Two residents who contacted the National Indigenous Times last night said the man had been seen making several sales of the t-shirts outside the council chambers. After complaining to council officers they were told no by-laws were being broken because the sign advertising the vehicle was situated inside - not outside - the vehicle.
One of the residents who complained (and requested anonymity) said: “The fact he was sitting out the front of the council building, probably within view of many security and CCTV cameras… I think it’s pretty brazen.
“By doing it in front of council he’s trying to assert some sort of power. He’s trying to say that he has immunity to spread hate around town.”
The residents told NIT that they also complained to local police but officers declined to take any action. Calls to the Northern Territory government also fell on deaf ears.
A spokesperson for NT Police this morning confirmed officers had received one complaint, but further comment was unavailable at the time of press. Alice Springs Police are, however, investigating the matter and trying to determine what laws, if any, Red may have broken, a spokesperson said.
We didn’t, however, have much trouble getting comment from the seller of the t-shirts.
Last night, NIT phoned the number in the ad. The owner of the vehicle is a local man in his late 40s. He identified himself only by his nickname, ‘Red’.
In a lengthy interview, Red unleashed a torrent of racial abuse, after initially claiming that the t-shirts and caps weren’t for sale.
“I’m not selling the t-shirts, I’m giving them to people who want them,” Red said. But when told NIT had photographs of the advertising signs in Red’s car, he replied, “You’re just some white c-nt who’s a f-cking n-gger lover.”
Red claimed the shirts were popular among local residents - even police had shelled out the $25.
“I’ve sold them to police…. I’ve sold them to nurses, school teachers…. No c-nt has ever come up to me and said nothing about it. I wear my shirts and hats everywhere I go,” he said.
He declined to say how many local police had bought his merchandise.
“What do you think, I’m f-cking stupid? I’m not telling you that. It’s just a number.”
He also claimed that the merchandise was not a response to the death of Mr Ryder and that he had been distributing them for a year.
“It’s got nothing to do with that sh-t. It’s just my way to sticking it up the black c-nts. It’s not illegal, I’ve sold to cops,” he said.
However, one local resident contacted by the National Indigenous Times said the vehicle was well known around Alice Springs, and the sign advertising the shirts had only appeared since the death of Mr Ryder.
Red did concede, however, that the bashing death of Mr Ryder was “going too far”.
“I don’t condone what they done to him at all. No c-nts should get killed, black or white. That’s going too far. [But] if they’d just actually touched him up….”
Red said the Alice Springs community was angry at the death of a white man allegedly bashed to death by several Aboriginal men earlier this year. He said he had grown up in the central Australian town and that Aboriginal people were the source of all the problems.
“[Aboriginal people] couldn’t even invent the f-cking wheel,” he said. “I’ve had enough sh-t from c-ons and n-gger lovers and c-nts coming into town who are not local.
“Go see the f-cking c-on camps, the c-on creeks. There’s a f-cking bottle shop across the road from the b-ong camp.
Another major problem was that the black people in town weren’t even ‘real c-ons’.
“A lot of the c-nts in town are mongrels. Their mum f-cked a g-n way back. Some dumb white g-n jockey c-nt rooting a n-gger… it comes out a half caste. It’s a f-cking mongrel,” he said.
He pointed to the fact jails in the Territory were full of black criminals as proof that Aboriginal people were the cause of Alice Springs’ problems.
“… 80 percent inside were f-cking n-ggers for doing shit,” he said, later conceding that he knew because he’d “done time… for flogging the f-ck out of some c-ons”.
Red said that “n-gger lover d-ckhead lawyers and reporters” only made the problem worse because they defended Aboriginal people.
Asked if he had any solutions for Alice Springs’ problems, Red was initially silent. He replied: “Take all the c-on camps out of town, put ‘em back out in the bush. They’re bludging f-cking leeches. We’ve gotta build more fences… get better security.”
A spokesperson for Alice Springs Town Council this morning told NIT that the council was unable to act because there had had been no indication “paraphernalia” was being sold. Instead, council was advised that a singlet with offensive material was visible from the outside of the vehicle.
At the time of press, the council was unable to explain why local residents had yesterday been given detailed information from council officers about by-laws relating to advertising being displayed on the inside of the vehicle.
