{"id":399695,"date":"2025-11-23T19:00:23","date_gmt":"2025-11-23T19:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/399695\/"},"modified":"2025-11-23T19:00:23","modified_gmt":"2025-11-23T19:00:23","slug":"shes-a-shrewd-green-meet-alice-springs-new-mayor-determined-to-rewrite-the-story-of-her-beloved-home-town-alice-springs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/399695\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018She\u2019s a shrewd Green\u2019: meet Alice Springs\u2019 new mayor, determined to rewrite the story of her beloved home town | Alice Springs"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Asta Hill drives into Alice Springs after swimming in one of the waterholes that dot the red centre, she is still struck by the shades of blue and purple in the Macdonnell Ranges that wet the brushtrokes of Albert Namatjira<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a reason that many of the most prolific artists in the world are from this Country \u2013 we have such an incredibly beautiful palette that they can work with,\u201d Hill says.<\/p>\n

In September, the criminal defence lawyer and human rights advocate became the first Greens-backed mayor of Mparntwe\/Alice Springs, where she grew up and is now raising two young children.<\/p>\n

Entering the fold of the town, Hill describes a gritty and raw place, alive with an energy that drew her home almost a decade ago after stints studying and working elsewhere \u2013 including as a legal intern at The Hague and postgraduate law student in New York.<\/p>\n

The town is a meeting place for Arrernte and other First Nations people from across the Northern Territory<\/a>, she says, and home to settler descendants as well as growing multicultural communities, who now make up about one-third of its population.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt truly is the most beautiful place to live,\u201d Hill says.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have this panoply of languages, cultures and traditions \u2026 and we\u2019re all living together in really close proximity to one another.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018It truly is the most beautiful place to live,\u2019 says new mayor Asta Hill of the town she grew up in. Photograph: Rhett Hammerton\/The GuardianDiffusing the \u2018crime panic\u2019<\/p>\n

For a town of fewer than 30,000 people, Alice exerts a disproportionately powerful hold over the Australian psyche.<\/p>\n

But the portrait Hill paints jars with that splashed on to screens across the country last year when the Territory government declared an emergency and enforced a youth curfew.<\/p>\n

This was an Alice of dysfunction and dystopia, depicted in footage of cars being pelted with rocks, stores ransacked, streets roamed at night by young, predominately Indigenous kids and stalked by white vigilantes. An Alice that became a national flashpoint to which the prime minister was drawn to announce alcohol restrictions. An Alice where the previous mayor called on the army or federal police<\/a> to intervene.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think, by and large, portrayals of our town really distort the reality,\u201d Hill says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is really disempowering, and I say that as a person who is extremely privileged and doesn\u2019t bear the brunt of the policy decisions that often flow from those distorted portrayals.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bear the brunt she may not, but the 37-year-old has spent a career dealing with the fallout of crime and punishment. For the better part of the last decade, Hill worked in Legal Aid NT, including years in Indigenous outreach, and as a criminal lawyer at the Central Australian Women\u2019s Legal Service. She has skin in the game.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want \u2013 alongside this town and all of its beautiful diversity \u2013 to take back some power in writing the story of this town and telling the story of this town,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was really the motivation for me in running for mayor.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the election on 23 August, Hill scored the highest primary vote of seven candidates, and edged out her main rival, an independent formerly of the Country Liberal party and Palmer United party, with 50.3% of the vote after preference-counting was completed on 5 September.<\/p>\n

The Greens party, historically, hasn\u2019t ran community safety campaigns and I sought to change that<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Asta Hill<\/p>\n

Beyond a slogan of \u201cchanging the story\u201d of Alice Springs, Hill\u2019s first campaign priority was to stop young Aboriginal people being \u201cused to platform political agendas\u201d and instead to make \u201cyoung people feel safe and welcomed in public spaces\u201d.<\/p>\n

So it is perhaps easy to interpret her election as a repudiation of the CLP Territory government\u2019s tough-on-crime agenda \u2013 a crackdown that has included lowering the age of criminal responsibility to 10, reintroducing spit hoods and pushed the holding capacity of prisons to breaking point in a place that has one of the highest incarceration rates on Earth<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But Hill acknowledges that the \u201cvast majority of people\u201d she met on the campaign trail \u201cexpressed concerns about community safety\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Greens party, historically, hasn\u2019t ran community safety campaigns and I sought to change that \u2026 I felt compelled to show leadership in the way that we talk about that issue, and to embed fundamental human rights into that conversation, as well as evidenced-based solutions to community safety concerns.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is a big difference, Hill says, between \u201cmeeting communities where they are at, hearing them, validating their concerns \u2013 and, on the other hand, fuelling a crime panic\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I was going into people\u2019s homes and connecting with their experience, but offering something different \u2013 and I really think that resonated with a lot of people.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2018A place of opportunity\u2019<\/p>\n

The former Charles Darwin University pro-vice-chancellor Don Zoellner says focusing on crime is not enough to explain Hill\u2019s election. An Alice Springs resident for almost 35 years until retiring to Adelaide a few weeks ago, the former high school principal and public policy analyst reckons the town\u2019s voters have a clear distinction between the tiers of government. They know the town council \u201cis not going to solve the crime problem\u201d.<\/p>\n

Zoellner believes Hill\u2019s election reflects in part the town\u2019s \u201cquite dramatically\u201d changing demographics. In the heyday of the CLP during the 1980s and 90s, he says, the town\u2019s economy was run by small business, the owners of which formed the bedrock of conservative politics. Today, he says, Alice is a regional centre for health and community service providers, often tertiary-educated people and more inclined towards progressive politics.<\/p>\n

[Asta\u2019s election] just reflects how bloody-mindedly independent Alice Springs is<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Don Zoellner<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of us old farts are leaving or dying,\u201d he says. \u201cThere is a new generation of younger people coming in, who see this town as a place of opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Zoellner also sees continuity in Hill. The town has a long history of backing independent politicians who champion its identity.<\/p>\n

Hill\u2019s local bona fides are unquestioned \u2013 she gave birth to her first child in her own childhood house, and now lives just around the corner. Most people who have spent significant time in the town have an Asta Hill connection \u2013 Zoellner\u2019s daughter went to school with her.<\/p>\n

\u201cAsta\u2019s election may look a bit way out there, in suggesting a big change in the place, but in another way, it just reflects how bloody-mindedly independent Alice Springs is,\u201d Zoellner says.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn that way, it is not surprising that someone who was advocating for the town, as Asta did [was successful].\u201d<\/p>\n

Zoellner\u2019s former CDU colleague, Alice Springs-based emeritus professor Rolf Gerritsen, says Hill also brought the \u201cformidable organisation\u201d of the Greens to bear.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are really the only party [in town] that is organised on a grassroots basis,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Hill says she wants to address Alice Springs\u2019 childcare shortages and make \u2018young people feel safe and welcomed in public spaces\u2019. Photograph: Rhett Hammerton\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

Hill ran in the 2024 Territory election for the Alice Springs-based seat of Braitling, where she came a comfortable second after winning 38.8% of the primary vote. That effort flowed seamlessly into Hill\u2019s bid for local council.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the last two territory elections, and in the last mayoral election, I have only been door-knocked by Green canvassers,\u201d Gerritsen says.<\/p>\n

Yet while reaping the benefit of the party affiliation, and repeatedly saying she wholeheartedly believed in and was proud of the Greens\u2019 policy, Hill stressed her independence throughout her bid for mayor.<\/p>\n

Asked at the candidates\u2019 debate by the outgoing mayor what her policy was on holding citizenship ceremonies on 26 January, Hill said it was \u201cpremature\u201d to answer as she needed to have a \u201cconversation\u201d with the community first. But if she needed to compromise or deviate from Greens policy, she would, she said.<\/p>\n

When all candidates were asked for their one big idea to change the town, it was Hill\u2019s response that struck a nerve. She would \u201cdeal with our chronic childcare shortages\u201d, Hill said, outlining her own experience.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s a shrewd Green,\u201d Gerritsen says.<\/p>\n

Because while Alice Springs might \u201cembody the Australian fantasy of the frontier\u201d, its residents want a local politician to address problems of the day-to-day.<\/p>\n

Like most Australians, he says, they \u201clive in suburbs and whinge about potholes\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Asta Hill drives into Alice Springs after swimming in one of the waterholes that dot the red…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":399696,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4740,50],"class_list":{"0":"post-399695","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-australia","9":"tag-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115600557576561859","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=399695"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399695\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/399696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}