Simplistic Messages
It is a crying shame that views aired by Claire Smith highlighting the Howard Government's fundamentally flawed response to the indigenous child health crisis are not shared by our present Government. Instead, we have witnessed a bunch of bureaucrats marching into remote indigenous communities to champion the Government's simplistic key messages surrounding this issue: that children must be saved from further abuse and that this plan is a fail-safe way to achieve this; that there is only one legal system relevant in an Australian context, and that indigenous Australians living in remote communities need to learn how to live like "the rest of us".
Three themes sorely lacking from the Government's response to the Little Children are Sacred report: empowerment, community consultation, respect. Let us hope that after the election, someone like Smith can advise government on the way forward, with a depth of knowledge gleaned after years working within indigenous communities. If only Mal Brough also gained this level of understanding after his time spent in Mutitjulu before recommending such a radical, grossly short-sighted and counterproductive response.
Sara McMillan, Balaclava
See: The Age
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