From afar, Alice Springs is a whirlpool of myth and truth. A town with competing interests and few solutions, marked by chaos and decades of government overreach. 

That all came to a head earlier last year, with what’s been described as a “youth riot” in town. The violence led to the Northern Territory government imposing an emergency curfew. 

This is when the headlines started: in cities and towns across Australia, we read about a “crisis” about “rampages”. One newspaper described the kids here as “tiny menaces stuck on a turnstile of trouble”.

In this first episode of our three part series This is Alice Springs Daniel James visits the town at the heart of our nation, to find out how all the interventions, big and small, by governments of all persuasions have led to this chaos. What he finds is that almost all of it leads back to one thing.

This series was originally published in October 2024.

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Guest: Hosted and reported by Daniel James