'Gangsters' fuelled by alcohol. More problems in town camps revealed

The entry to Old Timers town camp is adorned with flowers. (ABC News: Xavier Martin) Link copiedShareShare articleThe leader of Alice Springs's town camp authority rarely gives interviews anymore. The fourth-generation town camper, Walter Shaw, has been in the role for more than 15 years, but has largely kept out of the spotlight, even as his council faces national scrutiny. Most recently, the alleged abduction and murder of five-year-old girl Kumanjayi Little Baby, who was taken from an Alice Springs town camp house, has triggered questions about the state of the camps — 16 small Aboriginal communities on the town's fringes. Mr Shaw is the CEO of Tangentyere Council, one of the key organisations charged with providing services to town camps and managing the maintenance of homes in them. Walter Shaw has been the CEO of Tangentyere Council for more than 15 years. (ABC News: Xavier Martin) "I think the events of what's taken place with the tragedy around Kumanjayi Little Baby should enact change," Mr Shaw told 7.30 in an exclusive interview. For the hundreds of residents who call the town camps home, the issues faced are many and varied: broken locks and showers, late-night uninvited drunken visitors, and overcrowding. The exterior of the home where Kumanjayi Little Baby went missing from in the Old Timers town camp. (ABC News: Matt Garrick) "But when it's out of my hands to allow for a house to be upgraded and brought up to standardised living conditions, governments have to take responsibility with regard to how we all manage our houses, whether it be on town camps or remote communities, "I think we're doing as much as [what's in] our contract to do with regard to up-keeping of housing on the town camps,." Many Alice Springs residents have a perception that Tangentyere Council, should and could be doing much more to ensure that residents are safe and looked after. When images of the home Kumanjayi Little Baby was taken from spread across the media, that scrutiny escalated. The death of Kumanjayi Little Baby sparked tough questions about her circumstances. (ABC News: Xavier Martin) Coalition Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price questioned "how on earth" the amount of government funding received by Tangentyere could be justified, considering the results on the ground. "Anyone with eyes in their head can walk around a town camp and see the conditions in which our most marginalised are living in and the squalor that children are living in," she said in a Senate estimates hearing last week. The senator is calling for more external scrutiny of the organisation. Tangentyere Council is facing calls for greater scrutiny into their funding and management. (ABC News: Xavier Martin) Mr Shaw said that despite Tangentyere not having released an annual report on its website for four years, the council was being fully transparent with its operations. "We've released our finances to the rest of Australia, the rest of the world, and that is as transparent as we can be," he said. The organisation's 2024-2025 financial statement shows Tangentyere Council received $27 million in government and philanthropic grants to deliver services, repairs and maintenance at the town camps. Kumanjayi Little Baby's grandfather Robin Japanangka Granites, at the Old Timers town camp. (ABC News: Xavier Martin) Among those services, Tangentyere runs night patrols, family and anti-violence programs, and staffs community centres across the camps. But residents have told 7.30 they're not seeing the full results when it comes to their housing. Kumanjayi Little Baby's grandfather Robin Japanangka Granites doesn't live in a town camp, but has many family members who do, and is appalled by the state of many of their homes. "Our spirits will be connected forever" was the message written on this card for Kumanjayi Little Baby. (ABC News: Xavier Martin) "They are all dirty, the grasses are so thick and so tall, you can see markings in the paint, holes in the roof, holes in the cement," Mr Granites said. "That's how damaging it is for us to live in town camps. "I'd rather [Tangentyere] doing more than what they're doing right now." Robin Japanangka Granites says he is appalled by the state of many homes in town camps. (ABC News: Xavier Martin) Mr Shaw has defended his organisation and how it's working and said that he is "restricted in terms of what our aspirations would like to be with up-keeping the houses on town camps" due to his contracts with the NT government. Between the 1950s and 70s, town camps were set up on the outskirts of Alice Springs by Aboriginal leaders who had been displaced from their traditional lands, but couldn't establish homes in the township due to a discriminatory policy prohibiting Aboriginal people from settling within its boundaries. In the decades since, the camps have been subjected to successive NT and federal government policies, which have left the camps and their residents stuck in a bureaucrat

'Gangsters' fuelled by alcohol. More problems in town camps revealed

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