Federal senator and Shadow Indigenous Australians Minister Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has called for a federal response following serious incidents in Alice Springs on Tuesday.

Five men were arrested in relation to the incidents that saw a hotel attacked amid increasing tensions in the NT.

“Whether it’s a riot squad, or the presence of ADF [Australian Defence Force personnel] on our streets for some time until the people of Alice Springs can get to a point where they feel safe,” Ms Price said.

She added the NT government had failed young Indigenous children in the Northern Territory.

“This is years of policy failures in terms of our most vulnerable kids who have been left in utter dysfunction, to end up on a direct path to incarceration or death,” she said.

“We have not been able to address these issues with any real honesty or integrity to treat Indigenous children like other Australian citizens.”

Alice Springs Mayor Matt Paterson described the chaos, which NT Police says involved about 150 people.

NT Chief Minister Eva Lawler rejected calls for a federal response.

“We haven’t [lost control] and the police are doing a great job. We saw that they were able to disperse the crowd. They have had Aboriginal liaison officers talking to the family members [about the incidents],” she said.

“Skills for federal police are very different to the skills [that] you need for police on the ground … we can ramp up and have additional police in Alice Springs.”

The incidents happened after a funeral for a teenager who died when an allegedly stolen car carrying nine people crashed two weeks ago.