New blood needed in Indigenous body: former ATSIC chair
ABC News | 31 December 2007
A former Australian and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) chairman in Alice Springs says he wants to see more young people in the Federal Government's new Indigenous representative body.
Des Rogers was among those hand-picked by the former Howard government for the National Indigenous Council when it was set up three years ago, but was dumped because of his criminal record.
Mr Rogers says he will not be seeking selection in the new body to be named early next year.
"I think there's a lot more younger, articulate, intelligent and passionate people than me," he said.
"I think that what's needed is to grab some young people, and I think that was flawed in the ATSIC system as well.
"It was the same old people every year, or every three years, that put up their hand and [were] consequently re-elected. I think we need to give our young people a go now."
See: ABC News
Alcohol ID system to begin Feb: NT Govt
ABC News | 31 December 2007
The Northern Territory Government says it will begin rolling out the electronic ID system to Alice Springs bottle shops in February.
The system requires everyone who buys take-away alcohol to have their photo identification scanned.
It is designed to help enforce court orders and other measures like the one-cask-per-day limit in Alice Springs.
Alcohol Policy Minister Chris Burns says it is the next step in fighting the town's alcohol abuse problems.
"I told the reference group meeting that we'd be rolling that out in February," he said.
"There's a lot of training and public education that has to go on there, as well as establishing the system to make sure that it's operating effectively."
See: ABC News
Health service to stay open, intervention nurse hired
ABC News | 31 December 2007
A nurse previously deployed as part of the Commonwealth Indigenous intervention has returned to the Northern Territory to relieve a staffing shortage at the Aboriginal community of Kintore.
The Pintubi Health Service was facing closure over the Christmas-New Year period because it had only one nurse and no doctor.
Service administrator Jeff Hulcombe says contingencies have been made through the Emergency Response Taskforce, allowing it to stay open.
"We managed to get a nurse who was involved in the original health checks, not here but in the Territory to come here for that two week period from Christmas to over the New Year," he said.
"We've managed to line up a doctor but that's through our own efforts, and we've managed to secure a nurse through a recruiting agency from early January on."
See: ABC News
17 arrested over Wadeye Xmas riots
ABC News | 30 December 2007
Northern Territory Police say 17 people have now been arrested over Christmas Day riots in the Indigenous community of Wadeye, south-west of Darwin.
Hundreds of men armed with knives, machetes and spears took to the streets after a family dispute boiled over.
Extra police were sent to the community to help deal with the large number of people involved in the street battle and five of those apprehended remain in custody.
Police say more arrests are likely.
See: ABC News
Phone fault raises safety concerns in remote community
ABC News | 28 December 2007
Another Central Australian Aboriginal community says safety has been compromised because phone services have been down.
The Pintubi Health Service at Kintore in the Northern Territory, near the border with Western Australia, says technicians arrived in the community to fix a fault in the line today.
The communities of Santa Teresa, Titjikala and Finke also had phone problems prior to Christmas.
Pintubi Health Service administrator Jeff Hulcombe says he was originally told the problem could not be fixed until next week.
"But I asked them to upgrade it because we have the issue of while we don't have a doctor here, we have to communicate with district medical officers which requires them to call back to us, same with the RFDS [Royal Flying Doctor Service]," he said.
"If we can't do that in emergency situation, then we've got real issues."
A Telstra spokeswoman says the company recommends remote communities have a satellite phone as a back-up in emergencies.
See: ABC News
Wadeye Xmas riots 'shows police numbers need boosting'
ABC News | 28 December 2007
The Northern Territory Police Association says the Federal Government's intervention in Indigenous communities has failed to boost the number of police officers in the troubled community of Wadeye.
Amateur footage taken on Christmas Day shows hundreds of people armed with machetes, spears and hammers fighting in the streets.
The man who filmed the violence says it lasted for four days and only stopped yesterday when one of the town's six police officers called a meeting with community leaders.
Police Association spokesman Vince Kelly says police resources at Wadeye are still being neglected, despite the intervention.
"In terms of the intervention itself, the Northern Territory Government and the Federal Government need to sit down and commit themselves to increasing the size of the police force," he said.
"[They need to ensure] the police force has the capacity to police not just Port Keats to the level that is required, but every other community in the Territory where there's police situated."
See: ABC News
Independent review for Alice booze restrictions
ABC News | 28 December 2007
Alcohol restrictions in Alice Springs are to be independently reviewed.
The town has some of the tightest alcohol controls in Australia, including a ban on drinking in public, restrictions on certain products and limited hours for take-away sales.
The latest Licensing Commission figures show Central Australians drank more than 500,000 litres of pure alcohol last financial year.
Territory Alcohol Policy Minister Chris Burns that is 8 per cent less than in the previous 12 months.
"That shows that the strategies that have been employed in Alice Springs over the last 12 to 18 months are working," he said.
"We are having an independent evaluation commissioned to actually look in detail at that, it is pleasing but there's more to do," he said.
See: ABC News
Police move to curb Christmas violence in Wadeye
ABC News | 27 December 2007
Northern Territory police have met with community leaders in Wadeye, about 250 kilometres south-west of Darwin, in an effort to stop violence in the town.
A resident, who does not want to be named for safety reasons, has told the ABC that hundreds of people from the "Judas Priest" and "Evil Warriors" gangs took to the streets of Wadeye this week armed with rocks, spears and iron bars.
"[It] happened Christmas Day, Christmas afternoon and then again on Boxing Day," the person said.
The officer in charge at Wadeye, Sergeant Shane Taylor, says police were called to one fight that broke out near the local store yesterday, but says when they arrived, all the people involved ran away.
He says authorities then called a meeting with community elders yesterday to stop the fighting and says calm has been restored to the community.
Police say no one has been charged over the incident.
Government focus
The NT Member for Daly, Robert Knight, says government plans to shift Indigenous groups out of Wadeye back to their own country will curb community violence.
Mr Knight says the community has been troubled since its establishment in the 1930s when different Indigenous groups were brought to the town to live together.
He says this week's violence in Wadeye does not signal a failing in government initiatives.
He says the NT Government is focusing on moving the different Indigenous groups that live in Wadeye out to their own country, but says that will take some time.
"Moving people back out on country means you've got to provide accommodation, year round access and that's starting to happen," he said.
"We've got the upgrading of the Port Keats Road and the upgrading of other roads in the area and some more of housing accommodation going out there so that's going to take a little bit of time.
"But it is underway and it needs to be focused on and continued upon."
He says most people in the 2,500 strong community are helping government to reach that goal.
"There's a lot of people down there trying very, very hard to make things work. There's good people down there and they're trying to get on with their lives," he said.
"It's just a small group as it usually is in most communities around Australia that causes the most trouble and gets most of the bad publicity but very good people down there trying very hard."
See: ABC News
Govt's Indigenous welfare plan 'racist'
ABC News | 27 December 2007
The Centre for Aboriginal Policy Research (CAPR) says the Commonwealth's welfare quarantines are racist and should not be applied in north Queensland.
It says the Commonwealth must start treating Indigenous people the way it treats other Australians.
Welfare quarantines were first introduced in the Northern Territory under the Commonwealth Indigenous intervention.
CAPR director Jon Altman says the reforms planned for Cape York in the state's far north are better than those implemented in Territory, but that they still fall well short of best practice.
He says the NT intervention legislation is highly discriminatory but has been made exempt from the Racial Discrimination Act.
Mr Altman says the reforms are racist and will not fix dysfunction in Indigenous communities.
"What needs to be put in place are measures that accord with Indigenous aspirations that most importantly have provision of economic development opportunity to remote Indigenous Australians that are comparable to what are delivered to non-Indigenous Australians," he said.
"We've just got to start treating Indigenous people equitably as Australian citizens."
He says problems with Indigenous communities cannot be fixed with legislation that ignores human rights.
"Measures that contravene the Racial Discrimination Act are not acceptable, both domestically in terms of treating Indigenous people differently to non-Indigenous people, but also in terms of Australia's human right international obligations," he said.
See: ABC News
Indigenous plan needs 'huge investment' from COAG
ABC News | 27 December 2007
A research group on Aboriginal policy says a Council of Australian Governments (COAG) commitment to improve Indigenous educational outcomes will not succeed as an isolated initiative.
The COAG meeting in Melbourne last week agreed to halve the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous outcomes in 10 years.
Jon Altman from the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research says now that COAG has committed to the plan, it must be held accountable.
But he says better outcomes will not be achieved without massive investment in Indigenous housing and health.
"We can't expect Indigenous Australians facing deep backlogs and deep legacies from the past to be successful if they're not given the support that other Australians are [given] as citizens," he said.
Mr Altman agrees it is a challenge but says COAG must follow through.
"Historically we've got to be aware that we've set such targets before in Australia," he said.
"I think that it's very important to set targets but I think the challenge for governments is to be realistic about what is achievable and also to be realistic about the sorts of investments and the sorts of policy frameworks you need to meet targets once you set them."
A recent report into Indigenous well-being showed countries like New Zealand, America and Canada out-rated Australia in improvements to Aboriginal outcomes between 1990 and 2000.
Australia was highlighted as the only country on the list to have widened the gap between its Indigenous and non-Indigenous groups.
The report focused on improvements in indigenous health, education and economics.
See: ABC News
NT plans more alcohol management strategies
ABC News | 27 December 2007
The Northern Territory's Alcohol Policy Minister, Chris Burns, says further measures are needed to reduce drinking rates.
NT residents drank 80,000 more litres of pure alcohol equivalent in the last financial year than they did during the previous 12 months.
In the last six years, pure alcohol consumption increased the most in the East Arnhem and Katherine regions.
Central Australia was the only region to buck the trend in the last financial year, with 48,000 fewer litres of pure alcohol consumed.
Mr Burns says although that figure shows alcohol restrictions in Alice Springs are working, the territory-wide increase in drinking is of concern.
"Particularly when the excessive consumption of alcohol is at the root cause of a lot of the violence and anti-social behaviour we experience in the Territory," he said.
"I think we need to have a reduction in alcohol consumption or excessive alcohol consumption.
"There's no doubt about that and as a Government, we're rolling out alcohol management plans across the Territory region by region to address the issue."
Extended restrictions
The People's Alcohol Action Coalition says measures to reduce alcohol sales in Alice Springs need to be extended to other parts of the Territory.
Dr John Boffa from the People's Alcohol Action Coalition says the Commonwealth intervention has not addressed the issue and the NT Government has to act.
"To make this data publicly available makes everybody accountable and clearly they couldn't have sat on this data and not done something in the Katherine region and they won't be able to sit on this data and not do something in the East Arnhem region," he said.
"It's clearly very alarming and I think now that it's available, that's a sign of increased commitment."
See: ABC News
Wadeye police numbers 'neglected', despite intervention
ABC News | 27 December 2007
The Northern Territory Police Association says the Commonwealth intervention has failed to boost the number of officers in the troubled Top End community of Wadeye.
Amateur footage taken in the community on Christmas day shows hundreds of people armed with machetes, spears and hammers, fighting in the streets.
The man who filmed the violence says it lasted for four days and only stopped yesterday when one of the town's six police officers called a meeting with community leaders.
Police Association spokesman Vince Kelly says police resources at Wadeye are still being neglected, despite the Commonwealth intervention.
"In terms of the intervention itself, the Northern Territory Government and the Federal Government need to sit down and commit themselves to increasing the size of the police force, ensuring that police force has the capacity to police not just Port Keats to the level that it's required, but every other community in the NT where there's police situated," he said.
Territory Police have described the violence as a skirmish and say three people have been arrested.
The Superintendent responsible for Wadeye, Colin Smith, says he does not believe the community needs more police.
He says footage of the recent violence might distress some people, but that the officers had it under control.
"Most of the time we have more than enough police to deal with the day to day policing of Wadeye," he said.
"It's just when these riots get out of control is when we do require police, and we're very quick to send extra police in there."
See: ABC News
The role of porn in outback sex case
Stuff.co.nz | 21 December 2007
In the mid 1990s, Peter Danaja noticed life was changing at Maningrida, an Aboriginal community east of Darwin.
Already the children had stopped listening to their parents. They were talking of sex, ribbing each other with dirty jokes, turning their backs on ceremony and culture.
Mr Danaja, a senior community leader at Maningrida, says this coincided with the introduction of pornographic and violent movies.
Graphic sex scenes were also making their way on to commercial television stations and the years to come brought hardcore porn on pay TV.
Perhaps no one realised the impact this would have on young Aboriginal males at Maningrida.
"Nowadays kids rebel against us," Mr Danaja said in a letter read to the NT Supreme Court in Darwin this week during sentencing submissions for one of the more disturbing cases of child abuse in recent years.
An 11-year-old boy was attacked by two adults and three teenagers on three separate occasions at the coastal Arnhem Land community, between May and August last year.
During the screening of a pornographic DVD, the child was anally penetrated by both Cleaveon Cooper, then 18, and a 16-year-old before being fondled by a 15-year-old.
The juveniles cannot be named because of their ages at the time of the attacks.
Later than evening, the boy performed oral sex on Isiah Pascoe, then 19, while Cooper rubbed his penis in the area of the child's buttocks.
His 13-year-old friend - who had been laying on a mattress watching television - then attempted to penetrate the young boy.
On another occasion, possibly after police returned him to the community despite doctors finding he had gonorrhoea, the group went swimming at the Army Beach outside the town.
There he was sexually abused again by Cooper and the youngest offender.
In total the group pleaded guilty to eight sex offences, including sexual intercourse with a child under 16 and gross indecency.
A psychologist's report tendered to the court during sentencing submissions found all five offenders had a narrowly formed view of the world and lived in a community where overcrowding was rampant, particularly in the wet season, and there was "very little for young people to do".
They live in a remote corner of the territory and sometimes hunt and fish. Other times they are bored, with no jobs, easy drugs and limited schooling. English is spoken as a third or even fourth language and teenagers have little understanding of European ways nor the tools to make sense of it.
"A feeling of helplessness and frustration in the community. . . is quite palpable," the report said.
Justice Trevor Riley sentenced four of the group to a total of 32 months in prison. While acknowledging the role of pornography and other environmental factors in the lives of the offenders, he said: "These matters do not excuse or justify what took place".
The sentences ranged from 15 months for one attacker, to a good behaviour bond for another, and one month in juvenile detention for the youngest offender, who was less than two years older than his victim at the time of the attacks.
"They are each young men, they have each had a very basic formal education, their schooling has been sporadic and of little impact upon them," Justice Riley said.
"English is for each of them effectively a foreign language, they have limited understanding of European ways, they have been brought up in a remote location. . . and the psychologist regards each as having cognitive skills below their chronological age."
Justice Riley also questioned how and why pornographic material was so readily available to the group.
"The viewing of such material must provide impressionable young people with a distorted view of the world and what is not acceptable conduct," he said.
"How that (the porn) came to be there has not been explained, what impact that had upon the youthful offenders is not known to me. What cannot be doubted is that the playing of such material for young people is quite unacceptable and should not have occurred."
The case is reminiscent of those outlined in the Little Children are Sacred report, which prompted the Howard government's emergency intervention.
It found evidence of systemic child abuse fuelled by grog, pornography, poor education coupled with a breakdown in traditional values, cultural alienation and government neglect.
Child offenders, it said, were compelled to rape out of rage, confusion or despair. Their actions could also be traced back to a childhood sexualisation, where children as young as three were regularly exposed to graphic pornography.
The inquiry - which travelled 35,000km to 45 territory communities - made 97 recommendations, including a tightening of pornography laws.
"We found a lot of sexualised behaviour between children. Children acting out what they have either seen at home in overcrowded houses or through pornography being left around, magazines as well as DVDs as well as videos," said co-chair of the inquiry Pat Anderson.
"Everywhere we went, everyone complained. Both men and women complained about pornography."
Defence lawyers in the Maningrida case repeatedly pointed out their clients had a limited understanding of sex.
"When it came to matters of sex he was clueless, save that he watched porn. . . that was in essence his sex education," said Cooper's lawyer Peter Elliott.
Peggy Dwyer, who represented the youngest defendant, said: "He also spoke to me about mimicking what he saw in a DVD but not knowing really what was involved in sexual activity."
Outside the court, Mr Danaja spoke about the need for education, mentors and outside help.
"A lot of the kids are now. . . are starting to drift away from their responsibility to the cultural values that we have," he said.
See: Stuff.co.nz
Henderson backs timetable to close lifespan, education gaps
ABC News | 24 December 2007
The Northern Territory Government has supported the timetable for a federal plan to close the life expectancy gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.
Last week's Council of Australian Governments (COAG) meeting in Melbourne agreed to close the gap and halve the disparity in education within a decade.
In August this year, the Territory Government promised $286 million to close the gap within 20 years.
Chief Minister Paul Henderson says the Commonwealth's target is realistic.
"COAG have said within 10 years [governments will be] halving the gaps in terms of literacy and numeracy for Indigenous people," he said.
"The Territory Government has said we will close them completely over 20 years so I believe both programs are aligned together.
"I'd like to see them come in quicker but we've got to put those targets in place."
Hospital funding
Meanwhile, the Government says it is too early to know how much Commonwealth money the Territory will get to reduce elective surgery wait times.
At the COAG meeting, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd promised $50 million to drive down the wait times.
The funding is on top of $100 million announced in the election campaign.
Mr Henderson says the money will be distributed to states and territories next year.
"The Territory government will get our share of the $150 million, but we won't know what that is until the treasurers and the health ministers meet in January," he said.
"I welcome the extra commitment. It's going to make a difference here in the Northern Territory."
See: ABC News
Centrelink promises to explain welfare changes to Papunya
ABC News | 26 December 2007
Centrelink says it will return to a central Australian Aboriginal community in the new year to reassure residents about welfare changes.
Welfare quaranting began at Papunya less than a fortnight ago as part of the Commonwealth intervention in Northern Territory Aboriginal communities.
The council's vice president, Syd Anderson, says people do not understand the changes and are disappointed they have not been able to use quarantined money for Christmas shopping.
He says Centrelink staff explained the changes to people one-on-one when they should have used interpreters.
Centrelink manager Peter Doutre says interpreters are used when they are available.
He says Centrelink staff visited the community for six weeks around the time of the changes and will return early next year.
He says customers with questions about their income management arrangements should call the Centrelink Indigenous call centre in the meantime.
See: ABC News
Papunya faces 'bleak' Xmas amid welfare rules change
ABC News | 17 December 2007
Leaders in Papunya say the central Australian community is facing a bleak Christmas because people are confused about new welfare rules.
Income management was introduced in Papunya 11 days ago as part of the Commonwealth Indigenous intervention.
Papunya Council vice president Syd Anderson says residents have less welfare money this Christmas because they do not understand their work obligations under the new system.
He says it has put a dampener on the holidays.
"Last year we used to have people having their Christmas lights, decorations everywhere in the community," he said.
"Now this year it's real bleak, no Christmas enjoyment at all.
"People go to the shop expecting they are going to get quarantined money to do shopping and they come out with sad faces."
Centrelink staff were there when the new arrangements were introduced but Mr Anderson says people still do not properly understand how the new system works.
He says Centrelink staff must come back to explain their obligations.
"[They must] get interpretive people to explain ... slowly," he said.
"They just come in, they explain it real hard and get people to face one-to-one, but one-to-one people don't understand properly.
"They need interpreters on the side to help them out."
See: ABC News
Christmas Day violence erupts in Indigenous community
ABC News | 26 December 2007
Northern Territory Member for Daly Rob Knight says brewing tension in the Indigenous community of Wadeye, south-west of Darwin, erupted on Christmas Day.
Mr Knight says two gangs that rioted with spears through the town 18 months ago were also behind yesterday's disturbance.
He says there has been problems in the community since its establishment in the 1930s when different Indigenous groups were placed together by missionaries.
Mr Knight says that mix of people has a "pressure cooker" effect when the community is cut off from the rest of the Northern Territory during the wet season.
"It's a huge community and there's a lot of tensions this time of year with the roads starting to be cut off and lot of young people in the community," he said.
"About 18 months ago we had quite a bit of trouble down there and we had quite a bit of effort put in by the Northern Territory Government into finding a solution and that solution basically [is] getting people back onto their own countries."
Mr Knight says the violence is rife because people are coming off drugs and the community is isolated.
"People can't get out," he said.
"Not only the main roads but the secondary roads and tracks become soft and impassable so they can't get away from the community to go hunting or to just get away from the bubble that Port Keats sometimes becomes."
A resident in Wadeye, who does not want to be named, says the violence has been going on since Sunday.
He says police in the community are powerless.
"When you count people away on Christmas holidays and that, it doesn't do justice for the two, three or four police that are left here to control this happening every night," he said.
"Four days it has been going on and the police are totally burnt out."
The resident, a public servant, says hundreds of people have been throwing rocks, spears and iron bars since Sunday and the violence has reached crisis point.
"While everyone else in the country is enjoying a Christmas day, we are here in fear watching these people, these young punks in this community creating havoc," he said.
Before the latest incidents, the last outbreak of violence between the Judas Priest and Evil Warrior gangs was in October.
See: ABC News
'Urgent need' for alcohol reform in the NT
ABC News | 26 December 2007
The People's Alcohol Action Coalition says the latest alcohol sales figures highlight the urgent need for major reforms to reduce supply across the Northern Territory.
The Licensing Commission's latest figures show Territorians drank more than 3.1 million litres of pure alcohol last financial year, equivalent to 15 litres for every man, woman and child.
That is more than ever before, although there was a drop in Central Australia.
The Coalition's Dr John Boffa says more take-away licenses should be bought back and price benchmarks should be set to make beer the cheapest product on the market.
"Alcohol should not be sold at less than 90 cents a standard drink. That would remove all the cheap bulk alcohol," he said.
"The second thing we think is that we need to introduce at least one day a week where there are no take away sales.
"The problems are severe enough, and the crisis is big enough."
Dr Boffa says special restrictions introduced in Central Australia last year are why consumption has dropped a little in that region.
"The restrictions were put in place by the Northern Territory licensing commission prior to the intervention and prior to the dry town," he said.
"Those two measures, while they may have certain impacts are not going to be reducing the sale of pure alcohol and are not going to be preventing alcohol related harms in the way that the current restrictions are doing in Alice Springs."
Dr Boffa says alcohol restrictions associated with the federal intervention are unlikely to significantly reduce alcohol sales.
He says reducing selling hours and banning some types of liquor really works.
"We've seen a significant improvement in pure alcohol sales in the Alice Springs region, which is as we expected," he said.
"Although we have seen a reduction of 8 per cent in sales of pure alcohol in less than the 12 month period, in terms of the restrictions, we need to do a lot better than that."
"I think we've seen a continual deterioration for the Territory as a whole.
"We need to apply effective supply reduction measures across the Northern Territory as a whole and we need to strengthen the existing measures in Alice Springs."
See: ABC News
Come, the revolution
The Age | 23 December 2007
There is nothing new about Kevin Rudd's "new beginning" for Aboriginal people.
We will never know the full story of what happened in Aurukun, still less what, if anything, could have prevented it. Indeed, it is already fading from memory, as is the media storm over it - breaking, by an amazing coincidence, in the week of Kevin Rudd's first major initiative as PM at Bali - and the inevitable COAG follow-up, which will itself fade into memory, as the system continues to creak along.
As National Indigenous Times editor Chris Graham noted in Crikey, we've had "three 'new dawns' for Aboriginal people in four years, plus at least one 'new accord' and at least six 'new deals' ".
The Aurukun case is a perfect example of that. Apparently subject to equal parts error, folly and bad and worse alternatives, it combined Aboriginal issues with the other great anti-passion of our era, pedophilia, to create a perfect storm of public emotionality. And in its wake we got the newest wash-up of new beginnings.
"New beginnings" in Aboriginal policy are so well known by now that you could macro the whole argument on the keyboard. There are the "tired old dogmas", "political correctness", "fresh thinking unimpeded by political ideology" etc, etc. These serve much the same purpose as the initial outrage - promising a quick solution where there is none, so that no one has to bear the thought that the suffering and inequality will continue for some time, no matter what measures are in place.
Yet what marks every much-heralded new solution is not a radical break with the past, but rather a continuity with older solutions, usefully rebranded.
Take the example of Wadeye, which reportedly received special favoured status from former Aboriginal affairs minister Mal Brough. Based on a former Christian mission, which gathered seven tribes/clans together, it is now being extensively reconstructed with separate living areas for each clan, as a way - and one has to take these reports with a cowlick of salt - of lessening community conflict.
That may or may not be a good thing, and it may or may not be the community's wish, but is it really a bold new experiment, spurning the old dogmas? Not really. As far as development of a single Aboriginal people goes, it's a backward step, rewarding a sense of tribalism, dividing rather than uniting and synthesising. Rather than proceed to a hybrid traditional-modern society, it writes down archaic divisions in bricks and mortar.
The project acknowledges the profound cultural difference between kinship or tribal societies and modern individualistic ones - the very differences the last government scorned for years as "cultural relativism". Thus, from one angle it's enlightened, but from another it's seven new reservations-cum-culture parks.
Or consider the scheme being emphatically spruiked by Noel Pearson for family responsibility committees to oversee the money and habits of alcoholics and other addicts in Aboriginal communities.
To consist of a retired magistrate and community elders, the committees (according to Pearson) would quarantine an addict's welfare money to ensure rent payment, food purchase, school attendance and so on, and if necessary "refer them to the appropriate services".
Leaving aside rights issues, the idea of such a scheme is to enforce a higher level of passivity and control, as a means of eventually restoring individual responsibility to the person being supervised. This strategy has a rich history of failure across the world, but the core point is that it represents no real revolution in Aboriginal affairs but rather a variant of statism and tribalism. And that is a feature common to many of the initiatives in Aboriginal policy that are presented by their supporters as being in fundamental opposition - deep down, they share a commitment to enforcing passivity.
That extends all the way across to the question of an apology, which has become a counterproductive issue to rally around. Once it was delayed, the demand for it became a means by which Aborigines gave white people the power to grant them their subjectivity, which John Howard used to maximum advantage. The chief benefit of getting it now is that things can move on from the stasis that waiting for it has imposed. Indeed, recent Aboriginal political history splits pretty clearly into two periods. The essence of the first, from Wave Hill and the freedom rides of the 1960s into the 1980s, was to put white society on the defensive, morally and physically, to make it react, thus exposing its shaky morality.
Much, though not all, of the second period to date has been one of making policy - from ATSIC to neo-assimilation - that puts the emphasis on the state and its actions. The charge is, of course, grossly oversimplified. But if there is to be a new beginning, rather than variations on a theme, it will only come from reconnecting more substantially, militantly, with that earlier tradition.
To say that this is easier said than done is to understate it somewhat. It is worth saying, even from a great distance from Aboriginal society and its day-to-day problems, only because it is a simple truth of modern history that appears to have been obscured here, as policy took over from politics.
Remote communities may look unorganisable - but so did the poor of 18th-century London, the Irish in the 19th and 20th, Nepalese peasants now. History would suggest that it is only when people organise around a political project - the city of God, socialism, a nation united, sovereignty - that they undo their dysfunction at an individual level, and it matters less what that project is than that it is.
Until that revival, it seems likely that black and white relations in this country will be subject to a strange vacuum - one filled from time to time with a firestorm of rage and denunciation over this trial or that death, which flares for a moment, purging white shame, which is its only real purpose.
Guy Rundle is an Arena Publications editor.
See: The Age
Twin sex attacks show no easy option
The Australian | 20 December 2007
A good heart alone will not save indigenous children
HORRIFIC sex crimes against two young Aboriginal children in Queensland and the Northern Territory prove beyond doubt that taking the easy option on community dysfunction has failed indigenous Australia. The pack rape of a 10-year-old girl at Aurukun on Cape York, for which none of her nine confessed rapists was sent to jail, has been mirrored by the repeated sex attacks on an 11-year-old boy at Maningrida, 500km east of Darwin.
The Aurukun girl, born brain-damaged because of her mother's alcohol abuse, was ultimately failed by welfare workers who cared more about cultural sensitivities of the Stolen Generation than the prospect that sex crimes already committed against her would be repeated. The Territory boy was repeatedly sexually assaulted by two adults and three teenagers, who spent their days watching pornography and smoking marijuana. The boy was anally penetrated twice, fondled and forced to perform oral sex. He is now exhibiting behavioural problems as a result of the attacks, but is unable to return to the Maningrida community because of fears for his safety. Police believe the boy would be blamed for the punishment given to his attackers, who, unlike the Queensland rapists, were yesterday sentenced to prison, the harshest sentence being a minimum 15months' jail.
Both cases underscore concerns that there is an epidemic of child sex abuse in indigenous communities, something that was given further weight with the release of Territory statistics this week showing that between January and June there were 41 reported cases of gonorrhoea and chlamydia in children under 15, including children under five.
For already struggling communities, the way in which both offences were handled has reinforced the worst possible message, that sex crimes against children, even repeated gang attacks, will be punished at the lower end of the scale by the courts. The Maningrida case has also bolstered the impression that molesting a child is somehow a lesser offence in the Territory than raping an adult. This is because sexual crimes against children can be dealt with under Section 127 of the Criminal Code, which does not require consent to be considered but carries a maximum 25-year sentence, compared with the usual Section 192 for rape, which carries a maximum of life. While Section 127 sends a strong message that consent can never be a defence for having sex with a child, the lesser maximum penalty sends a contradictory message that it is somehow less abhorrent. Given that courts ultimately have sentencing discretion, it seems outrageous to us that sex crimes against children should carry a lesser maximum penalty.
Above all, the lenient treatment of offenders compounds the message that crimes in remote indigenous communities involving children will be treated less seriously than similar crimes elsewhere. But there can be no cultural excuse for what is taking place. The law should be applied equally to all people. Even The Age newspaper published a strong front-page story from Aurukun on Wednesday that said District Court judge Sarah Bradley had ignored local wishes for tough measures to deal with the culture of violence in the township.
The Age story acknowledges what we have consistently argued, that being soft on offenders serves only to perpetuate abuse. As Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson has written, if people are free of consequences for their actions, either good or bad, they are left disempowered. A lot of people of "good heart" have inadvertently reinforced dysfunctional behaviour across indigenous Australia by being too lenient. It may, as some indigenous leaders suggest, be time to consider greater use of tribal punishment, but the first step is to enforce existing laws properly. We must make sure that the dominant message sent out is that women and children will be protected equally, wherever they might be.
See: The Australian
Indigenous boy's assault prompts porn crackdown call
ABC News | 20 December 2007
A leader from the Northern Territory Indigenous community of Maningrida is calling on the Government to crack down on pornography use amid the shocking sexual assault of an 11-year-old boy.
Four of the five defendants have been sentenced to prison for sexually assaulting the boy.
The Supreme Court accepted when a teenager tried to have sex with the boy he was mimicking what he saw on a pornographic video.
Maningrida local Peter Dunaja says pornography has changed behaviour in the community in the last decade.
He says pornographic magazines started to come to the community in the mid-1990s.
"A lot of the kids are now ... are starting to drift away from their responsibility to the cultural values that we have," he said.
Mr Dunaja says politicians and bureaucrats need to visit the community to help address the pornography problem.
"There should be more tougher penalties, there should be more assistance," he said.
He says counsellors and sex education programs are needed in schools.
"These are the kind of things that are very hard for us, we need more counsellors, we need more bureaucrats to be able to make these decisions," he said.
"Not only that but in order for them to do that the golden rule is that they have to come and sit at a table to negotiate some of the things because each community has different priorities."
Mr Dunaja says the families of two men and three teenagers who pleaded guilty to child sex assault have reconciled with the victim's family.
See: ABC News
NT intervention head apologises for drunken soldiers
ABC News | 19 December 2007
The head of the Northern Territory intervention has apologised to the remote Central Australian community of Elliot for the drunken behaviour of two Norforce soldiers.
Major General David Chalmers says the Defence Force is investigating an incident where two soldiers deployed to the remote town on the Stuart Highway earlier this month were allegedly drunk soon after they arrived.
"Defence has a rule that no soldiers deployed on this operation will drink," he said.
"These soldiers apparently breached that rule."
Maj Gen Chalmers says he has been to Elliot and knows the town is struggling to overcome alcohol abuse and he's angry and disappointed.
"I apologise unreservedly to the Elliot community that that occurred," he said.
The men have been stood down but Maj Gen Chalmers says its a matter for Defence as to what discipline they will face.
Maj Gen Chalmers also says when Norforce was informed that a soldier deployed for the intervention in Central Australia was facing charges for assaulting his four-year-old son, he was immediately stood down.
"Up until the point he was found guilty, of course he wasn't, he was innocent of that offence that's the basis of our legal system," he said.
The soldier has since been found guilty, but Maj Gen Chalmers pointed out that Norforce is providing a logistical role.
"Norforce soldiers aren't working with children," he said.
CDEP changes
Maj Gen Charmers announced he will halt changes to welfare payments affecting Indigenous people on the Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) scheme.
He said new Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin's plan to reform CDEP rather than scrap it will affect the quarantining of welfare payments.
"If CDEP wages were retained as it stands right now then we wouldn't ... manage those wages," he said.
He says Indigenous people who have already left CDEP for other jobs will not be affected.
This is the first time Maj Gen Chalmers has fronted the media since the change of government and he recognised there has been a change of approach.
"The new Government has said that they will consult and they're very serious about that and they will require consultation and better consultation," he said.
See: ABC News
Grog ban brings hope back to Indigenous communities
ABC News | 19 December 2007
Prominent child health specialist professor Fiona Stanley has told an inquest into alcohol-related deaths in Western Australia's Kimberley region that excessive drinking is creating another stolen generation.
Three months ago, The 7.30 Report revealed the number of Aboriginal deaths caused by alcohol in the Fitzroy Crossing area, west of Broome, was close to 170 people in the past five years.
It has now revisited the tiny community, which has sought to stem the flow of alcohol by banning full and mid-strength takeaway sales for six months from its only pub.
In addition, a report commissioned by the Federal Government has made scathing claims about the running of the Indigenous-owned company, which operates the pub.
In most country towns, the sight of children playing in the streets might not seem out of the ordinary. But here in Fitzroy Crossing, it is remarkable.
It was just three months ago that this tiny community was being torn apart by grog.
"We just had over 170 deaths in the last five years, just about all of them were alcohol-related," community leader Joe Ross said.
Sick and tired of the drinking and violence, the local women's centre came up with a solution - a six-month suspension on full strength takeaway sales.
"We needed to get respite, we needed to address the volume of alcohol that was available in this community," Marninwarntikura Women's Resource Centre spokeswoman June Oscar said.
As a result of that ban, if someone wants to drink anything stronger than light beer, they can go to the pub's main bar or the nearest bottle shop, a 600-kilometre round trip.
Ms Oscar says the Women's Resource Centre has noticed a big difference in people's behaviour in just three months.
"Alcohol certainly exacerbated the level of violence and frequency of violence and therefore, women and children needing to seek refuge at the women's shelter," she said.
"We've seen a steady decline in the numbers."
The ban has been so successful that other communities are using Fitzroy Crossing as a role model.
"Before the ban, we'd have children congregating around the tourist bureau until quite late at night," Nindilingarri Health Service spokeswoman Maureen Carter said.
"Since the ban, you don't see kids hanging around out there any more. I guess they must feel safe to go home."
WA Drug and Alcohol Office spokesman Grant Akesson has seen similar results.
"We're starting to see more communities start to go down the line that Fitzroy's gone and making noise about, 'well these are our problems, these are things we want to do to address it'," he said.
Hotel hits out
Despite the apparent success on the restriction on the sale of alcohol here at Fitzroy Crossing, there are vocal opponents of it.
Unsurprisingly, the licensee of the Crossing Inn hotel is one of them.
Patrick Green says the bans have actually failed because they do not address the real problems in the town.
"I think it's easier to slap a ban on them than to deal with the real issues," he said.
Before the ban, the Crossing Inn sold the bulk of takeaway alcohol in the town. It is actually owned by Fitzroy Crossing's Indigenous community under the name Leedal.
Mr Green says unemployment is more of a problem than grog.
"Alcohol is one factor. If they've got things to do, maybe it's not a problem, but at this stage while they have free time on their hands, yes, alcohol is a problem," he said.
He also disputes claims that there is less violence in the town since the ban.
"The drop in violence is maybe because when we are reporting violence it doesn't go any further, other than other people are reporting the violence," Mr Green said.
The 7.30 Report has obtained a copy of a damning review of Leedal, which owns the inn.
It looks at the partnership between Leedal and the Federal Government-owned Indigenous Business Australia (IBA), which is aimed at providing business and employment opportunities to Aboriginal communities.
An extract from the Irving review of the IBA Fitzroy Crossing Joint Ventures reads: "If success is measured in terms of community involvement in and ownership of the outcomes of development projects, or improvements to the communities' well-being, then the Fitzroy project must be judged as having failed the community it set out to benefit."
The review also asks where the profits went.
"During the 18 years of the trust's existence, Leedal as trustee has failed to distribute any of its profits to the beneficiaries of the trust," it said.
"They have achieved nothing in the way of control over policies relating to alcohol and employment."
Tommy May is one of the Kimberley's senior traditional lawman and a respected artist, whose paintings hang in collections around the world.
Three of his nine children have died in drinking-related incidents. Since the ban, he has been painting more and not being pestered or humbugged by drunks, as it is called here.
"Better life and better sleep, be strong and healthy. No humbug in every camp," Mr May said.
Traditional law
One of the other effects of the ban has been a surge in interest in traditional law.
Elders like Harry Yungabun say there has been a reawakening of Aboriginal culture.
"It's like strengthening our traditional law. In a way, they look at themselves before what they're doing," he said.
"They weren't really much interested in our cultural side because they didn't really have nothing much to do here in Fitzroy. It's mostly drinking.
"Since this thing stopped and people started to realise what in fact the grog has done to them, then you see good result coming back from the people."
For many of Fitzroy Crossing's older people, the alcohol restrictions are a return to time when people drank less and social ties were strong.
"We live [a] better life now," Mr May said.
"For a couple of months or three months now, you can see everybody sober."
See: ABC News
STD figures outrage NT Indigenous health group
ABC News | 18 December 2007
The Aboriginal Medical Services Alliance of the Northern Territory (AMSANT) says recent figures on sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) are horrific.
The figures from the Centre for Disease Control show teenagers between 15 and 19 are recording the most STDs.
AMSANT's Doctor John Patterson is outraged.
"It's just unacceptable to be having those drastic figures amongst our teenagers in this day and age," he said.
The recent report showed 870 Northern Territory teenagers between 15 and 19 presented with an STD in the six months to June this year.
Dr Patterson says child sex abuse has to stop.
"That is just unacceptable we should not be having kids of that age be contracting [STDs] and other sexual diseases now," he said.
"We've got to address those issues ASAP and it should be a priority for all those that are involved, making sure our children are safe."
Dr Patterson also says the over representation of Aboriginal people amongst that group shows safe sex messages are not reaching Indigenous children and an old cartoon character mascot might help.
"Bring back Condom Man," he said.
He says the NT Government needs to deliver safe sex messages in a way that will cross barriers of culture and language.
See: ABC News
Trachoma rates in Indigenous communities 'a disgrace'
ABC News | 19 December 2007
Trachoma remains entrenched among outback Indigenous Australian communities more than 30 years after a national program was launched to eradicate the disease, a new survey shows.
Professor Hugh Taylor has just completed a five-week survey of the Katherine region in the Northern Territory to assess the prevalence and recovery rates of the blinding eye disease.
He says the continuing high rate of trachoma in outback Indigenous communities is "a disgrace".
For instance, up to half of children in some communities have the trachoma infection.
The survey results come ahead of the latest data on trachoma prevalence around Australia by the National Trachoma Surveillance and Reporting Unit, expected this week.
Prof Taylor, head of the University of Melbourne's Centre for Eye Research Australia, worked with the late professor Fred Hollows on the National Trachoma and Eye Health Program in the late 1970s.
He says Australia is the only developed country to still have the preventable disease. And he says the lack of action means the nation is on track to becoming the last country in the world to have communities where the infection is endemic.
Trachoma, an infection caused by chlamydia trachomatis, can lead to blindness and disappeared in non-Indigenous Australians about 100 years ago.
Scarring
As well as the high prevalence of trachoma in Indigenous children, the survey found that one in 12 adults have in-turned eyelashes as a result of inflammatory trachoma as a child. These in-turned lashes rub the eye and cause blindness.
"I expect one in six of these children are on the same escalator to trachoma as these older people," Professor Taylor says.
"The Aboriginal community is a non-written culture which is visually based. To have something that takes away their vision, particularly for elders, is devastating."
The trachoma infection is mainly spread through poor hygiene and living conditions.
Affected Indigenous Australian communities are mainly located in inland and remote Western Australian, South Australia and the Northern Territory.
Professor Taylor says the extent of the disease in Queensland and north-west New South Wales is not known.
But in coastal Indigenous communities, trachoma is less common because children's faces are kept cleaner by playing and swimming in the water.
"A lack of government commitment and a lack of targeted resources on the ground" are the main impediments to eliminating the disease among Indigenous Australians, Professor Taylor says.
His research centre will begin fieldwork in its national Indigenous eye health survey next year, which he says will update the 30-year-old data collected during the Fred Hollows-led program.
He hopes results of that survey will be the catalyst for a national eradication program.
Professor Taylor says a $25 million national program over five years, based on a successful World Health Organisation (WHO) program, would eliminate the disease.
International success
In the past year, the developing nations of Morocco, Oman and Iran have assessed themselves to be trachoma-free and are now undergoing WHO certification.
He says the WHO's SAFE strategy to eliminate the condition has been successfully used in places like Morocco and can be adopted in Australia.
The four-stage program includes surgery to correct in-turned eyelashes, antibiotics to eliminate chlamydia infection, an emphasis on facial cleanliness to reduce the risk of spreading the infection between children and environmental improvements to community hygiene and living conditions.
"We know how to eliminate the disease," Prof Taylor said.
"If Morocco can eliminate trachoma in 10 years, then [Australia] should be able to."
Professor Taylor will take up the inaugural Harold Mitchell Chair of Indigenous Eye Health within Melbourne University's School of Population Health next year.
He says he hopes to meet with the Federal Government early next year to discuss a national trachoma prevention program.
See: ABC News
Rudd adds Indigenous issues to COAG agenda
ABC News | 17 December 2007
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has added Indigenous affairs to the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) meeting, which will be held in Melbourne on Thursday.
There is already a long agenda for the meeting as Mr Rudd pushes to implement the policies he took to the election.
But he has been under pressure to also talk to his counterparts about overcoming Indigenous disadvantage.
Mr Rudd says he has decided to talk to the premiers and chief ministers about the issue.
"These are people of goodwill who want to do the right thing by Indigenous communities," he said.
"Let's face it, there are huge challenges out there.
"I'm looking forward to a very broad ranging conversation with the premiers and chief ministers on what further actions can profitably and productively and cooperatively be undertaken."
See: ABC News
Scheme aims to cut remote communities' cannabis use
ABC News | 17 December 2007
Police, Indigenous leaders and James Cook University (JCU) researchers are collaborating to reduce cannabis use in remote communities.
The first stage of the Weed It Out program will involve JCU researchers interviewing smokers to measure the extent of their use and the drug's impact.
The information will be used to help Cape York and Torres Strait communities, in far north Queensland, develop their own deterrent strategies using local languages and customs.
Associate Professor Alan Clough was involved in a similar program in Northern Territory communities where up to three-quarters of young men and a third of women smoked cannabis.
"We were able to document some positive changes, some modest positive changes in levels of cannabis use and some of the health and social consequences of those, especially the mental health consequences and we're hoping to be able to duplicate that to support this project," he said.
See: ABC News
Fiona Stanley breaks down at inquiry into Indigenous deaths
ABC News | 17 December 2007
The former Australian of the Year, Fiona Stanley, has told a Perth inquest that the high level of health problems facing Aboriginal people in the Western Australian Kimberley region is like another stolen generation.
Professor Stanley, who is also the Director of the Institute for Child Health Research, broke down while giving evidence at an inquest into 23 Aboriginal deaths in the Kimberley.
Many of the deaths were suicides linked to alcohol and drugs.
Professor Stanley detailed many of the health issues facing Aboriginal people in the region, including a high rate of foetal-alcohol syndrome.
She told the inquest living conditions have deteriorated over the past 30 years and many of the health problems could be prevented if conditions improved.
Professor Stanley also criticised government agencies for failing to implement the recommendations of several reports on the problems facing indigenous communities.
Outside the inquest, Professor Stanley said it was distressing that conditions appeared to be worsening.
"The actually physical conditions are not good," she said.
"I don't think that the housing situation, which is relatively easy to fix by the way, if you really wanted to fix it you would fix it."
See: ABC News
Rudd hears call for Racial Discrimination Act to be applied to intervention
ABC News | 17 December 2007
The Aboriginal Medical Services Alliance in the Northern Territory (AMSANT) says the previous federal government's changes to the Racial Discrimination Act were high on the agenda during discussions with the Prime Minister on the weekend.
AMSANT's chief executive Dr John Patterson was among 25 Indigenous leaders who met the Prime Minister to discuss Indigenous issues and the future of the intervention into communities.
He has welcomed Kevin Rudd's commitment to have more discussions with the group.
Dr Patterson says Community Development Employment Projects need to be retained and the Racial Discrimination Act needs to be applied to aspects of the intervention.
"With the income quarantining issue, that is obviously another issue that was raised by the group to the Prime Minister and Minister Macklin," he said.
See: ABC News
Television chief criticises intervention
ABC News | 17 December 2007
An opponent of the Indigenous intervention says she wants the Rudd Government to listen to feedback from Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory.
National Indigenous Television chief executive Pat Turner was not invited to a meeting of Indigenous leaders and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on the weekend.
She is criticising the timing of the Government review into the effectiveness of the intervention, calling for it to happen sooner rather than later.
She says the Government does not appreciate the negative impact the intervention is having on the Aboriginal community.
"I'm not going to be patient and I'm sure a lot of other Aboriginal people are not going to be patient," she said.
"We want proper changes that are constructive and are worked out in conjunction with Aboriginal people, done before the end of this next calendar year."
See: ABC News
Call for national Indigenous body to replace ATSIC
ABC News | 17 December 2007
A peak Indigenous health group is calling for the new Federal Labor Government to create a national representative body for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
The former Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission or ATSIC administered Indigenous affairs from 1990 to 2005 when it was abolished by the Howard Government.
The then Labor opposition supported the move.
But the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation (NACCHO) says a new representative body is urgently needed to address Indigenous issues in Australia.
The organisation wants Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to introduce a process to create a new national body at this week's Council Of Australian Governments meeting.
NACCHO says initiatives to close the gap in life expectancy between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians will fail if a representative body is not established.
Mick Adams, from NACCHO, says there is now a need for a national Indigenous body.
Dr Adams has supported a new Commonwealth commitment to meet with Northern Territory Indigenous leaders every three months, but says the plan will not address broader issues affecting Aboriginal people around Australia.
See: ABC News
My NT community faces quarantined Christmas
ABC News: Opinion | 17 December 2007
I live in the Aboriginal community of Eva Valley, in the Northern Territory.
I've got no television, but when my friend sister Olga told me we had a new Prime Minister, I was crying.
When she told me what Kevin Rudd had said, I was crying and she was crying. He said "I'm going to be Prime Minister for all Australians."
That Kevin Rudd, you can trust him. We trust him because he said he's going to be Prime Minister for all Australians.
We need the government and other organisations to help us. Now he is Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd can do something.
The first thing we need is work. We need jobs with proper pay. We want the power to help ourselves. We want to help ourselves.
Christmas is coming up. We don't know if they are going to quarantine our money and we're worried about that.
We spend money on a whole lot of things to make our kids happy. Toys. Little toys. Not big toys, but little toys.
At Christmas, we want to get bigger toys for our kids, but with that quarantining, I think they won't let us.
We won't have a right to buy those bigger things for our kids. We want the freedom to buy what we choose ourselves, not only those things they say we can buy. I'm worried about this.
We need a community vehicle to go to town to buy food, and sealed roads. Our community bus is finished, broken down. It's too old now.
We live 110 kilometres from town but we've got no vehicle to go shopping. We have to get a taxi. The price has gone up and now it's $220 in and $220 back.
We need a store in the community, to sell power cards, food, and clothes, so we don't have to go to town to shop.
Now that Kevin Rudd is Prime Minister we want him to help us. We've got things that worry us.
We're worried about quarantining, and buying presents for kids at Christmas, and we're worried that we don't have a store, or a community vehicle to go to town to buy food.
If it goes on like this, that we have none of these things, there will be trouble around the community. Husbands will get upset. Wives will get upset. Kids won't go to school on time. Everything will go wrong.
We want the government to help us, so we can help our children. We need to work together to help our children.
I dreamt a story, about that ship.
From the election, Kevin Rudd has got to be the Captain of that great big ship.
We are in his ship now and he has to take us forward. We don't look left, or right. We've got to look forward, for the future of our children.
Kevin Rudd is our Captain. That Captain has to make sure that everything is going all right on that ship. He has to look ahead for any danger. He has to be alert.
We are in his ship now and he has to take us forward, together with those other organisations. That Marion Scrymgour and Jenny Macklin, they're in that boat, too.
They're the crew, and they have to help the Captain make a safe journey.
We need a fresh start, new leadership, new everything.
Big ships are made to go forward. They don't go backwards, do they? That's what we want now, to go forward.
Rachel Willika is a Jawoyn woman. She lives at Eva Valley, one of the communities prescribed by the intervention in the Northern Territory. Her views are recorded regularly on the website Women for Wik.
See: ABC News: Opinion
Intervention soldiers 'gave alcohol to locals'
ABC News | 17 December 2007
Two soldiers deployed to the Northern Territory as part of the Commonwealth intervention have been sent home, accused of getting drunk and supplying alcohol to the locals.
The intervention was launched to try to stop what is often alcohol-fuelled abuse of Indigenous women and children.
Elliott chief executive officer Linda Keane says the soldiers went to the pub not long after arriving at the town midway between Alice Springs and Darwin earlier this month.
"The Elliott police contacted Norforce advising them of the situation and the soldiers were removed from the community the next morning," she said.
Ms Keane says the Norforce soldiers also bought take-away alcohol for the locals.
She says she is dismayed that people sent to tackle alcohol abuse and the problems it causes could be out getting drunk.
"It's very disappointing that this first meaningful visit that was to offer a service is clouded by behaviour that is, for all intents and purposes, the behaviour that we're trying to get rid of," she said.
"This community fought very hard to be placed on the list of prescribed communities and therefore be included in the intervention.
"We had very high hopes that the intervention in fact would bring good things and help the community to solve some of the local problems."
Territory police say the matter is now in the hands of the Defence Force.
The Defence Force says it is investigating whether the soldiers were drunk, but has refused to comment on the allegations they were giving away alcohol.
A Defence spokeswoman says it would be inappropriate to comment until the investigation is complete, but ca not give any indication of when that might be.
She says the soldiers may face charges under the Defence Force Discipline Act.
See: ABC News
Indigenous community gives Rudd CDEP plan
ABC News | 17 December 2007
A 14-point plan designed to retain and improve Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) has been handed to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd by Indigenous representatives from Arnhem Land.
In a preface, the plan says the quarantining of Centrelink payments has caused hardship and children have gone hungry because of the changes.
It says cutting CDEP has reduced investment in communities and business are closing.
The document was drafted by CDEP organisations and traditional owners at Yirrkala.
It calls for the community development part of the program to be focussed on and for a CDEP representative body to be set up.
Under the plan there would be better case management for people who have low motivation or reduced capacity to work.
There would be improved training and mentoring of participants and more focus on supporting business development.
Scheme welcomed
The Combined Aboriginal Organisations of the Northern Territory have welcomed the Federal Government's plans to to improve the scheme.
Coordinator Olga Havnen was among 25 people in discussion with Mr Rudd, the federal Indigenous Affairs Minister and the NT Government over the intervention in Darwin yesterday.
She says she is relieved the Government wont dismantle CDEPs.
"There were various elements to do with training, to have better linkages to the labour market," she said.
'Both the Prime Minister and Minister [Jenny] Macklin were committed to establishing a working group made up of CDEP representative organisations.
"I think that will be a very useful mechanism for getting decent deposit of changes and to getting some of this stuff back on track."
Ms Havnen also says income quarantining is both offensive and causing immense hardship across NT communities.
"Large numbers of people already use voluntary systems of Centrepay deductions to pay for things like their rent and electricity and other household essentials," she said.
"There was no undertaking given to halt the blanket quarantining. I guess we will need to wait and see what comes out of those further discussions."
See: ABC News
Are our children really sacred
Online Opinion | 14 December 2007
It is time for national laws to place Australia's first children first.
Sadly it comes as no surprise that the Queensland Department of Child Safety was directly involved in the case of the 10-year-old girl so brutally abused at the hands of young people in her community of Aurukun.
That the "justice" system then compounded the violation of this child by ignoring her right to expect that her abusers would be appropriately punished is also no surprise. We have seen this before and we will see it again unless, and until, we throw out the existing models of child protection and foster care and start again.
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The reality is that in most rural and remote areas Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children cannot count on statutory child protection authorities to protect them or to respond effectively when abuse occurs. Child protection models have been built on two assumptions that often don't operate outside of large urban cities. First, that child protection staff can get to a family and respond to critical incidents quickly and second, that within a community there will be a "supply" of well-resourced high-functioning families with whom to place a child.
Faced with this reality child protection staff make agonising decisions about when to remove a child from their family, and by implication their community, and place them in foster care a long way from home.
Placing Indigenous children in non-Indigenous foster care far removed from their community, as happened in the Aurukun case, doesn't resolve all the case issues or provide the child with all that they need. Children, all children, whatever their race or culture, want to be with their family. The best evidence and research tells us that abused children want to go home, to see their mum and dad, their brothers and sisters, their friends and peers. The child now at the centre of this latest national debate about Aboriginal children wanted to go home.
The model of foster care we operate in Australia is wrong. It is wrong for all children; it is wrong for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children. It is based on a false dichotomy. That a child is either with, and raised by, their birth family or by a foster family.
SNAICC, the Secretariat of National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care, argues that children can and should be raised by both. There is a third way. Place children with a well supported, resourced and trained foster family to ensure children are not at risk of abuse or neglect. Set up a community visitors program and co-ordinate visits between the community and the child. Don't bounce kids around between foster care placements and home. Support foster families to raise children with the birth family - not for the birth family.
Reinforce the message that families have to raise their children well. Train the magistrates to administer the law correctly. Provide community services to heal the victims. Insist at every level, family, community and within the justice system that abuse is intolerable and will be severely punished.
On the night of the Federal election both the outgoing Prime Minister, John Howard, and the outgoing Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, Mal Brough, in their concession speeches implored the incoming government to stick with the Northern Territory (NT) intervention. It is not insignificant that the NT intervention was singled out from everything that the government had done as the one thing that must be sustained by the new government.
The newly elected Federal ALP Government has indicated that it will largely continue with the NT intervention whilst reviewing aspects including the policy to quarantine welfare payments. Now some are calling for the NT intervention to spread to Aurukun.
Aspects of the NT intervention such as changes to the land permit system, land tenure and the appointment of administrators to manage Aboriginal communities have been criticised as not relevant to child protection. The Little Children Are Sacred report, upon which the intervention was premised, made no mention of taking over the running of communities and their assets as a precursor to protecting children from abuse.
These changes make more sense, have a logic you can understand, if you happen to believe that the actual communities are dieing and cannot be sustained. Like a failed state they need someone to move in and take over the day-to-day running of everything. Not surprisingly some have described the NT intervention as an invasion and likened it to the invasion of Iraq.
The Federal ALP Government must make clear its views and intentions regarding the future of remote Aboriginal communities. That's what the NT intervention has actually been about. It must do what the Howard government would not do - publicly commit to supporting the viability and sustainability of remote Aboriginal communities. It needs to make it clear that it has no hidden agenda to sit by and watch communities wither away.
SNAICC knows who the first victims are when, through the insufferable burden of living without good quality education, housing, health, early childhood, policing, employment, transport and communication services, communities start to unravel. The first victims are the children. Children like the young girl raped and abused in Aurukun - a community living with an insufferable burden.
Ultimately the future of remote Aboriginal communities such as Aurukun is everyone's responsibility. Any debate or discussion about the future of these communities, and the many distinct Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures they represent, must not happen behind closed doors.
It is grossly unjust not to provide the basic services and infrastructure that any community needs to function well and then blame families in those communities for the dysfunction that follows. This is all quarantining welfare payments does. Supporting communities through the provision of basic infrastructure does not promote welfare dependency, it promotes human rights. The right to protection from abuse is one such human right and the right to education is another.
Calls for the new Federal Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, Jenny Macklin, to extend the NT intervention to Queensland don't go far enough. SNAICC has for decades called for national legislation to create a framework that sets outs standards for child protection, children's rights and a common approach to preventing child abuse.
Next week Jenny Macklin meets all her state and territory colleagues. She should tell them that national legislation for child protection is on its way.
See: Online Opinion
Indigenous community gives Rudd CDEP plan
ABC News | 16 December 2007
A 14-point plan designed to retain and improve Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) has been handed to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd by Indigenous representatives from Arnhem Land.
In a preface, the plan says the quarantining of Centrelink payments has caused hardship and children have gone hungry because of the changes.
It says cutting CDEP has reduced investment in communities and business are closing.
The document was drafted by CDEP organisations and traditional owners at Yirrkala.
It calls for the community development part of the program to be focussed on and for a CDEP representative body to be set up.
Under the plan there would be better case management for people who have low motivation or reduced capacity to work.
There would be improved training and mentoring of participants and more focus on supporting business development.
Scheme welcomed
The Combined Aboriginal Organisations of the Northern Territory have welcomed the Federal Government's plans to to improve the scheme.
Coordinator Olga Havnen was among 25 people in discussion with Mr Rudd, the federal Indigenous Affairs Minister and the NT Government over the intervention in Darwin yesterday.
She says she is relieved the Government wont dismantle CDEPs.
"There were various elements to do with training, to have better linkages to the labour market," she said.
'Both the Prime Minister and Minister [Jenny] Macklin were committed to establishing a working group made up of CDEP representative organisations.
"I think that will be a very useful mechanism for getting decent deposit of changes and to getting some of this stuff back on track."
Ms Havnen also says income quarantining is both offensive and causing immense hardship across NT communities.
"Large numbers of people already use voluntary systems of Centrepay deductions to pay for things like their rent and electricity and other household essentials," she said.
"There was no undertaking given to halt the blanket quarantining. I guess we will need to wait and see what comes out of those further discussions."
See: ABC News
The word is hope
Sydney Morning Herald | 16 December 2007
At the end of a week in which the only news about Aboriginal Australia was the legal system's failure to protect a 10-year-old girl gang-raped in Cape York, the scene at Redfern Town Hall on Friday was a timely antidote for despair.
It was a graduation ceremony for 16 of 27 children who had completed a remedial reading program launched this year by the Reverend Bill Crews of the Exodus Foundation. To qualify, the children, most of whom are indigenous, had to be at least two years behind their peers in reading. What that meant for many is they couldn't read at all.
"I hated books because I couldn't read and I didn't know what the words meant and I had to make it up," said Jonny Sandstrom, 10, in year 4 at Darlington Public School.
During the 18-week course, the black marks on the page suddenly started making sense. "I thought, I can finally read. I can read any book."
His favourite book is Just Annoying by Andy Griffiths. He loves reading because "I get to find out what's in the book."
Nine-year-old twins Naryma and Wasana Grovenor, from Alexandria Park Community School, also couldn't read. Now, says their mother Nadine Dixon, they always have their noses in a book - on the bus, or even, perilously once for Wasana, when walking across the road.
Nadine's pride is mixed with sadness for her 16-year-old son at home who still can't read and has dropped out of school. "He thinks he's dumb," said Nadine. "He says, 'They're getting all the help I didn't get.' But he's really proud of his sisters."
Wasana can recite a long list of favourite books, especially the Selby series about a talking dog. "I used to think books were boring."
Naryma's favourite is Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone because "there are lots of hard words to read".
She has shown phenomenal progress, says Macquarie University's Professor Kevin Wheldall, who devised the MULTILIT (Making Up Lost Time In Literacy) program with its systematic instruction in phonics, teaching children to read by sounding out words. Naryma has progressed to the standard of a 17-year-old in "phonological recoding" - the ability to sound out non-words such as "sprank" or "klube", which shows a child is able to read any unfamiliar word.
All the children who have completed the program have achieved excellent results, says Wheldall, despite some attendance problems. After 14 weeks' instruction, the first group of 18 slow-progress readers, from years 3 to 6, increased their reading accuracy by an average 15 months, reading comprehension by 14 months, word recognition by 12 months and non-word reading by 27 months.
"Some of these kids are really bright and now they're exploding [with knowledge]," says Crews, who first teamed up with Wheldall and partner Dr Robyn Beaman in 1996 when he opened a MULTILIT centre for disadvantaged children at Ashfield Uniting Church because he was "sick of burying kids" who had dropped out of school because they never learned to read. "They've just been held back by the system."
One by one on Friday, the graduating class took the stage at Redfern Town Hall and fluently read speeches they had written onto little cards for an audience of parents, teachers and assorted dignitaries, including former education minister Brendan Nelson.
"I like to read because I learn lots of interesting things," said Natalia Batticciotto, 10. Oemar Alitembokarson, 11, said he loved learning "funny words like snowbound", "blabbledabble" and "varoom" in his favourite book, Selby Snowbound. "I like reading because it's good for your education," said Diana Henry, 10.
Not one child wasn't aware of the great gift received. It was the same in Coen School in Cape York, where Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson asked Wheldall and Beaman to set up a reading program in 2005, with eager learners and spectacular results.
This year they will take the program to Aurukun, where the 10-year-old in this week's news reports was gang-raped last year by nine youths and men, who were released without penalty by a Cairns District Court judge. The social workers, judge and prosecutor who contributed to this travesty of justice should reflect on the great potential locked in children in even the most dysfunctional indigenous community, if only they are given the same basic protections expected by other Australians.
See: Sydney Morning Herald
Apology a 'bridge to respect'
Sydney Morning Herald | 16 December 2007
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has promised that his cabinet will meet in a remote Northern Territory indigenous community in the first half of next year to help build bridges with Aboriginal Australians.
Mr Rudd met 25 indigenous leaders from all over the territory in Darwin yesterday to discuss the federal intervention, which began under the Howard government.
The discussion lasted two hours - twice as long as scheduled. It canvassed the apology which the Government intends to make for the stolen generation.
The Prime Minister asked indigenous people to give feedback about the content of the apology to Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin. He said the apology was "an important part of building a bridge of respect" and it was vital to get it right.
Sources said the meeting was held in good spirit, although some of the indigenous participants said it avoided detail.
Mr Rudd will turn the 25 members from yesterday's discussion into a reference group, returning quarterly next year to continue the dialogue. He will decide early this week whether indigenous affairs will be on the agenda for the pre-Christmas meeting of the Council of Australian Governments. Queensland raised the matter for inclusion on the agenda after revelations surrounding the rape of a 10-year-old girl in Aurukun.
Northern Territory Chief Minister Paul Henderson met Mr Rudd during the Darwin visit. He said he received a commitment from the Prime Minister that the Federal Government would spend the full $1.3 billion promised by the Howard government for the intervention.
"The commitment is there from the Prime Minister - a full review after 12 months and we will work together to strengthen what is working and really bring indigenous people across the Northern Territory along with us," Mr Henderson said.
See: Sydney Morning Herald
Rudd promises to keep close eye on intervention
ABC News | 15 December 2007
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says from next year he will visit the Territory every three months to discuss issues surrounding the federal Indigenous intervention.
Mr Rudd is visiting Darwin after an official trip to Bali and East Timor and has today met with NT Chief Minister Paul Henderson and 25 Indigenous leaders from across the Territory.
The Prime Minister says the Indigenous leaders will form a special group to advise the Federal Government on Aboriginal issues.
Community visits
Mr Rudd has committed the Federal Cabinet to visiting a remote Indigenous community in the Northern Territory next year.
He says ministers and government beaurocrats need to experience the challenges the communities face first hand.
He says he will return to the Territory every three months next year to discuss Indigenous issues with them.
"We want to ensure that our overall objective of closing the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous life expectancy, Indigenous and non-Indigenous education attainments is done on a cooperative and consultative basis, so that we achieve progress together," he said.
COAG discussions
Mr Rudd has asked state premiers and chief ministers for feedback on whether Indigenous issues should be part of COAG discussions.
The next COAG meeting will be held in Melbourne on Thursday.
Mr Rudd says the Government needs to work out whether the intervention in the Northern Territory is working before any extension can be considered.
"We're prepared to back this intervention and we'll then review its effectiveness," he said.
"That I think is the appropriate way forward before looking at any other measures downstream in terms of other jurisdictions.
"And, it's far better to do this in a cooperative basis."
See: ABC News
Rudd in Darwin for intervention meeting
ABC News | 15 December 2007
Northern Territory Chief Minister Paul Henderson is preparing for his first meeting with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to talk about the future of the intervention in Aboriginal communities.
Mr Rudd and federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin are in Darwin, with Mr Henderson saying he will raise a number issues at the meeting this morning.
"I'll be seeking to have a personal relationship with the new Prime Minister, to not only move Indigenous people forward in the Northern Territory but really to improve a whole raft of issues in the Northern Territory," he said.
Mr Henderson says he also hopes to discuss ways to strengthen the NT economy.
"I think there are real opportunities for the Territory over the next 10, 20, 50 years to really become the most part of northern Australia in terms of our trade with Asia," he said.
See: ABC News
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