had been declared a bankrupt or entered into an agreement with creditors in the last five years. He answered “no”.

On December 15, 2006 the Building Practitioners Board granted Randal Carey personal registration in the category of “building contractor, residential”, with registration number 20153CR. The registration would expire after two years.

In 2007 Mr Carey came to Alice Springs  to build the L’il Antz Childcare Centre and its owners’ home. That was a $2.7m contract. Mr Carey had previously undertaken large contracts and at the peak of his career, when he was a “relatively wealthy man”, he’d had 27 employees.

The L’il Antz contract was completed, said Mr Carey’s lawyer, Peter Maley. But a dispute over variations towards the end left Mr Carey out of pocket to the tune of $149,000.

It was around this time, said Mr Maley, that Mr Carey met representatives of Framptons First National, David Forrest and Jeff Hardyman.

In the latter half of 2008, Framptons First National marketed a New Homes scheme. Contracts for construction were to be put out to tender to a panel of builders. Clients would then choose their preferred builder. Framptons thereafter would monitor progress from beginning to end for quality assurance.

From September 2008 to March 2009 contracts were signed by home-owners and clients of the Frampton New Homes scheme. In each case the contracts named Carey Builders as the builder but bore Randal Carey’s personal registration number, 20153CR.

“Whether independent legal advice was sought [by the home-owners], I don’t know,” said Mr Maley. If it was given, it should be “carefully looked at”, because “a number of contractual safeguards” were not in the these contracts.

All clients were told by employees of Framptons that Mr Carey / Carey Builders had provided the only or the best or the cheapest quote. That “comes as no surprise”, Mr Maley told the court last Tuesday, as there was “a deal” between Mr Carey and Framptons to pay them what was effectively a “secret commission” – $8800 or 2.5% of the contract price – in return for them introducing him to the home-owners.

Six houses would be completed by Mr Carey, but in nine cases the home-owners would go on to suffer “drastic and serious consequences”, as Mr Maley put it, ending up with incomplete houses, significant financial losses, not to mention the emotional stress of it all. However, his client’s role needed to be understood in the context of “systemic failure”, said Mr Maley.

Randal Carey signed the contracts purportedly on behalf of Carey Builders as the constructing party. Under the Territory Building Act a building contract must be entered into by the registered building contractor before building work is commenced. A company may register as a  building contractor providing that directors are “fit and proper persons” and that at least one is a registered building contractor. Carey Builders has never applied for nor been registered as a building practitioner in the Northern Territory or elsewhere.

Above: Premises of the agents, Framptons First National, on the corner of Stott Terrace and Hartley Street.

On October 22, 2008, the Building Practitioners Board wrote to Mr Carey, reminding him of the approaching expiry date of his registration. If his renewal application was not finalised by then, his registration would lapse. It was the start of a drawn-out correspondence.

On December 1, 2008 Mr Carey applied for renewal of his registration. Summer rolled on and more home-owners signed up.

On January 28, 2009 the board told him that his application had been deferred because they had received information that he was bankrupt. The board requested a detailed response by February 27, 2009, outlining his current financial status. None was forthcoming.

On March 26, 2009 the board wrote again, reminding Mr Carey that his registration had expired, that he was unable to provide certification services and that his details had been removed from public listings of registered building practitioners.

Victims of Count 6 had made their first payment the day before, on March 25. Victims of Count 9 made their first payment, two days later, on March 28.

On June 12, 2009 the board sent a letter and an email to Mr Carey. He was again told his registration had expired and that he could not complete building work in the Northern Territory. A new deadline for response was set: July 1, 2009.

On June 29 Mr Carey replied, restating his wish to have his registration renewed and informing the board that, in the absence of a registration number issued to him,  arrangements had been made with another builder to use his registration number.  Mr Carey also noted the board’s warning against completing work, saying “I am not doing so”.

The next day, June 30, the board responded, again asking for information on his financial status by July 7.

On July 5 Mr Carey replied that he would be more than happy to provide further information.

Apparently he did not do so, as on July 20, 2009 the board wrote asking for an explanation of the delay.  Information had been asked for in late January and was still not to hand. A final deadline for compliance was set: July 31.

The deadline went by, but a few days later, on August 3, Mr Carey wrote that he had been declared bankrupt on November 28, 2000 (a different date to the one given in court last Tuesday), as a result of debts accumulated on a building project – his client had run out of money.  He believed the period of his bankruptcy was three years (when in fact, it had not even started) and he believed he had given honest answers when he applied to be registered as a builder.

On August 19, 2009 Mr Carey (pictured at right) was finally advised that the board had refused his application as he did not satisfy the requirements of a “fit and proper person” due to his bankruptcy.

Meanwhile, in early 2009 Mr Carey had spoken to William Cantwell, the principal of Territory Building Certifiers (TBC), an entity authorised to issue building permits and other approvals. Mr Carey told Mr Cantwell that his registration had expired. Mr Cantwell advised him to stop work immediately until his registration was renewed or another builder could take over. He explained that an incoming builder would need to enter into new contracts with the homeowners and fresh building permits would need to be issued.

Mr Carey faxed to TBC documents purporting to be evidence of new contracts entered into by various homeowners and Damien Golding, a registered builder in Darwin. Building permits were then issued in Damien Golding’s name.

At all material times none of the homeowners were aware that Mr Carey’s registration had expired; none was informed of any proposal of Damien Golding’s involvement; none had been introduced to him or otherwise knew of him.

Had he disclosed his status to Framptons when he became unregistered, Justice Jenny Blokland wanted to know. “Immediately”, was Mr Maley’s answer. “He treated them as his bosses.”

Subsequent to December 15, 2008, when his registration had expired, Mr Carey either commenced or continued building works under contracts with the eight out of his nine victims (couples, some with dependent children). In the ninth case, no work was done but a deposit was paid that has never been refunded.

With homes at various stages of completion, Mr Carey presented tax invoices to the victims. They were on the letterhead of Carey Builders Pty Ltd, which also bore Mr Carey’s personal registration number.  In each case he deceived his victims by falsely representing that either himself or Carey Builders was a registered building practitioner and as such was legally entitled to perform building work under the building contract and to demand payment.

In each case had the victims known that either Carey Builders or Randal Carey was not registered, they would not have paid the invoices nor permitted building works to progress.

Once word did get out, as it inevitably would, credit ceased and payments stopped. Carey Builders went into liquidation on March 15, 2010.

Mr Maley told the court that Framptons received “the lion’s share” of the first progress payments by homeowners , under their “secret commission” deal with Mr Carey. He said there is “independent documentary evidence” of the payment of an estimated $100,000 by Mr Carey to Framptons. “As you can imagine that put even more strain on his cash flow,” he told the court.

Mr Maley said this is the conduct about which Mr Carey proposed to give a detailed record of interview and statement to the Crown. He said disclosures had been made to a previous prosecutor by a representative of Framptons about these payments. This had led to discussions between his office and the prosecutor and an invitation to Mr Carey to cooperate with a further investigation.

He asked for credit for his client on account of this cooperation and also for his guilty plea made shortly after his indictment on April 29, 2013. But, countered prosecutor Stephen Robson, the plea was effectively “on the doorstep” of the court, with his trial scheduled to start on May 13. It had saved the time and expense of a trial but credit should be at the lower end.

At right: Victims Christopher and Rebecca Axe in September, 2010. They were lucky to have a qualified builder in the family who, after Carey Builders collapsed, completed their home for little or no pay over several weeks. Alice locals including suppliers and tradies chipped in, with discounts or donations.

Mr Robson also said that Mr Carey could have pleaded much earlier to the nine counts of deception, which were always the “primary offences”, carrying  a maximum term of imprisonment of 14 years. The other charges that were dropped were relatively minor, carrying a maximum term of three years and the burden of proof would have been on the Crown to prove them, as it would have been also in relation to any disputed facts.

Mr Maley said there was no need for personal deterrence in the case of his “genuinely remorseful” client who has no relevant prior convictions and is unlikely to come before the court again. The need for general deterrence could be met through a suspended sentence. This is not “a soft option”, he argued, it’s still “a proper term of imprisonment”.

This isn’t a court of “retributional revenge”, said Mr Maley. Locking a person up is done to protect the community, the break the cycle of offending: this isn’t a consideration for Mr Carey, he argued.

Justice Blokland asked Mr Robson to address her on a “rising of the court disposition”, whereby a partially suspended sentenced would be imposed, with Mr Carey deemed to have already served the partial term “upon the rising of the court”. When Mr Maley was making his submissions, he said Mr Carey had been in custody for five hours to date. Since then his client has remained in custody after being remanded before lunch on Tuesday.

Mr Robson said a “rising of the court disposition” would be “inadequate” but that much might depend on orders for compensation made by the court, an option Justice Blokland was keen to explore. Her decision will be made on Tuesday, May 21.

By ERWIN CHLANDA

Given that the Territory’s two most powerful men were in the room, question time at the Chamber of Commerce Budget luncheon yesterday was a sedate affair.

The most prickly query came from a builder, Paul, who asked Treasurer Dave Tollner why the government was negotiating with an interstate firm about the $10m redevelopment of the old police housing in Allchurch Street. Mr Tollner said he would investigate; his government is “big on buy local” but at times interstate suppliers are cheaper.

To a question by the Alice Springs News Online about the approximate per capita infrastructure spending in the 2013/14 Budget in the Top End, compared to The Centre, Mr Tollner replied that his staff would provide detailed answers.

But as a preliminary reply he said: “In Alice it’s somewhere along the lines of $3000 per person. I think there are only two regions that exceed that, Barkly and East Arm. The lowest spend per capita is of course in Darwin at $990, somewhere around there, per person on infrastructure.”

This will come as a big surprise to those who suspect that the Top End always gets the lion’s share.

The manager of the backpacker hostel Annie’s Place, Denise, asked – sparking some chuckles around the room – whether mining royalties received by Aboriginal people are being taxed.

And chamber CEO Kay Eade wondered if  Growth Town policies would be continued in the bush, providing employment opportunities for kids “who have nothing to do at the end of school”.

Mr Tollner said taxing royalty income is a Commonwealth matter, but he is not opposed to royalties. He said there has been a change in the way they are being managed by the Aboriginal trusts, less “doling out cash” and more investment in education and work opportunities on communities.

Work opportunities could include small businesses such as hairdressers, coffee shops and restaurants, part of a necessary welfare reform.
One of its “most strident” advocates was Chief Minister Adam Giles, who fought his 2007 Federal election campaign with the slogan “no more sit-down money”.

Mr Tollner said access to land and land tenure, on Aboriginal as well as pastoral land, are unresolved issues. For example, 40 year leases are “difficult – the longer the better”.

Rosemary Wiese asked about the introduction of social clubs on communities so that drinking is done “not in our streets”. Mr Tollner said major changes to the management of alcohol should come after the establishment of facilities and programs for dealing with its abuse.

It’s not a one size fits all issue: For example, when Arafura MLA ‪Francis Xavier Kurrupuwu‬ proposed full strength beer – not just light – to be available in his electorate, there was a “rivers of grog” outcry. But Mr Xavier was merely trying to stop his constituents from getting into trouble in the streets of Darwin.

Judith Donna said she’s been in Alice Springs 50 years, “watching”. She said she is “pleased the police station is now open 24 hours,” but she wants the police call centre, that currently “has no idea where anything is,” moved back to Alice Springs: “They are taking too long.”

“We are absolutely committed to having a call centre in Alice Springs,” Mr Tollner replied. In the interim, calls will be channeled to the local police station, and if they cannot be taken there, they will transfer to the call centre in Darwin.

Jimmy Cocking from the Arid Lands Environment Centre asked about water management. Mr Tollner replied that the Power and Water Corporation (PWC) had been ordered to act “more creatively” – not just with respect to water but also solar and wind driven electricity generation. The “uniform tariff” style of funding for PWC had provided no incentive to “embrace innovation”.

On the other hand, Samantha, from Inland Electrical, said her firm, in collaboration with the local Bushlight program, mostly Federally funded, had installed some 300 photovoltaic units in bush communities: these are working well and are welcomed by the locals, she said.

The Centralian Advocate queried what was the Budget’s “elephant in the room” and Mr Tollner said it was the Territory’s  disproportionate dependance on Canberra money – nearly 80% of the Budget.

He said it’s a worry to be exposed to Federal governments that can be fickle. The NT Government, looking into “each agency,” had managed to cut spending by $200m without reduction in services.

PHOTOS: Treasurer Dave Tollner with Chamber of Commerce members including, in the foreground, CEO Kay Eade (centre) and president, Julie Ross. • The luncheon crowd with Chief Minister Adam Giles in the foreground.

By ERWIN CHLANDA

Housing blocks will go on the market for $160,000 to $180,000 average in the new Kigariff suburb and its development is 18 months ahead of the former Labor Government’s schedule, Chief Minister Adam Giles told the Chamber of Commerce budget luncheon yesterday.

He said the government will subsidise the project to the tune of $3.5m and expressions of interest from developers of 100 blocks in Stage 1 will be sought next week.

Mr Giles said the project demonstrates government resolve to foster growth: In town there will be a “blanket” seven storey height limit in the CBD.

More than $10 million is being invested to deliver headworks to the Kilgariff site, Mr Giles said in a media release yesterday afternoon.

“I expect a preferred proponent will be appointed by the end of August, and we will work with the developer to get lots for sale off the plan as soon as possible after that,” Mr Giles said.

PHOTO: Kilgariff – the lock will come off 18 months sooner.

By ERWIN CHLANDA

It’s going to net the Territory only $10m but it seems to be the kind of measure that could have delivered to Julia Gillard the motza in revenue she isn’t getting from the mining industry.

And Treasurer Dave Tollner says it signals to the Grants Commission what it constantly is looking for, namely that the Territory is fair dinkum about raising taxes: As it is, 78% of our $5.7 billion Budget comes from Canberra, as GST and grants.

Two changes announced by Mr Tollner in this week’s NT Budget will make it harder for mining companies to shift profits overseas and minimise their Territory royalties obligations.
Firstly, under the Mineral Royalty Act, once the net value of a mine’s production is over a $50,000, it must pay royalties.

They are calculated on the operating revenue less allowable project costs, losses carried forward, the cost of capital and of exploration.
However, if that mining company sells its ore, at a very generous discount, to a company it owns overseas, which then onsells it to the end user for a very good profit, the NT misses out. No longer: The “capping transfer pricing” has now been set at 5.5%. That means the Territory will charge its royalties on the end sale price less no more than 5.5%.

Secondly, another measure will address the risk of accounting strategies that shift to the Territory expenses that were incurred by related entities either elsewhere in Australia or overseas.
The Act will be amended to limit the deduction of head office costs, management fees and labour costs to costs incurred in the Territory only.

The amendments are targeted at encouraging and rewarding those mining companies that genuinely maintain and operate a bulk of their operations in the Territory, says Mr Tollner.

Chief Minister Adam Giles told a Chamber of Commerce lunch yesterday that the government was working “behind the scenes” on getting mining and processing projects going in The Centre.

PHOTO: A Crossland uranium exploration crew in Central Australia.

Ms Price made Territory history last August when she clinched the former blue-ribbon Labor seat for the Country Liberals.

Yesterday she made national history when, in the adjournment debate, she crashed through the politically correct barriers, speaking no holds barred about her grief-torn life, the brutality around her, day in, day out, and the soul-destroying denigrating of her by fellow Aborigines, and whites, in the national spotlight.

Here is what Ms Price said, as reported in the yet uncorrected NT Hansard, to her electorate – and the people of Australia. She is pictured with Warlpiri elder Tommy Jungala Rice, her brother-in-law.

I now take this opportunity to talk about an issue that has always been close to my heart. Within the last four months, two more young mothers related to me were killed in Alice Springs Town Camp. One was injured mortally in the public, in front of several families. Nobody acted to protect her. Dozens of my female relatives have been killed this way. Convictions usually lead to light sentences. I was told by a senior lawyer that no jury in Alice Springs will convict an Aboriginal person for murder if the victim is also Aboriginal and he or she is only stabbed once.

We all have done nothing effective to stop this from happening. It has been going on for decades. This week we heard outrage from the Stolen Generation Association because this government wants to put the safety and wellbeing of our children first before their (inaudible) culture. I am not talking about the children of the Stolen Generation. It is our children.

Why hasn’t there been the same outrage over the continuing killing of our women and abuse and neglect of our kids? If these women victims were white, we would hear very loud outrage from feminists. If their killers had been white, we would hear outrage from the Indigenous activists. Why is there such a deafening silence when both victim and perpetrator are black? I believe that we can blame the politics of the progressive left and its comfortably middle class urban Indigenous supporters.

Because I have spoken out on this issue and others close to my heart, I have been routinely attacked by the left. Professor Larissa Behrendt claimed that what I say is more offensive than watching a man having sex with a horse. Her white professional protester colleague, Paddy Gibson, told the world that I was only doing it for the money and frequent flyer points. The Queensland educationist, Chris Sarra, said that I was ‘pet Aborigine’ who only said what the government wanted me to say. Chris Graham, the white editor of Tracker magazine called me a ‘grub’.

A white woman in Victoria, Leonie Chester, calls herself Nampijinpa Snowy River, on the internet. She tells the world that my people, the Warlpiri, are ‘her mob’. She and her friends have obscenely insulted me on the internet, over and over. Marlene Hodder, a white woman from Alice Springs and her protesting friend, Barbara Shaw, have called me a liar several times.

The Crikey blogger, Bob Gosford, who calls himself ‘the Northern Myth’, calls me Bess ‘Gaol is Good for Aboriginal People’ Price and accuses me of ‘vaguely malevolent and populist buffoonery that is designed to capture the attention of the tutt-tutterers and spouted by politicians that inevitably have a short tenure in power’.

In Brisbane, Tiga Bayles, using an Indigenous community owned radio station, told the whole world that I am ‘a head nodding Jacky-Jacky for the government’ and that I am ‘totally offensive and arrogant’ because I do not want people like Tiga who know nothing about us, speaking about my people. He and his friends laughed as they told the world that I am only interested in money.

When my daughter went to Sydney for the Deadly Awards, an Aboriginal interviewer for the Koori Radio Station in Redfern advised her not to tell anybody who her mother was. This is how these people show respect for family. In the last month, I have watched three of my sisters and a grand-daughter being buried.

These racists and sexist hypocrites sneer at our grief and care nothing for our suffering, but they are the darlings of the left. I wonder what would happen if Andrew Bolt had used insults like these against any Indigenous Australian. The hypocrisy of these people is incredible.

But I am in good company. When Mantatjara Wilson, a wonderful strong compassionate women I called mother, told the world about the crimes against her children on national TV, back in 2007, with tears streaming down her face, the left-wing activist moved to undermind her. They went into the communities not to protect the kids but to find women who would oppose Mantatjara.

They talked about outrage and shame, not because of the crimes you all know about but because somebody else was brave enough to tell the world about them and ask for help. That was what they called shameful.

They worry about the shame felt by perpetrators once they were exposed, not because of the agony of the victims and families. It is easy to find women who will support their men even though they are killers and rapists. Families are always stand up for their own and those who call themselves progressive will always find those willing to stand beside them and betray their own women and kids.

A few others have stood up and faced the vicious criticism of the left. I acknowledge the wonderful work of Dr Hannah McGlade in Perth and Professor Marcia Langton in Melbourne. Warren Mundine and Noel Pearson have also spoken out. A conference of Aboriginal men in Alice Springs publicly apologised to Aboriginal women and kids for the violence and abuse men have inflicted on them. None of those people have received support from the left or from Labor governments.

The left has tried really hard to call us liars and to put us down for speaking the truth and for wanting to stop the killing and the sexual violence. But they have put no effort, none at all, into protecting our kids and women. The exception to this has been a determination of Minister Jenny Macklin, who I acknowledge for her courage in the face of strong criticism from her own party and the Greens.

I recently went to Sydney for the launch of a book called Liberating Aboriginal People from Violence by wonderful caring friend of mine Dr Stephanie Jarrett. My words are on the cover of her book. We need to support those who tell the truth.

Dr Jarrett does that and she cares, maybe too much for her own good.

I have seen the tears in her eyes and heard the passion in her voice when she talks about her murdered and bashed ones. I trust her completely, but, of course, those who are not interested in the truth are out to bring her down.

She has been attacked in the Monthly magazine by its editor John Van Tiggelen in an article called Thinking Backwards. Dr Jarrett is saying there are elements to our traditional culture that we must change if we are to stop the violence that is destroying us, and she is right.

Things are much worse now than the old days because of the grog, the drugs and the awful welfare dependency that is sucking the life out of us. There are elements of our culture that are really good and should be kept, but we should be prepared to do what everybody else in the world has done and change our ways to solve the new problems we have now and that our old law has no tools to solve.

Some people call this integration, others call it simulation because they want us to continue to live in poverty, violence and ignorance so we can play out their fantasies on what the word culture means. I call it problem solving and saving lives. The left has its own agenda and liberating our people from violence is not part of that agenda.

Van Tiggelen talks about the book Black Death – White Hands written by Paul Wilson in 1982. In that book Wilson argued that when a man called Owen Peters killed his girlfriend in Queensland it was actually because of white colonialism and racism.

It was not the killer’s fault it was the whitefellas’ fault. This argument worked. Peters was only given a short sentence. Dr Jarrett started to worry about Aboriginal women’s rights when she saw David Bradbury’s film State of Shock. This was made in 1988 and was based on the same case.

Bradbury brought the film to Alice Springs and brought Owen Peters with him. In the film, Bradbury gave only the story of Peters and his family. Nobody from the victim’s family was given a chance to give their point of view. They would not have backed Bradbury’s arguments so they were ignored.

I remember Alwyn Peters telling us, ‘She has ruined my life; he was talking about the one he killed’. He went on to say, ‘She comes to me in dreams’. This made me feel sick.

When my husband asked David Bradbury, ‘Why did you not talk to the victim’s family, you would have got a different point of view?’. He said, ‘Alwyn Peters’ family are victims too’. In other words, all our sympathy was meant to be for the one who killed and his family, and not for the one he killed or her family.

In 1991, Audrey Bolger of the ANU’s North Australian Research Unit, wrote a wonderful little book called Aboriginal Women and Violence. At last, somebody was taking notice. At last, a white woman was trying to get governments to act. She was ignored and, as far as I know, nobody tried again after that.

Her voice was drowned out by the politically correct who took their lead from Wilson and Bradbury: just keep blaming the whitefellas and everything will be fine. When governments says sorry, everything will be fixed. Audrey Bolger said in a book way back then, that in the final analysis the problem of violence against Aboriginal women will only be solved by Aboriginal people themselves.

The report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Deaths in Custody said the same thing. In a way, she was right: my people need to act now to stop our own violence. But, in another way, this has given governments and the wider community an excuse for the big cop-out.

Okay. We whitefellas caused the problem but only blackfellas will solve them, so we sit around waiting for that to happen.

She also said: The problem is a complicated one, bound up as it is with other issues connected with changing lifestyles. Working through these issues towards satisfactory solutions is crucial to the future wellbeing of all Aboriginal people.

She was right, but in the 22 years since she wrote that, there have been no satisfactory solutions found and things are much worse now. It has not happened and I am sick of sitting around waiting for my loved ones who are being killed. We have had committees and research projects, and advisory councils, and ATSIC, and now we have A National Congress of Australia’s First People. Billions of dollars have been spent. We have had visits from the United Nations special rapporteurs, and Amnesty International Indigenous officers.

Not only have solutions not been found, but the most important issues are not even raised and talked about. I want to work through these issues and find solutions. For the left and for many Aboriginal politicians on the national stage, it seemed the only issues worth talking about were the Stolen Generations and Aboriginal deaths in custody.

These are real issues that have to be addressed, but they were not the only issues. In the meantime, women still died, children did not go to school, epidemics of renal failure, diabetes, cancer, heart disease grew worse, suicides increased, young men went to gaol, and we kept killing each other and ourselves.

Australians were not told that the death rate amongst our young men was higher outside custody than in, and that more Aboriginal women died at the hands of their menfolk than Aboriginal men died in custody. Since then, so many more women have died and have been sexually abused, assaulted …

Mrs LAWRIE [the Opposition Leader – ED]: A point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker! I have to draw your attention to the clock, it is a standing order.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: In adjournment we do have a bit of leniency. Continue, Member for Stuart …

Mrs LAWRIE: A point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker! We do not actually. I appreciate Bess’s speech, by the way, and believe this should be normally spoken in full length. I am sure you can do it another time, but there are conventions …

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I will check with the Clerk, member for Karama.

Ms Lawrie: Seek leave to table it if you want. Yes, seek leave to table it.

Mrs PRICE: Mr Deputy Speaker, I seek to leave the table.

By ERWIN CHLANDA

The NT Government, while taking law enforcement to new heights, is moving to make it cheaper, in terms of time as well as money.
Scaled-back paperwork will keep cops on the beat rather than in front of a keyboard.
Defence and prosecution will need to stick their heads together before putting matters before the court.
And tracking bracelets are “a whole lot cheaper than $214 a day” – the cost of banging up people in gaol.
Both Chief Minister Adam Giles and Minister for Justice and Correctional Services John Elferink spoke about initiatives planned or under way in the adjournment debate yesterday.
Said Mr Giles said the need to “satisfy evidentiary and court purposes with onerous written accounts and reports sees police diverted from patrolling our streets into offices and sitting at computers.
“Early arrest can see police numbers migrate from the front line to the back office for the majority of the rest of their shift to do the paper work.
“It is at this time, particularly on an evening shift, that criminal behaviour escalates.
“I am convinced we can truncate the recording requirements without sacrificing the protections that written orders offer.”
Mr Elferink added that police officers should not “be tied up at a police station for an hour-and-a-half or two hours to process somebody for a simple street offence”.
He says that process should take “no longer than it takes to process a drunk [for protective custody] which is a few minutes.”
He said at present what police do, “by necessity, is move people on rather than apprehending them.
“Then you have, essentially, created a situation where you will be possibly be arresting that person a few hours later, perhaps at 3 am or 4 am, and that person will then be arrested for a serious crime, such as a serious assault. It is much better to get those types of people off the streets earlier in the evening.
“A system of, essentially, paperless arrest for minor offences would be a wonderful way to go. That is one of the processes we want to roll out.”
Mr Elferink said he has investigated landline and GPS based tracking bracelets used by the criminal justice system in South Australia.
He is clearly sold on the idea, suggesting SA’s infrastructure could be used in the NT, for a fee.
He said the technology is not only used for pinpointing a person’s location, but also for remote drug and alcohol testing: “So if a person is on bail or in some way at liberty after being sentenced by a court, we can police the condition that they do not consume alcohol and drugs by whacking a bracelet on them.
“These bracelets work in a number of ways and they can work to exclude people from particular areas as well as include them in particular areas.
“If the same system is being used by the police, corrections and the justice system, then that surely makes sense that you have one provider.
“The reason we continue to talk to the South Australian government at this stage, is why would we not work with them? This stuff is monitored, quite literally, in other countries so the people who run these systems have clients all over the world and they are run centrally either through Europe, the United States, or wherever.
“If a person breaches the condition of their restraint, the bracelet will know where they are. If they try to cut the bracelet off, then that is an offence in its own right and they can go back to prison,” said Mr Elferink.
“That is a good way to keep people out of custody. Is it expensive? I understand it is not going to be that cheap, but it is going to be a whole lot cheaper that $214 a day.
“The fact is, if people front up to courts and they already have jobs, then we can try to punish people with restraints on their liberty whilst they still go to work.”
Mr Giles outlined the raft of new law enforcement measures, in place already or in preparation, with a focus on prevention.
He said: “Prevention initiatives will always be more effective than treatment and we must radically improve our efforts with crime suppression and reduction.”
The measures Mr Giles listed:-
• give power to police to obtain a sample of saliva from a suspect to test for the presence of dangerous drugs;
• include the one punch homicide laws;
• protect people in their place of work, “those just doing their job” (such as ambulance crews);
• deal with the powers of police being able to enforce orders or conditions made, prohibiting persons from consuming alcohol and other drugs by testing for compliance;
• increase the levies on court imposed orders, infringement notices, and enforcement orders;
• provide for the continuing detention or supervised release of serious sex offenders who are deemed to be such a serious danger to the community that regulation of the offender is warranted post-sentence;
• and include the hotly debated alcohol protection orders “which will complement the government’s mandatory treatment initiative, which targets problem drinkers detected for the defined trigger level of protective custody incidents within a two-month period”.
Mandatory conferencing between defence and prosecution in the event of not guilty pleas has halved the number of court cases in Victoria, said Mr Elferink.
“Currently, what happens is a lawyer for the defence can walk into the court, as is their right, put their hand up on behalf of their client and say the client pleads not guilty, or the client themselves plead not guilty.
“That means a hearing date is set, or a contest mention is set aside and, as a consequence of that process, you then have a file going back to the police station [where] a file has to be prepared.
“As I witnessed again the other day in Nhulunbuy … there was an 11th hour change of plea to guilty, because there was sufficient evidence to demonstrate that the offender in that particular instance had actually committed the crime for which he stood indicted.
“So, the police had to run around, collect all the evidence – to what result?
“A guilty plea should have been made in the first place because of the acknowledgement of the guilt of the offender in that instance,” said Mr Elferink.
“Pretrial disclosure requires that both sides, basically, play with an open hand.”

PHOTO: Police keep crowd in check outside the courthouse during the Liam Jurrah trial.

COMMENT by ERWIN CHLANDA

The media are sometimes blamed for harming our tourism industry by reporting “bad” news. This blame often comes from people who’d rather shoot the messenger than deal with the message.

For our part, the Alice Springs News Online has extolled the lifestyle in The Centre, and the magnificence of our landscape, in hundreds stories and pictures, and our team, over nearly four decades, has produced thousands of TV news, current affairs, magazine and documentary pieces which put our region on the world map – better than any advertising agency could ever dream of doing.

But when we become aware of a “bad” news story that is poignant and whose publication may lead to positive changes, we’ll also publish it – and this is one of those occasions.

An Australian tourist emailed Mayor Damien Ryan and all councillors, saying he would be “embarrassed to recommend Alice Springs and Uluru to anyone”.

That email was forwarded to us by Cr Steve Brown, who said the public needs to know about the fears and disgust experienced by this group of people who came to Alice Springs for a great time and left disappointed.

We sought permission from the author to publish his email. He granted it but asked for his name – supplied to the council members and known to us – to be withheld. Here then is that visitor’s unabridged message:

A group of us have just visited your city and have had a wonderful week sightseeing Alice to Uluru and much in-between. There are a few things I think you should know, some of which I am sure you already do. We all agreed that we would never recommend anyone visit Alice Springs. To be specific, we were very disappointed because:

• As Australians, we would be embarrassed by the behaviour of the indigenous population. We were warned not to go certain places at certain times by your locals. We feared for our safety many times.

• We did walk and shop in Alice only to be sometimes hassled by the local Aborigines.

• I know I am speaking in generalities, and you may be used to it, but the smell of many of the locals was unbearable. We left shopping, and we left the Casino because we could not bear the smell of some the people. Before you declare us racist, we would be concerned by any people with these issues.

• Uluru, the Olgas, Standleys, Simpsons Gap etc etc etc – all great. One thing was missing – the people supposedly caring for these wonderful pieces of nature. We spoke to many other tourists who simply could not believe there were no Aborigines around at these wonderful places to really promote their culture. The only culture we saw was NOT what we would want the world to see.

• Cafe and restaurant services were generally quite poor. We rarely received good service at still very high prices.

• Hotels were fair to average – nothing stood out.

I guess the Alice Springs Town Council can do little in these matters. But we thought, as fellow Australians, you should at least know why we feel the way we do. The bottom-line is that we would be embarrassed to recommend Alice / Uluru to anyone. I am sorry to be so vocal, but what nature has given us in and around Alice / Uluru should be shared worldwide!

Photo: Drinking and fighting in the town centre.

Review by KIERAN FINNANE

The cover of The Long Weekend in Alice Springs suggests that the story between its covers will be road trip. And it is one, of sorts. You won’t find these roads on any map but they will lead you into the byways of this desert place, reaching back through history into stories of origin, reaching out through darkness, real and metaphoric, into stories of now.

The starting points are several, all at once. There’s the meeting of Joshua Santospirito and Craig San Roque, a young man and an older man, one a psychiatric nurse with a drawing gift, the other a psychologist with a lyric gift. There’s a campfire and in its flickering light, a woman in mourning. Her husband has died but her grief goes deeper than this. There’s a book of quite a different order, Jungian explorations of the contemporary world, and a request for San Roque to make a contribution.

So, setting out from the meeting of the two men, for the sake of simplicity in this text, with its limited means of typed words on a screen, destined for a journalism site. These are limits that The Long Weekend is marvellously liberated from, due to its form as a ‘graphic novel’ or ‘comic’ (words that don’t quite rightly describe it); due to Santospirito’s artistry; due to the soaring and delving of San Roque’s mind and pen.

Santospirito, frustrated and raw from his experience of working in remote mental health, met San Roque, seasoned by long years of the same, but also resilient from a deep nourishment – as we learn from his essay at the end of the book – by Jungian psychoanalysis, thought and practice. San Roque gave Santospirito some of his writings, including an essay, ‘A Long Weekend in Alice Springs’, his contribution to The Cultural Complex: Contemporary Jungian Perspectives on Psyche and Society, edited by Thomas Singer and Samuel L. Kimbles (Brunner-Routledge, 2004).

There was no sudden illumination that explained everything or showed a way forward but Santospirito found the writings “somehow useful” and began to draw his way into San Roque’s ‘Long Weekend’.

He takes us to the campfire in San Roque’s backyard and in just a few deft black and white images envelopes us in the thickness of this night, the deep well of loss that has brought Manka Maru to this point, by this fire.

He draws ‘Craig’ at his desk, wrestling with the task of writing an Australian perspective for The Cultural Complex, wrestling with the very concept of how a cultural complex operates – easier to detect looking at another culture, harder to detect in your own culture.

Craig’s door opens into the backyard. It’s Friday and Warlpiri family from the bush join Manka Maru. They’ve come in for the footy match; among them, a young man damaged by petrol sniffing, one of many in Craig’s professional care. The visitors interrupt Craig’s concentration but it’s a fruitful interruption: he will find his way into thinking about cultural complexes by describing what happens on this long weekend.

Some of what happens is eventful in a road trip kind of way – like going hunting with the Warlpiri visitors who arrive in increasing number. Some of it is eventful but bleak as Craig, the ‘shrink’, goes about his work, in the court, at the hospital, by the roadside where a man, who believes he is the King of Iraq, is sitting in his car with his three-day dead dog on the back seat. This episode kick starts the deeper journey, a haunting, at times thrilling excursion into our psychological inheritances.

Is the ‘King of Iraq’ a refugee from another time, Craig asks himself. And his mind wanders to the mythical Middle East and the story of Inanna’s grasping, ruthless attempt to bargain with death. (Santospirito’s drawing and mise en scene make the story wonderfully vivid.) The cure for some our ills would be an “assurance of immortality”. It’s part of what Craig knows the King needs. But short of that, what?

Craig remembers his meeting with an old Warlpiri man who told him to mind his own stories. That counsel fell on fertile ground, for Craig / San Roque is deeply in love with story, alive to the unfolding stories around him, to the ancient stories, the ones carried forward in our classical Western culture, the ones from the Aboriginal “dreaming system” (in so far as they have been shared with him). “The human psyche loves processing its own thoughts,” Craig thinks. If we lose the ability to do this, we “fall helplessly out of being.”

This has happened to Teresa to an extreme degree. Craig visits her in the psych ward. She’s trapped in a “cannabis-induced psychosis” but it’s more than the cannabis, more than the petrol that preceded it, and her scarifying life experiences. “Something in the cultural lobe of her brain allows her psychic demise.”

Cultural memory offers resilience in face of the tides of history. Craig picks up a male friend, Amos, to join him on the hunting trip with the Warlpiri women and children. Amos is of middle European and Jewish lineage – a strong bloodline in dispossession. Around the campfire, cooking lizards, Napaltjarri tells the children, black and white, about the travels of Malu (kangaroo) from up North.  Amos and Craig sit to the side – Craig’s still wrestling with his writing task and enlists Amos’ help. They try tracing some travels of their own, the big shifts of people from their lands in Europe. Amos suggests that the Gypsies and the Jews were less vulnerable to the cultural breakdown this caused because they’d “learned to use cultural memory in a special nomadic manner”.

We are introduced to the ancient Arrernte stories of Alice Springs, particularly the wild dog story, inscribed in the local landscape. The dog came through Ntaripe (Heavitree Gap), attacked the incumbent male, ravaged the mother and puppies. The Mount Gillen ridge and much of the land on the western side of the river were formed by the activities of the dog. Alice Springs is built on this mythic event, a dogfight and a rape. “Serious dark men might whisper the details.” This is part of the psychological inheritance of those to whom this cultural memory belongs – as well as those in the “overlap”, as Craig describes it, between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal cultures: “Sites do things to people.”

When memory is encoded in sites and song-cycles, as it is in classical Aboriginal culture, and the links to these are broken, depression and malaise follows. This is affecting (to greater or lesser degrees) all who live in contemporary Alice Springs – not just in the shadow of broken Aboriginal songs, but in the shadow of non-Aboriginal people’s own cultural disconnections as well as the contradictions between the Christian and colonising projects that are the foundation of our nation. If I’ve understood it rightly, cultural complexes get people stuck in this brokenness and this contradictory space.

“We can save ourselves with imagination.” It’s the closest thing to a ‘solution’ that can be put between inverted commas. And the book enlists us at every page into acts of imagination through the alchemy of Santospirito’s and San Roque’s gifts. Some of Santospirito’s drawings are exceptional in their emotional power, and the multi-layering through space and time that the comic book form allows makes for rich story-telling. Combine this with San Roque’s poetics, the depth of his thought, and the heart of both men, and you have a book, a travel guide for our place and time. Read it and you’ll never think about the town’s ‘social problems’ in the same away again. Read it and you’ll never look at Alhekulyele (Mount Gillen, the nose of the ancestral dog) in the same way again.

At present, The Long Weekend in Alice Springs is also an exhibition at Watch This Space in George Crescent. It shows the comic book in the making, the drawings that appear in its pages and more, as Santospirito worked on his adaptation. Until June 7.

Photos: “Jim” serving Clifford Tilmouth. “Max” tinkering with a bicycle his house-mate has just bought. “Jim” stirring gravy for chips which are a favourite snack for the supermarket’s mostly Aboriginal clientele.

By ERWIN CHLANDA

Max and Jim (we’ve changed their names) are clearly not the kind of prisoners for whom the visionary “sentenced to a job and a future” scheme of Correctional Services Minister John Elferink is designed.

Mr Elferink sees it as a step-up into the broader community for people, mostly Aboriginal, who’ve never worked before.

Max and Jim are white and had significant backgrounds in employment and small business before their respective offences, which are in the

mid-range of seriousness.

But both have embraced the scheme so whole-heartedly that they seem set to have a major impact on its success. Their message to fellow prisoners: a project like this will give you a great chance. But you must want to change yourself.

Jim says he knows many people in gaol who have no intention of embarking on that journey, “happy to sit on their arses”. How to motivate them to join the program may be its biggest challenge.

The program gave Jim and Max the opportunity, but the initiative was theirs: having navigated the obstacles in the correctional services system, having “worked their way down to a low security rating,” they “pushed and pushed” and received permission.

They made their way “like everyone else” to Jobfind and – found a job. “It’s easy in Alice Springs,” says Jim. They are now working in an IGA supermarket.

During 12 months while he was still a prisoner, and six months following his release on parole, Max worked his way up to the assistant manager position, such as he had held before his crime.

“Being inside puts you right back,” he says. “You’ve got to claw your way back up again.”

Max’s parole conditions prohibit him from drinking alcohol. He isn’t fussed: “I’ve never been a big drinker. You can listen to music and drink soft drinks. No worries. The key to life is keeping busy.”

And he walks the talk: on the job he oversees about a dozen staff and needs to know – and sometimes do – all their jobs, from stacking

shelves to the sensitive task of running a bottleshop in a town battling alcoholic mayhem.

He loves it: “Gaol is shit. You don’t want to be there.”

He says for someone who’s been inside for years, coming out and re-joining “normal people, eating normal food, doing normal things”

works both ways: the employer gets someone for whom going to work is a real joy, says Max. Disinclined to false modesty he describes himself as the poster boy of the program.

Until last week Max was the only occupant of a five bedroom suburban house owned by Anglicare, not far from the supermarket. He says this house and his contact in Anglicare, the “non judgmental” Adam (his real name), are the make and break of the fledgeling program at the moment.

“When you come all you’ve got is a pair of jeans and jocks. You are dropped off in town. That’s it. Most people just go to the pub, with the

$200 they give you.

“Even for me, who’s very self confident, it is overwhelming. You’re just standing there.

“Adam took me to a shop. I asked him, can I go in there? You can do handstands in the carpark, he said to me. You are so used to asking permission for everything, it’s such a regimented life in gaol. It took me two or three days to even be happy about being out again,” says Max.

“Adam spent every day for a whole week with me. Picked me up, dropped me off. Helped me getting my licence, clothes, bank account. He

set up internet banking for me.

“Without all that their time in gaol would be wasted for many people. They’ll be back in there in no time.”

Going back “to family” is for many a move back to booze and idleness. This house, so far, is the only alternative.

Alcohol is banned, and that may put off some potential occupants, says Max.

An Aboriginal man he’d known in prison has now moved in, says Max. He has taken him under his wing, with an infectious enthusiasm for “doing things”. He is teaching the new housemate computer skills.

Other off-work hobbies he shares with the new resident are building an off-road scooter, the stand-on variety, with an engine and disk brakes front and back. Or fitting small engines to bicycles.

Jim tells a story that’s less upbeat. He and I were chatting outside the store in his lunch break. An Aboriginal man with a big, beaming face arrived, barefooted, limping, with bandages on his legs.

He’d been released from gaol two days earlier. With a sad smile and a resigned wave of his hand, he tells Jim he’d gotten pissed and rolled a car. That’s life, isn’t it?

No, it isn’t, says Jim. He is on his way up. The work scheme helps but so does his background as a self-employed builder, tiler and plasterer, on a string of FiFo jobs around the country, supporting his partner and four children in Tasmania.

He says only people who have an iron resolve to go straight will succeed in the scheme.

His duties at the store are wide-ranging. The scheme arranged for him to get a forklift driver’s ticket – a condition for the job, and paid for by the scheme.

Jim had been driving forklifts in an earlier life, including big ones for moving containers, but without a ticket. Now he can do it legally.

However, he had managed to keep busy “inside,” cooking for as many as 780 people, and servicing machinery such as mowers and slashers, even re-building engines.

Max took courses in gaol, and completed Certificates One in cooking and carpentry.

At the supermarket Jim’s main job is running the fast food section, offering a variety of meals, mostly deep-fried, prepared in a spotless kitchen and served from a bain-marie. He is training a school-leaver with calm, focussed instructions.

Jim gets up at 5.30am in his single cell, in the cottages for low risk inmates outside the big fence, currently housing around 140 inmates.

He arrives at work at 7.30am in the Bush Bus which is ferrying about 20 prisoners to their various jobs in town.

Some are unpaid volunteers. Only a few are on a normal wage like Jim, $17.50 an hour plus loading, for a five-day, 40 hour week, not on weekends.

Jim pays $25 a day board to the prison system for the days he works. Most of the rest of the money goes into his bank account.

Soon he will, for six months, move into the Anglicare house with Max. “This will get me on my feet.”

He will keep the job. Jim’s transition from prisoner to every-day citizen will be complete.

[It is a standard protocol when dealing with prisoners in the media that we do not identify them nor show their faces in photographs.]

By KIERAN FINNANE

Framptons First National real estate agency received a “secret commission”, the “lion’s share” out of the first instalments paid by Alice Springs home buyers in a scheme which had Randal Carey as the builder, said Mr Carey’s lawyer Peter Maley (pictured) in the Supreme Court this morning.

Mr Carey paid Framptons an estimated $100,000, by cheque: there is “documentary evidence” of the payments, Mr Maley said. Mr Carey yesterday pleaded guilty to nine charges of deception, in falsely representing himself and his company as registered building practitioners.

The deception has had “profound and ongoing effects” for all his victims, all hard-working members of the community whose dream of building their own home turned into a “nightmare”, argued Crown prosecutor  Stephen Robson when making submissions this morning on how Mr Carey should be penalised.

The benefit to Mr Carey in the agreed facts before the court was more than $1.7m.

“Where did the money go?” asked Mr Maley. He had some answers for the court: $8800 or 2.5% of the contract price on the various homes went to the real estate agents – a “secret commission”.

Mr Carey’s offending in eight out of the nine counts was aggravated by his knowledge of his deception over a period of time, argued Mr Robson. He was an undischarged bankrupt all along, his personal registration as a building practitioner had expired on December 15 2008, and Carey Builders Pty Ltd was never a registered building practitioner in the NT.

Some clients had entered into a contract with him prior to the registration expiry but most had not. He acted with “a selfish disregard for the rights and interests” of the home owners, said Mr Robson.

Yes, Mr Carey should have explained his status to the owners but he disclosed it “immediately” to Framptons who were “technically the owners’ agents”, said Mr Maley. “They knew what was happening … He treated them as his bosses.”

Mr Robson proposed that the court make compensation orders for the victims. Mr Carey’s status as an undischarged bankrupt may make that difficult, said Mr Maley – and more information is being sought from the Public Trustee before sentencing. But, said Mr Maley, Framptons agreed with the owners to monitor the progress of their homes from beginning to end. As professional real estate agents they have professional indemnity. There are “real issues” that expose them to a claim, said Mr Maley.

It was part of the agreed facts that Framptons would monitor the building work for “quality assurance”. Before Mr Maley made his submissions, Justice Jenny Blokland enquired of Mr Robson what Framptons’ awareness of the situation was. Mr Robson said the Crown doesn’t have information about what they knew. Without suggesting that anyone is in the frame, “it bears looking into”, he said.

Mr Maley said he was not trying to minimise Mr Carey’s contribution but it was part of a “systemic failure”, starting with the “conduct of the agents”, and added to by the building contracts, which lacked “a number of contractual safeguards”, and the building certifier. It all built into “a perfect storm”.

Mr Carey remains willing to provide evidence to police and to act as a witness for the Crown, said Mr Maley. The intention was that he be interviewed yesterday, however the investigating officer was not available.

Justice Blokland said she would not be ready to sentence Mr Carey (pictured at left) today.

UPDATE, 14 May 2013, 3.51pm: Any compensation payments ordered by the court would be a stand-alone debt to be serviced by Randal Carey. They would not form part of his existing bankruptcy, prosecutor Stephen Robson told Justice Jenny Blokland after he and Peter Maley for Mr Carey had spoken to the Public Trustee during the lunch adjournment.

Mr Maley outlined his client’s capacity to pay. He currently works as a truck driver out of Port Hedland in the Pilbara, driving 14-hour days. He earns almost $200,000 a year but at age 62 that is unlikely to continue for very long into the future. He calculated income left after Mr Carey meets his obligations at about $500 per week. He has some equity in a house owned by his wife, yet to be sold.

Justice Blokland said a “reasonable order of compensation” would be the “right thing” and she would take such an order into account in “mitigation of penalty”. But, if there’s no likelihood of it being paid, she wanted to know to what extent having such order might stop the victims from pursuing other avenues, as “time is running against them”. Mr Robson said he had no information about action regarding other people that may be being contemplated.

Mr Carey was remanded for sentencing until next Tuesday.

See update.