In rural Australia, youth crime is hampering efforts to improve tourism Travel News

Alice Springs, Australia – For Ben Hall, CEO of tour bus operator AAT Kings, business has been tough lately.

He says tourists aren’t booking trips to Uluru, the massive sandstone attraction in Australia’s Northern Territory, in the numbers they used to.

“We’ve definitely seen the journey from Alice Springs to Uluru has softened a little bit,” Hall, who runs a fleet of about 30 buses focused on trips to Uluru, told Al Jazeera.

“We’ve added a few new short breaks this year in the region…but it’s certainly been a tough trade.”

Tour and car rental companies across Australia’s Red Centre, as the vast rural region is often called, have reported a similar drop in business.

While tourism publishers attribute the decline to a number of factors, most agree that part of the reason is a rise in youth crime in Alice Springs, a remote town of about 40,000 people that serves as a hub for tourists to outback destinations such as Uluru.

In the past two years, juvenile delinquency in the city has captured national media attention and sparked political uproar at both levels of state government, even as juvenile delinquency has risen across the country.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who leads the centre-left Labor Party, has made several visits to the city to highlight his government’s efforts to tackle the issue.

In March, and again in July, the Northern Territory government implemented curfews that bar children from the city center at night following a series of violent attacks.

The increase in crime has drawn particular attention to Alice Springs in the media as it has come after the Northern Territory government ended a 15-year ban on alcohol in remote Aboriginal communities in late 2022.

In 2007, the Australian federal government implemented a series of interventions in the Northern Territory, where nearly one-third of the population is Aboriginal, in response to a local government report that found evidence of child sexual exploitation in remote Aboriginal communities.

The state’s intervention, which some rights groups criticized as discrimination and discrimination, included a blanket ban on alcohol in remote Aboriginal communities that was extended by successive local governments.

After the end of alcohol prohibition, a series of high-profile incidents of violence in Alice Springs, including youths stealing cars and attacking police vehicles, made national headlines.

In the year ending November 2023, violent offenses committed by young people rose to 1,182, an increase of 50 per cent compared to 2019-2020, according to the Department of Justice and Justice in the Northern Territory.

After accounting for population change, the total number of new people fell from 2,855 to 2,819 per 100,000 people in 2022-2023, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, although part of that decline can be explained by the government’s August 2023 decision to raise. age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 12.

Local police warned residents to avoid visiting the city centre, while the Northern Territory government also banned the sale of alcohol in January 2023.

While the rise in crime has spurred politicians to take action, some community leaders and legal experts have criticized the local government for implementing “draconian” policies, such as curfews, that could stigmatize Indigenous communities.

Human rights groups have also accused police of targeting Aboriginal people in the area, which has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world.

Last month, the newly elected government in the Northern Territory lowered the age of crime from 12 to 10, raising concerns among community leaders that Aboriginal youth will be incarcerated at higher rates.

The North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency, a not-for-profit legal service, has noted that between 2018 and 2023, the prison population in the region has increased by 22 per cent, which it says is a result of young Aboriginal Australians being targeted by the law.

Jared Sharp, the non-profit’s chief legal officer, said in a press release that while the community is seeing an increase in youth crime in the Northern Territory, “youth court accommodation has been depleted for three years”.

The focus on youth crime and the subsequent decline has been keenly felt by tourism workers, who often see an increase in tourism during the dry season between April and October.

In April, travel industry figures called for “urgent” financial support from the government after the announcement of an early curfew caused a wave of customer cancellations.

In September, Ross River Resort, a popular base for travelers en route to Alice Springs, announced that it would close its doors to the public from the following month.

Martin Ansell, director of tourism company Grollo Group, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that tourism was down “50 to 60 per cent” from last year.

Kirsten Holmgren, who runs in the East MacDonnell Ranges, said she had a “very quiet” season.

“This year I have never had more than six people on a 16-seater bus, so I have to fill in between working for other companies,” Holmgren told Al Jazeera.

Although Holmgren acknowledges the issue of youth crime in Alice Springs, he believes the media has given too much attention to the issue, putting off tourists.

“That’s why car break-ins and car thefts have really increased. This does not affect tourism at all. It only affects local people,” said Holmgren.

Danial Rochford, CEO of Tourism Central Australia, said crime was not the only reason tourism had suffered, pointing to the pressure on the cost of living and reduced flights to Alice Springs.

Tourism in the region has been “very challenged”, Rochford told Al Jazeera.

Although tourism companies have reported a drop in visitors passing through or based in and around Alice Springs, operators are very happy with the number of visitors to Uluru itself.

A spokesperson for Voyages Indigenous Tourism Australia, the Indigenous-owned business that owns Ayers Rock Resort, said the company was “in the middle of one of the busiest times at the moment, welcoming local and international visitors back to pre-Covid levels during the peak winter season”.

Rochford said Uluru’s visitor numbers had been benefiting from the addition of direct flights from Cairns, Melbourne and Brisbane by Qantas and Virgin Australia, respectively, since last year.

Hall from AAT Kings admitted that air accessibility and the rising cost of flights to Alice Springs have created difficulties for local tour operators.

“I think it’s great [solution to the decline] trying to find more planes to fly to the destination. Security may be another,” said Hall.

Before falling sharply last year, domestic tourism in the Northern Territory saw little impact as Australians flocked to the region to enjoy their newfound freedom following the lifting of the COVID-19 lockdown.

Since then, local tourism operators have found themselves increasingly competing with the international market as Australians flock overseas in record numbers.

In 2023, the area as a whole recorded 1.6 million visitors, a decrease of 1.3 percent from the previous year.

Despite the return of foreign visitors to Alice Springs since the end of the pandemic, their numbers have not returned to their 2019 levels.

Despite the challenges, maintaining a healthy tourism situation in the Northern Territory is important not only for the local economy, but also for the promotion of Aboriginal culture, says Jungala Kriss, who works with Aboriginal tourism in Alice Springs.

“I think that historically, most people think about Aboriginal people through textbooks. Many students at school. They grow up not knowing Aboriginal people,” Kriss, who runs in the West MacDonnell Ranges including Aboriginal artefacts, told Al Jazeera.

“So when they come to a place where there are a lot of Aboriginal people, they start to see that. [Aboriginal people] they are just like them,” said Kriss.