Intervention dispute not over
The Australian | 30 November 2007
A High Court challenge against the commonwealth's intervention in Aboriginal communities will continue, despite proposed changes to the reforms by the Rudd government.
A traditional owner and a community organisation at the remote Arnhem Land community of Maningrida, 500km east of Darwin, launched the legal bid in September, claiming the Howard government's takeover of Aboriginal land diminished indigenous rights and was not done on just terms.
The legal action was taken by Reggie Wurridjal and the Bawinanga Aboriginal Corporation, which provides employment services and runs several businesses in the community. Retired Federal Court judge Ron Merkel agreed to represent Maningrida, with Labor law firm Holding Redlich acting as solicitors.
Key elements of the intervention are set to be changed by the incoming federal Labor government, which has promised to reintroduce the Community Development Employment Projects, or Aboriginal work-for-the-dole, and the permit system. Kevin Rudd is also under pressure from within his party to bring forward and extend its proposed 12-month review of the intervention.
Bawinanga chief executive Ian Munro confirmed yesterday that the legal challenge would continue, regardless of the change of government: "The (Rudd) government does not have control of the Senate, and the laws remain in place."
Mr Munro also said the Rudd government had given no indication it would change the compulsory five-year acquisition of Aboriginal land, which formed a major part of his case against intervention.
The case was adjourned last month for a further directions hearing on Monday.
See: The Australian
It's time to stop playing politics with vulnerable lives
Sydney Morning Herald | 30 November 2007
Marcia Langton
The crisis in Aboriginal society is a public spectacle, played out in a vast reality show through the media, parliaments, civil service and Aboriginal world. This obscene and pornographic spectacle deploys a special mode of dehumanising abuse and parody, and ultimately shifts our attention away from the everyday crises that Aboriginal people endure, or don't endure, dying as they do at excessive rates.
This spectacle is not a new phenomenon in Australian public life but the debate about indigenous affairs has reached a new crescendo, fuelled by the uncensored exposé of the extent of Aboriginal child abuse.
More than a century of policy experimentation with Aboriginal people climaxed with the Commonwealth Government sending the army and a specialist taskforce into the Northern Territory, the only jurisdiction where it has such broad powers.
It legislated more than 500 pages of emergency intervention measures that subvert self-government powers of the Northern Territory in the most extraordinary federal takeover in Australia's history. In some critical respects, the outcome is what many have recommended for decades: interventions to prevent the abuse, rape and assault of Aboriginal women and children and decisive action against the perpetrators.
The federal legislation and the emergency taskforce constituted a slap in the face for the Northern Territory Government led by the then chief minister, Clare Martin - a bracing vote of no confidence in her government's capacity to deal with the Aboriginal crisis.
Even though the Commonwealth provides funds to the Northern Territory Government on the basis of the disadvantages of the population, it was the Commonwealth, rather than the Territory Government, that became the villain of the piece in the public debate about the intervention.
Last Sunday Labor's Trish Crossin and Warren Snowdon reportedly demanded that the intervention be halted, with a list of demands: the reinstatement of the Aboriginal work-for-the-dole scheme; the removal of measures to limit alcohol sales; and the reinstatement of permit restrictions for Aboriginal communities that had been not just isolated from the outside world but effectively quarantined from the larger society and economy. It remains to be seen whether the Prime Minister-elect, Kevin Rudd, will honour his commitment to the intervention.
Now Martin and her deputy, Sid Stirling, have resigned.
There has also been a spill in the chairman's position at the powerful Northern Land Council. Wali Wunungmurra, one of Galarrwuy Yunupingu's cousins, was elected to the position. Just before the federal election, Yunupingu supported the principal intention of the intervention in a public lecture at the University of Melbourne.
The political earth is moving after so much pretentious, vain, and ultimately anti-humanist dancing with symbols while the practical responses to the crisis never came.
There's a cynical view afoot that the emergency intervention was a political ploy - a Trojan Horse - to sneak through land grabs and some gratuitous black head-kicking disguised as concern for children. These conspiracy theories abound, and they are mostly ridiculous.
Those who did not see the intervention in the Northern Territory coming were deluding themselves. It was the inevitable outcome of the many failures of policy and of the strange federal-state division of responsibilities for Aboriginal Australians. Added to this were the general incompetence of the civil service and the non-governmental sector, including some Aboriginal organisations, lack of political will and the dead hand of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission.
The combined effect of the media campaign for action and the emergency intervention has been a metaphorical dagger sunk into the heart of the powerful, wrong-headed Aboriginal male ideology that had prevailed in indigenous affairs, policies and practices.
It's time for the voices of women and children to be heard. It's time for both the federal and the Territory government to stop playing politics with the lives of the vulnerable and shut down the alcohol take-away outlets, establish children's commissions and shelters in each community - as Noel Pearson has suggested - and treat grog runners and drug dealers as the criminals that they are. Otherwise, they will all have the blood of the victims on their hands.
Professor Marcia Langton is the Inaugural Chairwoman of Australian Indigenous Studies at the University of Melbourne.
See: Sydney Morning Herald
GP group hopeful of finding doctor for Pintubi
ABC News | 30 November 2007
General Practice and Primary Health Care NT says it hopes the Indigenous intervention will result in more doctors and nurses willing to work in the Territory.
The group's Jim Thurley says he's spoken to several doctors and nurses involved in the intervention who've expressed interest in returning.
Dr Thurley says he hopes they will ease the staff shortage problems in remote communities.
"There's been quite a lot of criticism [of the intervention but] what that has done is expose a lot of health professionals to what it's like working in the Territory. And I know from my contact with the people who have gone out to do the child health checks there has been an interest in coming back in a more permanent position."
Dr Thurley says it's likely the doctor's position at the remote Pintubi Homelands Health Service will be filled shortly.
The service, which is near the border west of Alice Springs, had warned it may have to close over Christmas and New Year, because of a lack of staff.
But he says the service may still have to close for short time over Christmas.
"Christmas is a time when people obviously want to take holidays, so that does put a bit of a strain on our locum service at times."
See: ABC News
'Sorry' issue splits Libs
Sydney Morning Herald | 30 November 2007
New deputy Liberal leader Julie Bishop has failed to fall in immediately behind her leader's opposition to saying sorry to the Stolen Generation.
Commentators believe Malcolm Turnbull's strong support for saying sorry may have helped cost him the leadership in yesterday's party room ballot, which he lost to Brendan Nelson by 45 votes to 42.
Dr Nelson says he will not support prime minister-elect Kevin Rudd's plan to say sorry for past governments' removal of indigenous children from their parents.
While he said he would discuss the issue with colleagues, Dr Nelson said last night: "In my view we have no responsibility to apologise or take ownership for what was done by earlier generations".
Ms Bishop declined to offer a view on the issue today.
"It's now up to the new government to take a position on this and then we will respond accordingly," she told ABC Radio.
"I think we need to consult within the party to ensure that everybody understands where we are going with this issue."
Ms Bishop said saying sorry "became one of those symbolic issues from which the party would not retreat".
"We are very proud of the fact that we responded so immediately to the Northern Territory report and ... we must continue with that Northern Territory intervention so that we can make a practical difference to indigenous people in this country.
"We've still got to focus on the practical solutions for indigenous disadvantage and that's what our focus will be."
Ms Bishop said Mr Rudd had been "very shy" in spelling out the terms of a Labor Government apology.
"I mean, he has been consistently baulking at actually saying these are the words we will use.
"So, I think it would be incumbent on us to consider what the government is putting forward and then take a position on it."
Dr Nelson has maintained Mr Howard's stance by saying he is not convinced of the need to say sorry.
"In my view, we have no responsibility to apologise or take ownership for what was done by earlier generations," he told ABC TV last night.
"Our generation cannot take personal or generational responsibility for the actions of earlier ones which in most, but not all cases, were done with the best of intentions."
Today, Dr Nelson said he had cried while reading about the plight of Aboriginal Australians in the past, but Australians should not be sorry about it.
On Aboriginal history, he said: "I am not ashamed to say I was in tears reading a lot of it".
"From the early 20th century through to about 1970, in most but not all cases they were good intentions, devastating outcomes in a lot of cases, arguably good outcomes in others," he told Southern Cross Broadcasting.
"Our generation will look back with a sense of shame in some of those outcomes, but we don't own them," he said.
See: Sydney Morning Herald
Nelson pleads with Rudd not to retreat from NT intervention
NI Times | 30 November 2007
New federal Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson has pleaded with Prime Minister-elect Kevin Rudd not to retreat from the coalition's radical intervention into Northern Territory Aboriginal communities.
Dr Nelson made special mention of the intervention today during his first press conference as leader of the Liberal Party.
His plea came shortly after Mr Rudd announced Jenny Macklin would become Indigenous affairs minister, after having responsibility for the portfolio in opposition for the past year.
"Whatever the differences between the two major sides of politics, Aboriginal babies born today still, after all we have done, have only a one-in-three chance of seeing the age of 65," Dr Nelson said.
"The appalling circumstances that led to the intervention need to be changed and addressed.
"They're the things ultimately by which we'll be judged.
"It is extraordinarily important that it not be the subject of partisan party politics, and literally young Aboriginal Australian lives rely on it."
Dr Nelson said Mr Rudd would come under "enormous pressure" from within his own party to retreat from the intervention.
Labor pledged bipartisan support for the intervention when it was announced in June, even though many in the party opposed it.
It has already pledged to roll back two key planks of the intervention: the abolition of Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) program - known as an Aboriginal work-for-the-dole scheme - and changes to the permit system.
But Mr Rudd today indicated continued general support for the intervention.
"There will be a 12-month review and it won't be earlier," Mr Rudd told reporters after announcing his frontbench.
"And I said repeatedly before the election this has to be given an opportunity to work, I was serious about that, I'm serious about it now."
Mr Rudd said the year ahead would be "crucial" in indigenous affairs and Ms Macklin was well qualified to deal with the challenges.
Olga Havnen of the Combined Aboriginal Organisations of the NT said Ms Macklin's appointment to the portfolio would provide vital continuity in Indigenous policy, particularly regarding the intervention.
Ms Havnen said she wanted to see Labor push forward with a "realigned and better focused" intervention.
Tasmanian Aboriginal leader Michael Mansell welcomed Ms Macklin's appointment but called on Mr Rudd to directly involve himself in Aboriginal issues.
"Aboriginal people will be looking for statements and actions from Mr Rudd and Ms Macklin to indicate things are going to be different from the dark and traumatic Howard years," Mr Mansell said. - AAP
See: NI Times
Outback welfare cards sold for cash
The Australian | 29 November 2007
The quarantining of welfare payments in central Australia has hit its first serious snag, with evidence emerging that stored-value cards issued to Aboriginal people for food and clothing are being traded on the black market for cash.
Aborigines in 10 communities to the south and west of Alice Springs have been issued with the cards in recent weeks as part ofthe roll-out of the commonwealth's Northern Territory intervention.
The small, plastic cards are an income-management tool aimed at ensuring that Aborigines spend 50 per cent of their welfare money on food, clothing and rent.
The Australian has learned that the cards, issued to purchase goods at Coles, Woolworths and Kmart, are routinely being traded for less than their real value.
A $200 card, for example, is sold for $150 cash, which can then be spent on alcohol, junk food or other commodities not sold at the supermarket chains.
Tangentyere Council executive member Barbara Shaw said the problem could be overcome only by issuing the cards to specific individuals and making them non-transferable.
"It's not just drink," Ms Shaw said. "People like to have the takeaway food, they like to have the cash to buy it. They can't go to KFC with a voucher, you can't go to a video shop with a voucher."
Titjikala traditional owner Joe Rawson told The Australian he had also heard that people were selling the cards in return for cash. "What they are doing is trading them with taxi drivers," he said.
Titjikala is the closest to Alice Springs of the 10 communities that have income-management plans. There has also been evidence of the trade in Finke, further to the south, and in Mutitjulu, to the southwest.
But the size of the black market is set to grow drastically in coming weeks when Aborigines living in Alice Springs's 19 town camps are issued with the cards.
Currently, people in the 10 communities whose income is being managed have half of their income quarantined at their local store. But they may choose the stored-value cards as an alternative. This enables them to buy food and clothes at cheaper prices in Alice Springs supermarkets.
Because indigenous people in Alice Springs town camps do not have community stores, it is anticipated that the majority of their quarantined income will be put on a stored-value card.
Ms Shaw said Tangentyere, the organisation that manages the 19 town camps, already had in place a voluntary system of food vouchers for 800 town camp residents.
When it was introduced three years ago, this scheme also had a problem of vouchers being traded for cash. But it had now been improved by printing names on the vouchers to ensure that welfare benefits were actually being spent on food.
"People will try whatever they can to get money because it's money, rather than a card," Ms Shaw said.
The council is hoping their voluntary food-voucher program will remain in place for those who are already on it.
The Australian spoke to several taxi drivers and the operator of a second-hand shop in Alice Springs who said they had not been offered stored-value cards. However, each said they were not surprised it was happening, and expected it would occur more when town camp residents started being given the cards.
A spokeswoman for Centrelink said they had not heard of the practice.
See: The Australian
Snowdon calls for health service staffing
ABC News | 29 November 2007
The Labor Member for the Northern Territory seat of Lingiari, Warren Snowdon, says he is not surprised an Aboriginal medical service in the western desert is having trouble attracting staff.
The Pintubi Homelands Health Service in the community of Kintore says it might have to close its doors over the Christmas period because only one nurse is available to work.
Mr Snowdon says many remote health services face difficulties recruiting staff.
But he says people in the Kintore community need a health service.
"So I think the priority ought to be for the government agencies which are involved to work with the Pintubi Homelands Health Service to try and recruit staff [and] provide additional resources to them to get staff, if they don't have enough money to attract staff or alternatively arrange for some volunteers in the short-term," he said.
See: ABC News
Daly, Fry depart Northern Land Council
ABC News | 29 November 2007
There's been further political upheaval in the Territory with changes at the top of the Northern Land Council.
Just a day after John Daly was voted out as its chairman, the NLC's long-serving chief executive Norman Fry has resigned.
"My reasons for resigning from the Northern Land Council stem from the sheer weight of time that I've been there," he said.
"I'm tired. I've got to rejuvenate and move on."
The council's new chairman Wali Wunungmurra paid tribute to Mr Fry saying he was instrumental in many major projects, including the Blue Mud Bay seas case which is on appeal to the High Court next week.
The council says it will continue with projects supported by Mr Fry, including the nuclear waste dump at Muckaty Station near Tennant Creek.
Mr Fry had held the position for 12 years, and says a change of leaders in the council, the Territory government and in Canberra is an opportunity to create new and better relationships.
He denies that he was pushed to leave.
When asked if he was planning a future in politics, he replied with a flat no.
"I certainly don't like the look of politics in anyway in the Northern Territory and I'm really not interested in the local scene," he said.
The Territory's new Chief Minister Paul Henderson says he'll seek to establish a good working relationship with the new chief executive.
See: ABC News
The NT intervention is unravelling: Altman
Crikey | 28 November 2007
Professor Jon Altman from the Australian National University writes:
I have to declare my interest. I opposed the so called "national emergency" intervention from 21 June 2007, the afternoon it was announced (see Crikey piece 22 June 2007). It looked to me like political opportunism by a government that had become increasingly oppositional to Indigenous interests.
On 25 November 2007, in an undisciplined and gloomy post-election moment on the ABC's Insiders, Alexander Downer revealed that the intervention's aim was to generate electoral bounce. Downer thought the intervention was popular, but not in the opinion polls, nor it now seems among Aboriginal voters in Lingiari where all 73 prescribed communities are located.
This raises worrying questions about with whom it was popular: the uninformed? Those who condone racially discriminatory measures? Those who are conspicuously compassionate about the nationally significant issue of Indigenous disadvantage, like ex-Minister Mal Brough?
By September 2007, about $1.4 billion had been committed to the intervention but, in the five months since 21 June, little has been achieved on the ground. If this is a national emergency, the response has been implemented in an ad hoc and unsystematic manner at a snail's pace.
A survey I conducted with five communities last month indicated that the only areas where there had been consistent implementation was in conducting voluntary health checks (with generally incomplete coverage and no reporting of child s-x abuse); in appointing government business managers with unfettered "emergency" powers; and in constructing expensive, but unsightly, housing for intervention staff from converted sea containers.
Quarantining people's welfare payments without proper processing systems in place is a disaster in some situations; and moving people from work to welfare by abolishing the CDEP scheme and without alternative employment is unconscionable.
Fortunately, the full intervention fiasco has only been rolled out to a handful of communities. This was not because of thoughtfulness or caution by the Intervention Task Force, but the result of incompetence arising from lack of adequate consultation and reluctance to collaborate with effective community-based Indigenous organisations.
So calling an immediate moratorium on the intervention and urgently reviewing its workability and sustainability would make good policy sense.
The incoming Rudd government has committed to stop the nonsensical abolition of CDEP and to reinstate the permit system (that has not yet been effectively abolished anywhere) because neither has anything to do with the protection of children. Other measures might quickly follow: the proposed compulsory acquisition of prescribed communities that will be legally contested; the quarantining of welfare that will be expensive to administer, that is racist and will prove ineffective; and the appointment of government business managers with dictatorial powers. How many spokes of the intervention wheel will need to be removed before it collapses?
Only two tests need to be applied to intervention measures to see which should go and which should stay. The racial inequality test should dictate that any blanket measures that would not be applied to non-Indigenous Australians (e.g. income quarantining and alcohol prohibition) should go immediately, or at the very least be modified to introduce defensible discretion in implementation. The racial equality test should dictate that elements like adequate community policing and funding commitments to enhanced housing, education, health and employment should stay to provide citizenship entitlements to Indigenous people on an equitable needs basis.
What should also disappear as quickly as possible from public discourse is the offensive and carefully crafted negative language of 'national emergency' and 'intervention'. Instead, we should talk about urgent policy focus and adequate resourcing to address the disadvantage experienced by Indigenous Australians in the NT and elsewhere.
The focus on one jurisdiction only is both demeaning and statistically indefensible. Such language also demeans the NT polity. It is little wonder that Clare Martin found her position untenable with over 30 per cent of the NT constituency and 50 per cent of the NT geographic jurisdiction being administered remotely by bureaucrats in Canberra. As the Memorandum of Understanding signed between the NT and Commonwealth on 17 September for nearly $800 million recognizes, it is NT not Commonwealth agencies that will need to deliver programs and services.
Ultimately, it is Indigenous community-based organisations that will do the real on the ground delivery of programs and services. This reality provides the principal reason for halting the intervention immediately¬before too many of these organisations and key staff disappear. Fortunately, much of the ALP's Indigenous economic development strategy released on 7 November (see www.kevin07.com.au) recognises this; on top of the $1.4 billion already committed, there are additional resources to facilitate innovative and sustainable development opportunities.
The intervention is unravelling, but a national focus and considerable goodwill and funding commitment remains. Five requirements, based on principles of participatory development, will be essential if we are to see progress in the NT:
- Recognising Indigenous diversity and difference as a positive that benefits the Australian nation
- Partnerships with communities and the establishment of appropriate channels to hear Indigenous aspirations
- Building local intercultural organizations and institutions and capabilities
- Realistic investments, in catch up to close the gaps and to support innovative programs to enable local livelihood opportunity
- Planning for sustainable outcomes based on rigorous needs-based analysis with ongoing and transparent evaluation.
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Mr Sartor's plan for planning
Sydney Morning Herald | 17 November 2007
FRANK SARTOR has been champing at the bit to reorganise planning in NSW. Now the Planning Minister has published a discussion paper, so home builders, renovators and developers can see what he wants to do. Most of his improvements genuinely deserve that name. But some do not.
Mr Sartor wants to make the system flexible so it will fit the nature of developments being proposed. Small renovations and simple projects will go through a simple process, which becomes progressively more complex for larger developments. This makes eminent sense. For the home owner or builder hoping to gain approval for a small project, Mr Sartor's changes would bring a welcome cut in red tape. By widening the definition of a complying development, he hopes to cut the number of development applications in half. It is only common sense, for instance, that someone wanting to install a solar water heater on the roof of a home in these times should not need to apply for development approval. And where disputes do arise, Mr Sartor suggests submitting them first to arbitrators as a way to keep them out of the courts.
He has also suggested ways to amend the management of strata-title properties to ensure developers of new projects do not undermine the legal rights of other owners. He might have gone further. With whole streets of ageing strata-title blocks now ripe for rebuilding, the law needs to ensure the wishes of a majority of owners are not thwarted by the opposition of one or two objectors.
At the other end of the scale are projects of state significance. For these, Mr Sartor proposes a Planning Assessment Commission to take over part of his own role as the consent authority. It puts the Minister at arm's length from the process - but he would still choose the commission members. Much, clearly, would depend on that choice.
On the issue of private certifiers, however, his proposals fall short of what is needed. Mr Sartor wants improved accreditation and auditing of certifiers, though he must also provide the Building Professionals Board with the resources to carry this out. But the basic conflict of interest remains: the developer employs the person who is to say whether a project meets planning criteria. Until that structural flaw is solved, the problems with the existing process, which have been highlighted by the Herald's reporting, will continue.
Beyond sorry, making amends
KEVIN RUDD is setting foot on more difficult ground than he thinks in promising to make a formal apology early in this parliamentary term for the nation's past treatment of its Aboriginal people. Wrongly handled, it could end up like one of the numerous apologies uttered by Japanese politicians for their country's pre-1945 depredations in Asia - formalities hiding a lack of true historical consensus and contrition on one hand, and seen as insincere and lacking practical consequences on the other.
The moment for Australia's political leader to say "sorry" may have passed. The election has not settled the "history wars", and reconciliation of issues like the stolen generation will happen at different speeds around the states. Rather, the test for the new government is the one it set itself: not looking back but forward, and ending the appalling gap in life expectancy for indigenous Australians.
Clare Martin's sorrowful exit as chief minister of the Northern Territory highlighted the contentious aspects of the federal "intervention" into 73 indigenous communities in June. She attacked the outgoing Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, for admitting the Howard Government expected some electoral benefit from this. Yet she left the way open, by sitting on the damning report into sexual abuse of Aboriginal children and by failing to tackle the Territory's glaring epidemic of alcohol-induced crime, violence and neglect.
Something like the intervention was needed, even if the Coalition had an eye to its political spin-off. With new governments in Canberra and Darwin, the intervention should be quickly reassessed and given tighter focus on delivering services. Political grandstanding has to be stripped out, duplication of health facilities ended, and care taken that the result is more doctors, nurses, social workers and police caring for the communities, not layers of managers consuming the funds.
Unnecessary measures that undercut Aboriginal self-management should be wound back. The permit system might have hindered journalistic and other scrutiny, but it also helped bar sly-groggers, dodgy salesmen and predatory art buyers. Why was it necessary to resume control of community land and assets? Why make all or most Aborigines virtual state wards, when only some were squandering welfare on booze, rather than buying food for their families? Why end the Community Development Employment Project, when this provided the only work experience available in some remote settlements?
When there's a resurgent, healthy and engaged indigenous population, our sorrow at historical wrongs will have been expressed genuinely, and to some purpose.
See: Sydney Morning Herald
One of the brains behind NT intervention retires
Sydney Morning Herald | 28 November 2007
THE Commonwealth's most senior indigenous affairs bureaucrat, and one of the public service's most controversial figures, has retired, leaving the cupboard of policy architects for the Northern Territory intervention almost bare.
Wayne Gibbons, who is an associate secretary at the Department of Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs and the head of the Office of Indigenous Policy Co-ordination, retired after 39 years of public service yesterday.
With the former prime minister John Howard, indigenous affairs minister Mal Brough and Peter Shergold, the secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Mr Gibbons was one of the authors of the Howard Government's practical reconciliation policies and its radical measures to "normalise" NT communities.
In recent years he has been described as "the intellectual architect of the intervention" and a "determined" and "sober bureaucrat not afraid of getting a job done" as he oversaw the clean-up and dismantling of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission and the Government's radical measures to tackle child sexual abuse in indigenous communities.
He has also been responsible for some of the more colourful imagery in indigenous affairs, such as a claim in 2004 that the advent of Shared Responsibility Agreements would mean an end to Aboriginal nepotism, which included "everything from people being excluded to people having their legs broken with a baseball bat".
When the number of indigenous staff employed at the Office of Indigenous Policy Co-ordination dropped by a quarter between July 2004 and November 2005, Mr Gibbons said in his defence that the office had "a merit system, not an affirmative action system".
The Canberra Times reported "catcalls and walkouts" in response to his take-no-prisoners approach at the OIPC in 2005, but then-minister Amanda Vanstone liked his direct approach.
More recently, he was criticised for approving the appearance in disguise of a staffer, Greg Andrews, on the ABC's Lateline in June last year, alleging pedophilia was rife in Aboriginal communities.
See: Sydney Morning Herald
'Stay with intervention'
The Australian | 29 November 2007
RESPECTED Aboriginal academic Marcia Langton has warned Labor to stop playing short-term politics with the commonwealth's intervention in remote communities and expressed concern about moves to wind back key elements of the reforms.
Urging Kevin Rudd to work with indigenous leaders, Professor Langton yesterday told The Australian the main thrusts of the intervention, such as alcohol restrictions, should continue.
But she said the incoming federal government had an opportunity to redefine the intervention "in line with human rights standards".
"There's never a good time to play short-term electoral politics with the life-and-death issues in Aboriginal communities," Professor Langton said.
"This is especially not the time to do so, and I urge Northern Territory politicians, whether they are elected to federal or Northern Territory seats, to desist from playing electoral politics with the lives of Aboriginal women and children."
The prime minister-elect faces growing pressure to wind back key elements of the intervention, with a chorus of voices - including Territory Labor MP Warren Snowdon, former Fraser government indigenous affairs minister Fred Chaney, former ATSIC chair Lowitja O'Donoghue and ANU academic Jon Altman - yesterday arguing for significant changes to the plan. But Professor Langton said the work of the intervention, unveiled by John Howard in July, was too important not to proceed.
"I think the rush to review the intervention might be motivated more by short-term electoral gains, such as commitments made during the election, rather than working for good, long-term sustainable outcomes," she said. "I note with interest that Kevin Rudd has asked his members of parliament to visit two schools in each electorate and to visit homeless people.
"Well, I would ask further that each of them visit an Aboriginal community and talk to women and children and ask them what they want."
Professor Langton said Mr Rudd should take note of a speech in September by former Northern Land Council chairman Galarrwuy Yunupingu, who broadly backed the intervention after signing a memorandum of understanding with the Howard government to establish a 99-year lease over his Arnhem Land community of Ski Beach.
"There's a very good case for consultation with the appropriate Aboriginal people without delaying the intervention," she said. "As far as I can see, the best means of doing that at this stage is to work through Aboriginal leaders such as Galarrwuy Yunupingu, who has proposed an elders council, or Mala elders (group)."
Aboriginal Territory Labor MP Alison Anderson has also urged continued support for the intervention. "I hear a lot of people ... talking about the intervention and saying there are good and bad things about (it)," she told Territory parliament on Tuesday night.
"But when there is a national crisis and emergency, it means that things are bad. We know things are bad in our communities. We attend the funerals. We know our children are being raped. We know our women are being violated, and it takes guts for someone to do something."
Mr Chaney said the style of the intervention should be rethought.
"To just lump everybody together and condemn them is just very demoralising," he said yesterday. "It is a pity they (the Howard government) added so much baggage to it that it led to a sense that it wasn't really bona fides among Aboriginal people."
Although Mr Rudd has promised to review the intervention after 12 months, Territory Labor senator Trish Crossin this week said the review should be brought forward.
New Territory Chief Minister Paul Henderson has asked to be consulted in any redesign and has called for the re-introduction of the permit system, the CDEP work-for-the-dole scheme as well as scrapping rules requiring identification to buy more than $100 of alcohol.
But Professor Langton was appalled at the easing of alcohol bans. "One of the most serious problems we have to deal with is the easy access to alcohol and drugs in the Northern Territory. That's clearly the view of Aboriginal women living in these communities. They are, after all, second to their children, the most vulnerable citizens in the Northern Territory."
She also urged caution in any moves to reintroduce CDEP in its previous form. "Of course there's great interest in retaining it, because without secure incomes, people will starve," Professor Langton said. "Aboriginal life is on the knife-edge in these communities, but the ... goal must be to create conditions for Aboriginal men and women to be economically active to participate in the economy, not be trapped in welfare programs."
Professor Altman yesterday called for an "immediate moratorium" to review the intervention.
Ms O'Donoghue said she wanted the intervention to be substantially changed.
"He (Mr Rudd) ought not to let it run to 12 months," she said. "He needs to look at it quickly, and he will be pressured by people to do it."
See: The Australian
Scheme 'based on flawed opinions'
The Australian | 29 November 2007
PRESSURE to water down the federal intervention in the Northern Territory increased yesterday when former Family Court chief justice Alastair Nicholson said parts of the scheme were based on flawed assumptions about Aboriginal society.
Provisions imposing penalties on parents for the misbehaviour of their children wrongly assumed that all Aborigines lived in nuclear families, Mr Nicholson said.
This had little relevance in many indigenous communities and ignored the fact that the birth parents of many Aboriginal children did not have the final say on their conduct.
Mr Nicholson, who retired from the Family Court in 2004, made a sweeping critique of the intervention last night while delivering the Lionel Murphy memorial lecture in Sydney.
As well as identifying flawed assumptions about the nature of Aboriginal society, he also accused the Howard government of harbouring an assimilationist agenda and defended the use of Aboriginal customary law.
Preventing judges from taking account of customary law when passing sentence was disgraceful, he said. Such an approach did not apply to Jewish or Islamic people or others with different customs or practices, he added.
"It is utterly unjust and stupid for judges to be prevented from taking these matters into account in determining the degree of criminality of the offender," he said.
Mr Nicholson's critique comes after the incoming Rudd government indicated its willingness to change parts of the intervention. These included reintroducing the controversial permit system, which regulates non-indigenous access to communities, and modifying rather than scrapping the Community Development Employment Projects work-for-the-dole scheme.
Mr Nicholson said abolishing the permit system and the CDEP scheme were among the key measures that were "heavy and punitive and calculated to gain maximum political capital".
The intervention had restricted the rights of indigenous people in ways that would not be tolerated by the wider community.
"It is discriminatory and racist and bundles all indigenous people together as potential pornographers, child molesters and persons habitually addicted to the excessive consumption of alcohol," he said.
Although the intervention had been presented to the community as a way of saving children from abuse, Mr Nicholson said most of the measures had litle to do with the sexual abuse of children.
Property and land acquisition powers were troublesome, "particularly given the (former) government's apparent assimilation agenda".
He said withdrawing government benefits from the parents of children who failed to attend school took no account of the fact that in many indigenous communities decisions on what children did were taken by the extended family, not the birth parents.
It also ignored the child adoption practices of Torres Strait Islanders in the territory.
"There is a well-established custom of children being 'given' to siblings or other blood relatives," he said. "However, the obligation of making them attend school will fall on the biological parents under this legislation."
A spokesman for Kevin Rudd declined to comment on Mr Nicholson's lecture until the new government takes office.
See: The Australian
Friction over indigenous intervention
The Australian | 17 November 2007
THE incoming government's support for John Howard's intervention to combat child abuse in Northern Territory Aboriginal communities faces growing opposition within Labor's Left faction.
Territory Labor senator Trish Crossin told The Australian the review of the intervention that Kevin Rudd promised to deliver when he was Opposition leader should be brought forward and extended.
Senator Crossin's call for an early review came as the taskforce rolling out the intervention in Aboriginal communities stopped winding up employment programs axed by the Howard government as it awaited a new policy direction from the Rudd government.
As the taskforce waits for Mr Rudd to select an indigenous affairs minister, the new Chief Minister of the Northern Territory, Paul Henderson, has asked to be involved in discussions with the federal government about where the intervention goes under Labor.
Mr Rudd, who supports the broad thrust of the intervention despite reservations with some aspects, had previously promised to review the intervention's results after a year.
Mr Rudd has vowed to reintroduce the controversial permit system and modify rather than scrap theCDEP work-for-the-dole scheme.
But Senator Crossin wants CDEP reinstated immediately and said she was not willing to accept the intervention's five-year takeover of Aboriginal controlled-land in the Territory. "I still think we need to make some assessment of the five-year leasing. I still believe you can develop communities without the acquisition. That's why I think we should review whether it's necessary," she said. "I think it's something we should review early in the new year."
She said she would be making the case to the new indigenous affairs minister. She said she and federal Labor MP for the NT seat of Lingiari, Warren Snowdon, were "on the ground regularly and constantly and I think our knowledge and feedback from indigenous people should be taken very seriously".
Other federal Labor MPs have told The Australian they support Senator Crossin's position, and are pushing for an "evidence-based" approach.
One MP said: "We didn't want to get into a debate about this before the election but we have to relook at it now. Not everything the previous government did was about helping children."
But former Labor president and Aboriginal activist Warren Mundine said the intervention should not be wound back within 12 months.
"Before we start fiddling around with the intervention, we should stick to our review. We said it would be in 12 months," he said. "I know some of my dear friends on the Left want us to scrap many elements but the reports are clear something radical still has to happen so we have to give this a go."
Mr Mundine said he also believed the CDEP work-for-the-dole scheme had trapped indigenous people on welfare jobs forever. "It has to be dramatically reformed if we bring it back," he said.
He urged Mr Rudd to stick to it and then assess its merits through a major review.
The Territory Government had consistently opposed some elements of the intervention, including the abolition of the permit system that regulates non-indigenous access to communities and the five-year acquisition of land. The new chief minister will lobby Mr Rudd to modify the intervention now that Labor has won the federal election.
Labor vice-president Linda Burney, the first Aboriginal minister in the NSW parliament, this week told The Australian she was hoping Mr Rudd would make more changes than already promised.
See: The Australian
Way forward exists on NT intervention
The Australian | 28 November 2007
The opportunity is there to build on solid gains
THE benefits of the commonwealth intervention to protect Aboriginal children in the Northern Territory can in part be measured by the dramatic growth in food sales on indigenous communities. The Australian's Simon Kearney, who has spent six months on the frontline of the intervention, says welfare money that was once spent on alcohol, gambling and drugs is now being used to buy food for children, as was always intended. Takings at some stores have increased more than fivefold. The welfare reforms continue to enjoy widespread support, particularly among women. About half of all children on indigenous communities have received a health check-up under a well-intentioned scheme that was badly weakened in its ability to identify victims of sexual abuse when it was made non-compulsory. Elsewhere, the extension of alcohol bans to include all Aboriginal lands has made life much more difficult for sly grog runners. No one is pretending that the longstanding problems of remote communities have been fixed but the evidence is there that the intervention has started to build a foundation for change. The next phase of the intervention includes the deployment of police to each community to improve safety and to add to efforts to stamp out child sex abuse, which was the great justification for the intervention in the first place.
Having come this far, it would be a tragedy if the momentum that has started to build was allowed to simply drain away as a consequence of the defeat of the Howard government and the removal of Aboriginal affairs minister Mal Brough. Kevin Rudd is no doubt sincere that he is determined to lift the life expectancy, health and education outcomes for indigenous Australians to better match those of the mainstream community. To achieve it, returning to the policies that have failed for the past three decades is surely not an option.
Mr Rudd has an opportunity for a fresh start with the new NT Chief Minister, Paul Henderson, to negotiate a plan that delivers the practical outcomes he is seeking for the benefit of all indigenous children in the NT. Mr Henderson has said he supports most of the aspects of the commonwealth intervention - additional police resources, better housing and health services, in particular.
The NT wants the rules concerning a register of big alcohol sales eased but is not seeking to overturn the ban on alcohol consumption on Aboriginal land. Mr Rudd has said the commonwealth will consider introducing a revised Community Employment Development Projects program. If a new CEDP is established, it should be not be allowed to become a vehicle for passive welfare, as has happened in the past. Nor should it be used by the NT Government to cost-shift what should be Territory expenses to the commonwealth by using participants to do real jobs that would otherwise receive proper wages and entitlements.
The Australian is most concerned about calls for the reintroduction of a permit system to restrict public and media access to Aboriginal lands. Lack of proper scrutiny has played a big role in allowing the appalling conditions on many communities to develop unchecked. Proper policing is what is needed to protect children and keep predators out, not self-appointed gate-keepers who are not responsible for their actions. Restoring the permit system is popular because it protects powerful people in communities but it leaves vulnerable people, including children, open to exploitation.
See: The Australian
Henderson prepares for NT Govt top job
AM: ABC News | 28 November 2007
TONY EASTLEY: The Northern Territory's new Chief Minister, 45-year-old Paul
Henderson, has moved about a bit over the years from France, to the UK, to Zeehan
in Tasmania, and then all the way to the Top End.
After eight years as an MP, he is now Chief Minister and has got a tough job ahead
of him. He's got to unite his government, build some bridges to Canberra, and
somewhere in between adopt the right plan for helping implement the federal
intervention in the Territory.
After Clare Martin's shock resignation, Paul Henderson, who is unknown outside of
Darwin, has been thrust into the limelight. The leadership change also sees Marion
Scrymgour elevated to deputy leader, the highest level for an Aboriginal politician in
any government.
Paul Henderson joins us this morning.
Good morning Mr Henderson, and congratulations on your new position. You've got
tough times ahead by the sound of it. Do you support the continuation of the federal
intervention in Aboriginal communities?
PAUL HENDERSON: Good morning Tony, and thank you for your welcome. There's
not only tough times for the Northern Territory, there's very exciting times for the
Northern Territory, Tony. We've got an economy that's outperforming most of the
rest of the nation.
We've got jobs growth that's outperforming the rest of the nation, and we've got real
opportunities now with an incoming Rudd Labor Government to form a new
partnership around improving the social, economic outcomes for Indigenous
Territorians, and it's a role that I'm going to take on board with a new portfolio of
Territory Federal Relations.
TONY EASTLEY: Do you support the continuation of the federal intervention?
PAUL HENDERSON: What I support is a new partnership with the incoming Rudd
Federal Government, and most of the aspects of the intervention we want to turn
into a plan to improve the lives of Indigenous Territorians, and most importantly I'll
be putting to Kevin Rudd, as soon as I can meet with him.
We've got to engage Indigenous Territorians in these reforms in the way forward,
and certainly if we can harness Indigenous Territorians in terms of supporting this
plan, moving to improve health, policing in the communities, improving housing,
we're going to go a long, long way to improving the lives of our children in those
remote communities.
TONY EASTLEY: Are you suggesting there, there isn't widespread support for this
intervention at the moment, and you're going to have trouble convincing Mr Rudd
otherwise?
PAUL HENDERSON: Look, there is widespread support for many aspects of the
plan, the additional police, the additional commitment to housing, the improvements
to the health aspects.
There is contention around the blanket removal of CDEP (Community Development
Employment Projects) in remote communities where there is no economy, and
certainly Kevin Rudd and the Federal Labor Government have said that they're
going to stop the blanket removal of CDEP.
So, it's about working together, it's about engaging Indigenous Territorians in these
reforms, all of us putting our shoulders to wheel to improving the lives of Indigenous
people in the Territory, and I'm absolutely committed to doing that, and have created
a new portfolio of Territory Federal Relations to commit myself to that task.
TONY EASTLEY: Do you agree, Paul Henderson, with your deputy's old comments
about the intervention being a new style McCarthyism and being the "black kids
Tampa"?
PAUL HENDERSON: No, I don't agree with what Marion said and she has said that
she has retracted those comments, and she made those comments at a time when
she was immense personal stress.
TONY EASTLEY: But even though she has taken back those comments can you
rely on her to back the intervention if it continues, well as it will continue for the next
12 months, and perhaps beyond?
PAUL HENDERSON: Absolutely. Marion will make a fantastic Deputy Chief Minister.
She has got enormous capacity and integrity. She is well respected in Indigenous
communities right across the Northern Territory, and what we have to do Tony, is to
engage and harness Indigenous people in terms of their commitments to these
reforms.
And we've got to work together. We just can't have plans from Canberra imposed,
without consultation, on the Northern Territory. If we can engage Indigenous
Territorians, Marion Scrymgour is certainly up to the task.
We're going to go a long way to the goals that we all want Tony, which is to improve
the lives of Indigenous people, both socially and economically, and also keeping
Indigenous kids safe, getting them to school, getting them an education so they can
make some real choices in life.
TONY EASTLEY: Do you expect to have a major say in the review that the Federal
Labor Party has promised about the federal intervention?
PAUL HENDERSON: Well, I do because we want a new relationship with Canberra,
a forward thinking relationship based on collaboration and respect. The Northern
Territory's history is littered with big plans from Canberra being imposed on the
Northern Territory where there is absolutely no understanding of a population of just
over 200,000 people across the sixth of the landmass of the Northern Territory, and
the genuine difficulties in terms of providing services to small, remote, isolated
communities.
Let's work together, let's engage Indigenous Territorians, and we're going to see
some really big gains.
TONY EASTLEY: Paul Henderson, thanks for joining us this morning on AM.
PAUL HENDERSON: Thank you Tony.
TONY EASTLEY: The Northern Territory Chief Minister, Paul Henderson.
|
Opposition, independents back changes to child protection laws
ABC News | 28 November 2007
The Northern Territory Parliament this afternoon passed the most significant changes to child protection laws in more than 20 years.
The Opposition and the independents have unanimously backed the NT Government's Bill.
The Bill has taken about three years to draft, but the need to overhaul the laws became more urgent after the release of the 'Little Children are Sacred Report' in June, highlighting the extent of child abuse in Aboriginal communities.
The centrepiece of the legislation is the appointment next year of a Children's Commissioner.
This will be an independent position that oversees and scrutinises the child protection system.
Deputy Chief Minister Marion Scrymgour says other elements include the tightening of mandatory reporting for abuse or child neglect.
See: ABC News
Clinic's former director criticises NT intervention
ABC News | 28 November 2007
The former director of the Mutitjulu Health Clinic has condemned the Commonwealth's intervention into Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory.
Bob Randall says the Commonwealth is punishing all Indigenous people for the crimes that only a few are committing by quarantining welfare payments and placing restrictions on Aboriginal communities.
He says it is time the Federal Government started treating Aboriginal people the same way they treat other Australians.
"You punish the perpetrators and the criminals and deal with them as you deal with any other criminal doing the same sort of criminal acts," he said.
"Wherever it's happening just deal with the perpetrators, not a mass blame and a mass punishment system which is what they've done with the intervention."
A spokeswoman for the Northern Territory Government says they still support the intervention.
But she says the government will approach the Prime Minister-elect, Kevin Rudd, in the near future to discuss how it can be improved.
See: ABC News
No Roll-Back Of NT Intervention: NT Govt
AAP | 27 November 2007
New Northern Territory deputy chief minister Marion Scrymgour is expected to get the Aboriginal affairs portfolio, despite her strident opposition to the federal intervention.
Incoming prime minister Kevin Rudd disagreed with the Tiwi Islander last month when she called the reforms to combat child abuse the "black kids' Tampa" and a "vicious new McCarthyism".
The then federal indigenous affairs minister, Mal Brough, called for her resignation, while Mr Rudd said he supported a new approach to Aboriginal affairs.
Ms Scrymgour was forced to back down from her comments.
On Monday, she became the most senior indigenous politician in government in Australia's history after Clare Martin and Syd Stirling resigned from the top jobs.
New NT Chief Minister Paul Henderson said there would not be an "wholesale roll-back" of the Howard government's intervention in Aboriginal communities.
"(There are) issues around the edges that we disagree with and we're going to resolve those with the new Rudd government," he said.
"Let's move forward in a spirit of cooperation rather than intervention."
Mr Henderson said his deputy would have a key role in determining "a new plan" and hinted that she would be given indigenous affairs in a portfolio reshuffle on Friday.
"I don't think there will be any surprises," he told reporters.
Mr Henderson came under fire on his first day in the job after backbenchers Matthew Bonson and Len Kiely were appointed to cabinet.
In an embarrassing gaffe for the government last year, Mr Bonson penned a memo in which he attacked Ms Martin for her handling of indigenous issues. He was also accused of brawling in the bathroom at a basketball match.
Mr Kiely was exiled to the backbench after he made a sexual slur to a female security guard in a government-sponsored box at a cricket match.
"(Len) made a mistake and he apologised for it, and I believe that he has fixed the issues that he has with alcohol," Mr Henderson said.
"I believe in giving everybody a second chance."
But NT Opposition Leader Jodeen Carney said the appointment of the two men was a "shocking lapse of judgment" and an "appalling choice".
On Monday, the incoming federal deputy leader Julia Gillard said the permit system would be reviewed, but the government would not hand back control of Aboriginal communities to her Territory colleagues.
Ms Scrymgour said the compulsory acquisition of land, the removal of permits and the scrapping of Aboriginal work-for-the-dole scheme were at the top of her agenda, although she said you don't "have to be blind Freddy" to realise help was needed.
"Whilst I have been quite critical and my criticisms have been well known, I have always said there are aspects of the intervention I fully support," she said.
"There is a dollar commitment there and we want to make sure that commitment goes into the right areas."
Ms Scrymgour said she supported the quarantining of welfare payments, grog and pornography bans and increased police numbers.
She again attacked a 99-year head lease over a community on the Tiwi Island which was signed in August, saying people remained confused and unsure of the process.
~ aap
|
New NT deputy chief to push Rudd on intervention
The Age | 28 November 2007
MARION Scrymgour says she has never pulled her punches and is not about to start now she has become the highest-ranked Aboriginal leader of any Australian government.
"We are kidding ourselves if we said there is a child sleeping out there who is safe tonight - that is not the case," said Ms Scrymgour, speaking about the intervention in the Northern Territory's remote indigenous communities that has the support of Labor Prime Minister-elect Kevin Rudd.
Ms Scrymgour, who was elected the territory's deputy leader on Monday, told journalists yesterday that six months after the Howard Government started spending hundreds of millions of dollars on the intervention there was still "social devastation" in the communities.
"We have seen Aboriginal people leave their communities en masse and they have come into our suburbs because of the confusion, the anger and the anxiety that is out there," she said.
Ms Scrymgour, a feisty and controversial mother of three who will take charge of indigenous affairs after a reshuffle of the NT Government's cabinet this week, has put Mr Rudd on notice she will push for changes to key elements of the intervention - which the Howard government described as an emergency response to protect vulnerable indigenous children.
"I've always said quite clearly the acquisition of land and the removal of permits does not go to the protection of children," Ms Scrymgour said.
Ms Scrymgour, 47, whose father was a member of the so-called "stolen generation", made clear she intends to take the lead in "putting a new plan" to the Rudd Government to tackle indigenous disadvantage.
She said she supported some aspects of the intervention, including extra police and money to build schools and houses.
But she added: "We need to put forward a plan that will be strategic in areas of real need."
The NT's new Chief Minister, Paul Henderson, who replaced Clare Martin after she stepped aside on Monday, is seeking a meeting with Mr Rudd to discuss the plan as hundreds of people working for the intervention taskforce in 73 prescribed communities wonder about their future.
Ms Scrymgour lashed out yesterday at the impact 99-year leases had had on indigenous people on the Tiwi islands, north of Darwin, where her mother was born and which she represents in the NT Parliament.
"It's clear people didn't understand the concept of what was happening," she said.
"They are not happy ... they didn't know what they were getting themselves into."
Mr Rudd and whomever he appoints to be his indigenous affairs minister will find Ms Scrymgour a formidable Aboriginal advocate.
She created splits in Labor when she last month described the intervention as the "black kids' Tampa" and a "vicious new McCarthyism" before she was forced to concede her comments were "a bit over the top".
One of six Aboriginal MPs in the NT government, Ms Scrymgour often clashed in private with Ms Martin.
See: The Age
Barrie Cassidy speaks with Alexander Downer
ABC: The Insiders | 25 November 2007
BARRIE CASSIDY, PRESENTER: And now, we're joined now from the Adelaide Hills by the man who has been Foreign Minister for the past 11.5 years, Alexander Downer.
(to Alexander Downer) Good morning and welcome.
ALEXANDER DOWNER, FORMER FOREIGN MINISTER: Good morning, Barrie.
BARRIE CASSIDY: You doubted the polls for a long time but the country has turned against your government despite a strong economy.
ALEXANDER DOWNER: Well, I think, look, the honest truth is we've been there for a very long time, 11.5 years. After a while people do start to get that sense that they'd like a change. We had that with the Hawke and Keating governments, though they had of course a very deep recession.
I think by the time we got to 1993, it was really only 'Fightback' that stopped the Liberals being elected then. This time I think as we've got to 11.5 years there has been a sense in the community not of hostility, or, you just heard a lot of party political pap there for a few minutes.
I don't think much of that is true. I think at the end of the day, people just thought it was time for a change.
BARRIE CASSIDY: If you sense that, and you sense that now, why did you not accept that during in the last six or 12 months, do you think you did enough self examination on issues beyond the economy?
ALEXANDER DOWNER: Ah, look, what's the point of going back over the last 12 months, we can't relive that. It's all over. We just, I think for the Liberal Party, it won't be doing itself much of a favour by a constant retrospective.
The one election we will never fight again is the 2007 election. So we didn't win the election, so that's fair enough. We'll leave commentators to trawl over the entrails of the 2007 election, but I think the main thing for the Liberal Party so to look to the future, to try to win the 2010 election.
And the first thing the Liberal Party should do in order to win the 2010 election is get behind Peter Costello as the new leader of the Liberal Party, because I think he will be a very formidable Leader of the Opposition and I think he will very much get Kevin Rudd's measure. So I think that is the important thing for the Liberal Party to do, not think about whether we should have said this or we should've said that.
BARRIE CASSIDY: We will talk about the future in a moment, is there any comment you want to make on the Coalition's campaign? Do you think in retrospect it was an adequate campaign?
ALEXANDER DOWNER: Well it wasn't a winning campaign, so I thought Brian Loughnane, the federal director and the campaign director, did an outstanding job. He really did work hard on the basis of the research we had he made sure the messages were tightly focused as they should be.
But as I said, it's very hard after 11.5 years to present yourself as fresh and new. It's kind of hard to do that. It's the nature of politics in Australia. People do think after a while that maybe it's time for change.
BARRIE CASSIDY: One way to present yourself afresh and new is to come up with a new leader. Perhaps in retrospect should you have said to the Prime Minister, get out while you're ahead?
ALEXANDER DOWNER: Well, conversations that we had, I think, will always be what they should be: private conversations.
But look, in the end what was decided was decided, and John Howard continued as the leader with a transition plan to Peter Costello.
Had we changed to Peter Costello, what would've happen, nobody knows. Nobody has any idea. That might be again something that commentators can amuse themselves with through sort of retrospective speculation, but I just don't know what would've happened, to be honest with you, I really don't.
But in any case, the Prime Minister wanted to stay on and, he was confident he could win the election and you know, we didn't, so there you are.
BARRIE CASSIDY: But was it a mistake, though, to revisit the issue during APEC, to take soundings and then to essentially ignore the advice that came back to him?
ALEXANDER DOWNER: Well, I think it was sensible for the Prime Minister to look at our situation.
Look, to be honest with you, I'll tell you one thing retrospectively, my view through this year was that it didn't look to me as though we were going to win the election. I didn't of course say that publicly and you wouldn't have expected me to. It would be suicidal to do that sort of thing, but as the year wore on there wasn't a very positive public response to a range of different initiatives, for example the $10 billion Murray Darling initiative was very well supported by the public, was a wonderful thing to do, something I've wanted to see happen all my adult life.
But it didn't shift the opinion polls. When we brought down a very popular budget in May, yes, popular with the public in terms of the initiatives, didn't shift the opinion polls.
And when we intervened in the Northern Territory in the Indigenous communities there again, the actual initiative was very popular with the public but it didn't shift the opinion polls.
I must tell you that throughout the year I have had a fairly gloomy view of our prospects. So inevitably in those circumstances, a lot of us talked about it and what we could do to try and impervious our situation, so I do think that's wise?
I think that was very wise, but who knows what a better solution could be. History just doesn't record that.
BARRIE CASSIDY: But surely that underlines it. If you a gloomy prognosis on your prospects, Peter Costello was available, you're now saying he will be an excellent leader of the Liberal Party, surely it would've been worth a try?
ALEXANDER DOWNER: Well, who know what would've happened, frankly. I mean, who knows? We just will never know the answer to that. I think also it's important to remember that I think John Howard has been the best Prime Minister Australia's ever had, he's been an extraordinarily successful Prime Minister. He has been a formidable political figure, he's been one of the great political figures of Australian history and you know, people were certainly not going to turn aggressively on somebody of that stature.
That there's just no question of it.
BARRIE CASSIDY: You have no doubt Peter Costello will be elected leader of the Liberal Party unopposed?
ALEXANDER DOWNER: Look, I've not spoken to too many people since last night. I've spoken to about two people. So I hope, as a former leader myself, let me say I hope that the party will just get behind Peter Costello and elect him unopposed.
I think that's the right decision for the Liberal Party. Peter Costello has enormous talent and remember he does have a great deal more experience, almost infinitely more experience than Kevin Rudd, and it will be a tough job for Mr Rudd to confront somebody who is as experienced as articulate, and as formidable as Peter Costello.
I think Mr Rudd will find, of course he will have a honeymoon for a while, but I think he'll find dealing with Mr Costello very heavy going as time goes on.
BARRIE CASSIDY: Malcolm Turnbull won his seats against the odds, will that boost his stocks within the party?
ALEXANDER DOWNER: Well, he has been in Parliament for 3 years and I think he's gradually building up a bank of experience there, and I think he has a very good future in the party.
He is a very good friend of mine and I think very highly of him as a person. But look, you need to build up experience in politics and he's doing that. Nobody in the party, well, I suppose at least in theory with the exception of me, but I'm not running for leader, but no one in the party has the experience of Peter Costello and I think there shouldn't be a contest to the leadership. It should just go straight to Peter Costello.
BARRIE CASSIDY: You have been Foreign Minister for 11.5 years. Is it going to be tough to settle on the opposition benches, will you commit to 3 years?
ALEXANDER DOWNER: Well, I you know, I've been elected for 3 years, that's my current plan. What I'll do, I'm not sure, you know, I'm not decided, I'll have a talk with my family during the course of today and with my staff, many of whom have now lost their jobs and we'll have a talk about it and talk with some friends, but, my plan is to remain in the Parliament because I've been elected for 3 years by the people of Mayo.
I have more than 50 per cent of the vote in the electorate. I don't want to turn my back on them but what I'll do beyond that in the Parliament I'm not sure.
BARRIE CASSIDY: Shadow treasurer, does that appeal?
ALEXANDER DOWNER: I've been a shadow treasurer, actually. I just don't know. I really don't. I haven't really thought it through to be honest with you.
I just genuinely am completely uncommitted about these things.
BARRIE CASSIDY: Deputy, would you be interested in the deputy's position?
ALEXANDER DOWNER: Ah, I again, same. I just need to think it all through.
I've been as they say, focused...
BARRIE CASSIDY: There was one other theory put out at one stage, the Liberal Party of course has to rebuild in the states as well. It was suggested you might take a look at that, perhaps get involved in state politics?
ALEXANDER DOWNER: (laughs) No thanks. I don't think so. After you've been a Foreign Minister for 11 and three quarter years, the lure of a State Parliament is not all that great, I can assure you.
BARRIE CASSIDY: Appreciate that point. We appreciate your time this morning, and throughout those 11.5 years as Foreign Minister.
Thank you very much.
ALEXANDER DOWNER: It's a pleasure.
See: ABC: The Insiders
Indigenous rangers welcome Rudd
ABC News | 27 November 2007
Aboriginal land and sea rangers in the Northern Territory have welcomed the change of government and hope there'll now be more consultation about the intervention in indigenous communities.
The Liberal Party was heavily criticised on new alcohol laws, the removal of land permits and the loss of the work-for-the-dole employment program C-D-E-P.
Sea-ranger coordinator at Borroloola, Steve Johnson, says he hopes to work more closely with the Labor Party, and he's particularly pleased that Kevin Rudd mentioned indigenous Australians in his acceptance speech.
"I think that it's great and it is conciliatory, but there are things that have to be done with the intervention," he says.
"It is great that there is focused attention on those years of neglect in remote communities, but there's complete lack of consultation.
"What consultation there is takes place behind closed doors and normally amongst a bunch of professional whitefellas, without any of the people it'll impact on most being involved."
See: ABC News
Oenpelli community gets Heart Foundation tick
ABC News | 27 November 2007
The Kunbarllanjnja Community Government Council in Oenpelli, 320 kilometres east of Darwin, has received a national award from the Heart Foundation.
The Council runs a remote indigenous stores and takeaway program focusing on increasing the sale of fresh fruit and vegetables to improve heart-health in the community.
The council will be given a commemorative plaque and $2,000 during a ceremony at the community tomorrow.
A spokesman for the Heart Foundation is hoping to use the Kunbarllanjna program as a model for other stores around Australia.
See: ABC News
Researcher calls for scrapping of 'racist' intervention policy
ABC News | 27 November 2007
An Indigenous economic policy researcher has urged the new Labor Government to do away with what it describes as the "racist" elements of the Commonwealth intervention.
The new Government is expected to reinstate the Community Development Employment Project (CDEP) and keep the permits system the previous government planned to scrap.
John Altman from the Australian National University's Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research says it needs to go even further.
"I think the compulsory acquisition of townships shouldn't be allowed, but I think also it's important that the quarantining of people's welfare shouldn't be allowed to happen," he said.
"This is being introduced in a non-discretionary way, so it's assuming people don't know how to deal with their incomes where in fact we know that most Indigenous people do."
See: ABC News
Brough, Pearson, Yunupingu rejected by Aboriginal voters
NI Times | 27 November 2007
Editor of the National Indigenous Times, Chris Graham, writes:
I never quite understood how Mal Brough managed to escape genuine mainstream media scrutiny so often during his brief but, shall we say, "exciting" time in Indigenous affairs. I always just put it down to the "conga line of suckholes" phenomena identified by Mark Latham (albeit as a "Liberal" inclination in dealings with Americans... but as we all know a trait which also besets some in the media when confronted with a
"Minister").
The media liked Brough - known as "Sideshow Mal" within Indigenous affairs - because he was always prepared to "say anything, do anything" to get a headline. That makes for great copy. Unfortunately for Brough, however, the media didn't get to decide the outcome of the contest for his parliamentary seat.
That privilege was afforded the fine residents of the federal electorate of Longman who, it turns out, decided that Mal Brough was even more odious than the "average" Queensland Coalition member... which is quite something.
Across the state, Queenslanders registered an eight percent swing against the Howard government. But in Longman, the swing against Brough was almost 11 percent. Even worse, of the 29 seats up for grabs in Queensland, only three recorded swings to Labor above 11 percent, and two of those were in seats where the sitting Coalition member had retired.
I accept that opposition to the NT intervention did not translate to any significant swing against the Coalition at a national level. But given the huge swing against Brough personally, it's hard to escape the conclusion that his boy's own adventure in the NT didn't play a part, albeit a relatively small one.
Perhaps, when it came time to vote, at least some of the good people of Longman stopped to think about the NT intervention and decided that using the s-xual abuse of children for your own personal/political gain was really quite... well... disgusting. Either that or the Longman punters decided that Mal Brough was just a really sh-t local member.
As for the Aboriginal vote in the Northern Territory, well they also got to cast judgement on Brough (and Howard). And what a judgement they delivered! Conveniently, one federal seat - Lingiari - encompasses all of the 73 Aboriginal communities affected by the NT intervention.
Media have correctly noted that "Aboriginal booths" in Lingiari delivered votes to the ALP in the 90 percentile range. True enough, but once again the reporting has been sub-par. Just quoting the percentages from a few booths doesn't come close to telling the real story.
It's correct to say that at the Wadeye booth, for example, the ALP collected about 95 percent of the vote. But what does that actually mean in real numbers? Of the 723 people who cast a ballot, just 26 of them voted for the CLP. 26! And doubtless almost every one of those was white.
In Angkarripa, in central Australia, the CLP managed just five primary votes out of a potential 503. That's 0.99 percent of the total vote.
But the really big story - one which went begging for the media - was from a small booth in Arnhem Land. Yirrikala is home to Galarrwuy Yunupingu, the prominent Aboriginal leader who outraged colleagues by reversing his opposition to the NT intervention on the eve of the official start to the election campaign.
Brough, no doubt, thought he had an ally in Yunupingu, but the electoral returns reveal otherwise. Of the 266 votes up for grabs, the CLP secured just two of them - 0.75 percent of the primary vote.
And what of the other great story that went begging? The vote for the ALP in the booth of Hopevale - Noel Pearson's hometown. 75%.
One of the great hypocrisies not just of media coverage of Indigenous issues, but of Australian thinking generally is our inability to apply the "good for the goose, good for the gander" principle when it comes to black issues.
For example, WorkChoices. The Australian public rejected it. No one's debating the mandate to wind it back.
Yet the Aboriginal people of the Northern Territory overwhelmingly, comprehensively, spectacularly reject the NT intervention, and we're all still arguing about whether it too should be scaled back.
The fact is, Aboriginal people still want the $1.3 billion spent in their communities, plus a lot more to make up the massive gaps in health, housing and education that have grown amid decades of appalling government neglect. They just don't see why they have to give up their basic human rights in the process.
Aboriginal people rejected the methods of the intervention. They want consultation, not confrontation. They want assistance, not insistence.
And they want to be heard. As usual, Aboriginal Territorians have spoken loud and clear at this federal election, but I fear that as usual, not enough people are listening.
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Federal election ripples capsize NT leadership
Sydney Morning Herald | 27 November 2007
CLARE MARTIN fought back tears yesterday as she told how tough her life had become under the Howard Government's indigenous intervention, before she resigned as Chief Minister of the Northern Territory's Labor Government.
Denying speculation she was forced to step aside, Ms Martin yesterday said she made the decision on Sunday after watching the defeat of John Howard on Saturday night.
"One of the things I didn't want to do was the hang on way past my time," she said as she also announced her deputy, Syd Stirling, was stepping aside.
Ms Martin said her Government, reeling from criticisms that it had neglected Aboriginal disadvantage and was soft on crime, could now refresh and form a new partnership with the incoming Rudd government.
"You have to look at how you can refresh the team," she said.
Territory Government MPs have elected the Education Minister, Paul Henderson, as Chief Minister, and the controversial indigenous minister, Marion Scrymgour, as his deputy.
Mr Henderson, a senior cabinet minister since Labor took office for the first time in the Territory in 2001, has been an ambitious heir apparent for several years but was prepared to wait for Ms Martin to decide when to step aside.
But Ms Martin came under renewed pressure at the weekend after Labor's veteran Territory MP, Warren Snowdon, blamed local issues such as law and order for large swings against him in urban Alice Springs booths at Saturday's federal election.
Labor strategists also blamed Territory issues for the Country Liberal's Dave Tollner withstanding Labor's national swing in the Darwin-based seat of Solomon.
Mr Tollner hopes to hang on to the seat after the counting of pre-polling and postal votes.
Ms Martin told journalists she had been considering stepping aside for 12 months but that the election result became the trigger.
Asked if she was pushed to quit, she said: "No, not at all.
"I won't deny the intervention had a big impact on my decision," she said.
Ms Martin was widely criticised when she failed to act quickly enough on a damning report on child abuse in the Territory, prompting the Howard Government to seize control of 73 remote indigenous communities.
"The last six months have been the toughest of my political career," Ms Martin said. "Every single day has been tough."
She said she felt "quite ill" on Sunday when she heard the outgoing Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, say in a television interview the Howard Government intervened in the communities to save itself from political defeat.
See: Sydney Morning Herald
'We will say sorry': Rudd
The Age | 27 November 2007
KEVIN Rudd has vowed to act quickly after he is sworn in as prime minister to make a formal apology to Aboriginal Australians on behalf of the nation.
More than a decade after a landmark inquiry found that past policies to remove indigenous children from their families amounted to "genocide", Mr Rudd said yesterday he would make a statement of apology "early" in the new Parliament.
After his historic election win on Saturday, Mr Rudd has also taken the first steps to launching his so-called education revolution, ordering MPs to visit schools to gain insights on how to implement Labor policies.
And he has demanded that the Coalition support the repeal of WorkChoices in the Senate, after Queensland Liberal George Brandis suggested his party might not vote for the changes. "I thought the Australian people had a fairly clear message on that, only a couple of days ago," Mr Rudd said.
The apology to Aborigines will mark a symbolic break with John Howard's refusal to apologise to the "Stolen Generations" during his time in office.
Mr Rudd's vow came days after he alarmed some indigenous leaders by saying there would be no referendum on reconciliation in the first term of his government, if at all.
Cape York indigenous leader Noel Pearson said at the time it was a disgraceful abandonment of a promise, and called Mr Rudd a "heartless snake".
Mr Rudd also wavered repeatedly during a recent radio interview when asked if he would use the word "sorry" in his apology. He finally clarified - after the question was asked for a sixth time - that "of course the substance of it is sorry".
Yesterday he moved to smooth relations by confirming that a formal apology would come "early in the parliamentary term", and reaffirming his pledge to eradicate, within a generation, a 17-year gap in life expectancy between indigenous and non-indigenous children
Indigenous leaders welcomed the promise of a formal apology, saying there could be no healing without one. But they warned that saying "sorry" had to be backed up with a commitment to improve the health and living standards of Aborigines.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner Tom Calma said an apology would have a "cathartic effect" for indigenous Australians, similar to that felt by Vietnam War veterans after being welcomed into Anzac Day parades. But he said the apology would still be "just the start" and Labor also had to follow through with the funding it had promised to support healing and mental health programs.
The new co-chairman of Reconciliation Australia, Mick Dodson, agreed a formal apology was "important to all Aboriginal Australians because it acknowledges the suffering of too many of our people. But it's only part of the story of reconciliation."
Mr Dodson said the promise to close the life expectancy gap was also crucial and would involve a national plan to look at health, education, housing, employment and . (building) a respectful relationship with indigenous Australians".
Judy Atkinson, director of the Gnibi College of Indigenous Australian Peoples at Southern Cross University, said many people who had been subjected to removal policies were now in prison or on the streets, and the "symbolic essence of saying sorry would have no literal meaning in their life". That was why it was important for Labor to commit to healing and bettering the lives of Aborigines, she said.
In another signature act yesterday, Mr Rudd ordered his MPs to visit both a public and a private school in their electorates by tomorrow, and to come to Canberra on Thursday with insights for a debate on implementing Labor's education policies.
Nominating education as his "absolute priority" in government, the Prime Minister-elect also commissioned his first cabinet submission: an implementation plan to buy computers for every student in years 9 to 12. Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet secretary Peter Shergold has been instructed to prepare the submission in time for the first meeting of the new cabinet, expected next week
Arriving to a rapturous welcome at Southern Cross College, a Catholic school in the northern Brisbane seat of Petrie, which fell to Labor on Saturday, Mr Rudd and his deputy Julia Gillard were greeted by students chanting, "Kevin 07, Kevin 07."
Mr Rudd stressed that his computers plan would aid both government and non-government schools, underscoring Labor's pledge to fund education regardless of the choice made by parents about public or private education.
"We are blind to these matters because we want the best government schools in the world and the best non-government schools in the world - we want a world class education system while preserving parental choice," he said.
As he considers the composition of his first ministry, Mr Rudd also hinted that some high-flying new recruits might not be automatic starters.
"I believe that when it comes to selecting a frontbench team that parliamentary experience is very, very important," he said. That could leave recruits such as Maxine McKew, and union leaders Greg Combet and Bill Shorten, serving apprenticeships as parliamentary secretaries before joining the ministry.
Mr Rudd also flagged a broader, more activist role for Treasury in helping to shape policy, after department chief Ken Henry said in a speech earlier this year that his agency was eager to play a greater role in issues such as water policy and indigenous affairs.
"I believe the Treasury is staffed with high quality personnel, it has a strong tradition in independence in provision of advice, I would therefore welcome a broader role for their advice across the whole of government."
He made the comments at his second media conference as Prime Minister-elect, which lasted less than 17 minutes. His first, on Sunday, went for barely 13 minutes.
See: The Age
Dawn of a new era
ABC News | 27 November 2007
Kevin Rudd, prime minister-elect, has declared his hand openly on the issue of a national elected Indigenous representative body and hopefully Labor will implement it within the first 12 months of their new term.
It is refreshing to hear that Rudd has committed Labor to building a national consensus to improve the social and economic wellbeing of Indigenous people, to enable them to exercise their rights and meet their responsibilities as members of the broader Australian community.
Labor recognise that governments have a responsibility to turn this disadvantage around and have said through policy papers that it is determined to see change through evidence-based programs which avoid bureaucracy and are designed in partnership with Indigenous people.
Jenny Macklin, the party's Indigenous affairs spokeswoman, said in her speech to the Labor National Conference earlier this year that Labor would form a national Indigenous representative body.
So what are the issues and what type of representation do we want?
Throughout the past couple of years I have been a public critic of both major federal parties, especially of their bipartisan support on the abolition of ATSIC.
Sure I was one of the first Indigenous commentators to go on record as saying the old ATSIC was past its 'used by' date - but I insisted, as did Jackie Huggins and her national review team later, that it needed to be replaced by a more accountable and transparent elected model.
So what are the issues and what type of representation do we want?
As I've travelled this vast country attending an assortment of large Indigenous gatherings I've gained a broad perspective of what Indigenous people feel is required to address the current imbalance in both the representation and service delivery for their respective communities.
I'll preface my comments on ATSIC by saying the majority of past ATSIC representatives were honourable leaders who tried their best to deliver programmes in a fair and equitable manner.
ATSIC problems
But many community members who spoke to me feel they personally contributed to the demise of ATSIC through their inability to speak out on the lack of accountability and transparency of their leaders. Most agree that they voted the usual suspects into public office hoping they would change their questionable habits, but as with past experience they were proven wrong again.
I recognise that many responsible voters cast their vote without fear or favour on a candidate they thought could best represent them and their community, but in the final analysis that vote regrettably didn't deliver enough leaders of substance to positively influence major policy initiatives by Commissioners at the national level.
Scores of people I've met around the nation have questioned the suitability of some ATSIC Regional Councillors assessing the allocation of funding for domestic violence programmes when it was common knowledge in their community that they were the perpetrators of violent beatings of their partners on a regular basis.
Others commented on the appropriateness of some of ATSIC Regional Councillors passing judgement on detailed business applications when many of them were compulsive gamblers or simply careless with money and who have difficulty meeting payment on regular household bills.
And again similar comments have been passed on to me by community members who were aghast at Regional Councillors assessing programmes on alcohol and drug programmes when paradoxically some of them would be suitably qualified, as alcohol and drug dependent people, for entry into the programmes in question.
I'm confident this time around that the voting public will be more cautious when casting their crucial vote as I believe they all know that they will not get another opportunity from a sympathetic government to elect a national representative body if they get it wrong again.
The big issues
On an issues front you only need to look at recent newspaper articles to see what today's major crisis is.
The West Australian (November 8) reported a senior police officer telling a coronial inquest into Aboriginal deaths that up to 25 planes a week with up to 90 cartons of alcohol on board had been flying into the remote community of Oombulgurri.
The Courier Mail (September 20) had bold headlines of warring tribal clans (Wik Mungkin and Wik Ngathan tribes) fuelled by a boatload of "sly grog" turning on police in a riot involving up to 200 people at the Aboriginal community of Aurukun.
Mostly communities want what other mainstream communities have and that is an adequate police presence to implement a law and order programme and for their people to access to high levels of education, employment, health and housing opportunities.
The Indigenous community members seek to have social parity with mainstream society which requires a long term financial commitment from government to 'closing the gap' on life expectancy and the multitude of accompanying health and social disadvantages that continues to be a blight on Australia's human rights record internationally.
A recent report said 90 per cent of the Northern Territory prison population was of Indigenous descent. This, and an appalling over-representation of Indigenous youth and women in gaols nationally, is unacceptable.
Many Indigenous people feel they have run into a brick wall on their native title claims due to the incompetence of far too many inept Native Title Representative Bodies who favour some traditional owner groups over others and distribute their minimal resources accordingly.
So I suggest all Indigenous people of voting age to seriously engage with one another in communities so they can enter into dialogue with government officials and be part of the decision making process on the name, composition and terms of reference of the proposed national elected representative body.
But the most important thing I would like Indigenous people to think of when they go to cast their vote in an AEC sanctioned secret ballot for a new national representative body is the famous old saying of philosopher and novelist George Santayana who once said; "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
Stephen Hagan is a lecturer in the Centre for Australian Indigenous Knowledges at the University of Southern Queensland.
See: ABC News
Alice mayor wants Brough's work to continue
ABC News | 27 November 2007
The mayor of Alice Spr |
