The Northern Territory government will be to blame when there is an increase in the number of homeless people on the streets of the NT, a leading federal minister has said.
In an op-ed published in National Indigenous Times on Sunday, Minister for Indigenous Australians Malarndirri McCarthy again criticised the Territory government for closing the 400-bed YiSSA short-stay accommodation facility — Darwin's largest homeless shelter.
"YiSSA has given refuge to thousands of people over its lifetime. It was a safe facility with 24-hour security, private rooms and the offer of three meals a day," Senator McCarthy wrote. "To be clear, residents paid per night to be there, and it was open to Indigenous and non-Indigenous residents.
"It was my view that the vital role this facility played meant it could not be closed without a replacement and I was willing to have the Commonwealth contribute to keep it open."
The CLP Government announced in July that the YiSSA facility — run by the Yilli Rreung Housing Aboriginal Corporation — would close after it failed to reach an agreement with Ausco, which owns the demountables on the Crown land site.
The centre housed up to 400 residents, mainly Aboriginal people, including domestic violence survivors and people from remote communities who needed access to life-saving medical treatment such as kidney dialysis.
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Last week, YiSSA officially closed, with vulnerable Territorians who lived at the facility bussed to a new site in Batchelor, 100km south of Darwin. The federal government said the financial outlay would be close to $18 million.
The NT Government says dialysis patients from YiSSA would not move to Batchelor, which lacks the healthcare facilities available in Darwin.
Senator McCarthy described the decision as a "shocking turn", while Batchelor residents were "rightly furious at the lack of consultation".
"I spoke to a grandmother who was the sole carer for her grandchildren. Her daughter, their mother, had died by suicide, and she was left with nowhere to go and sought refuge at YiSSA," the Minister wrote.
"She told me the children were attending school and YiSSA gave them some stability and normality in their lives, allowing them to get an education."
Senator McCarthy added, "Another woman pointed to a deep scar on her forehead and said, ' A bad man did this to me.'"
YiSSA resident Tilathia Gore, 38, told AAP outside the centre last week that she had no choice but to take the bus to Batchelor.
"We're getting shipped out against our own will and we're hearing the facility out there is not even done up properly," she said.
"We've got kids, old ladies coming out with us, if anyone gets sick, it's going to take forever for an ambulance to get out there. It's sad, it's heartbreaking, we've got everything here in Darwin for us. Going out there, it's going to be hard."
The closure of YiSSA has prompted condemnation from Aboriginal leaders, who have raised concerns about the lack of consultation and where vulnerable people — many from remote communities — will go.
Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro last week claimed some YiSSA residents "have been working" or "have a home in a community".
"They're just not at it now," she told Darwin's Mix 104.9 "Government's not in the business of providing holiday accommodation for people...There's homelessness and homelessness, and we need to be talking about genuinely people who do not have a home and need a roof."
The Northern Territory has the highest rate of homelessness in the country, at almost 12 times the national average. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people make up 87 per cent of the Territory's homeless population.
The federal government offered up to $3.5 million to the NT Government to help purchase the facility from Ausco, with the NT Government contributing another $3 million. The offer was conditional on the facility being run by Yilli Rreung — a "well-respected and highly effective Aboriginal community-controlled organisation that had been operating the facility for years".
"This is consistent with the National Agreement on Closing the Gap Priority Reforms: that governments should be increasing services delivered by Aboriginal community-controlled organisations," Senator McCarthy wrote.
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The NT Government rejected the offer, with Minister for Children and Families Robyn Cahill indicating the Commonwealth's funding conditions were unacceptable to her government.
Senator McCarthy wrote that the Commonwealth submitted a counter-offer under which the modular accommodation blocks would be "wholly owned by the NT government", while the Commonwealth would still contribute $3.5 million.
"Until now, these negotiations had been happening in private," the Minister wrote. "It was then that Ms Cahill and the Chief Minister took to the airwaves. First, the Chief Minister dismissed the offer as a waste of money. Then Ms Cahill called the funding conditions too much to accept."
She wrote that after YiSSA closed last week, only 23 people made the move to Batchelor, calling it a "scandalous waste of taxpayers' money".
"But the human cost is still unknown," Senator McCarthy wrote. "Those cast out of the facility with nowhere to go. Back to partners it is not safe to be with, or to remote communities without dialysis facilities."
The Minister argued the CLP's "cruel decision" would have a "devastating impact on the lives of so many in need".
"When we see more homeless people on our streets, we will know who put them there," she added.
