First published in The Australian

DEFIANCE, relief and uncertainty were in evidence in the town camps of Alice Springs yesterday as the implications of the Rudd Government's plan to compulsorily acquire the camps began to sink in.

Residents of one of the camps, Ilpeye Ilpeye, which has broken away from the Tangentyere Council, said the council's refusal to agree to a greatly increased $125 million package offered by the commonwealth was foolish.

The money is for building houses, roads, kerbing and street lighting, and for beginning a transformation towards creating normal suburbs, with normal services. "We've broken from Tangentyere and it feels good," said Ilpeye Ilpeye resident Cheryl Stirling. "They have never done anything for us, and now I just want to make the camp better for my family."

Ilpeye Ilpeye said it would like to talk directly to Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin about what she could offer them.

Brian Stirling, chairman of the Lhere Artepe Aboriginal Corporation, a native title group, said people could no longer sit around waiting while Tangentyere let deadlines pass.

"For all these years, they haven't run the service properly on the camps. The families have just had enough."

In the Hidden Valley camp, Mark Lockyer said Tangentyere had failed his 60-year-old wheelchair-bound mother and other elders such as Johnny Brown. "They've neglected the camps and they've neglected the people who live in tin sheds," said Mr Lockyer, who no longer lives in a camp but grew up in them.

Mr Lockyer said Tangentyere had controlled the camps for so long that people like his mother believed they would be cast adrift without the organisation.

"It terrifies people by telling them they're going to be forced off the camps. That's not going to happen. People are just confused. They haven't been informed properly by Tangentyere."

Tangentyere acts as an umbrella group for 15 of the 18 town camps that Ms Macklin said on Sunday would be compulsorily acquired if Tangentyere didn't agree to the terms of her package, which involves $100 million for camp infrastructure and $25 million for health services.

Of the other three camps, one is already outside Tangentyere's control and another two, White Gate and Namatjira, are not official town camps but permanent drinking holes with improvised shelters located on vacant crown land.

Tangentyere wants to retain control of town camp housing, acting as a landlord that manages tenants and decides who is allocated housing.

This has been the main sticking point in negotiations, with the Government insisting that Territory Housing control all housing for a minimum three-year period.

Tangentyere said yesterday its role had been misrepresented in the media and by Ms Macklin, saying it supported tenancy reform but wanted "community housing reform" rather than public housing reform.

"She said housing allocations were not based on need, and they are. She said we don't collect rent off town-camp residents - they do pay rent; we collect rent from all of the 204 houses in the camps," said Tangentyere spokesman, David Donald.

Barbara Shaw, a former member of the Tangentyere executive and a defiant anti-interventionist, believes the Government is intent on stealing town camp land.

Ms Shaw said Tangentyere had copped the blame for the violence and crime in the town camps, but disputed that levels of suffering were high.

"People choose to live outside their homes around the fireplace because that's what they know. People choose to have other families in their homes because Aborigines are family-oriented and we look after each other."