Winds of Change
New Matilda | 31 October 2007
Galarrwuy Yunupingu is nobody's fool. For 23 years he was Chairman of the powerful Northern Land Council (NLC), the body that manages Indigenous lands north of Tennant Creek on behalf of traditional owners. A former Australian of the Year, he is a dab hand at negotiating successful outcomes for his Gumatj clan.
In an article in The Age on Saturday, Yunupingu revealed his intention to return to the national stage. 'I've got nothing much to do so I thought I'd better get myself active and useful again' he said. Observers could be forgiven for having failed to notice Yunupingu's alleged withdrawal from the spotlight. This senior Yolgnu man has all the political acumen of the fixers and number-crunchers who prowl the eastern seaboard doing the bidding of their masters in the major political parties.
At the recent Garma festival, held on traditional Yolngu land near Nhulunbuy in East Arnhem land, he made no secret of his dissatisfaction with the Federal Government's intervention into Indigenous Affairs in the Northern Territory, describing it as 'sickening, rotten and worrying.'
Some weeks after the festival he entertained an unlikely visitor on his traditional land at Port Bradshaw: Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Mal Brough. Brough told Yunupingu that his interest was in protecting Aboriginal children and improving the quality of life. The wily Indigenous leader agreed that he had spent his own life in this service, and offered the Minister his full support in these noble objectives. 'I would join him, as I would join any minister with the same good intentions and put my shoulder to the wheel' Yunupingu wrote in The Australian recently.
Yunupingu's subsequent decision to sign a memorandum of understanding committing his people to exploring the possibility of a 99-year lease over the Ski Beach (Gunyangara) settlement set tongues talking. On the face of things, it was a political coup for Brough to be seen to have recruited the great land rights warrior into his 99-year lease cart. But closer examination suggests that Yunupingu hadn't missed a trick.
Some weeks earlier, a 99-year lease over the Aboriginal township of Nguiu on Bathurst Island had been signed in an atmosphere of bitter acrimony among the traditional owners. The Tiwi Islanders have their own small, independent land council, making them arguably a softer target than the Top End mainland communities which are aligned with the NLC. Under the Nguiu deal, the head lease will be managed by an ill-defined 'government entity' and the local community will potentially lose influence in decisions about what happens on their traditional land.
But Yunupingu was never likely to sign over a head lease to such an entity. Should the Ski Beach deal be completed, the head lease would be administered by an Aboriginal-controlled organisation. It seems that Brough was prepared to wear a trade-off of this magnitude to get one of the most astute and powerful Indigenous politicians of this generation on side.
Professor Jon Altman from the ANU's Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research wrote in Crikey.com recently that the Ski Beach community had simply made a sensible commercial decision. They chose to negotiate a 99-year leasing arrangement with very substantial financial benefits for the community, rather than accept the compulsory acquisition of their township for five years with the risk that just-terms compensation may not be paid.
It is unclear whether the Ski Beach scenario - whereby traditional owners will control the head lease - sets a new minimum standard for these deals, or whether the Minister will make the more generous package available only to selected communities. If the latter, then the Minister must explain why some communities will be treated more favourably than others.
Recently in The Age, Patrick Dodson expressed serious reservations about these deals. He described the 99-year leases as the 'practical and symbolic instrument of our Government's crusade to make Indigenous people culturally invisible'. He spoke of the need for a national dialogue focusing on mutual respect, common ground, and the importance of enhancing and sustaining cultural and social values. Dodson remains the pre-eminent voice in Indigenous politics in this country and his views rightly command respect. However, on face value, the Ski Beach deal appears to recognise at least some of the key principles that Dodson espouses.
In the red dust of the Central Desert 1500 kilometres to the south-west of Ski Beach, the winds of change are beginning to blow. The received wisdom that the 'rights agenda' is paramount - and that land rights are sacrosanct - is being re-examined through the pragmatic prism of the human beings who live on these communities. Many of these people are crying out for decent housing, an end to the ravages of grog, and some economic opportunities for their kids. Owning their land may be cold comfort if their life chances, and those of their children, are so brutally curtailed.
It is important to realise that those entertaining this point of view will not countenance any sort of cultural trade-off. They are bush people who are steeped in culture, law and language. These things are simply not negotiable. Indeed some of these people find a certain dark humour in overblown policy pronouncements from the government of the day. They recognise that governments are transitory: like trains, there will be another one coming soon.
Shortly after the intervention was announced, I travelled with the ALP member for MacDonnell, Alison Anderson out to the community of Hermannsburg, an hour's drive west of Alice Springs. Her mission was to reassure her voters that the Government was not intending to again steal their children. Her advice to them was to carefully consider the assistance being offered through the intervention, and to assess how the community - which has been starved of resources for so long - might take maximum advantage. Anderson grew up on this country and her loyalty to the people who live here is unequivocal.
However, it is abundantly clear that the 'traditional' land rights agenda also continues to enjoy strong support. Last month, 100 Indigenous activists from all around Australia, including representatives from land councils, health services, legal services groups, members of the Stolen Generation and housing bodies met to form the National Aboriginal Alliance. The new organisation 'rejects outright the discriminatory and coercive elements of the Commonwealth's invasion in the Northern Territory'. Their manifesto states that 'the lack of national political representation for Aboriginal people has left us vulnerable to harsh government policies' and calls on all Australians to 'engage with, speak up and support Aboriginal people's self-determination'.
Indigenous Australians entertain a range of views that stretch right across the political spectrum. Black Australia is sufficiently robust and sophisticated to manage this diversity, despite the propensity of tabloid newspapers to beat-up any divergence of views between Indigenous leaders.
The Nhulunbuy negotiations, like the discussions in the desert, will only add rigour to the Indigenous position. Neither the determinedly assimilationist Howard Government, nor the 'smooth the dying pillow' anachronisms of the Bennelong Society should regard these apparent reappraisals as a capitulation. Rather, they are simply a recalibration of the weaponry that is being used in the great battle for Indigenous justice.
See: New Matilda
Prepare for jail, boy's abusers told
The Australian | 31 October 2007
Two young men accused with three teenagers of sexually assaulting an 11-year-old boy at a remote Aboriginal community could face long prison terms, a court heard yesterday.
Claevon Cooper and Isiah Pascoe, both 20, pleaded guilty in the Northern Territory Supreme Court last week to raping the boy at Maningrida, 500km east of Darwin, between April and May last year.
Three teenagers - one aged 14, two 17 - also pleaded guilty to abusing the boy, who was assaulted on three occasions at the community.
In court yesterday, judge Trevor Riley denied Cooper and Pascoe bail, saying the maximum penalty for the offences they had committed was 16 years behind bars.
"It seems to me that the sentence is likely to be of some duration," Justice Riley said. "That is, it will not be a sentence to the rising of the court, or for a very short period. On the information available to me at this time, and notwithstanding the relative youth of each of them, they are each facing a term of actual imprisonment."
The five defendants pleaded guilty on Friday to a total of eight charges, including sexual intercourse with a child under the age of 16 and gross indecency.
Police began investigating the case after the boy was treated for gonorrhoea at a Darwin hospital, although prosecutors said there was no suggestion he contracted the disease from one of the accused.
The court heard that the first case of abuse occurred between April and May last year, when Cooper and one teenager had sex with the boy, and another teenager fondled his buttocks, while a pornographic DVD played in the room. Later that day, the boy went to a nearby house where he was sexually assaulted again.
On the third occasion, the boy was abused while swimming with a group of boys in the sea.
In court yesterday, Justice Riley granted bail to the three teenagers on the condition they live at Milingimbi, a small community about 100km from Maningrida, and not contact the victim in any way.
Justice Riley acknowledged that reoffending remained a concern even though psychologists still had to assess the teenagers.
"For myself, I have a concern for the protection of the victim in these proceedings," he said.
Prosecutor Jon Tippett QC said the victim was keen to return to Maningrida but said the case had "broader social implications".
Mr Tippett said counselling services should be made available at the community as part of the Howard Government's intervention in Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory.
"If this intervention we are having here in the Northern Territory is worth anything at all then we, the community, should be able to get some significant assistance from the commonwealth and the Territory to assist," he said.
Ten males were originally accused of abusing the boy, with six ordered to stand trial. Charges were withdrawn against a third adult on Thursday.
In the committal hearing earlier this year, the Darwin Magistrates Court heard that the boy had been bound with shoelaces and drugged before being repeatedly raped. But those claims were not included in the Crown facts presented to the Supreme Court.
The case was adjourned until December 18.
See: The Australian
MP damns welfare controls
Sydney Morning Herald | 30 October 2007
Labor's vice-president, Linda Burney, has condemned the Federal Government's policy of welfare quarantining and declared she does not trust John Howard to deliver his promised referendum to acknowledge indigenous people in the constitution.
Her attack puts Ms Burney - the state's first indigenous minister - at odds with the Labor leader, Kevin Rudd, who has offered broad bipartisan support to the Government.
Ms Burney said yesterday that she could not remain "silent and bipartisan" at such a difficult time for indigenous people.
"While I welcome Mr Howard's call, I also remind him - we in the reconciliation movement have long memories," she said.
Ms Burney denounced the Government's spending $88 million to quarantine the welfare payments of 20,000 indigenous people in the Northern Territory. During a University of Technology, Sydney reconciliation event she said the policy was excessive and targeted war veterans and good families as well as dysfunctional ones.
She told the story of Geoff Shaw, an Alice Springs man who has served in Borneo and Vietnam and is having half of his war veteran's pension quarantined because he is an Aboriginal man living in the Northern Territory.
"I have no problem with mutual responsibility, but this seems to be a blanket application, and you don't need to do anything wrong to be affected by it," Ms Burney said.
Her comments were out of step with the stated position of Labor's indigenous affairs spokeswoman, Jenny Macklin, who has said that while Labor would make some changes to the intervention, it would not scrap the Federal Government's welfare-quarantining system.
She said at least $13 million of Commonwealth funding promised for indigenous housing in NSW in the coming year has been withdrawn, even though there are more Aboriginal people in this state than anywhere else.
"The question needs to be asked, how the Northern Territory intervention is being paid for and what that means for other states and territories."
A spokeswoman for the NSW Minister for Housing, Matt Brown, said that although NSW had one-third of Australia's Aboriginal population, about $13 million of Commonwealth funding it received annually to help house these people had been scrapped as part of a redirection of funding to remote and very remote areas. The new system will not be finalised until after the federal election.
"This is despite the fact that 95 per cent of the Aboriginal population in NSW live in urban and regional towns. Nationally, only 9 per cent of Aboriginal people live in remote areas."
Ms Burney, asked if she expected a slap on the wrist for her comments, said she did not.
"The last time I checked, freedom of speech was still part of Australian democracy."
See: Sydney Morning Herald
Mayor calls for 'suburb' plan extension
NT News | 30 October 2007
The plan to "normalise" Bagot into a suburb should be extended to all Darwin Aboriginal communities, the city's Lord Mayor said yesterday.
Garry Lambert backed Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough's plan to remove the fence and develop the community.
The mayor said parts of Bagot should be sold for low-cost housing, including government housing.
And he said Kulaluk, Minmarama, Belyuen on the Cox Peninsula and One Mile Dam, should also be turned into suburban areas.
"If we're talking normalisation, you'd have to imagine it would apply to all those community living areas within the municipality," he said.
Mr Lambert said Darwin City Council would have no problem providing services for the area - and charging rates.
"There are efficiencies in the concept of having more of a broader rate base, particularly when you're not having to provide too much more in services," he said.
Mr Brough was abused by Bagot residents on Sunday after he announced his broad plan.
The community council holds the land in a perpetual lease from the Crown in the NT.
But a briefing note handed out at the community details Larrakia Development Corporation (LDC) plans to subdivide Bagot's 23ha into low-cost residential blocks.
It says residential blocks could be sold for about $120,000, with 12-month residents getting the first option to buy their own home.
LDC chief executive Greg Constantine said the proposal would amount to the end of the Bagot community as it now stands.
"The whole proposition is based on the fact that it will be open to all Territorians, indigenous and non-indigenous," he said.
The LDC is actively pursuing all commercial opportunities on Larrakia land that will assist improving the living standards of Aboriginal people in Darwin."
See: NT News
Greens 'The Obligation is Mutual' Report
Media Release Greens Sen. Rachel Siewert | 30 October 2007
The Australian Greens today welcomed the report 'The Obligation is Mutual' from the Catholic Social Services group.
"Catholic Social Services are quite right in their fears over this legislation," said Greens spokesperson on Community Services Senator Rachel Siewert. "The recent changes to the social welfare system in the NT have huge ramifications for the broader community."
"Initially, we were told such measures were necessary to deal with alcohol and child abuse in Aboriginal communities, but the scary fact is; the framework is already in place for similar conditions to be placed, at the whim of the Government, upon any Australian parent receiving social security.
Social security amendments made at the time of the NT Intervention Bill provide for 100% quarantining of payments in response to school attendance and child welfare concerns right across the country.
"Given recent concerns by the Commonwealth Ombudsman about Centrelink's inappropriate administration of the Welfare to Work program, the idea of these same people having the power to enforce punitive welfare quarantine programs across Australia is of definite concern," she concluded.
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Brough inspired by Bagot graduate
NT News | 30 October 2007
Louise Poulson is the first girl to finish high school in the Bagot community's history.
During the school holidays, while other youngsters spent time with their friends, the 18-year-old Darwin High School student volunteered at the community health centre.
"I wanted to finish high school and maybe become a nurse - I want to work in a community hospital," she said.
Her mother, Dawn Adams, bragged about her Louise's achievement to Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough during his weekend visit.
And the Minister broadcast the news in interviews with media around Australia as an indictment on the state of the community's education.
Ms Adams agreed that more students should be going to school but said she was proud of her daughter.
"You've got a lot of good parents in the community, but a lot of kids don't want to listen to them," she said.
"I was lucky. My daughter is 18 - she could drink and smoke, but instead she stayed at home and studied."
Louise said she even tried to convince her 16-year-old neighbour to stay in school.
"Every day, I would say to her, `Are you sure you don't want to come to school today?'," she said.
Ms Adams said her daughter was starting to be seen as a role model in the community.
"Everyone wants to get out and get a job - that's our goal," she said.
"Education is the key to that goal."
See: NT News
The real face of Howard's Northern Territory intervention: welfare cuts and community closures
Indybay | 27 October 2007
In June, the Howard government announced a "national emergency" plan to take control of more than 70 Aboriginal communities throughout the Northern Territory (NT). Police and military forces were sent in, purportedly to protect Aboriginal children from sexual abuse. So great was the alleged urgency that the 1975 Racial Discrimination Act was suspended to allow for the racially-targeted intervention.
Four months on, not a single case of child abuse has been identified, and no charges or arrests for child sexual abuse have been made. But other police actions against the Aboriginal population have skyrocketed.
In the first three months of the operation, in seven communities alone, police made 63 arrests and issued 72 summonses, mostly for traffic offences, alcohol smuggling, domestic violence and assaults. By singling out Aboriginal areas for racially-based bans on alcohol and pornography, the government has only ensured that the imprisonment rate among indigenous people, who are already some 30 times over-represented in prisons, will rise. What the intervention has done, however, is highlight the shocking state of indigenous health and the lack of basic medical services. The government reports that 3,000 children have been examined in 34 communities. More than 80 percent have been found to be suffering from chronic ear, throat and nose conditions, directly related to inadequate and overcrowded housing conditions. It is already patently clear that the government has no intention of funding the intensive long-term and specialist care needed to address this situation. So far, around 40 doctors and 77 nurses have volunteered to carry out the medical checks, with 5 doctors and 26 nurses already completing a second deployment. But 30 communities have yet to be visited, meaning resources are so inadequate that not even an initial examination has been carried out on thousands of desperately needy children.
See: Indybay
One policy, two camps - the takeover rift
Sydney Morning Herald | 29 October 2007
The Prime Minister may have driven a wedge between prominent Aboriginal activists over the Federal Government's intervention in remote communities. Joel Gibson reports.
In the days immediately after the declaration of a national emergency in the Northern Territory, five of Labor's so-called "Bush MLAs" hit the dusty roads of central and northern Australia to gauge the response to the Federal Government's plan.
Already, a split was emerging. In a confidential internal report in July prepared for the Northern Territory Labor Government and obtained by the Herald, there emerged subtle differences in the reports of the Arafura MP Marion Scrymgour and the McDonnell MP Alison Anderson.
While the summary concluded that linking land and permit issues with child protection issues had sparked "fear, social disruption and damage to Aboriginal individuals and communities", and that it was "imperative that the Commonwealth drop the nexus" between the two issues, Anderson's contributions repeatedly reflected a positivity that was absent from the final account.
She visited the celebrated artists' community of Papunya, 240 kilometres north-west of Alice Springs, on June 30, and reported that the meeting of 70 people was "largely welcoming of the Commonwealth initiative", despite concerns about a lack of information, land and permit issues and health checks.
In Areyonga the next day, she said the people were "supportive of intervention if it helped kids and issues such as housing". In Wallace Rockhole on July 2, they were "generally welcoming of possibilities of increased resources through [the federal] intervention".
Scrymgour's reports contained no such optimism. They were more detailed and almost entirely negative.
On July 3 in Gunbalanya, she reported one person's fear that "there are vultures waiting out there for the end of the permit system", another's threat to take legal action over compulsory health checks, and a concern that they "could be devastating and permanent" for children.
In Maningrida on July 4, she reported "very strong condemnation from all sources particularly focused on statements . against land take over and permit abolition".
Those early differences were writ large this week on a national stage as Scrymgour ventured to the sandstone surrounds of Sydney University and used the annual Charles Perkins Oration to fire a verbal cannonball back into the Territory. She described the intervention as the "Black kids' Tampa", as the second stage of the 1911 policy of removing children, as "a circus" and as "a deliberate, savage attack on the sanctity of Aboriginal family life".
Anderson shot back, accusing her colleague of knowing nothing about living among the poverty and abuse in remote communities and calling the intervention a "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity".
"My people need real protection, not motherhood statements from urbanised saviours," she told The Australian. "I live my law and culture and I will represent my people regardless of what's fashionable. My people need the help and want the help from this intervention."
The Indigenous Affairs Minister, Mal Brough, and the Prime Minister, John Howard, called for Scrymgour to resign and for the Opposition Leader, Kevin Rudd, to clarify his party's position on the intervention.
Rudd said she was "wrong" but the Northern Territory Chief Minister, Clare Martin, backed her, saying that the views in Anderson's central Australian electorate differed from those in Scrymgour's Top End seat.
Anderson went to ground.
Meanwhile, a group of traditional owners from Maningrida in northern Arnhem Land were filing a High Court writ in Melbourne, challenging the abolition of the permit system and the compulsory acquisition of their land.
In the wash-up, the only thing that was clear was that neither latitude nor political party nor urbanity were determinants of who supports the intervention and who does not. It is far more complicated than that.
The fiery spat between two former allies did more than expose the precariousness of Labor's support for the intervention, which is being held together with bits of political sticky tape and string in the lead-up to next month's election.
It also saw indigenous leaders being increasingly marshalled - by the media, at least - into two loose camps. Anderson was promptly lumped in with figures such as Cape York's Noel Pearson, the land rights activist Galarrwuy Yunupingu and Professor Marcia Langton of Melbourne University, who have all expressed some support for the intervention. The Perth magistrate Sue Gordon has been its chief supporter, on account of her role as co-chair of the national emergency response taskforce.
Viewed through the two-camps prism, Scrymgour has now joined the opposing tent, which includes Mick and Patrick Dodson; the Social Justice Commissioner, Tom Calma; the former ATSIC heads Lowitja O'Donoghue and Pat Turner; the chief of Combined Aboriginal Organisations, Olga Havnen; and the Northern Territory and NSW Aboriginal land councils.
The "two camps" view, although overly simplistic, is not altogether inaccurate.
On the ABC's Difference of Opinion last week, Gordon was isolated by her fellow panellists Havnen, Calma and O'Donoghue and an audience heavily skewed against the intervention. Some openly scoffed at Gordon's statements.
Langton, who is chair of Pearson's Cape York Institute and Melbourne's foundation chair in indigenous studies, calls it a "cleavage". She compares the two sides to nursing sisters exercising triage in a casualty department.
"If you've got an emergency on your hands and you've got a nursing sister deciding who needs beds, then the most needy or urgent and life-threatening situations go first," Langton says. "But if you were one of the [intervention] naysayers, then they wouldn't. The children wouldn't get a look in. The people who can't look after themselves come very low down the priority list for these people."
Asked if the cleavage is between the pragmatists and the idealists, between those who are willing to compromise on certain principles to achieve a result and those who are not, she objects to the terminology.
"I'd like to think that Alison Anderson, Galarrwuy Yunupingu and I are the idealists. We are the people who want the ideal, which is healthy families, people living in safety. "I can't see how they are defending any grand principle except the right to shoot their mouths off and I'm getting a bit sick of it."
Gordon does not like to hear talk of camps. "I just think people are passionate about Aboriginal affairs and some have an understanding and some have no understanding and they are following what they are reading and what they are hearing," she says. "In some cases, hate [of Howard] is blocking people as to why they are opposing it. Politicians in the NT are running around really confusing people on the ground. People are being abused, in a sense."
But Yunupingu sounded pragmatic when he told the ABC last month: "I simply have come to realisation that this is the only way to enter into arrangement between a government who has the money and the service ability to run a community and the land owners."
Yunupingu's adviser, Sean Bowden, says the lifelong land rights campaigner's objective has always been to "mould the intervention so it's effective" and provide guidelines to the Government. "Galarrwuy is trying to maximise the opportunities for his people," he says. "There's $1.3 billion that's never been there before. Let's get people into houses, jobs, schools; let's not look a gift horse in the mouth."
His position is not so far from that of the Central Land Council's director, David Ross, who particularly opposes the erosion of land rights but also abhors the Government's response to criticism. "The Federal Government and Mal Brough in particular has been very good at portraying anyone who may speak against a specific measure of the intervention as someone who is opposing the whole intervention and by implication standing in the way of the protection of at-risk children," Ross says.
"Individuals and organisations should be able to oppose specific changes without being branded by the Government as just trying to protect ill-gotten gains or being accused of shielding child abusers."
Langton notes: "There are so many contradictions, contortions and distortions in the debate, it's no wonder the public are confused."
To lump the nation's Aboriginal leaders into two neat camps, of course, risks repeating an ancient mistake. There are more than 200 indigenous nations in Australia and almost as many views - as Gordon pointed out on the ABC, as if to protect herself from the combined force of Calma, Havnen and O'Donoghue.
No one, for example, opposes the injection of police and health professionals into Northern Territory communities, although some say the health checks, which are reaching two in three children, are ineffective or too short-term.
Calma does not oppose the intervention per se, but is appalled at any suspension of human rights instruments to achieve it, particularly those designed to protect children.
"Consistent with Article 2 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child," he says, "[it] must be done 'without discrimination of any kind, irrespective of the child's race'."
Scrymgour opposes welfare quarantining and alcohol bans only when they are adopted with a "one size fits all" approach. She is "absolutely opposed" to the abolition of the Community Development Employment Program (CDEP), a type of Aboriginal work-for-the-dole scheme, and the permit system, the acquisition of lands, the repeal of the Racial Discrimination Act and the loss of the right to appeal against administrative decisions.
Havnen's stated views are similar to Scrymgour's, as are Turner's and those of the Northern Territory and NSW land councils. Bev Manton, chairwoman of the NSW Aboriginal Land Council, sees flaws even in the police presence because it is not sustainable. She is in lockstep with Ross, who also sees problems with most measures, including welfare quarantining, which contains "no allowance under the intervention for educating people in ways of better managing their income".
Yunupingu, although a supporter, also remains an opponent of abolishing the permit system and compulsorily acquiring Aboriginal land, says Bowden - but he hopes further negotiation can make these measures palatable.
Even Langton, who calls Brough "brave - crazy brave, perhaps - but courageous, nevertheless", accuses the Government of being unprepared for the post-CDEP environment and treating the work of the Cape York Institute like a menu. "They have said, 'We like this entree but not the others, this dessert but not the tiramisu'. But you can't pick and choose from this menu," she says.
Pearson and Langton accuse Brough of failing to consult adequately with traditional owners, which they say might have won broad support for the intervention, and of what Langton calls a "failure to build into his intervention the principle of Aboriginal responsibility, especially in welfare reform, as described repeatedly in Noel Pearson's work . If this fundamental principle is ignored, the future of the intervention will fail".
As for Gordon, who wrote a West Australian Government report on child sexual abuse in that state, she agrees in part with Langton and Pearson. But she is the most reluctant to criticise any aspect of the most radical changes to indigenous policy since the 1967 referendum. In fact, she says she cannot discuss policy matters because of the federal election campaign.
"If you have an emergency you can't actually go out and have meetings. In some ways I agree with Marcia [that more consultation would have helped] but how long would this discussion be and would it hold things up?"
See: Sydney Morning Herald
Toxic feelings at proposed nuclear dump
Sydney Morning Herald | 29 October 2007
Aboriginal landowners surrounding the proposed site of Australia's first nuclear dump have changed their minds about allowing access to trucks carrying waste as bitter argument rages among indigenous groups about the Federal Government's plans.
"I won't sign any agreement because my mob disagrees with building the dump there," said Sammy Sambo, senior elder of the Milwayi clan, which owns the only road to the site in Muckaty, a former cattle station 120 kilometres north of Tennant Creek.
"We are upset about the way those government fellas have gone about trying to convince us and are confused and worried about what to do next."
Elders of two Aboriginal clans owning parts of Muckaty, including land adjoining the site, have told the Herald they have not been properly consulted, contradicting the federal Science Minister, Julie Bishop, who said last month she was satisfied that potentially affected Aboriginal groups have had "adequate opportunity to express their views".
Milwayi elder Janet Thompson said meetings with her people to discuss an offer of $2 million to allow trucks carrying waste to cross their land were called at short notice and most of those who indicated their agreement at a recent meeting did not know what was being proposed.
Most of the elders do not speak English as their first language and were not offered translators.
"I walked out," Ms Thompson said. "The process wasn't fair. They have talked to one mob at a time. We want a big meeting to bring all this out into the open."
Mr Sambo said he and other elders had second thoughts because "they tell us the dump will only be for low-level waste, like gowns and blood from hospitals. But we are worried because we hear it will eventually become a dump for nuclear waste from around the world".
Under a deal secretly negotiated by the Northern Land Council, the 70-member Ngapa clan will receive more than $10 million for allowing 5000 cubic metres of nuclear waste to be stored on their land for up to 300 years.
In May, in its only public comment on the deal, the Ngapa clan said Canberra's money would "create a future for our children with education, jobs and funds for our out-station and transport".
Dianne Stokes, an elder of the Yapa Yapa clan, which owns land at Muckaty, told the Herald the dump proposal had put enormous pressure on clan groups, most of whom were unhappy about it.
"There's been a lot of trouble . people arguing and calling others dickheads and things like that for giving away the land and destroying our culture," she said.
Ms Stokes was among a group of Muckaty elders taken to Lucas Heights, the Australian Atomic Energy Commission's research establishment, when the deal was being negotiated in 2006.
"After four days in Sydney I fell for it . I said I supported the dump," she said. "They showed us videos about how safe it would be." But Ms Stokes said that after returning to the territory she became opposed to it when she "began to think, well, if it is so safe why don't they put it in Sydney?"
Experts are now studying the site to see if it is suitable for the dump, which would store spent fuel from research reactors.
See: Sydney Morning Herald
Brough extends intervention to heart of Darwin
The Age | 29 October 2007
Intervention in remote Aboriginal communities has been extended to a town camp in the centre of Darwin by Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough, who says some indigenous children are living in circumstances worse than dogs'.
"I have no intention to allow children to continue to live in circumstances that you wouldn't allow dogs to live in in any other part of Australia - the RSPCA would take them away and charge the parents," said Mr Brough, who had been asked about town camps in Alice Springs.
Visiting Darwin to support Country-Liberal MP Dave Tollner's fight in the marginal seat of Solomon, Mr Brough announced that a re-elected Howard Government would convert the 23-hectare Bagot community into a normal suburb with land developed for private and public housing.
Since the 1930s, the community in the heart of suburban Darwin has been home to several hundred indigenous people as well as an often troublesome transient population of Aborigines.
Mr Brough attacked the NT Labor Government for allowing problems in the community to fester.
"They built a beautiful fence around so no one can see the problem and that's simply not good enough," Mr Brough said.
"There is no street lighting, sub-standard and overcrowded housing, and residents are left to cope with social problems created by blow-ins - this impacts negatively on all of Darwin."
As Mr Brough made the announcement in Bagot's community hall, several Aboriginal woman verbally abused him, one of them calling out: "You try living like a blackfella."
Mr Brough said he was prepared to put up with a bit of noise if it helped children.
Under the Government's plan for Bagot, a private developer would build 150 new houses, a medical centre, shops and other facilities.
Some areas would be set aside for Aborigines. "We will unleash commercial opportunities so that Aboriginal people can benefit," Mr Brough said.
Mr Brough renewed his attack on NT Chief Minister Clare Martin, saying he was saddened to learn that she had vetted a speech given last week by the territory's Child Protection Minister, Marion Scrymgour, who described the intervention as the Howard Government's "black kids' Tampa" and "vicious new McCarthyism".
"Where does she stand? Has she actually got any leadership? Does she support Kevin Rudd? Does Kevin Rudd support her?" Mr Brough said.
Ms Scrymgour said yesterday she should have chosen her words more carefully for the speech she wrote shortly after the death of her father.
Mr Brough also pledged up to $6 million to fund a crocodile-farming business and a business development zone in the East Arnhem Land community of Ramingining. A joint venture would produce high-quality crocodile skins for domestic and export markets.
See: The Age
Community women back NT intervention
The Age | 29 October 2007
The women of mission station Hermannsburg have backed the Federal Government's emergency intervention to stamp out indigenous child abuse, saying they want the grog tap turned off and drug dealing wiped out.
In an uncompromising statement, the women criticised Marion Scrymgour, the Northern Territory's only indigenous minister, for criticising the intervention as an attack on Aboriginal culture and describing it as the "black kids' Tampa".
Spokeswoman Helen Kantawarra said the women backed the intervention and the efforts by local indigenous MP Alison Anderson, the ALP member for the central desert seat of Macdonnell, to encourage indigenous people to lead decent and healthy lives.
The women's statement comes as rifts with the NT Government of Clare Martin cast doubt on Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd's claims that the ALP backs the intervention. NT Chief Minister Martin had cleared Ms Scrymgour's speech.
Mr Rudd has criticised Ms Scrymgour's comments. So has Ms Anderson, who said it was a disgrace that people who knew nothing about poverty and abuse in remote communities should condemn the intervention.
In backing Ms Anderson, who represents Hermannsburg, Ms Kantawarra said: "The issue here is the wellbeing and health of our children, and the future of our families and communities."
Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough said he had visited Hermannsburg and Mutitjulu communities at the weekend and found solid support for the intervention among women and children.
Mr Brough said people understood why the Government had to phase out community development employment projects.
"They want the grog out of their communities and in Mutitjulu the women asked when they could start work on painting their houses. I said they could start tomorrow."
Mr Brough said that although the Opposition had backed the emergency legislation, it had failed to support a number of measures contained in the bill.
See: The Age
Brough decrees makeover for Darwin camp
Sydney Morning Herald | 29 October 2007
The federal Indigenous Affairs Minister, Mal Brough, has extended the intervention in remote Aboriginal communities to a town camp in the middle of Darwin.
"I have no intention to allow children to continue to live in circumstances that you wouldn't allow dogs to live in in any other part of Australia - the RSPCA would take them away and charge the parents," Mr Brough said.
Visiting Darwin to support Country-Liberal MP Dave Tollner's fight in the marginal seat of Solomon, Mr Brough announced that a re-elected Howard Government would convert the 23-hectare Bagot Community into a "normal suburb".
Since the 1930s the community has been home to several hundred indigenous people and an often troublesome transient population of Aboriginal people from around the Northern Territory. Mr Brough attacked the Territory's Labor government for allowing problems in the community to fester.
"There is no street lighting, substandard and overcrowded housing and residents are left to cope with social problems created by blow-ins," he said.
As Mr Brough made the announcement in Bagot's community hall several Aboriginal woman abused him, one of them calling out: "You try living like a blackfella."
Mr Brough said he was prepared to put up with a bit of noise if it helped children.
Under the Government's plan a private developer would build 150 houses, a medical centre, shops and other facilities. Some areas would be set aside for Aboriginal people.
Mr Brough renewed his attack on the Northern Territory Chief Minister, Clare Martin, saying he was saddened to learn that she had vetted a speech given last week by the Territory's Child Protection Minister, Marion Scrymgour, who described the intervention in Aboriginal communities as the Federal Government's "black kids Tampa" and "vicious new McCarthyism".
Ms Scrymgour said yesterday she should have chosen more carefully her words for the speech she wrote shortly after the death of her father.
Mr Brough also pledged up to $6 million to fund a crocodile farming business and a business development zone in the East Arnhem Land community of Ramingining. A joint venture between Murwangi Crocodile Farms and the Darwin firm Porosus would produce high-quality skins for domestic and export markets. He said the farm would create up to 15 jobs.
See: Sydney Morning Herald
40 kids, no teacher: NT community demands answers
ABC News | 26 October 2007
The Northern Territory Government has defended its decision not to allocate a remote community with 40 children a full-time qualified teacher.
The State Government was earlier this month explaining why only about a third of Northern Territory Indigenous children meet national benchmarks for reading writing and maths.
Now the Mapuru community, 500 kilometres north-east of Darwin, says it has been unable to get the Government to give its students a qualified teacher more than three days a week.
Jackie Nguluwidi says his children desperately want an education.
"They are starving for English and they are starving for maths," he said.
Education Minister Paul Henderson says the State Government will be considering options in the coming weeks.
"I'm sending a Department of Employment Education and Training officer out there over the next couple of weeks to look at how we can better support those students," he said.
But he is not promising the community a full-time teacher.
The Education Union says there are 54 homeland learning centres across the Territory waiting to be resourced with a full-time teacher.
Education Union Territory branch president Nadine Williams says that is not good enough.
"We believe it's an international disgrace. We are one of the richest countries in the world," she said.
"We have an enormous budget surplus as a country which has been proudly promoted by the Prime Minister, the Treasurer and others and we are very aware that education has to be a priority."
See: ABC News
Maningrida case 'not about politics'
ABC News | 25 October 2007
The chief executive of a remote Northern Territory community that is taking High Court action to stop some elements of the Commonwealth intervention going ahead says it is not about politics.
Ian Munro from Maningrida's Bawinanga Aboriginal Corporation says the case questions the validity of the Federal Government's removal of the permit system, and the takeover of Aboriginal land through five-year leases.
He says the case is being pursued to protect the community's economic future.
"It's got nothing to do with the election, it's about the right and aspiration of organisations like Bawinanga to continue to provide a range of services to our members and to continue to operate businesses in places like Maningrida," he said.
He says early indications are the case is a strong one.
We're very hopeful," he said.
"The legal team that's representing us has done an enormous amount of work that's very high quality and the suggestion is the case will be very compelling.
He says if the case is successful, it will stop the Federal Government in its tracks.
"My understanding is if we're successful in this action, then the Commonwealth will not be able to compulsorily acquire land elsewhere in the Northern Territory," he said.
See: ABC News
Howard accuses Labor of NT intervention game-playing
ABC News | 25 October 2007
Prime Minister John Howard says if Labor is elected it would wind back the intervention in Northern Territory Aboriginal communities.
Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough has called on the Northern Territory Labor Minister Marion Scrymgour to quit because she has spoken out against the intervention.
Today Mr Howard hit out at federal Labor over the issue.
"The Labor party has been playing a double game on the Northern Territory intervention," he said.
"Their headline response is 'oh we agree with Mr Howard and Mr Brough' - their behind the scenes, on the ground response is to try and spread fear and loathing."
Mr Howard says federal Labor MP Warren Snowdon and the Labor frontbencher Jenny Macklin have also made it clear they would push Kevin Rudd to change the way the intervention operates.
He says Labor has stirred up opposition to it in Aboriginal communities and he urges people to ignore that.
'Rudderless' leadership
Meanwhile, the CLP candidate for Lingiari, Adam Giles, says the Northern Territory Chief Minister should sack Ms Scrymgour for criticising the Commonwealth's intervention in Aboriginal communities.
He says federal Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd should disendorse the Labor Member for Lingiari Warren Snowdon, for his comments about the intervention.
"At the national level there's supposed to be bipartisan support," he said.
"But what we're seeing is a rudderless leadership with no one taking control, no one trying to help the Aboriginal people and just trying to put things back to the way they were, and we know that the way they were wasn't working."
Collective responsibility
Local Government Minister Elliot McAdam says he does not support the lifting of the permits system, the scrapping of Community Development and Employment Programs (CDEP), or the compulsory acquisition of Aboriginal communities.
But he says the Government is serious about responding to the Little Children are Sacred report.
"I think the bottom line here is Kevin Rudd, Marion Scrymgour, Elliot McAdam, Alison Anderson, anyone else in government has a collective responsibility," he said.
"I'm not interested in the politics around this, I'm very much interested in ensuring that we put in place the best possible response for people who live in the bush."
See: ABC News
Australian Leader Wants 'New Reconciliation' With Aborigines
New York Times | 12 October 2007
The Australian prime minister, John Howard, proposed a referendum on Thursday to change the Constitution to recognize the role of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in Australia's history.
Mr. Howard, who is expected to call parliamentary elections in the next few days, said he wanted what he described as a ''New Reconciliation'' with the country's indigenous people.
''If re-elected, I will put to the Australian people within 18 months a referendum to formally recognize indigenous Australians in our Constitution, their history as the first inhabitants of our country, their unique heritage of culture and languages and their special, though not separate, place within a reconciled, indivisible nation,'' he told an audience at the center-right Sydney Institute.
Eileen Cummings, a former government adviser on Aboriginal affairs and a prominent spokeswoman for the community, describes Mr. Howard's proposal as both uncontroversial and a tactic to spruce up his election fortunes.
''He's trying every trick in the book,'' she said. ''The whole legislation is aimed at mainstreaming us, to change the Aboriginal people. They've tried it before, and it hasn't worked.''
The relationship between white Australians and the continent's original inhabitants has been rocky from the start. While Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders gradually regained some of their rights, many still live in significantly disadvantaged circumstances.
The indigenous population constitutes some 2.7 percent of Australians, and many live in abject poverty in isolated rural communities, grappling with the connected challenges of lack of education, unemployment, alcoholism and health problems.
Mr. Howard said he wanted to encourage indigenous Australians to help themselves.
''The central goal is to address the cancer of passive welfare and to create opportunity through education, employment and home ownership,'' he said.
But his plan will provide little comfort for those who accuse his government of trying to make indigenous Australians more like the rest of the country.
''At its core is the need for Aboriginal Australia to join the mainstream economy as the foundation of economic and social progress,'' Mr. Howard said.
For most Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, culture and history are indelibly tied to their land. Apart from a few tourist ventures, economic opportunities are scarce in the remote villages where many indigenous Australians live.
It will be hard for many to enter fully into the mainstream economy, as Mr. Howard wishes, without moving to economic hubs and abandoning their land in the process. ''What he's going to do is move people into the town centers, and that is where all the problems have occurred,'' Ms. Cummings said.
Previous governments have also struggled to create policies to help indigenous Australians. The paternalistic policies that replaced the brutality of the early years were superseded by a program of ''empowerment'' in the last quarter of the last century, but for the vast majority the increase in rights has not led to much improvement in their circumstances.
See: New York Times
Brough wants NT Minister to resign over intervention criticism
ABC News | 25 October 2007
Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough has called for the resignation of a Northern Territory Minister who described the federal intervention in the NT as a vicious form of McCarthyism in Australian politics.
Marion Scrymgour, who is the Territory's Minister for Family Services, delivered a blistering attack on the Federal Government's intervention in Aboriginal communities at a speech in Sydney on Tuesday night.
The country's first female Aboriginal Cabinet Minister accused the Federal Government of bullying Aboriginal people and of returning them to the days of native welfare.
In last night's Charles Perkins Oration in Sydney, she offered the most scathing criticism yet of the Federal Government's intervention in Northern Territory communities.
"The new world order for Aboriginal people requires, it seems, a vicious new McCarthyism," she said.
Ms Scrymgour likened the intervention to the Commonwealth policies of last century, to remove Aboriginal children from their families.
"It is as if the second intervention has given the Commonwealth permission to enact a great undoing of our lives," she said.
"Aboriginal Territorians are being herded back to primitivism of assimilation and the days of native welfare. It has been a deliberate, savage attack on the sanctity of Aboriginal family life."
She accused the Government of demonising decent, innocent people as child abusers and perpetrators of violence.
"Aboriginal men have been universally condemned as uncaring, substance abusing, vicious molesters," she said.
"While Aboriginal women have been portrayed as hopelessly weak, pathetic creatures incapable of caring for their families or their children.
"And woe betide anyone, Aboriginal or not Aboriginal, who dares criticise the second intervention."
To rousing applause, she said she would not be cowed by tactics that have done widespread social damage.
"John Howard and Malcolm Brough ... I'm doing far more than merely criticising you and your Government's assault on Aboriginal Territorians," she said.
"I am condemning it's motivation, I am condemning its operations and I am condemning outright its moral basis and the moral authority you purport to exercise in saving the children. You are doing nothing of the kind."
Reaction
The Minister's speech has sparked a passionate reaction around Australia.
Talkback lines ran hot at Darwin ABC this morning, with callers vigorously supporting and vehemently opposed to the intervention plans.
But the strongest words were from Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough, who has called for no less than Ms Scrymgour's resignation.
Mr Brough says the outburst goes against Northern Territory and federal Labor's line on the intervention.
"What she had to say there was just a denial of the facts of a killing of a culture. That's what it is," he said.
"It's being drowned in alcohol and it's been snuffed out with drugs and I think it's time that we all understood that and we dealt with it and it's time that Marion actually resigned if she can't actually support trying to save her own peoples' culture."
He also says Kevin Rudd needs to demonstrate that he is in charge of his party.
"This is where leadership starts and finishes on the tough issues - they're here, they're now," he said.
"I am putting him on the spot to either say he condemns Marion Scrymgour, condemns the ALP in the Northern Territory or is he going to remain silent, and in doing so, ensure that we go back to the system that lets these kids suffer in the way that they have."
Mr Brough says Ms Scrymgour is out of touch with people on the ground.
"I mean come on, let's get real. I don't know where Marion's living but she's not living in the town camps of Alice Springs, she's not living in the town camps of Tennant Creek," he said.
Ms Scrymgour says she stands by last night's description of the intervention as exploitative and discriminatory.
"I think Mal Brough should resign. I said last night I also won't be [pressured] by the bully boys and I think Mal Brough has been a bully boy ever since - with this whole issue," she said.
See: ABC News
Snowdon attacks intervention boundaries
ABC News | 25 October 2007
The federal Labor Member for the Northern Territory seat of Lingiari says people in the remote community of Yuendumu, north-west of Alice Springs, are worried a five year Commonwealth lease over the township could take in sacred areas.
The Commonwealth is taking over Aboriginal townships for five years as part of the intervention.
But Warren Snowdon says the proposed boundaries for the Yuendumu lease are just one example of the arbitrary way the intervention is being rolled out.
"It includes some sacred areas which the community don't want to have involved, it includes gravel pits, it includes land which is leased by someone else," he said.
"It's very ill-thought out and as a result the Government has to bring back surveyors and talk to the community about areas they can actually use."
The Country Liberal Party (CLP) candidate for Lingiari, Adam Giles, has accused Labor of scaremongering in Aboriginal communities affected by the Commonwealth's intervention.
"There are six days to go before nominations close for the federal election. It's time to get a new candidate for Labor for Lingiari, someone who'll support communities, support the Northern Territory and show that leadership to drive change through," he said.
See: ABC News
Govt facing High Court challenge over NT intervention
ABC News | 25 October 2007
A remote Northern Territory community has issued a High Court challenge to part of the Federal Government's emergency intervention into Aboriginal communities.
The Maningrida community east of Darwin has confirmed it is taking legal action but is not commenting any further at this stage.
The ABC understands the proceedings were issued today and are focused on the parts of the intervention that involve the Northern Territory Land Rights Act.
This includes elements such as the removal of the permit system in some areas and five-year compulsory acquisition of communities.
See: ABC News
Yuendumu community 'overwhelmed' by intervention
ABC News | 25 October 2007
Members of the remote Indigenous community of Yuendumu north-west of Alice Springs say they are overwhelmed by the number of changes being rolled out as part of the Commonwealth's intervention in the Northern Territory.
About 30 Warlpiri elders and traditional owners of Yuendumu met in the community this morning to discuss the intervention.
They say they are opposed to five-year leases of townships, changes to the permit system and the abolition of Community Development Employment Projects.
A Warlpiri elder, Ned Hargreaves, says Aboriginal people have not been consulted properly.
"They haven't been honest to us, they've let us down, we as the citizens of Australia we should have known, should been told what was happening, not at the very last minute like this," he said.
"And just coming in, telling us like this, ordering us just telling us, order us, this is what you're going to do."
See: ABC News
Stop interfering: angry elders take a stand against changes
Lindsay Murdoch, Sydney Morning Herald | 25 October 2007
The Northern Territory's Warlpiri people are angry.
"This intervention has hit us like a ton of bricks," said an elder, Harry Jakamarra Nelson.
"There's been no consultation with us . we don't know what is expected of us and we really believe that our future is under threat."
Mr Nelson yesterday chaired an emotional meeting of Warlpiri elders, who issued a statement attacking the Howard Government's intervention in 73 remote Northern Territory communities.
"Our communities have been overwhelmed by the large number of changes and have been placed under enormous pressure and stress," it said. "We ask political leaders from all parties to show Aboriginal people respect and to talk to us about how we can make a new start to the intervention after the election."
The Warlpiri, who describe themselves as a nation with 4000 people scattered across the Territory, are the first Aboriginal clan group to make a united stand against the intervention, which includes seizing control of communities for five years.
At yesterday's meeting in Yuendumu, 293 kilometres north-west of Alice Springs, elder after elder spoke about their opposition to the Government taking over their townships, which include Yuendumu, Lajamanu and Willowra.
They said that although Yuendumu, a community of 800 at the edge of the Tanami Track, has had up to 20 white people in the town since the intervention began in late June they do not see how their lives will improve.
The elders were angry at the decision to quarantine half of people's welfare payments, which must be spent on food and other essentials in a designated shop. They also opposed the abolition of the permit system.
Yuendumu elders said they were furious when they learnt the Government was taking over culturally sensitive areas in the community, including a men's ceremonial area and the cemetery.
Mr Nelson, president of the Yuendumu Community Council, said a Government-appointed business manager, who lives in the community, had not made clear what he wanted from the elders.
The statement said the Warlpiri strongly supported action to tackle child abuse.
A federal Labor MP, Warren Snowdon, told the meeting that a Labor government would wind back key elements of the intervention, including abolition of the permit system and the Community Development Employment Program.
See: Sydney Morning Herald
Howard calls for NT minister's scalp
The Australian | 25 October 2007
Prime Minister John Howard has backed a call for Northern Territory Community Services Minister Marion Scrymgour to be sacked.
Alison Anderson, Northern Territory Labor MP for Macdonnell. Picture: Renee Nowytarger
The Northern Territory Government is split over the commonwealth's intervention in remote communities.
Ms Scrymgour, MP for the Arnhem Land electorate of Arafura, used the 2007 Charles Perkins Oration at Sydney University on Tuesday night to condemn the Howard Government's intervention as the "black kids' Tampa".
"Aboriginal Territorians are being herded back to the primitivism of assimilation and the days of native welfare," she said.
"It has been a deliberate, savage attack on the sanctity of Aboriginal family life."
Mr Howard, who is in Perth, today backed a call by federal Aboriginal Affairs Minister Mal Brough for Ms Scrymgour to ber sacked.
Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd yesterday distanced himself from Ms Scrymgour's remarks, saying she had got it wrong.
And an Aboriginal MP has thrown her support behind the reforms and criticised "urbanised saviours" in the indigenous community who had condemned the dramatic measures.
Labor backbencher Alison Anderson, who represents the central Australian electorate of Macdonnell, told The Australian yesterday the intervention was targeted at indigenous people who were "desperately in need of help". The former Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander commissioner was responding to the comments by Ms Scrymgour, who on Tuesday attacked the reforms as a "vicious new McCarthyism".
"It is a disgrace that people who know nothing about living amongst the poverty and abuse in remote communities have condemned the intervention," Ms Anderson said.
"My people need real protection, not motherhood statements from urbanised saviours. I live my law and culture and I will represent my people regardless of what's fashionable. My people need the help and want the help from this intervention."
Ms Anderson's comments place the respected central Australian leader in direct opposition to Ms Scrymgour, the nation's only female indigenous cabinet minister, and highlight strong support for the intervention by many Aboriginal people in the traditional communities where the intervention began.
"Sick people and dead people have no rights," Ms Anderson said. "This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get things right and I think that let's put all our political ambitions aside and look at it in the spirit that it's put out there, to help children and help Aboriginal people."
The dispute further inflames the divide between the nation's indigenous leaders over the reforms, with NT elder Galarrwuy Yunupingu, Cape York leader Noel Pearson and intervention taskforce chairwoman Sue Gordon in support of the measures but other leaders, including National Indigenous Television chief executive Pat Turner, former ATSIC chairwoman Lowitja O'Donoghue and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social justice commissioner Tom Calma expressing serious concerns.
Dr Gordon last night criticised Ms Scrymgour and other indigenous opponents of the intervention. "I get a vibe there are people who don't want traditional people to have some help," she said. "People are denying Aboriginal people in these communities basic human rights.
"What are they opposing? Some don't seem to know what they are actually opposing, and I'm disappointed in that."
Dr Gordon lashed out at Mr Calma, saying he had not helped Aboriginal children while he was commissioner.
"Tom Calma gets up and preaches about human rights but he doesn't mention the rights of the child, and when I mention it I get shot down in flames," she said. "I haven't been very happy with Tom's performance. He said a lot of words but where was he with Kalumburu (in Western Australia) exploding? He has been commissioner for three years."
But Ms O'Donoghue defended Ms Scrymgour, describing her as astrong politician and a community person.
"She knows her people and she knows what her people think, so she's reporting that. I thought she was strong and very good," she said. "All Aboriginal people don't think alike."
Ms O'Donoghue said it was not fair to describe the Northern Territory minister as an urban indigenous person who did not understand what it was like in remote communities.
"It's not fair to say she's always gone backwards and forwards to her community - she's a community person. She's a member of parliament, she's got to do her job - doesn't mean she's outside her community," Ms O'Donoghue said.
Mr Brough has been trying to gather support from Aboriginal leaders for the intervention, and achieved a breakthrough last month when Mr Yunupingu backed the plan while moving to create a 99-year lease over his Arnhem Land community of Ski Beach. Mr Yunupingu said: "This is the opening we need to create a new era of empowerment for Aboriginal people."
Mr Yunupingu's support was secured with the help of Mr Pearson, who has been credited as the driving force behind the Howard Government's efforts to reform welfare and ensure Aboriginal people take individual responsibility. In June, Mr Pearson told the ABC's Lateline program he had been "taking the stick quite a bit to progressives in relation to Aboriginal policy".
"You know, there's something mad going on in the midst of many of our traditional supporters, because they're putting quibbling about politics and putting all kinds of objections in the road," he said.
Ms Scrymgour's speech sparked another war of words between Canberra and the Northern Territory Government, with Mr Brough calling on her to resign over her stand.
"She's not just another politician, she is in fact a minister of the Northern Territory Government and she's wrong," Mr Brough told ABC radio. "It (Aboriginal culture) has been drowned in alcohol and it's been snuffed out with drugs, and I think it's time we all understood that and we dealt with it, and it's time Marion actually resigned if she can't actually support trying to save her own people."
Mr Brough also accused Mr Rudd of "political expediency" by pledging to reintroduce the permit system, which regulates non-indigenous access to communities, and the Aboriginal work-for-the-dole scheme, CDEP.
"That's not new leadership, that is no leadership," he said.
Backing Mr Brough, Mr Rudd said Ms Scrymgour was "wrong" because the Little Children Are Sacred report, released earlier this year, highlighted indigenous child abuse that exceeded any "acceptable national norm".
"That's why dramatic intervention was necessary," Mr Rudd said. "It certainly was controversial, I accept that, but we've got to give a new approach a go because that report was so dramatic in its findings on the abuse of children in those communities."
Ms Scrymgour called Mr Brough a "bully boy" and said he should resign. But she appeared to be left isolated by two senior colleagues yesterday, with acting Chief Minister Syd Stirling releasing a statement reinforcing the Territory Government's position.
"The Northern Territory Government has consistently supported the federal intervention where it helps to protect children," Mr Stirling said. "We have also consistently opposed measures which don't directly protect children, such as the abolition of CDEP and permits, compulsory land acquisition and the silly $100 takeaway alcohol laws."
Education Minister Paul Henderson also did not publicly endorse Ms Scrymgour's comments. "I just feel a bit disappointed that we're now into personal name-calling as opposed to really focusing in on the tragedy that was identified in the Little Children Are Sacred report, and all of us actually stepping up to the mark in terms of our responsibility as governments, as a broader community, a society, to make the lives better for those kids," Mr Henderson said.
However, indigenous Labor backbencher Karl Hampton, MP for the central Australian electorate of Stuart, said he "strongly supported" Ms Scrymgour.
"People in my electorate strongly feel that they have been disempowered by this approach by the Howard Government," Mr Hampton said. "People are feeling very disempowered and very upset by how the whole thing has been handled."
Territory Opposition Leader Jodeen Carney said Chief Minister Clare Martin should either support the intervention or Ms Scrymgour but not both.
"If Clare Martin still supports the federal intervention, and one of her ministers doesn't, then Ms Martin must take action and remove her minister from cabinet," Ms Carney said. "If, on the other hand, Clare Martin opposes the intervention, then she should have the courage to say so. Territorians deserve to know where she stands."
See: The Australian
Rudd stands by intervention amid NT criticism
ABC News | 17 October 2007
Federal Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd is maintaining his support for the intervention into Northern Territory Aboriginal communities, despite condemnation from a Territory minister.
The Territory's Child Protection Minister, Marion Scrymgour, has described the Commonwealth intervention as "the black kids' Tampa" and an election ploy.
She said the values and principles that led to the Stolen Generation were also behind the policy.
But Mr Rudd says he still backs the approach.
"She is wrong because the report, 'Little Children Are Sacred', told us of one set of cases of child abuse after another, way in excess of any acceptable national norm," he said.
"That's why dramatic intervention was necessary, [it] certainly was controversial, I accept that but we've got to give a new approach a go."
Intervention 'a circus'
Member for Lingiari Warren Snowdon says he agrees with Ms Scrymgour that the intervention has become a circus.
Mr Snowdon says people in Yuendumu are confused, concerned and unhappy with many parts of the intervention.
He says he agrees with the objectives of the intervention and does not regret voting for the legislation allowing it to go ahead.
But he says the Government is coming up against problems because of the way it is implementing the changes.
He describes the process as abysmal, rushed and ill thought out.
See: ABC News
Indigenous intervention an election ploy: Scrymgour
ABC News | 24 October 2007
Northern Territory Family and Community Services Minister Marion Scrymgour has launched a scathing attack on the Government's intervention into Aboriginal affairs.
Ms Scrymgour delivered the speech during last night's Charles Perkins oration in Sydney, likening the new Indigenous policies to those used by the Commonwealth to remove Aboriginal children from their families.
She said the values and principles that led to the Stolen Generations were also behind the Commonwealth's latest response to Indigenous people nearly a century on.
Ms Scrymgour accused federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough of using scare tactics to gain compliance for the intervention.
"Mal Brough has launched attacks on anyone who has raised doubts and fears about this new world order for Aboriginal Territorians," she said.
Ms Scrymgour told the gathering the new Indigenous policies were brought in as part of an election ploy, describing them as "Howard's rabbit out of a hat - the black kids Tampa".
But she said she would not bow to pressure, slamming the new legislation for not addresing any of the 97 recommendations laid out in a child sex abuse report it was responding to.
"I'm condemning its motivation, I am condemning its operations and I am condemning its moral basis," she said.
She said the intervention had given the Commonwealth permission to herd Aboriginal people back into the primitivism of assimilation and the days of native welfare and described it as a deliberate and savage attack on the sanctity of Aboriginal family life.
Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough says Ms Scrymgour should resign over the speech because she is out of touch with people on the ground.
"Marion needs to resign. She is part of a Territory Government that has signed up to this," he said.
"She is there blatantly saying it's wrong. She is one of a long list of Labor people including Jenny Macklin who have been out there who have said they will reinstitute the permit system and they'll reinstitute CDEP."
Ms Scrymgour has responded by calling for Mr Brough to resign.
See: ABC News
Brough calls for NT minister to resign
Sydney Morning Herald | 24 October 2007
A Northern Territory Aboriginal minister and federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough have called on each other to resign, amid conflict over the federal government's intervention in the territory.
Mr Brough and NT Minister for Community Services Marion Scrymgour traded barbs Wednesday after she launched a scathing broadside against the federal government over what she described as "the black kids Tampa".
Ms Scrymgour attacked the motivation and operation of the intervention, which was aimed at ending the child abuse rampant in Northern Territory indigenous communities.
"Mal Brough has launched attacks on anyone who has raised doubts and fears about this new world order for Aboriginal Territorians," she said.
"If you're not with us, he says, you're with the perpetrators.
"I am condemning its motivation, I am condemning its operations and I am condemning its moral basis."
Mr Brough responded by saying Ms Scrymgour was "in denial of the facts" and should resign if she could not support efforts to save her own culture.
"She is not just another politician, she is in fact a minister of the Northern Territory government and she's wrong," he told ABC Radio.
"(Aboriginal culture) has been drowned in alcohol and snuffed out by drugs and I think it's time we all understood that and dealt with that.
"And it's time that Marion actually resigned if she can't support trying to save her own people's culture."
Mr Brough also accused Labor leader Kevin Rudd of "political expediency" after some federal Labor politicians pledged to reinstitute the Aboriginal lands permit system and Aboriginal-work-for-the-dole.
"Support it on the ground, don't undermine it and be two-faced to Australia," Mr Brough said, as he called for Mr Rudd make a stand and pull his party into line.
"This is where leadership starts and finishes on the tough issues."
His comments prompted Ms Scrymgour to make her own call for resignation.
"I think Mal Brough should resign," she said.
"Rather than trying to sit down and work through these issues with our government, he has been a bully boy ... without any caring or at least consultation," she said.
"I will continue to criticise in the interests of Aboriginal people."
Mr Brough countered by saying he had spent two years talking to communities about child sex abuse, and if he waited any longer to act more lives would be destroyed.
The Democrats' Andrew Bartlett accused Mr Brough of being excessively aggressive towards his critics, and described his call for Ms Scrymgour's resignation as "absurd".
"Mr Brough seems to believe that everybody except himself is out of touch with what is happening on the ground," Senator Bartlett said.
"The fact that Mr Brough so viciously attacks anyone daring to question any aspect of the government's intervention is just another example that this government has stopped listening to anyone."
See: Sydney Morning Herald
See: "Who's National Emergency?" by Marion Scrymgour - Part 1 - Part 2
Labor minister lashes party over intervention
Joel Gibson, Sydney Morning Herald | 24 October 2007
Australia's first female Aboriginal cabinet minister has broken ranks with federal Labor in a firebrand speech in Sydney, accusing it of doing little more than "hanging on to the Coalition's political apron strings" over the intervention in the Northern Territory.
The measures adopted to stop child sexual abuse were "a circus" and the Government's response to critics amounted to "a vicious new McCarthyism," said Marion Scrymgour, who is responsible for child protection in the Territory.
One Central Australian community had been visited "by 164 Commonwealth public servants and consultants related to the intervention for a population of a few hundred over a period of 10 weeks", Ms Scrymgour said in her Charles Perkins Oration at the University of Sydney last night.
"This included a departmental visit from public servants flown in from Canberra to download data from the community's computer on to a Government memory stick," she said.
"That same data had been emailed to the same department, to their Canberra headquarters, 10 days beforehand. Stories like this abound."
Survey teams visiting more than 70 Aboriginal communities in the Territory had learnt nothing that both governments did not already know, she said.
"Like philosophers debating the numbers of angels on the head of a pin, or physicists counting exotic sub-atomic quarks and hadrons in particle accelerators, the Commonwealth has documented all this and more .
"We know the results. They will tell us that for generations Aboriginal Territorians have endured poor housing, poor health, low educational outcomes and few job prospects.
"While not necessarily directly causal in relationship, these social factors, which the Commonwealth has known about for 30 years and which the current Federal Government has presided over for 11 years, have undoubted impact on the incidence and severity of community and family violence, sexual abuse and substance abuse."
In 2001 Ms Scrymgour became the first Aboriginal woman elected to the Northern Territory Assembly. She is now the Labor Government's Minister for Family and Community Services, Child Protection and Young Territorians.
The emergency response was, in fact, the "second intervention" in the Territory, she said. The removal of children such as her father, Jack, and the late Charles Perkins was the first.
And the Government's response to critics went far beyond "if you're not with us, you're against us".
"According to Mal Brough [the Indigenous Affairs Minister], 'if you're not with us, you are for the perpetrators'. The new world order for Aboriginal people requires, it seems, a vicious new McCarthyism."
See: Sydney Morning Herald
Charles Perkins Oration 2007
See: "Who's National Emergency?" by Marion Scrymgour - Part 1 - Part 2
40pc of Indigenous NT children not in school: report
Anne Barker, ABC News | 23 October 2007
A report has found that 7,500 children in the Northern Territory are not going to school.
The Australian Education Union (AEU) has been looking at schooling in remote communities since the Federal Government began its emergency intervention in June.
It has found a high level of non-attendance among Indigenous children, made worse by a serious lack of school resources.
Poor education was named as a key factor behind the child sexual abuse that prompted the Commonwealth's intervention in the Territory.
The Little Children are Sacred report identified a clear link between education, or the lack of it, and the manifestations of a disordered society, and at the bottom of the pile it said, the final degradation was the abuse of children.
The Australian Education Union has now done a study of census and school figures, and finds only 60 per cent of Indigenous kids are getting to school.
AEU federal president Pat Byrne says that is a staggering statistic.
"That means, according to our calculations, that about 7,500 students across the Territory are not accessing either preschool or schooling, and up to 5,000 under-18s are not accessing secondary education or vocational education and training," she said.
"Now, obviously that is a significant factor in terms of the differential between Indigenous student outcomes and non-Indigenous."
But rather than blaming the children or their parents, the union says the biggest factor in non-attendance is the lack of infrastructure by way of schools themselves, or teachers.
In fact the report says there has been a surge of children enrolling since the Commonwealth intervention began, but no corresponding surge in resources.
Olga Havnen represents the Combined Aboriginal Organisations.
"[At ] the beginning of the school year, you have high levels of attendance and enrolments - it peaks in those first few weeks and then gradually tapers off," she said.
"Part of the problem, I suppose, is that our schools have never been adequately resourced. If you have a look at most of them, they'd be well over 30-years-old.
"The standard of classroom accommodation, both the kids who have got learning disabilities like hearing impairment, must make it incredibly difficult, both for kids and for teachers. This has got to be addressed immediately."
More resources
Ms Byrne is now demanding an extra $1.7 billion to fund 1,300 more teachers and 500 teaching aides in the Northern Territory.
She says otherwise student numbers will drop off and the remaining teachers will not cope.
"Students are actually coming, they're enrolling, but we're finding that teachers are now in some instances struggling with class sizes of perhaps 40 or more students without additional staff and without adequate accommodation," she said.
"Now that's not something that can continue because what we'll find is that teachers will resign, they'll become burnt out, they'll have to take sick leave.
"Students in fact won't keep coming if what they're presented with is a teacher desperately trying to cope, rather than a well-resourced and properly funded education provision."
Ms Havnen agrees.
"I think all of this is suggesting very clearly what's needed is a comprehensive plan for education for remote community people," she said.
"If we don't have that comprehensive plan with the kind of resources and investments that we need, then we're not likely to get the improved education outcomes that we've all been asking for."
She says the effort must be a joint exercise.
"It can't just be done by Aboriginal people or communities, it's got to be done with education professionals, it's got to be done jointly with the Territory and the Commonwealth Government," she said.
"Quite clearly, the kind of investment we need here in the Territory to address Indigenous disadvantage cannot be done by the Territory Government on its own."
See: ABC News
Govt funds to NT education 'more than doubled'
ABC News | 23 October 2007
The Federal Government says it has more than doubled its contribution to education
in the Northern Territory since it came to power.
The Australian Education Union has called for an extra $1.7 billion to be spent over
the next five years, including money for 1,300 more teachers.
It argues most of the money should come from the Commonwealth.
Education Minister Julie Bishop says spending has increased from $73 million in
1996 to $185 million this year.
Ms Bishop says the Commonwealth is working towards better educational outcomes
through the intervention.
"Rather then just pluck figures out of the air, as the Education Union does regularly,
the Howard Government will continue to fight for better outcomes in education in the
Northern Territory and will continue to work with individual communities to get
results," she said.
See: ABC News
Red tape bogs Aboriginal deals
Joel Gibson, Sydney Morning Herald | 23 October 2007
A central element of the Federal Government's mutual responsibility policy in indigenous affairs is being undermined by governments that fail to keep to the deals, says the first independent review of all 80 Shared Responsibility Agreements that governments have signed with Aboriginal communities.
Many indigenous communities have embraced the four-year-old system, based on consultation and consensus, but they have been frustrated at times by red tape and a lack of support and commitment from all levels of government.
In a reported dated July but released yesterday, the consultancy Morgan Disney & Associates wrote: "We have titled this report Don't Let's Lose Another Good Idea as a reflection of the concern that, just as the evidence is emerging that something is working well, there will be a repeat of the old pattern of dispensing with a good initiative and trying something new."
Shared Responsibility Agreements, or SRAs, are funding deals that governments have signed with indigenous communities that want to deal with specific issues.
The goals range from improving school attendance or health and hygiene to developing cottage industries.
An early example was the agreement in Mulan, Western Australia, which promised a petrol bowser in return for the community ensuring that children washed their faces regularly. When the bowser was delivered late and carried the wrong type of fuel, the issue received national media attention.
When it came to governments' record of delivering on the other 79 deals to date, the report said: "On the whole, many government agencies appear to be meeting most of their commitments.
"However, across the 80 reviews and the site visits examined during this review there were significant examples of governments being slow to implement their funding commitments and, in some cases, this had significant consequences for communities."
The agreements had also failed to reduce red tape and foster more rapid and responsive funding solutions to communities in dire need, the review found.
"Many participants and especially communities hoped that SRAs would achieve single funding agreements with common reporting arrangements. This has not been the case and most SRAs appear to have increased the number of agreements: i.e. there is an SRA with outcomes and indicators, and then as many as six to seven funding agreements attached, with separate indicators, reporting arrangements and monitoring systems."
Another failure had been the lack of communication with indigenous people about what the agreements were and how to access them, the report said.
Most communities, however, supported the policy, which they considered consistent with indigenous customs, traditions and the values of working together and reciprocity.
The report was partly based on 80 detailed reviews of agreements by independent consultants, which the Department of Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs has refused to release. The Herald lodged a freedom of information request for the reviews.
See: Sydney Morning Herald
Indigenous groups back calls for funding boost to NT schools
ABC News | 23 October 2007
The Combined Aboriginal Organisations of the Northern Territory have backed calls for an extra $1.7 billion to be spent on improving education, particularly in remote Aboriginal communities.
An Australian Education Union (AEU) released report which calls for 1,300 more teachers and 500 teacher aides was the core of today's meeting between the Union and Aboriginal leaders over the impact of the federal intervention on Territory schools.
The Union says their 'Education is Key' report documents how 5,000 students are not accessing secondary education or vocational training.
AEU president Pat Byrne says funding is needed to meet increasing school populations brought on by Commonwealth policies linking welfare payments to school attendance.
"One of the consequences in the short term in some communities is that classes have doubled or tripled in size and we have in some instances teachers managing or trying to manage with classes of 40 or more children with no support and not appropriate classroom facilities," she said.
She says it is unreasonable to expect children to go to school when there is simply not enough teachers or classrooms.
"Unless both Governments are serious in relation to putting the funding in, it is sheer hypocrisy for a Federal Government for example to withhold welfare payments on the basis of children not being at school," she said.
Northern Territory's Chief Minister Clare Martin has denied there is insufficient resources to deal with a rise in remote school enrolments and does not believe they have been matched by increased attendance.
"When extra teachers are required at any time during the year those are available. That is the formula that we work to," she said.
"In terms of infrastructure, there is a lot of work under way and I can't quite tell you where the contracts are at for additional classrooms going to many schools across the Territory. Our intention is that they'll be in place in time for next year's school year."
But the Combined Aboriginal Organisations Olga Havnen says the pressure for resources has been growing for some time.
"There's been a 40 per cent growth in the population out bush over the last 20 years and there hasn't been the commensurate level of investment in things like basic school education infrastructure," he said.
"There hasn't been a commensurate level of resourcing for teachers and for the special needs of Aboriginal children many of whom don't have English as a first language and who really need special teacher education services."
Graham McKay from the school at Ngukurr says the situation is already quite bleak and enrolments need to be supported by infrastructure developments or remote schools risk losing teachers and students.
"Simple hygiene, there are not enough taps for the children to have a drink there there are not enough troughs for the children to wash their hands," he said.
"We only have two toilet blocks which are used by six-year-olds right up to 16 to 17-year-olds."
See: ABC News
NT grog bans working, says MP
ABC News | 22 October 2007
The Northern Territory Government has released figures showing a 40 per cent drop
in complaints of antisocial behaviour in public housing in Alice Springs since new dry
areas legislation was introduced in August.
CLP Member for Greatorex Matt Conlan told Parliament last week he had received a
number of complaints that the new rules had just shifted drunken behaviour off the
streets and into public housing.
But Housing Minister Elliott McAdam says that is not the case and people are
moving to have their homes declared alcohol-free.
"Matt Conlan's wrong - simply he's wrong," he said.
"What's occurred is we've had 59 restricted areas since July of this year, we've had
21 acceptable behaviour agreements and there has in fact been a 40 per cent
decrease in terms of anti-social behaviour associated with public housing."
Despite the figures, Mr Conlan maintains there is problem in public housing.
"The long and short of it is I'm receiving complaints into my office, the Minister
appears not want to believe that, I don't know why he'd think I'm making it up," he
said.
"Clearly people are coming into my office and I've seen a large number of
complaints since the dry town legislation."
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