Consult Aborigines & Then Plan How To Help
Malcolm Fraser | July 13, 2007, The Age
Glen Wesan There is general agreement that we are long
overdue in introducing policies and actions that will improve the wellbeing of Australia's indigenous
population. That is why there is general approval that the Federal Government is now seen to be
doing something. Much of the reaction to this initiative has, however, been superficial.
Aboriginal leaders, and many others, have been asking for action over the entire life of the
Government. Why has the Government been so slow to act?
Why has so little planning gone into this action plan? Why are survey teams visiting Aboriginal
communities only after the announcement of the plan? Normally assessments are made before policy
is announced. Then there is a clear idea of how many doctors and nurses are required, and how
much money will be needed.
And this is not just a matter of health professionals. It is also a question of putting much greater
funds into Aboriginal education, of bringing services to remote communities, which can enable their
inhabitants to gain skills and thereby reasonable employment. Services are taken to remote, very
small, white communities. The School of the Air is a good example. Why do we do so much worse for
Aboriginal communities?
Canada has shown us what can be achieved, if we are prepared to put much greater resources into
health and education. The Government has spoken of a six-month action plan. But what is needed is
a 20-year plan, designed to enable many more Aboriginal Australians to play full and productive roles
in national life, while understanding and respecting their own culture and historic tradition.
The Labor Party has not been particularly vigorous, during the past 10 years, in championing a better
deal for Aborigines. They have done little to press the Government, even where there are clear
failures, such as the fall in the number of Aboriginal students in our universities in the years since
this Government came to power. Now Aboriginal people are asking whether this Government initiative
is aimed at disempowering them even more.
What is the Government's real agenda, many are asking? Why does the explanatory memorandum
on the legislation to amend the Aboriginal Land Rights Act read: "The principal objectives (of this bill)
are to improve access to Aboriginal land for development, especially mining ." What has that got to
do with child abuse? And what logic is there in the proposal to remove the permit system, whereby
Aboriginal leaders decide who can come onto their land? Surely that will only enable non-indigenous
pedophiles to have easier access to Aboriginal children. Yet non-indigenous pedophiles are a
significant part of the problem.
The Government constantly highlights the misdeeds of Aboriginal people, giving the impression that
practically all are addicted to alcohol and drugs, abuse their children, and are prone to domestic
violence. The reality is very different. There are many fine Aboriginal communities where these
problems are dealt with effectively by their leaders when they arise.
A more effective strategy would be to highlight the communities that are getting on top of their
problems, while tackling the problems of dysfunctional communities with minimal publicity. When the
situation improves, then the improvements can be publicised. In that way, respect for Aboriginal
Australians would grow among the wider community, and so would Aboriginal morale. But this
Government seems more interested in suggesting that Aboriginal people are incapable.
The Government has undertaken a highly complex and important task. So far the initiatives have
caused many fears. It will only succeed if the Aboriginal community is consulted and fully involved in
planning the strategy. If this is done, and there is a willingness to provide the necessary resources
over many years, then it will be possible to build a better future.
Malcolm Fraser was prime minister from 1975 to 1983.
Angry Aboriginal Elders Threaten Ban On Climbing Uluru
Barbara McMahon in Sydney, The Guardian | June 27, 2007
Tourists may be banned from climbing Uluru, Australia's famous natural landmark, as part of a protest by its traditional Aboriginal owners over a government crackdown on indigenous communities.
The ban is being considered by leaders of Mutitjulu, an Aboriginal settlement in the shadow of the giant red monolith, commonly known as Ayers Rock, in the central Australian desert. Mutitjulu, a community which has long-standing problems, is the first to be targeted following an inquiry into sexual abuse of indigenous children. The government last week ordered compulsory medical checks for indigenous children, a ban on alcohol and pornography and restrictions on welfare payments, following a report that said sexual abuse of children was rampant in communities in the Northern Territory.
Calling the situation a "national emergency", Australia's prime minister, John Howard, also ordered more police, with the military giving logistical support, to be sent into communities to halt violence and restore order.
A Mutitjulu elder, Vince Forrester, said yesterday that local residents, especially women and children, were frightened at the looming intervention and some families had fled into the bush, fearing that their children might be taken away.
"The community is bewildered as to why there is a military operation against the most poverty stricken members of Australia," he said. The traditional owners of Mutitjulu and Uluru were considering a civil disobedience campaign that would include a ban on climbing the rock.
"The tourist industry brings a lot of dollars into the territory and tourists all come to Uluru. Obviously civil disobedience can come in protest form," said Mr Forrester.
The traditional owners of Uluru regard the rock as sacred and can ban climbing at ceremonial times, such as funerals. However, half a million tourists visit the rock every year and tens of thousands climb to the top. Aboriginal leaders and more than 60 community and welfare groups yesterday sent an open letter to Mr Howard welcoming action on child abuse but urging more consultation with Aborigines and less emphasis on punitive measures.
Peter Botsman, a commentator on Aboriginal affairs, said the government had not done any groundwork before announcing the measures. The government should have picked the Aboriginal community with the most problems and got the support of local leaders instead of planning blanket action in 60 communities in the Northern Territory, he said.
See: The Guardian
Aboriginal policy is not underpinned by race, but by health concerns
Richard Alston, The Guardian | July 10, 2007
Richard Flanagan may be a prize-winning Australian fiction writer, but this scarcely qualifies him to be taken seriously when he turns his hand to political diatribes - as he did in responding to the Australian government's plan to deal with the high rate of child abuse in indigenous communities (This draconian outrage has shaken Australia, June 28).
It is important to appreciate the dimensions of the social problems which have affected Australian Aboriginals for decades. But it is just as important to understand that Flanagan, who claimed that prime minister John Howard "was widely perceived to play the race card", is fundamentally out of step with the great majority of both the Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities.
Aborigines constitute nearly one-third of the Northern Territory, and the dimensions of their health problems are horrendous. Compared to other Australians, life expectancy is 20 years lower, infant mortality nearly three times higher, diabetes 7-10 times higher, and tuberculosis nearly five times higher. Alcoholism is endemic. Unemployment is three times higher and the imprisonment rate 16 times higher. The real tragedy is that more than 30 years of land rights, with an accompanying slice of mineral riches, and many more years of welfare and housing programs, have made little difference. The recent Northern Territory report confirmed the extent of the devastation: child sexual abuse is serious, widespread and often unreported.
In response, the Australian government proposed severe limits on alcohol; medical examinations of all indigenous children; at least 50% of welfare payments to go to children; income support conditional upon school attendance; compulsory acquisition of townships for five years; work for the dole linked to intensive clean-up of communities and a ban on possession of pornography.
Flanagan trotted out the claim that Howard only won the 2001 election because he turned away a boat hired by professional people smugglers. Apart from never mentioning that Australia has one of the most generous refugee intakes in the world, this canard ignores the fact that opinion polls showed that he was already well on the way to winning.
Flanagan dismisses the need to promote national values as "an oily phrase that appears to be a stalking horse for a new intolerance". This is little more than perfervid conspiracy theory, nowhere more graphically demonstrated than in Flanagan's preferred alternative approach - as if people marching across Sydney Harbour Bridge in the name of reconciliation is any substitute for practical life-saving action.
Flanagan acknowledges that the Northern Territory report "presented a horrifying picture of black Australia in collapse", yet offers no solutions. And he is at a loss to explain why Noel Pearson - in Flanagan's own words "one of black Australia's most gifted and articulate leaders" - has long advocated a similar plan. Pearson knows that self-determination had, with the Aboriginal parliament, turned into a hollow catchphrase.
The road ahead will not be easy but millions of Australians, who have enormous sympathy for the plight of their fellow countrymen, will be very encouraged that someone has finally had the courage and determination to act.
See: The Guardian
Aboriginal abuse plan denounced as racist
Barbara McMahon in Sydney, The Guardian | June 23, 2007
The Australian prime minister, John Howard, confronted a furious response yesterday to his radical plans to deal with alcoholism and child abuse in indigenous communities, as the Aboriginal question threatened to grow into a major issue ahead of a general election.
Opponents accused Mr Howard of seizing on the issue to boost his re-election chances after he announced a ban on alcohol and pornography, and compulsory medical checks for some Aboriginal children in parts of northern Australia blighted by appalling social conditions.
But the government showed no signs of climbing down yesterday, announcing that extra police would be deployed in Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory from next week, with the Australian Defence Force providing logistical support. The first officers will be based in Mutitjulu, near Uluru (formerly known as Ayers Rock), to stamp out the use of alcohol and drugs, and gather evidence about the abuse of women and children.
The indigenous affairs minister, Malcolm Brough, said: "We'll be able to make a practical and real difference to that community."
The measures, which followed a major report last week that highlighted the chronic mistreatment of children in some communities, have in effect reversed a decade of allowing Aboriginal communities to largely govern themselves.
As well as the ban on alcohol and pornography, school attendance will be enforced and restrictions put on welfare payments so parents spend their money on food and not on a "river of grog", as the report's co-author, Pat Anderson, an Aboriginal health specialist, put it. Indigenous communities will in effect come under federal authority for the next five years.
But politicians claimed the prime minister was merely trying to look good in the run-up to the general election. Alan Carpenter, premier of Western Australia, said: "If he thinks it's an emergency, one could ask the question: why hasn't he done anything about it in the last 11 years? This is designed to create an issue for Mr Howard to run on."
Peter Beattie, premier of Queensland, also called the six-month ban on alcohol a "silly gimmick". He said Aboriginal parents should be involved in any plans to improve social conditions in townships. "Let's not become savages in this; we need to involve the community," he said.
There are serious questions about some of the measures. The Aboriginal Medical Services Alliance - Northern Territory said compulsory medical checks on indigenous children were racist and were causing anguish to parents. The Australian Medical Association said there were "nowhere near enough doctors" in the Northern Territory to conduct medical checks for an estimated 23,000 children.
The drinks industry has called the alcohol ban "an administrative nightmare" and said it would not stop problem drinkers from getting alcohol. Community health workers have asked what treatment would be made available for sexual abuse victims or people forced off alcohol. Doubts have also been raised about the ability of local prisons to cope with a possible influx of Aboriginal prisoners in already full jails.
However, Kevin Rudd, leader of the opposition Labor party, dismissed suggestions that the plan was a political stunt and said he would work with the government on a "positive, non-partisan basis".
Mr Howard was standing his ground. "We've been too timid in the past about interfering," he said. "I'll be slammed for taking away people's rights but frankly I don't care about that."
Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory have largely refused to comment so far, saying their councils would issue a considered response in due course. In Brisbane yesterday, demonstrators protesting about the acquittal of a police officer charged with the death of an Aboriginal man in custody condemned interference in Aboriginal affairs.
The statistics
Australia's 460,000 Aborigines make up about 2% of its 20m population. They are consistently the country's most disadvantaged group, with far higher rates of alcohol and drug abuse, and domestic violence. Alcohol causes the death of an Aborigine every 38 hours. Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, who together make up about 2.5% of Australia's population, live on average 17 years less than their fellow citizens. The average life expectancy for Aboriginal men is 59, compared with 77 for non-indigenous males, according to a 2006 report by the Australian institute of health and welfare. An indigenous Australian is 11 times more likely to be in prison than a non-indigenous Australian, and is almost three times more likely to be unemployed.
See: The Guardian
The Australians who are outcasts in their own land
Barbara McMahon in Wadeye, Northern Territory, The Observer | June 24, 2007
Political moves to curb alcoholism and truancy have ignited a national debate over the heartache and squalor affecting troubled aboriginal communities
Walk around the sprawling community of Wadeye and you will be assailed by children, quick to spot a stranger in town. They crowd around curiously and talk to you in broken English but chatter among themselves in Murrinh-patha, the indigenous language of this former Catholic mission. Six other languages are spoken here, all of them endangered, making Wadeye a laboratory for linguists.
'Language is our identity and if we forget our identity, we are nothing,' says Patrick Nudjulu, sheltering from the sun on the veranda of his house. A patriarchal figure, with white beard and a leg withered by leprosy, he points to his grandchildren playing nearby. Speaking in their mother tongue will keep them connected to their culture, says this old man. But he encourages the children to go to school to do their sums and to learn how to speak in English. 'You need to be able to talk to the white fella,' he says.
Wadeye, pronounced Wad-air, sits on the edge of the Daly River Reserve, 280km south-west of Darwin in Australia's Northern Territory. The country's largest indigenous community, it has a population of 2,700, comprising 24 clans, seven tribes and three ceremonial groups. The ethnic mix is a throwback to the Thirties when missionaries persuaded indigenous groups to live together.
Cut off by road for up to five months of the rainy season, any visitors come in by air. The flight is over forests and woodlands, towering cliffs, vast wetlands, paperbark and mangrove swamps. It is wild and beautiful country. The few outsiders permitted to come here arrive at the airstrip on the edge of the township and find a settlement resembling a shantytown. At first glance, it seems a picture of dysfunction. There is litter everywhere and none of the niceties of life that white people in suburbs of Sydney or Canberra take for granted, such as shops and cafes.
Many of the buildings are boarded up and covered in graffiti. A glance inside reveals that most are largely unfurnished, apart from cookers, a few chairs and mattresses, televisions and stereos, many of which blast out music at all hours.
There are no well-tended gardens and people can't help but bring in mud and dirt, especially in the wet season. Overcrowding is rife and an average of 17 people live in each house, following the Aboriginal tradition of living in family groups. Some of the tenants, who are clearly depressed and lethargic, do not seem to notice the squalor that they are living in or the smells around them.
There is high unemployment in Wadeye. Most people exist on welfare payments. There are also endemic health problems associated with overcrowding, poor hygiene and a lack of education. Dr Pat Rebgetz, the only doctor serving this community of 2,700 people, says health care has been under-funded for decades and there is only so much he and his team of community nurses can do in their 'crummy' health care centre. Residents suffer high rates of heart disease, rheumatic fever, skin sepsis and nephritis. Some 20 to 30 per cent of children have perforated ear drums due to chronic infection. Some children are malnourished. There are 80 births a year, some to 13- and 14-year-olds.
'This is happening because of decades of neglect,' says Dr Rebgetz. 'I feel the politicians think these people are not worth it. They largely believe the Aboriginal people have brought all this on themselves. There are a lot of gentle, good people here who have just been beaten down by their living conditions. The grandmothers are the backbone of this community. I am in awe of how they can survive among all this dysfunction.
'Everyone knows what the problem is. It's not rocket science. If you want to improve the health of people here, you have to improve their living conditions. The basic problem is overcrowding and the lack of hygiene. We all knew it 100 years ago when we were living in slums, but it's still happening now.'
Wadeye is an alcohol-restricted community. 'There are a lot more Aboriginal non-drinkers than there are drinkers,' says Dr Rebgetz. 'But all Aborigines get tarred with the same brush.' He says that because alcohol is proscribed, a lot of young men spend their dole money on ganja. 'There are a lot of young men here in their twenties and thirties who haven't had an education. They don't have anything to do. They don't have any responsibilities,' he said. 'It's hard to apply western values but there's an aboriginal style of child rearing that lets kids do what they want. There's a lot of cultural stuff about kinship that means you are obliged to feed a family member if he comes in and says he's hungry or give him somewhere to stay but now that's been turned into kids hassling their grandmothers for money. It's hard for people to stand up to that.'
Dr Rebgetz adds: 'I see 18-year-olds and if they're sent into Darwin it's like going to the moon. They need an older person who has English to go with them and to be their interpreter. What chance do these kids have? I don't understand it. The government has a $13bn surplus this year but there's a $2bn to $3bn deficit around Aboriginal communities for housing and infrastructure. Why aren't they spending it on these people? They're citizens of this country too.' He says Wadeye waited two years for a donga, a portable building, to use as a men's clinic and it has only just arrived. But when the police asked for a similar building, it arrived in three weeks. 'I'm a total cynic but I'm not cynical about these people,' he says.
The people of Wadeye are wary of journalists because most of the headlines about the town have been about riots that broke out in 2005 - between two gangs called Judas Priest and Evil Warriors. Walking around town it seems most young people belong to gangs of some kind, seemingly harmless. A group of giggling girls say they belong to the Tina Turner gang, and apparently there is one named after Celine Dion. At the dongas where visitors stay, food that I had bought at Wadeye's only general store was stolen a few hours after I arrived. Children of 12 or 13 had been hanging around but they took crisps and biscuits, leaving a gold chain and a computer. With so few resources here, it does not seem surprising bored young people form gangs and that violence inevitably erupts every now and then.
Local people play down the riots of 2005, but they gave Wadeye a reputation as a lawless place. The town now has strong leadership in the form of Thamarrurr Council, made up of representatives from each of the clans. It is working hard for the common good, developing ways to bring employment such as a commercial fishing scheme and training young men to be bush mechanics. Other projects include building houses - more than 200 are needed urgently - developing recreation grounds, improving roads, and installing street lighting - 95 per cent of the town is in darkness at night.
'We're trying to normalise the town,' says spokesman John Berto. 'I think this community is doing fantastically well. It's only 80 years since they had contact with the white man. Of course there are a lot of problems here but there are also good things, the culture and the language, the closeness of families, the strength of leadership in men and women.'
A massive task is ahead of those who want to improve Wadeye but after a few days visitors begin to look past the distressing living conditions and discover the people of Wadeye are sustained by their culture, which is kept alive through songs, legends and stories. Retaining their traditional language is part of that. Murrinh-patha, the language of the Kardu Diminin clan that owns the land on which Wadeye stands, is spoken by everyone while the other languages, spoken by only a handful of elders, are in danger of becoming extinct.
At Our Lady of the Sacred Heart School in Wadeye, children are taught in Murrinh-patha and in English. 'Language is strong here and people want to hold on to it,' says Tobias Nganbe, co-principal. 'But we also want our children to be proficient in English so that they will be strong people on their own lands, have similar employment opportunities to white kids and be able to move between their own culture and mainstream Australian culture.'
The teaching staff have an uphill struggle. According to activists, one of the reasons so many Aborigine children do not speak English competently is a shameful lack of resources and a shortage of teachers qualified to teach English as a second language.
Another reason is the dismal school attendance figures among Aborigine students. At Wadeye, 600 children are enrolled at school but only 300 attend regularly. The picture is the same at other Aborigine schools and this has prompted Prime Minister John Howard's government to float the idea of diverting welfare payments from parents whose children do not attend.
The reasons for non-attendance are many. Some Aboriginal parents did not have happy experiences at school and do not believe it is important to send their children. In many communities, including Wadeye, schools have been so under-funded that there are not enough classrooms or teachers. Inevitably, children and their parents become disillusioned.
Last month, Wadeye lodged a landmark complaint in the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission alleging that for three decades local and federal governments deliberately discriminated against the community by under-funding the school. The class action case, prepared by pro bono lawyers, includes every resident of school age in Wadeye since 1979. It is based on a study that found that for every dollar spent educating the average child in the Northern Territory only 48 cents was spent on a child in Wadeye. The figures were said to have been calculated by a funding formula that gauges attendance, instead of enrolment.
The same study also found that local and national governments overspent on 'negative' areas in Wadeye such as policing and criminal justice and under-spent on 'positive' areas such as education and job creation. Wadeye is the first Aboriginal community in Australia to launch such an action and, if it wins, it wants compensation in the form of vocational and remedial education for people now unemployed and on welfare.
On my last day in Wadeye, the Nudjulu family took me to their outstation at Kuy, 40kms away. Patrick rested in the shade while his wife Mona and grandchildren went hunting for mud-crabs in the mangrove swamp for eating later.
Patrick, who speaks several Aborigine languages, as well as English, told me he was educated at Wadeye in the early mission days and put up in dormitories with other children.
'I was born here, in the bush,' he said. 'I used to run away and walk back here.' He laughs heartily: 'I'm happy to be here still.'
See: The Observer
Consult Us & Give Us Respect: Expert's Plea
Debra Jopson | June 23, 2007
ABORIGINAL Australians are being used "in a desperate game of wedge politics where the prize is electoral success", Sydney's most prominent indigenous health leader has said in an open letter to the Federal Government.
"But I doubt whether dishonourable success is electoral success at all," says Naomi Mayers, of Redfern's Aboriginal Medical Service, in her five-page letter sent yesterday to the federal Indigenous Affairs Minister, Mal Brough, the Prime Minister, John Howard, and the Opposition Leader, Kevin Rudd.
Dr Mayers says a royal commission is needed to examine the scandal of successive governments systematically diverting funds earmarked for Aboriginal programs to general community projects and infrastructure.
This was exposed by a federal government-commissioned review into Northern Territory spending in 1980 and has continued nationwide, she says.
The dismantled Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission had its funding to tackle child abuse cut after it campaigned for a decade for more money - as the indigenous activist Mick Dodson pointed out four years ago, her letter says.
In a passionate plea for self-determination and respect for human rights, Dr Mayers calls on the politicians to look again at the solutions to the indigenous plight outlined in numerous reports, including the 1989 National Aboriginal Health Strategy, which was never implemented.
"It was the first occasion in Australian history since 1788 that Aboriginal peoples and Australian governments had worked together under the Aboriginal decision-making process of consensus," she says.
In her 40 years in Aboriginal affairs she has read most reports and all those about her people's health. "My summary is this: the fundamental recommendations are remarkably similar, but Australian governments have avoided their implementation."
She adds: "We are regularly spoken to with contempt, hectored, lectured at and treated as inferiors of lesser intelligence whose ideas are to be dismissed."
See: Sydney Morning Herald
Aborigines Face Ban On Alcohol & Porn
James Sturcke & Agencies, Guardian Unlimited | June 21, 2007
Pornography and alcohol will be banned for Aborigines in Australia's Northern Territory, the country's prime minister, John Howard, announced today, after a report found that "rivers of grog" were leading to rampant child abuse.
"This is a national emergency," Mr Howard told parliament. "We're dealing with a group of young Australians for whom the concept of childhood innocence has never been present."
The sale, possession and transportation of alcohol would be banned for six months on Aboriginal-owned land in the Northern Territory, Mr Howard said, and sales would be reviewed after that.
Some Aboriginal leaders immediately attacked the plan as "disgusting and paternalistic", saying they were not consulted and that they objected to restrictions on how indigenous people spend their welfare benefits.
The child abuse report, Little Children Are Sacred, released last week, found drinking was a key contributor to the collapse of Aboriginal culture and neglect of children, and created opportunities for paedophiles.
The report said hardcore pornography was rife in Aboriginal communities and available to children, who had become desensitised to sex with adults. The sale and possession of pornography is also to be banned.
"A river of grog [alcohol] is killing people and destroying our communities," Pat Anderson, who co-chaired the inquiry, told reporters last week. "There is a strong association between alcohol abuse, violence and sexual abuse of children."
About 60,000 of Australia's roughly 400,000 Aborigines live in the Northern Territory. They are consistently the nation's most disadvantaged group, with far higher rates of unemployment, alcohol and drug abuse, and domestic violence. Their life expectancy is 17 years shorter than that of other Australians.
Alcohol kills an Aborigine every 38 hours and accounts for a quarter of deaths in the Northern Territory.
Under Mr Howard's plan, new restrictions would be placed on welfare payments for Aborigines, forcing parents to spend at least half of the money on essential items such as food - a measure meant to prevent wasting money on alcohol and gambling. Family welfare payments would also be linked to children's school attendance.
Aboriginal leaders said it was the kind of government behaviour that disenfranchised their people and created the problems in the first place.
"I'm absolutely disgusted by this patronising government control," said Mitch, who uses one name and is a member of a government board helping Aborigines who were taken from their parents under past assimilation laws. "And tying drinking with welfare payments is just disgusting.
"If they're going to do that, they're going to have to do that with every single person in Australia, not just black people."
The report said banning alcohol sales in some Aboriginal communities had dramatically reduced sexual abuse and violence: "Alcohol is being used as a bartering tool to gain sex from children, either by offering it to the children themselves or in some cases to adult members of their family."
One Aboriginal woman from the Yolngu tribe said "white man's water is a curse" and called for alcohol outlets to be closed.
"Eradicate this curse that is killing us physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually," she wrote in a letter published in the report.
The report said: "Many of the Aboriginal people spoken to by the inquiry were not aware of legal issues such as age of consent."
See: The Guardian
The Aboriginal people are likely to disappear within a generation
James Sturcke, Guardian Unlimited | June 21, 2007
A report called Little Children Are Sacred highlights the blight of alcoholism and child abuse in Australia.
Alcohol's devastating effect on Australian Aboriginal society is hardly a new phenomenon but it appears to be accelerating, with a warning that indigenous life could vanish within a generation - in native communities that equates to about 15 years.
Among a raft of problems linked to alcohol is the sexual abuse of children - a fact confirmed in last week's report, Little Children Are Sacred, by one of Australia's most senior lawyers, Rex Wild QC, and Pat Anderson, a Alyawarr woman well known for her work on indigenous health and community issues.
Ms Anderson told reporters at the report's launch that there were "rivers of grog killing people and destroying our communities". Alcohol causes the death of an Aborigine every 38 hours, with a quarter of the deaths in the Northern Territory.
But is prohibition, as effectively announced today by the Australian prime minister, John Howard, the answer?
"It is absolutely clear that unless we take on and overcome the abuse of alcohol and the harm it causes the Aboriginal people, then the Aboriginal people and their cultures are likely to disappear within a generation or so," the inquiry found.
The authors visited 45 Aboriginal communities and found crime had been cut by 70% in areas where pubs had been shut.
"People seemed to be more at rest and were talking and acting in a much happier manner than they would have been if the pub was open," the report observed during a visit to Borroloola.
"Since the pub lost its licence, the community had become quieter, there was no brawling, more kids were attending school and parents and adult family members were spending more positive time with children doing family activities such as fishing."
Child abuse allegations among the Northern Territory's 60,000-strong Aboriginal population have come under the media spotlight since last year's broadcast of a television documentary about a suspected paedophile who was trading petrol for sex with young girls.
In compiling Little Children Are Sacred, the authors say they "quickly became aware" - in common with numerous earlier inquiries - that child sexual abuse was directly related to other breakdowns in society.
"Put simply, the cumulative effects of poor health, alcohol, drug abuse, gambling, pornography, unemployment, poor education and housing and general disempowerment lead inexorably to family and other violence and then on to sexual abuse of men and women and, finally, of children," the report states.
Alcohol is readily available and is being drunk in record quantities in communities where - amid high unemployment - there is little else to do.
"The inquiry believes that extreme alcohol abuse has become normal in the Northern Territory and the devastating effects on children are rapidly increasing. The inquiry was also told of increasing numbers of Aboriginal children taking up alcohol and that the ages of first-time drinkers are decreasing.
"The importance of effectively dealing with substance abuse, in particular alcohol, as part of an overall strategy aimed at protecting Aboriginal children from sexual abuse, cannot be emphasised strongly enough. Only radical, determined and wholesale reform will make a difference."
The consumption of alcohol by children "increases their vulnerability to abuse" and is used as "a bartering tool to obtain sex" either by offering it to the youngsters or their guardians.
The authors also express concern about the widespread availability of pornography, which is widely seen by children as a result of poor supervision.
"The daily diet of sexually explicit material has had a major impact, presenting young and adolescent Aboriginals with a view of mainstream sexual practice and behaviour which is jaundiced. It encourages them to act out the fantasies they see on screen or in magazines."
On top of recommending that under-16s should be banned from exposure to pornography and that an "alcohol framework" to reduce consumption should be established, the authors said that better education was essential, not just in getting pupils into school but among adults, too.
The report criticised the present and past governments for lacking the political will to tackle the issue, particularly when last year's budget surplus was "billions and billions of dollars".
There are 97 recommendations in the report but blanket prohibition is not among them. Instead, in dealing with alcohol, it calls for reduction programmes and plans tailored to individual communities.
It also recommends introducing more public health campaigns highlighting the dangers of alcohol and making counseling available.
Appeals for extensive consultation with Aboriginal elders for culturally acceptable ways of battling the "impending disaster" appear to have been ignored.
While the report's authors may be gratified that the Australian prime minister is not afraid to take radical measures, his apparent lack of consultation harks back to the paternalism which characterised the treatment of Aborigines half a century ago. That is unlikely to win support for the changes in the places where they matter most.
See: The Guardian
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