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Problems in remote community of Imanpa

Reporter: Liz Jackson

This is the print version of story that was shown on ABC 4 Corners programme 29th May 2006

29 May 2006 - MARK COLVIN: Ten days ago we saw the worst that can happen when things go wrong in remote Aboriginal communities, when the rest of Australia became aware of the anarchy and violence at Wadeye.

But even in communities where things have gone less spectacularly wrong, the situation may still be very bad.

ABC TV's Four Corners tonight screens a report on one of those communities, Imanpa, about three hours drive south of Alice Springs.

It has huge problems with school attendance, there's widespread petrol- sniffing and even the town's work-for-the-dole scheme has failed.

In this extract from the film, we're in the town's only store where, as the white temporary manager, who'd be leaving next day, tells someone on the phone, there are no customers.

STORE MANAGER: There's nobody here. There's no maru here. There's no wati (phonetic) maru, kunga (phonetic)maru here. No-one here. No nobody's here. Okay.

We've only got a little bit of meat, not very much sugar left and, we've got a fair bit of bread, but no eggs. that's the last of the eggs down there. Plenty of tins though, but you can't live on just that.

LIZ JACKSON: You got any money to buy any more stock?

STORE MANAGER: No.

LIZ JACKSON: No money to buy any more stock?

STORE MANAGER: My credit's been cut off.

LIZ JACKSON: How do you lose money in the only store in town that sells food?

UNKNOWN PERSON: Mismanagement generally.

MARK COLVIN: Liz Jackson reported the Four Corners story. I asked her what answers she'd been able to find to the question of how the store had failed so dismally.

LIZ JACKSON: Mismanagement but also theft, continual break-ins, certainly temporary store managers suggesting that people who might have had keys were stealing as well. But, book-up, I mean people just not having enough money so credit, huge amounts of credit. And it got to the point at Imanpa where their major preoccupation is will they have a store open so that they can buy food next week.

MARK COLVIN: And if they don't, that's the end?

LIZ JACKSON: Well in a community like that the next nearest store is over 200 kilometres away.

MARK COLVIN: But the community revolves around the store. Without a store.

LIZ JACKSON: Yeah, without a store you can't have a community because as I say, if you don't have a car, you don't eat. I mean, you need to have the store.

MARK COLVIN: When we talk about mismanagement, people are reluctant to say too much because of libel laws or whatever, but we're talking about theft are we? Embezzlement? What?

LIZ JACKSON: Certainly, and we're not just talking Indigenous people, we're talking some of the people who've worked in there over the years and people are as you say in the program reluctant to name people for defamation reasons. But it's certainly been the case where there's no accountability.

People just skim, people siphon off, and that's widespread, and widely known in remote communities is that some people, some people go and work there, you have to say, with the best of possible motive and do a really good job. Some people I think see themselves as, "I've gone to this remote community, I deserve a little bit more" and take a little bit more.

I mean, purchase order books were out in the community, not centralised. I mean, no-one was keeping an account, a strict accountability over who was buying what. And one of the biggest areas of concern is how much money is bled off, just for something like fuel, which when you live in a remote community is actually a very important and substantial part of your
expenditure, is just petrol.

MARK COLVIN: So is this going to be another film that just shows how awful it all is, or can you see anything sparking out of it? Can you see any solutions arising? Or is it just really dismal now?

LIZ JACKSON: And I mean I think it's a difficult situation there and I mean, I didn't. we haven't set out to make it about, on the one hand this community works and on the other hand this community doesn't work, we chose just to look at one.

And as I say, it's certainly not the worst. It's not as if we've selected out a really poorly performing one. But I think at the moment in the present times it's important to say, "We need to focus and identify when things are failing."

And I think in a way people have tried very hard over 30 years to, in a sense, talk up and feel positive to the extent that it's been possible. But I think we really need to look at why things don't work for the sake of, I mean if you'll excuse me saying, but for the sake of particularly the young people who live there.

MARK COLVIN: Because the end result is the kind of thing that we've been hearing about.

LIZ JACKSON: They're ill equipped, yeah .

MARK COLVIN: . child abuse, domestic violence?

LIZ JACKSON: Yeah and on top of that, you see a group of young people who, there's so little offered to them there and yet they are so ill-equipped to go somewhere else, and that's a really depressing and woeful situation to place anyone in.

MARK COLVIN: Liz Jackson who reported tonight's Four Corners story.

Source: 4 corners ABC

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