By ERWIN CHLANDA
While Top Enders are allowed to frolic in national parks including Litchfield this long weekend (ABC TV News image), the people of Alice Springs continue to be locked out of their West MacDonnells without any explanation from the Gunner Government.
That is notwithstanding that the Iwupataka Land Trust, known as the Golden Mile, west of Alice Springs, has now been excluded from the biosecurity area which also includes the West Macs.
There are no living areas between the turn-off towards Glen Helen a bit further on, from Larapinta Drive into Namatjira Drive, all the way to the park’s western end.
Exclusions from a biosecurity area, declared under Federal law but presumably managed jointly with the NT Government, can clearly be obtained.
This was demonstrated by the Central Land Council, acting for its members.
MacDonnell Regional Council CEO Jeff MacLeod says these include the Golden Mile residents, apparently between the town and Jay Creek, who shop, work and go to school in Alice Springs.
We asked Mr Gunner whether he had made a similar representation to the Federal Government on behalf of his constituents in Alice Springs, who want to spend their long weekend at the Ellery Bighole, Ormiston Gorge, Redbank and a dozen other locations in the magnificent West Macs.
We received no reply from Mr Gunner.
Neither did we get any response to emails about the West Macs issues we sent to the NT Government’s Covidmedia on April 6 (two messages) and April 27. Nor were there replies to several reports and readers’ comments we published about West Macs issues.
It’s not as if we are able to put questions to Mr Gunner and NT Health Minister Natasha Fyles during their daily chest thumping live COVID broadcasts.
Through a minder they have declined participation by Alice Springs News via phone link in these “press events” in Darwin: We would need to be there to ask questions, we were told.
This comes from a government that was elected on a platform including honesty and transparency. It’s an impertinence at the best of times, let alone the current ones.
Labor will have opportunity to explain this conduct in the lead-up to the election scheduled for August.
We have no access to anywhere until after the Queen’s Birthday weekend. So another weekend quarantined to Alice Springs.
Yoo-hoo Mr Gunner and minders – waving from Alice Springs.
Could you please answer the questions submitted by Mr Chlanda.
There are quite a few of us very interested in your answers. Or perhaps you could grant Mr Brash an interview on ABC Radio Alice Springs.
It’s only been three and a half years and we still haven’t heard your dulcet tones.
Enjoy your laksa and paw paw salad this long weekend.
What could Mr Gunner do if an convoy of families were going to Ellery Hole Monday?
Have them all arrested and put into isolation?
Maybe the time has come for the people of Alice to stop being peaceful sheep.
Time to be goats and escape.
Goats are some of the most intelligent and independent farm animals, a trait that often lands them in trouble.
Mr Gunner has joined the Darwin Moguls and cares not for Alice Springs or Central Australia.
Coronavirus restrictions should be across ALL NT biosecurity areas and NOT just in the area of Alice Springs.
This is a blatant insult to Centralians and by not answering questions in this regard properly confirms this.
I look at the Labor Ministers and see and hear juvenile poorly educated individuals who really have no business in Parliament let alone politics. It is very embarrassing as the rest of Australia and internationally our Ministers are seen as village idiots.
The idea of building free enterprise and raising living standards are an unintelligible thought for Labor.
Our forebears knew Darwin and Labor in particular regarded Alice Springs as an outpost that is not relevant.
They knew this instinctively and hence why those who work and build Alice Springs became conservative, for Labor is a communist based regime, unable to govern a democracy based on free enterprise. Labor want the collective to pay for its rule of its destructive ideological power mindset. So when Mr Chlanda says: “Labor will have opportunity to explain this conduct in the lead-up to the election scheduled for August.”
I say and feel the people of Alice Springs and Central Australia need to remember this in a couple of months and remove Labor completely from Central Australia.
Let’s build Alice Springs and Central Australia up again: “United we stand, divided we fall.”