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Alice Springs police were called to an Indigenous camp yesterday to defuse threats of a violent riot.

There were reports of up to 80 people making their way to Hoppy’s camp, intent on attacking members of the community.

The incident is believed to have been sparked by a recent double murder.

Residents from Hoppy’s Camp escaped into the hills and ran to the Alice Springs Police station before the attack started.

The Member for Braitling Adam Giles saw the confrontation from the nearby Northside shops.

“There was a tenseness in the air, you could just see people running everywhere, driving all over the place trying to calm the situation down,” he said.

“[They were] doing a tremendous job but we can’t have this sort of thing happening in our town.

“We do have rules and laws as a society. We can’t bring this tribal payback into Alice Springs.”

Police have seized weapons including boomerangs, nulla nullas, sticks and knives from the would be attackers.

Officers say they will be working with elders to try to resolve the tensions today.

The independent coordinator for Indigenous services appointed by the Northern Territory Government says Government ministers and departments are suppressing information about Aboriginal policy failures.

The coordinator, Bob Beadman, has released his first six-monthly report.

He criticises ministers and departments who he says are creating a “skewed” picture of progress in remote Indigenous communities and town camps.

He says they are suppressing the truth in order to paint themselves in the best possible light.

The Working Future project was set up with the intent of closing the gap of Indigenous disadvantage through the delivery of better services and infrastructure in 20 targeted “growth towns”.

Mr Beadman says there is a lot of work to be done to change entrenched social problems.

His report says there is a desperate need to secure private investment in communities for economic development, and to eliminate extensive welfare dependency.

BE it shooting feral pigs or hooking 2m sawfish from the billabongs of the Fitzroy River, rangers at the Kimberley community of Jarlmadangah are determined to make their own way in an ever-changing world.

A stronger understanding of their indigenous culture, a whiff of self-assuredness and a sense of place and responsibility are becoming the norm rather than the exception in places such as Jarlmadangah, a respected, dry community 230km east of Broome.

Travis Faceldean and Justin Gray are two rangers being trained in all facets of culture — even white man’s — as other communities around them struggle for survival and relevance.

Not unlike the catchcry in the agricultural sector during the 1980s — get big or get out — the finances of many Aboriginal towns across the top of Australia are under scrutiny like never before.

Hot on the heels of the 2007 federal intervention into Aboriginal communities throughout the Northern Territory, the commonwealth and West Australian governments are making no apologies about pressuring outback communities to re-examine how they spend taxpayers’ money.

And those communities, like Jarlmadangah, booze-free and well-run, are at last emerging from a ragtag of others that have been gutted by alcohol and subsequently lost a generation of men.

The Jarlmadangah ranger project has been so successful other communities across the region are copying it. It involves caring for country, eradicating feral animals such as pigs, dogs and cats, back-burning to minimise the threat of bushfire and discovering and maintaining sacred sites.

One program the rangers have taken to with gusto is helping scientists from Perth’s Murdoch University monitor the endangered sawfish. The Fitzroy River is one of the world’s few remaining freshwater breeding grounds for the fish.

For two weeks every year, the rangers catch the fish, tag them with satellite receivers and then set them on their way into King Sound and out into the Indian Ocean and Timor Sea. The sawfish, which can grow to 6m, has been tracked as far north as Cape York in Queensland and at the bottom of Western Australia near Esperance, and heading towards the Great Australian Bight.

The rangers have also trapped ducks to test for swine flu and have been asked to catch mosquitos, which can help identify the presence of Dengue fever throughout northern Australia.

As a lure, they put a kangaroo tail in a bucket of water.

This can confirm suspicions about the migration of people and animals across some of the most isolated parts of the continent.

But most of all, the program gives the young men a sense of purpose, using traditional and modern techniques to achieve goals and set examples for others who are keen to join the rangers. “You’re never bored here. There’s always plenty to do,” Mr Gray said.

CAPE York leader Noel Pearson has called on the Rudd government to urgently realign its policies on Aboriginal housing, predicting that the many billions currently being spent on building public housing in remote communities will result in wastage on an enormous scale and little improvement in the livelihoods of indigenous people.

Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin’s “obsession” with negotiating 40-year leases to provide secure tenure for public housing assets was “completely inconsistent with home ownership”, Mr Pearson said. As The Australian revealed this week, negotiations over 40-year leases in Queensland have stalled, with Cape York mayors refusing to sign the leases and seeking legal advice.

Legislative changes introduced by the Bligh government more than 18 months ago to encourage home ownership have so far failed to result in one home loan being issued.

“The priority at the moment is to vest 40-year leases in the Queensland Department of Housing, for public housing, and that is what all of the bureaucratic energies are directed towards,” Mr Pearson said.

“So home ownership is on the backburner and it’s not a priority.”

Mr Pearson said providing more public housing should not take priority over schemes that encouraged indigenous people to build their own homes or invest in homes that already existed, as risk encouraged responsibility.

“We have got to get skin in the game by families, and the best way of getting skin in the game is through some form of home ownership. The second issue is, we’ve got to bring the construction price down, and the third issue is what the government has made its first issue, which is the urgent need for more housing.”

Mr Pearson said the housing policies of successive federal governments had created an “irrational” housing market that made home ownership unattainable for most indigenous people, reflecting a government view that home ownership was only for the privileged Aboriginal few.

People living in Cape York - who, under Queensland policy, must buy the land they effectively already own before they can even think about building a house - have to spend an average of $500,000 to own a house.

“It is an irrational housing market that governments are paying for here where the default position is always the most expensive option,” he said.

A long-time advocate of private home ownership, Mr Pearson - a lawyer and founder of the Cape York Institute for Policy and Leadership - rejected the notion put forward by the federal statutory body Indigenous Business Australia that native title issues were creating insurmountable complexities in the process of achieving home ownership in Cape York.

Ms Macklin said the government was committed to addressing unacceptable housing shortages in remote indigenous communities, including through encouraging home ownership.

“The Australian government is keen to support as many indigenous Australians as possible to achieve their aspirations to own their own home,” Ms Macklin said.

“Home ownership can bring important social and economic benefits.”

Children in Cherbourg, in southern Queensland, can now be published authors.

The non-profit organisation Budburra Books has created a program that will allow pupils at Cherbourg State School to write, illustrate and publish their own books, to assist their learning.

Queensland Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Partnerships Minister Desley Boyle says it will allow the students to express their creativity.

“To write them, to illustrate them might I say, and then to arrange them for printing. They are just wonderful local stories for kids mostly in middle years of primary school,” she said.

Ms Boyle says if the program is successful, it could be adopted elsewhere.

“I was with a group of mayors of Aboriginal communities when they saw these books and had a flick through them and you could certainly see that they were all getting the idea that this is something we’ll want to try in our own communities,” she said.

There has been a rise in the number of income management cases in Indigenous communities in Cape York Peninsula in far north Queensland.

A report from the Queensland Family Responsibilities Commission looked at school attendance, child services and magistrate notifications and income management in Aurukun, Coen, Hope Vale and Mossman Gorge.

The report for the September quarter shows 130 people have conditional income management - up 10 from the July quarter.

Most are in Aurukun and Hope Vale. Three people have applied for voluntary income management.

The commission’s report says many people who inquire about voluntary income management want help dealing with the pressure from friends and relatives to buy non-essential items and contraband.

The report notes some people are being turned away from the welfare centres that were set up to help.

It has found issues with one bank in Aurukun has also created difficulties for locals trying to have their money managed.

THE Bligh government’s plan to open the way for Aboriginal home ownership in remote north Queensland settlements is failing, as not a single home loan has been signed since a new leasing scheme was introduced 18 months ago.

Native title laws are being blamed for the bureaucratic bottleneck that has left Aborigines who are keen to own a home forced to remain in the public housing system.

The statutory body that facilitates home loans for Aborigines living in remote communities, Indigenous Business Australia, says it is “ready to write home loans tomorrow” for a number of families, but negotiations over native title have stalled their plans.

IBA general manager Ron Morony said achieving home ownership had been much more difficult for Aborigines in Queensland than it had for those in remote communities in the Northern Territory, where 12 home loans had been signed and another 29 people were waiting for loans to be approved.

“Our frustration has often been just getting through the technical stuff of leasing,” Mr Morony said. “What is kicking in is native title rights, which we have got to get clear with the traditional owners before we can actually agree to these leases.”

IBA says it is negotiating with eight communities in north Queensland, including Mapoon, Palm Island, Yarrabah, Wujal Wujal, Hopevale, Cherbourg and Doomadgee on home ownership, but until the land issues are resolved “these discussions cannot progress past expressions of interest or inquiry stage”.

The Queensland parliament passed laws in July last year that were billed as the vehicle to enable Aboriginal home ownership in remote communities on land held in trust by Aboriginal councils. The legislation allowed for individual 99-year residential and commercial leases to be signed in remote communities, and the new laws were touted as the key to resolving land tenure issues and allowing economic development. However, it is indigenous councils and not the Queensland government itself which are able to grant leases.

The Queensland government’s Resource Management Indigenous Services executive director James McNamara said there were five applications for 99-year residential leases being assessed and processed by councils and trustees, with the assistance of the Department of Environment and Resource Management.

“Processing 99-year leases is a matter between the individual applicant and trustee of the land,” Mr McNamara said.

Mayor Percy Neal of Yarrabah near Cairns blamed delays by

the local land council for the failure to progress 99-year lease applications.

“I think just about everybody wants to own their own home,” Mr Neal said. “Yarrabah council has always pushed the issue that we want to see people get their own homes, but these guys — the state, the land council — are continually stuffing around.”

A pre-inquest hearing into a death in custody on Palm Island off north Queensland has rejected the state’s Attorney-General’s submission that accidental death of Cameron Doomadgee be ruled out.

The inquest into the death of Mr Doomadgee on Palm Island, off Townsville, in 2004 will reopen in March.

An inquest found Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley was responsible for Mr Doomadgee’s death, but the police officer was later cleared of manslaughter.

In June this year, the Court of Appeal ordered the inquest be reopened.

A hearing in Brisbane today, ahead of the inquest in March, heard the Attorney-General made a written submission suggesting a finding of accidental death be ruled out.

The submission from the Queensland Attorney-General that a finding of accident be ruled out was rejected by the coroner Michael Barnes.

Lawyer Glen Craney, acting for Sergeant Hurley, said the submission seemed to be a continuation of the failed prosecution and an attempt to have another go at his client.

The lawyer says the Queensland Attorney-General’s ongoing involvement in an inquest into the death in custody is “unseemly”.

Mr Craney says the Doomadgee family is ably represented and the Attorney-General should reconsider his continuing involvement in the case.

However Peter Davis, acting for the Queensland Attorney-General, rejected the criticism, saying the submission on accidental death was only a preliminary view.

Senior Sergeant Hurley may not attend the re-opened inquest next year unless giving evidence.

The hearing was told Senior Sergeant Hurley’s partner is due to give birth in March, when the inquest is scheduled to reopen.

Coroner Michael Barnes will hear two days of evidence on Palm Island, and five in Townsville.

Andrew Boe, acting for the Doomadgee family, says Sergeant Hurley’s evidence should be given in person and not via a video link.

The Federal Court has ruled that an Aboriginal art wholesaler and retailer broke the law by wrongly claiming artworks were painted by an Indigenous artist.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) alleged that Australian Dreamtime Creations and its director, Tony Antoniou, breached the Trade Practices Act.

It was alleged the company sold artworks from its retail outlets and website falsely claiming they were painted by an Aboriginal artist.

The ACCC also claimed the company sold wooden artworks made in Indonesia, passing them off as Australian-made.

Justice John Mansfield found the company has engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct.

Literacy and numeracy testing of students shows slight improvements in most areas, but poor and Indigenous children are still struggling.

Students in years three, five, seven and nine were tested as part of the National Assessment Program earlier this year.

Students in Victoria, New South Wales and the ACT reached or passed the national benchmarks in all categories, despite slight drops in some areas compared with last year.

The Northern Territory had results well below average, but had a strong result in reading for year three, rising from 62.7 per cent last year to 68.6 per cent this year.

Acting Prime Minister Julia Gillard says it is important to be realistic about the results.

“We as a country for a long period of time have lived with an education system where poor kids have finished at the back of the class,” she said.

“That’s true today, and it was true 10 years ago. So it is going to take sustained effort and work to resolve that.

Ms Gillard says the My Schools website, to be launched in January, will give information about which schools are performing well, and those that need help.

“I think we will see schools that teach large numbers of Indigenous children who are doing very well indeed, and once again, we’ll want to take that best practice and share it,” she said.

“Where Indigenous students are falling behind, we’ll want to make a difference through our new reforms.”