Crying out for a new beginning - SMH - 2 Feb '13

As the sun drops behind the paperbark trees along the Darling River, teenagers from the Alice Edwards Village throw a fishing line out to catch yellowbelly.

There is little else to do in their village on the outskirts of Bourke; a group of rundown houses left to rot by their local Aboriginal Land Council which, despite this, continues to collect rent off occupants.

For many people, jail is a refuge from the suffering rather than a place of punishment  

For the village's young people, pulling fish from the river is more than just a lark.

Anything that steers children away from juvenile crime - even for one night - is a small victory for the town, which elders and community members fear is rapidly sliding backwards.

Figures compiled exclusively for Fairfax Media by the Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research show Bourke topped the state for six of the eight major criminal offences last year including assault, break and enter, motor vehicle theft and malicious damage to property.

It shows the remote western NSW town of a population of 3000 is more dangerous than any country in the world, when compared to United Nations data.

Police numbers have swelled to 40 - a higher ratio than New York City, which is 10 times safer - and Aboriginal youths make up 80 per cent of incarcerated people in the region.

Felicia, a 20-year-old mother, says boredom drives the mostly opportunistic crime on the streets.

"The kids do things just to get a chase off the cops," she said.

But worsening Social Disadvantage in Bourke is also to blame.

As other parts of the state prosper, Bourke is languishing with generations of socially dysfunctional families, high unemployment caused by drought, poor school attendance, alcohol abuse and deep scars from a long history of racism and land dispossession.

For many, jail is a refuge from the suffering rather than a place of punishment, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, Mick Gooda, said.

"It's going backwards here," said a town elder, Aunty Dawn Smith. "The kids do nothing. There's nothing for them to do."

At night, they roam the streets. Fairfax saw one boy about 10 years old take cigarette butts from the ashtray of a pub and smoke them. Another stuck his middle finger up at a passing police car and shouted "f---ing c---''.

"Wider society thinks 'well, why are these young men going out and doing this stupid stuff, this is just ridiculous'," says Bourke's Aboriginal Legal Service solicitor David Pheeney. "But when you really talk to them and you find out all their background information, it's really quite sad. There are a lot of angry, young men in the criminal justice system here."

Up to 70 per cent of male and female Aboriginal offenders have been abused as children, recent reports have found.

A lack of sentencing options is exacerbating the problem, Pheeney says. In Bourke, there are no resources to offer community service or intensive correction orders, so the only punishment options for magistrates are suspended sentences or jail terms.

Pheeney said over-policing exacerbates crime in the town, including searches and bail checks that border on harassment.

Yet Sergeant Chris Neaves said police were constantly "up against a brick wall". One young constable set up a boxing ring and taught five Aboriginal boys to box - including one who has since applied to become a police officer - only to be called a paedophile by others in the town.

"There's a lot of hatred and anger in the community," Neaves says. "But we keep trying to extend the hand of friendship where we can."

Others have accused the community of turning on itself.

An elder, Clare Smith of the Alice Edwards Village, said her people had been paying more than $160 a week rent to the Nulla Nulla Local Aboriginal Land Council yet have received next to no housing maintenance in return.

There have been court battles over unpaid rents, claims of corruption and threats of eviction.

The bitter in-fighting among Aborigines in Bourke has left the village flailing in Third World conditions, with mice infestations, brown snakes breeding in the roofs, electric shocks coming out of the walls and disintegrating fibro walls possibly riddled with asbestos.

"We get treated like the lowest animals on earth here," Mrs Smith said. "You wouldn't even treat a dog like that. You would give a dog a feed."

Astonishingly, there are more than 50 organisations run by the state, federal or community in Bourke that receive millions of taxpayer dollars each year to address the town's problems.

A report released by the Ombudsman on Thursday found most were ineffective and lacked co-ordination.

A community member and child protection advocate Joan Dickson said most programs were formulated for Aboriginal people rather than with them, and were doomed to fail.

"Services are too frightened to integrate because regional directors and people above them want to retain their empires," she said.

State, federal and local governments have dismally failed the town of Bourke. Yet so has the town itself.

"I couldn't say there are leaders in Bourke because there are no role models," said a local foster mother, Lillian Lucas, 35. "We're a town that is so divided. We're not getting anywhere and I'm at the stage where I just want to leave."

The children at the Alice Edwards Village still have big dreams. Ernest wants to be a rugby league player; another, Ashley, dotes on his three-month old son, Zade.

They have grown up with an innate connection to the land and the chairman of the Bourke Aboriginal Community Working Party, Alistair Ferguson, said returning some of it would go a long way to helping young people.

One community member, who wished to remain anonymous, said the only way forward for Bourke was to start afresh with new approaches.

"I wouldn't live anywhere else than Bourke," she says.

"But as a group we just have to come back together and find a new place to start."