A fair few comments here, but none address the specific situation in Alice Springs. Alice Springs is the major settlement of the 'Red Centre' of Australia, and

A fair few comments here, but none address the specific situation in Alice Springs. Alice Springs is the major settlement of the 'Red Centre' of Australia, and is home to many Indigenous Australians. Indigenous Australians were culturally and genetically separated from the rest of humanity for tens of thousands of years, and, in a hungry continent where no fruit laid on the ground long enough to ferment, never interacted with alcohol until European settlement. Indigenous Australian societies had extremely limited material cultures because their environment afforded them such scarce resources with which to create one. European colonisation and subsequent attempts to both 'civilise' and exterminate Indigenous Australians were utterly deleterious to their palaeolithic culture. They no longer needed to hunt and gather for sustenance, and yet those in remote communities found it difficult to find meaningful participation in the economy that now provided for them (often through outright discrimination). Combine this with the introduction of alcohol, which intoxicates Indigenous Australians more effectively due to a complete lack of any tolerance for it, as well as other intoxicating substances, and we have a recipe for autogenocide, nearly as effective than the previous attempts through the Stolen Generations. Petrol stations in outback Australia sell a particular blend of fuel known as 'Opal fuel'[0]: it contains less of the aromatic compounds that give the 'high' to petrol sniffers, which is also rife amongst Indigenous communities. Kava, a mild narcotic from the South Pacific island nations and popular amongst their diaspora in Australia, can only be imported into Australia in limited conditions (only for personal use, and only 2 kg per individual arrival) because it was mixed with red wine in Indigenous communities for an extra 'kick'. Policies for improving conditions for Indigenous Australians in remote communities vary from the ineffectual to the authoritarian. (The 'Intervention' mentioned in the article is an example of the latter.) Allowing communities to be locally regulated by their Elders is a compromise, and the basis of the programme described in the article. post script: The above is a description of the situation in remote, outback communities, and administrative centres for those communities, like the towns and cities of the Northern Territory, such as Alice Springs and Darwin. The obvious question, then, is why don't Indigenous Australians move to more prosperous towns and cities? There are two answers. One is the poor life outcomes for those who historically did move to those areas, for example, the slums of Redfern and Blacktown[1] in Sydney. The other comes from the traditional spirituality or Lore of Indigenous communities: they don't believe that they own the land, but rather that the land owns them. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opal_(fuel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opal_(fuel) 1: The area gained that name for awful reason you think it got that name.