The Northern Territory government wants Australia to believe it's up to the job of delivering and overseeing the strictest alcohol regime in the nation.
After weeks of resistance, Territory Labor has agreed to reimpose takeaway alcohol bans in Aboriginal communities that were previously subject to Intervention-era restrictions under federal law.
NT Chief Minister Natasha Fyles has pledged that, with urgency, her government will introduce and pass legislation next week to temporarily restore the bans.
But she has been unwilling to concede that any mistakes were made when the bans lapsed in July last year, in a process widely now considered rushed and mishandled.
There were warnings and criticism from Aboriginal health organisations, unions, political opponents and residents in towns like Alice Springs.
They said there was too little consultation, too little in the way of support for communities transitioning out of the bans and that governments were slow to act when the consequences were becoming clear.
The report commissioned by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese during his recent dash to Alice confirmed what was already being reported.
They were already heading up, but alcohol-related assaults in Alice Springs jumped 79 per cent in the year to last November, compared to 2019.
There was a 96 per cent increase in already sky-high numbers of alcohol-involved incidents of domestic violence.
Presentations to the Alice Springs emergency department are up 50 per cent, with break-ins and property crime ballooning too.
Under the glare of the national spotlight, Ms Fyles has been asked repeatedly if it was a mistake to require dry communities to opt-in to ongoing restrictions instead of opting-out over a transition period.
She's been asked if she acknowledges there was no proper support put in place, that the change threw fuel on the crime crisis in Alice Springs.
She's been asked if she agrees that a backflip is a backflip.
"Hindsight is a wonderful thing," Ms Fyles said last week.
Even the prime minister, who was newly in power in Canberra when the bans lapsed, could acknowledge that both stripes and tiers of government had messed up.
"All governments could have done better over a long period of time on all of these issues," Mr Albanese told parliament.
But not the territory leader.
This is a government that has introduced other, nation-leading alcohol reforms, like Australia's first alcohol floor price.
Now, it faces a trust deficit by some in Canberra's Parliament House chambers – including Labor party counterparts – who believe it did not act fast or dextrously enough.
"There has been enormous pressure applied … to ensure that the Northern Territory government does what we know they are capable of doing within the NT Legislative Assembly," Senator Malarndirri McCarthy told the Senate on Wednesday.
"Did they do it too late, have they been real slow? Well I think we can all answer that. But [now] they're doing it."
Not everybody believes that they'll do it properly.
Federal Coalition Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has introduced a private members bill aimed at restoring federal alcohol bans in the Northern Territory.
Senator Price said the NT government "can't be trusted" to take full responsibility for circumstances on the ground and her bill would provide an opportunity for federal oversight.
She's long harboured a deep distrust of the Fyles government — a point she's made multiple times over various issues.
Ms Fyles has repeatedly rebuffed suggestions her government erred in its handling of this issue.
She's repeated the same phrases over and over, "answering" questions that no one has asked — that "alcohol is a legal product", that her government has been "agile", and that the former Coalition government is the one to blame.
However, faced against the bare facts, the track record of the NT government on this issue is shaky.
Senator Price says it's now hard to trust Ms Fyles' government to oversee one of Australia's most delicate social policy changes, and advance the prospects of part of the nation's most disadvantaged populations.
There's also the question over whether the residents in the impacted communities and town camps will trust the NT government to deliver these new bans.
After years of Commonwealth Intervention policies controlling their lives, and offering little in the way of progress for their communities, should anyone be surprised if they don't trust governments?
The NT government has not yet proven itself up to the challenge of bettering entrenched Indigenous disadvantage.
And there's so far been more than 40 years of self-government for the NT to try to prove that it can.
Ms Fyles needs to prove to the public that her government is up for it.
She could start by acknowledging the mistakes that were made in the past.