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."
See: ABC News
Brough critical of NT Govt town camps effort
ABC News | 22 October 2007
The federal Indigenous Affairs Minister, Mal Brough, says the Northern Territory
Government has done nothing to improve living conditions in town camps since
saying it was a priority almost two years ago.
Mr Brough withdrew a $60 million offer to upgrade the Alice Springs camps earlier
this year, after Tangentyere Council refused to accept 99-year leases.
He says he has been waiting for the NT Government to negotiate with the council or
step in to take over the leases.
"The best part of two years ago [Chief Minister] Clare Martin said the town camps
were the single most important pressing issue in Indigenous affairs in the territory,"
he said.
"You would think that as a person with one house of parliament you would legislate,
you would do whatever you could to fix the place.
"But fundamentally, there's been virtually no improvement in those town camps."
Ms Martin says she does not believe the door is closed on the negotiations.
"What I would like to do is sit down and talk through it again." she said.
Ms Martin says the money offered earlier in the year is very important for upgrading
the standard of the town camps.
"They're now dry areas, but what we need to do is put better infrastructure in and fix
the housing and the Federal Government needs to help us with that," she said.
See: ABC News
Snowdon 'not relying' on Indigenous vote
ABC News | 22 October 2007
The Labor Member for the Central Australian seat of Lingiari, Warren Snowdon,
says he will not rely on the Indigenous vote to retain his seat at the federal election.
Mr Snowdon says key issues in the electorate are town leasing and the abolition of
permits and Community Development and Employment Programs (CDEP).
But he says people will make their decision based on a range of issues .
"It would be very presumptuous of me to rely on any particular vote," he said.
"What we have to do is convince people of the merits of our arguments as to why
they should vote for us on election day.
"I take nothing for granted and I do make the point that the intervention is one
aspect of what's happening on the ground."
Country Liberal Party candidate for Lingiari Adam Giles says the Indigenous
intervention is a key point of difference between the candidates in the seat.
He says unlike Mr Snowdon, he has a plan to move forward.
"He does not have a plan for Lingiari. My plan is we're going to create local
economies out in communities, we're going to get children to school.
"We're going to make sure we have to appropriate health services and create jobs
out there."
See: ABC News
Call to protect all children
The Age | 23 October 2007
Protecting children from abuse should receive the same Federal Government leadership as the recent intervention in the Northern Territory, the national child protection chief of the Anglican Church said yesterday.
Garth Blake, SC, introducing child protection measures at the church's three-yearly parliament in Canberra, said federal and state governments were moving too slowly.
"There doesn't seem to be the political will by the Commonwealth, said Mr Blake, head of the church's professional standards commission.
"There was a summit in Melbourne last year, and it's on the agenda of the council of community welfare ministers, but how long does it take?"
The Federal Government claimed child protection was a state responsibility, but an area of such national concern needed national leadership, he said.
"We would like to see federal leadership on this to bring together the states and stakeholders. We would like to see the same sort of urgency that has been given to (intervention in) the Northern Territory."
Mr Blake urged the Government to appoint a minister for children and to develop a national strategy on child abuse and neglect.
He said states and territories should have uniform mandatory reporting and screening of people who wanted to work with children. At present four have different protocols and four have none.
Sydney director of professional standards Philip Gerber said Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd should be asked whether an alternative government would appoint a national child protection commissioner, as urged by many professionals in the area.
Also speaking at the parliament, Melbourne Archbishop Philip Freier said the Government needed to monitor the intervention in the Northern Territory, especially the effectiveness of quarantining welfare payments, medical examination of children and plans to compulsorily acquire land.
"I am grateful that our Government has at last decided to take Aboriginal disadvantage seriously," said Dr Freier, a former bishop of the Northern Territory. "But I, like many others, have misgivings about the way the Government responded."
He said there was no dialogue with the affected communities before radical legislation was forced through and the troops moved on to Aboriginal lands.
"These radical remedies have not been applied to dysfunctional, abusive communities, families or individuals in the rest of Australian society. Some might call this a form of racism."
See: The Age
Aboriginal education 'underfunded' in NT
Sydney Morning Herald | 23 October 2007
Almost $2 billion is needed to address what the teachers' union says is an education crisis for Aboriginal students in the Northern Territory, worsened by federal intervention.
Overworked teachers, outdated buildings and "third world" facilities are unable to cope with increased enrolments because of Canberra's reforms, according to a report released by the Australian Education Union (AEU).
"There has been a surge in enrolments but this, however, has not been matched by a surge in resources," said AEU president Pat Byrne.
"Now the federal government has taken the step of intervening it must show leadership and back up its actions with resources."
The report said at least $1.7 billion was required over five years to ensure that Aboriginal students in the territory have the same opportunities as other Australian children.
This includes at least 1,360 extra teachers, up to 585 additional school staff and $440 million for one-off infrastructure costs such as new buildings.
"Anything less than this will leave NT indigenous students at a disadvantage to the rest of Australia and perpetuate the problems we see today," said Ms Byrne.
As many as 7,500 Aboriginal children students were found to be missing from school or preschool, while up to 5,000 students had no access to secondary or vocational education services.
"They have known about these problems for many years and they have chosen I believe a very cynical process without thinking through and developing a well thought out plan," said Leon White, a retired former principal from Yirrkala.
"There is no point having kids coming to school if you don't have a plan about how you are going to support teachers, support schools and support the system."
Under the intervention, welfare payments have been tied to school attendance.
"Teachers are now struggling with class sizes of 40 or more students with no additional staff and without accommodation," said Ms Byrne.
"Teachers will resign, they will become burnt out and they will have to take sick leave."
At the remote community of Ngukurr, about 600km south-east of Darwin, there are 300 students enrolled in a school built for 150.
If the intervention is successful, this will increase by another 90 students next year meaning another four teachers will be needed.
Like other remote communities there are no additional support services, despite the fact 30 per cent of children have special needs.
There are 20 teachers working at the school but there is only accommodation for 10 of them. Five are expected to leave next year.
"They just can't hack it anymore," said teacher Graham McKay, who described facilities at the school as "third world".
"We are at crisis point. We are overcrowded and overworked and because we feel we are not getting the support we need we are jaded ...
"We are continually being told that things were going to happen and they don't."
The report called for a comprehensive plan of action, with $1.6 billion coming from the commonwealth and $100 million from the NT government.
See: Sydney Morning Herald
Katherine to become a dry town
Tara Ravens, The Australian | 19 October 2007
Katherine in the Northern Territory is to become a "dry" town, with drinking banned from all public places to curb crime and violence.
The move follows a request from the town council, which told the NT Licensing Commission that alcohol consumption was jeopardising public safety.
The move comes on the back of the Federal Government's alcohol bans in remote Aboriginal communities as part of a range of measures to stamp out child sex abuse.
It also follows the declaration of a dry town in Alice Springs.
The Alice Springs ban was a first for the territory, outlawing alcohol consumption in all public areas including the main thoroughfare of Todd Mall, parks and suburbs from July.
NT Commission chairman Richard O'Sullivan today said Katherine's dry area covered the town boundary and included all public areas within the municipality.
It does not include the Katherine Low Level Crossing Reserve between 7am and 7pm, or private premises.
"The commission is aware of the concerns of many Katherine residents about alcohol fuelled anti-social behaviour," Mr O'Sullivan said.
"The combination of a number of initiatives advised by government including improved rehabilitation, return to home policies and sobering up shelters will all play an essential role in reducing these alcohol-related problems."
Mr O'Sullivan said the restrictions would come into effect on January 21 next year and be subject to review.
See: The Australian
A never-never land for sense
Don Watson, Sydney Morning Herald | 20 October 2007
Don Watson visits a resilient Aboriginal community where the would-be protectors
are the problem, not the people.
Three-and-a-half hours westward from Gove, the half-dozen houses of an Aboriginal
outstation lie baking in the scrub. At certain times of the year about 80 people live
here. As well as the houses, there is an airstrip, two school buildings, a workshop
and a phone booth; and a story attaches to each of them.
A couple of weeks ago, police arrived and searched the place for drugs. They had
no reason to think they would find any and they didn't. When the place was
established almost 40 years ago the community banned all drugs, including alcohol
and kava, and the rule has applied ever since. There is no gambling. And if the
police were looking for signs of domestic violence or molested children, they weren't
going to find them either. It is not paradise, but these things don't happen there.
They are Yolngu people. To judge by the rock paintings and mythology with which
they identify, it is likely they have been on these lands for 4500 years. As with other
outstations, this one was set up to maintain the culture and language and the land
from which they are inseparable. The white Australians of those times thought this
was reasonable. The feeling was that enough damage had been done to these
people, and that less might be done in future if they were given their ancestral lands
and, as far as possible, allowed to live according to their customs and beliefs.
It is hard country and it has made them resilient people. The chief custodian was
raised in keeping with the laws and rites of his ancestors. He grew up nomadic and
can give the Yolngu name to every species of plant and animal that lives there;
every rock and every painting; every waterhole and every kind of fish. He is a tiny,
impish man; alternately anxious and laughing. He also looks indestructible, and if he
proves not to be in the next few years, it will be the tobacco and not the country that
does for him. Tobacco is the only non-medicinal drug allowed at the outstation.
The great objectives of the outstation movement were to protect the cultural
traditions and pass on them on to future generations, and to keep the young people
away from the chaos of the larger settlements where drugs, violence and despair
devour them. Go to one of these settlements and then go to the outstation and you
can easily conclude that the objective has been met. The young people of the larger
centres know nothing of their traditions, and look unhealthy. The children of the
outstation know something and look healthy and happy. The teenagers and adults
carry no surplus fat. Their skin shines.
They would be even healthier if the contractors who put in the septic tanks and
drains had done their work a more conscientiously: a real septic tank instead of the
44-gallon drum they used, and agricultural pipes to drain water away from the taps,
would have eliminated the pools of stagnant water where parasites gather. They
would be healthier still if the health department had held the contractors to account:
or if it had not taken the view that people's rotten teeth should not be treated
because then everyone else would want their teeth done, and excused its own
neglect on the grounds that Aborigines can tolerate more pain than whites.
The people at the outstation go hungry sometimes. This is partly because the
habitats of the animals they once hunted are being destroyed by exotic species.
Cane toads have killed off the goannas and pythons that were once an important
part of the people's diet. Water buffalo and pigs gouge the land, rip out vegetation
and erode and foul the creeks.
They also go hungry because their supports fail them at nearly every step. The half-
dozen houses are as if expressly designed to be unliveable in the sweltering climate
and perfectly unsuited to the inhabitants' way of life. No breeze can blow through
them. Most of the solar panels only worked for a few weeks after they were installed
and no one ever came back to fix them.
The tractor provided to maintain the airstrip is a rare Korean model without spare
parts. For more than a year the people asked for someone to come and fix it. Three
months ago a volunteer overhauled it, but it lacked two parts. It still does. The
community generator was running the batteries flat. The community was blamed.
But the volunteer found that the person sent to repair it had assembled the
alternator the wrong way. The daily life of the people is conducted in the shadow of
this incompetence, waste and neglect. The stories are funny in the manner of
Russian satire; but the reality, like the Russian one, is corrosive and dispiriting.
Dr Neville White is a biological anthropologist. He is also a Vietnam War veteran. He
drove up from La Trobe University 35 years ago and has been there for months at a
time every year since. He persuaded Rotary and other philanthropic bodies to put up
the money for a school and a workshop, and he took a team of other veterans up to
build it with the young men. When the workshop was finished, at a cost of several
thousand dollars, a bureaucrat flew out from Darwin to supervise the installation of
an illuminated exit sign.
The vets teach the young men various skills: how to repair houses, how to paint
them. The young men are keen to learn. Until recently a teacher came each week
from the regional college - a teacher with trade skills who could work with the
teenagers and young men. Two young women from the outstation were trained to be
assistant teachers. Enrolments at the school more than doubled. A second, larger
school building was erected.
And then, after a few months, the trade teacher was taken away. The young men
who had been learning how to repair Land Cruisers and plumb houses found
themselves in class with six-year-olds being taught how to make pizzas. Enrolments
halved. Most have gone to the centres where the drugs and chaos are. Some went
because they were scared by stories that the police and soldiers were coming after
them. The Yolngu often use signs to communicate with each other: to signify police
they cross their wrists, as if handcuffed.
The difference between the efficiency of the volunteers and the ineptitude of the
bureaucracy is startling - as startling as the difference between the volunteers'
generosity and the paltriness of the bureaucracy and the contractors. Next time
Australians congratulate themselves on their work in Aceh or East Timor, or deplore
the US response to Hurricane Katrina, they might reflect on the Northern Territory.
No white community would stand for it. But then, in general, white communities are
not so heavily dependent on the government. Some are, of course; and some, like
the Aborigines of the outstations, choose to live in remote and unproductive places.
But the white people who do this are commonly esteemed as authentic, if not
"iconic", Australians, and the passing of their way of life is reckoned a national
tragedy. There was a time when it seemed possible the country would think this way
about the Aborigines living on their homelands, but it now seems certain that this
time has passed.
Even if the services intended for the outstations reached them, life on the outstation
would still fall well short of perfect. When the sun is setting and the kids are playing
football or hanging from the mango trees, and the men are hunting and the women
tending fires, and the bee-eaters are whizzing about and the old custodian is
wandering up the airstrip on his nightly search for tracks and taking the odd pot shot
at mudlarks with his shanghai, it comes close to seeming perfect. But, of course, it's
not: it wasn't before the Europeans, it wasn't after them, and it's not now.
Yet it is so much better than the bigger centres. And it would be so much better still
if the promises were kept; the humiliations and disappointments were kept to a
tolerable minimum; and the people were not obliged to be always asking - like
children - for their recognised entitlements. It is not just the impression of relative
health and happiness: there is hard data to say they are healthier. And while
government surveys never seem to ask the question, the people on the outstations
will tell you that they feel healthier, happier and safer there.
The practical skills the residents want, and the vets and the government teacher
were beginning to provide, are precisely what the Government says it wants. Being
able to fix their own and others' vehicles would not only provide income and jobs but
free them from the grip of town repairers who charge them what they like and do not
hesitate to confiscate their cars if they cannot pay their bills. Yolngu work teams can
maintain the buildings, machinery and roads at a fraction of the cost of contractors.
Providing guided tours for scholars and students would make for useful jobs and
income and maintain the connection with the land. Everything the people of the
outstation want, the Government says it wants for Aborigines. Everything the people
have conscientiously shunned for 35 years, the Government says must be shunned
now.
So why would the Government abolish the permit system that protects the land
against degradation and the people against booze and drugs? No one seems to
know if the system still applies or not, but tourists and hunters are assuming that it
doesn't and are heading into the lands for the first time in 40 years. Why would they
cancel Community Development Employment Projects on these outstations? Why
would they tell the people that they must be economically self-sufficient, yet deny
them the means they have chosen to do it? Why tell them - as the Yolngu say they
have been told - that they must set up a shop and sell drinks and artefacts to
motorists passing on the Katherine road? Or dance for them at night? Why, when
the centres are plagued with booze, dope and violence, force the outstation people
back into them? These are not my questions: they are what the local administrators
and educators are asking.
Whatever the particular merits of the present Federal Government intervention,
there is no question that the big centres needed drastic action. They have needed it
for years. But why starve the people out of the homelands? The old custodian
speaks just enough English to make his view of these things clear. It's not for drugs
or for children, he says. It's for mining. He has always said "no". But they never stop
asking. And they'll win in the end.
That is one plausible explanation. There is another one which he cannot know: that
they have put themselves beyond the reach of booze and drugs, but they could not
escape the culture wars and the Carlylean tenet of their chief protagonist - that
history is always right and just and the vanquished have no cause worth defending.
Don Watson is an author and a former political speechwriter.
See: Sydney Morning Herald
A decade of neglect
Simon Quilty, The Age | 16 October 2007
A few weeks ago a 14-year-old Aboriginal girl died after she fell from the back of a
moving car. She was the fifth child to die in less than 12 months in the small
community of Utopia in central Australia. A teenager hanged himself, a toddler was
crushed by a car, a baby died of what is presumed to be a pneumonia, and another
baby, born prematurely, died of what I am led to believe was inevitable causes.
Overcrowded housing is extreme, as attested by the tiny single-room tin hut that is
home to the Frank family. Norman, an ambulance driver and handyman, lives here
with his wife and six children, four of whom are under five. They have been
promised better housing for five years.
There is no garbage collection in Utopia because the council is impoverished. One
of the consequences of this is the spread of infection, manifested most awfully by
the golf ball-sized boils from which almost every single child in the community
suffers.
And yet we are all led to believe that the "problem" is child sexual abuse. The grief,
poverty and terribly poor health are a testament to the past decade or more of
criminal Government neglect.
Yes, John Howard, you have good reason to seek reconciliation, especially after
your recent show of might in the Northern Territory that is so transparent to
Aboriginal people up here.
See: ABC: Message Stick
Intervention policy tearing communities apart, says far-north
health chief
Jo Chandler, The Age | 19 October 2007
Click to view pdf version
Confusion and distress in remote Northern Territory communities arising from the Federal
Government's emergency intervention is damaging the health of Aboriginal people, a health executive
told a meeting in Melbourne last night.
Irene Fisher, chief executive of Sunrise Health, a network of 10 health centres in remote communities
east of Katherine, said anxiety was feeding despair in already fragile communities. Two recent youth
suicides in the area - the first in several years - had galvanised her involvement in an increasingly
vocal campaign against the Government takeover of 70 remote communities.
"I've never known a mortality rate like what is happening at the moment," Ms Fisher told The Age
before last night's meeting. A Jawoyn woman, she has worked in the area as a nurse and health
executive for 17 years.
"I know cynics will say, 'Oh, you can't blame it on the intervention' - and say this is why we need
the intervention. People are forgetting the fragile state of the communities and the people living in
them. To me it is almost like some are dying of broken hearts."
Along with Aboriginal leaders Olga Havnen and Lowitja O'Donoghue, Ms Fisher was in Melbourne this
week as part of an effort to revive a 10-year-old lobby group of black and white women concerned
about Aboriginal policy. The Women for Wik movement, which monitors the effects of the
intervention, has gained endorsement from about 3000 women, including Tamie Fraser, Lady Deane,
Justice Elizabeth Evatt and Gabi Hollows.
The most tangible effect of the intervention so far was "absolute shock and cynicism", said Ms Havnen, an outspoken critic of the intervention. "The only thing people have seen on the ground has
been an increased number of bureaucrats, and new housing and vehicles for bureaucrats,and
constant convening of meetings by the public sector," she said.
"The $1.3 billion is not being spent on child protection - there are no additional child protection
workers, there are no services or programs expanded in the areas of children or family services."
Ms Fisher said she was already calling on aid groups to help communities facing a grim Christmas.
Under the intervention, 50 per cent of family welfare payments will be withheld to ensure it is spent
on food and other essentials. But many remote townships still did not have functional town stores
equipped to cater for those needs, she said.
See: The Age
Fears housing shortage threatens domestic violence scheme
ABC News | 19 October 2007
Counsellors in Yuendumu, in central Australia, say they cannot understand why the
Federal Government has agreed to fund a domestic violence educator for the
community until 2010, but will not fund accommodation to house the workers.
Mt Theo program spokesman Brett Badger says the current domestic violence
educator, who lives with her husband in Yuendumu, is taking leave at the end of the
year and wants to recruit a replacement.
But the educator says the Government has knocked back a request to provide
accommodation for a new staff member.
Mr Badger says the program is now under threat.
"It would be a huge setback for that program to close because it has brought such
benefits to the community," he said.
"Also because when you start something and it's going well, for it then to be taken
away takes you back further than square one. It takes you to minus five because
people get so disillusioned."
A spokesman for the Department of Families, Community Services and Indigenous
Affairs says all money for the Family Violence Regional Activities program has been
allocated.
He says Yuendumu might be able to apply for funding for accommodation from
another program.
See: ABC News
Third of homes crowded
Siobhain Ryan, The Australian | 18 October 2007
More a third of indigenous community housing is overcrowded, with some homes
lacking basic necessities such as water, power and sewerage.
An Australian Institute of Health and Welfare report released today has underlined
the problems plaguing the housing run by indigenous community organisations in
2005-06.
Dwellings run by the groups account for the bulk of the nation's housing stock for
indigenous people, totalling more than 22,000 homes in 2005-06, overshadowing
the 12,893 owned directly by government.
But overcrowding rates over a five-year period remain consistently higher - about
three times more - for houses owned by community organisations which receive
government funding, than those where the government holds title.
"It's related to the tenure type," Helen Johnstone, from AIHW's Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander Health and Welfare Unit, said.
"In the Northern Territory, there's a very large indigenous community housing sector
and that's where you see the highest rates of overcrowding."
The statistics, which include some repackaged from an earlier Australian Bureau of
Statistics report, come as the Coalition heads toward a federal election pushing for
greater individual home ownership among indigenous Australians.
The Government announced the scrapping of a community housing and
infrastructure program for indigenous people in the May budget as part of the
package.
The AIHW report found that, in the Northern Territory, about 300 permanent
indigenous community homes were, as at June 2006, not connected to the water
supply, a similar number lacked reliable electricity, and almost 400 lacked a
sewerage system.
But it said the number of homes without those basic services was on the decline, as
was the rate of overcrowding.
See: The Australian
What indigenous health experts think of the NT intervention
Crikey | 18 October 2007
Health journalist Melissa Sweet writes:
In August, the organisation representing Australia's Indigenous doctors and medical
students raised concerns that the negative consequences of the Federal
Government's rushed NT intervention would last for generations.
Last month, in a statement that didn't attract much media attention, the organisation
representing Indigenous nurses expressed dismay that children were being used as
"an excuse for an invention that is disempowering the very communities it purports
to assist".
Now, Indigenous researchers with expertise in Aboriginal child protection have made
their concerns public, warning that the intervention may do more harm than good.
In the latest Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, they ask:
What rationalisation can the Australian Government give, either in a state of crisis
or in its day to day operations, for expanding the use of paternalistic and overly
bureaucratic methods that have already been shown historically to cause harm to
Aboriginal people?
They also argue that the intervention breaches National Health and Medical
Research guidelines for the ethical conduct of health research involving Aborigines and Torres Strait
Islanders.
The researchers, from Curtin University, the Telethon Institute for Child Health
Research and the University of Western Australia, argue that the intervention:
* breaches the guidelines principle that Aboriginal people be treated as equal
partners in initiatives affecting their lives. Instead, it is "bureaucratic and directional"
* fails "miserably" to meet the principle that Aboriginal people be treated with
respect
* risks compromising children's safety by removing Aboriginal peoples' control
over who can come onto their lands
* cannot meet the obligation to do no harm as the medical checks are "ill-
conceived at best and at worst could inflict secondary trauma on yet another
generation of Aboriginal children".
The researchers say there is ample evidence of effective, respectful practices with
Aboriginal communities across Australia that could be applied in the NT.
"The Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development has shown that in
North America when Indigenous communities are given the sovereignty to
legitimately make their own decisions about what development approaches to take
in their communities, they consistently perform better than external decision
makers," they add.
"Positive change can only occur if Aboriginal people are included in a meaningful
way in the initiative. Paternalism, aggressive domination and imposed control did not
work in the past and it will not work in 2007."
It's not quite true, as I've heard said around the traps recently, that the only people
alarmed by the intervention are armchair critics in Melbourne who've never been to
an Indigenous community.
See: Crikey
Reforms 'a complete debacle'
The Australian | 19 October 2007
Three years after the introduction of whole-of-government trials designed to lift
living conditions in Aboriginal communities, a government audit has found that the
reform agenda has been stifled by rigid funding arrangements and public service
culture.
The Australian National Audit Office was able to point to only one success in eight
trial areas across the country, prompting an Aboriginal leader to declare the trials a
"complete and utter debacle".
In 2004, in the wake of the abolition of the discredited Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander Commission, the federal Government brought together a high-level
Ministerial Taskforce and Secretaries Group on Indigenous Affairs, headed by Peter
Shergold, the then secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet.
It introduced Shared Responsibility Agreements and Indigenous Affairs
Arrangements, which transferred responsibility for Aboriginal services to mainstream
departments.
Eight trial sites were established in: the ACT; the Anangu Pitjantjatjara
Yankunytjatjara lands of South Australia; Murdi Paaki in NSW; Shepparton in
Victoria; northeast Tasmania; east Kimberly; Wadeye in the Northern Territory; and
Cape York. At the time, Dr Shergold called it "a bold experiment" and an approach
"on which my reputation, and many of my colleagues', will hang".
But the ANAO probe has found that a minority of programs have incorporated
"whole-of-government" innovations since the commencement of the arrangements.
A survey of 257 managers of indigenous-specific programs done by the ANAO
revealed that barely half agreed that new arrangements encouraged flexibility and
innovation (only 10 per cent strongly agreed); 36 per cent thought they provided
Aboriginal people with better access to mainstream programs; and more than 85 per
cent said they failed to reduce red tape.
Just 51 per cent thought the IAAs had had a positive effect on indigenous service
delivery.
When managers were asked to identify barriers to better collaboration with other
departments, the most frequently cited barriers were "departmental culture and
systems; and rigid funding arrangements and program guidelines".
The report found that "insufficient attention" had been given to implementing policies
aimed at making funding arrangements more flexible and revising programs "if they
prevent innovation or fail to meet local needs".
The one successful trial was Murdi Paaki in NSW where ANAO identified: improved
literacy for indigenous students in Year 3 and Year 5; improved rent collections in
the region (from 94 per cent in 2002 to 97.5 per cent in October 2006); an overall
reduction in a number of crime indicators, including an 8.3 per cent decrease in
domestic violence; and significant health improvements.
Aboriginal activist Olga Havnen yesterday said: "I think that what it says is that it is a
complete and utter debacle" and the high-level scrutiny of Aboriginal communities in
the trial sites had not delivered significant change in those communities.
See: The Australian
Substance abuse 'rife' in NT communities
Sydney Morning Herald | 16 October 2007
Alcohol and cannabis abuse is rife in Aboriginal communities across the Northern
Territory, and there are "large gaps" in the government's response to the crisis, an
inquiry has found.
The parliamentary investigation also found evidence of a black market trade in
petrol, working to counter the introduction of the non-sniffable alternative Opal.
Tabled in the Territory parliament on Thursday, the report - Confronting the
Confusion and the Disconnection - identified petrol, grog and cannabis as the three
problem areas.
It said "very high rates" of cannabis use were connected to suicide and that concern
about the issue was "lower than warranted".
"(It) produces significant social, psychological and psychiatric harms, and
compounds negative effects from poverty and unemployment," the report said.
The report also noted that data shortages were hampering an effective response,
and warned about the long-term effects of the drug.
Despite the success of Opal, the committee found evidence of a black market trade
in conventional fuel while it said "the present high levels" of alcohol consumption
were viewed with "grave concern".
"Severe harm continues to be caused by the availability of low price, high alcohol
products," the report said.
It called on the Territory government to "take a lead" in advocating, along with other
jurisdictions, for a consistent national tax regime on alcohol by volume.
The new model would allow the money generated to then go into harm reduction
and prevention.
"Substance abuse rips through the hearts of people and communities," committee
chair Alison Anderson said in the report.
"I understand that some families are hurting because of grog, ganja (marijuana) and
petrol sniffing and that government needs to acknowledge this and take appropriate
actions."
The report found "large gaps" in the territory's government response to substance
abuse, coupled with insufficient levels of coordination to reduce supply and demand.
"As a result, significant opportunities are being lost to rehabilitate people habituated
to substances," the report said.
"Many community based service providers in the substance abuse area are
underfunded and have insufficient security and consistency of funding.
"This limits their capacity to work on prevention, despite a widespread recognition of
its importance."
Among the report's 15 recommendations was that the government update its grants
process and adopt a coordinated approach to substance abuse based on
consultation.
It also noted that community service for substance abuse relied heavily on CDEP,
otherwise known as Aboriginal work for the dole.
The scheme was scrapped as part the federal government's intervention in the
Territory to combat child sex abuse to try and get more people into mainstream
employment.
This would result in a dramatic shortfall in human resources in most remote
communities, where CDEP acts as en economic lifeline.
See: Sydney Morning Herald
Synod Statement regarding Federal Government Intervention in
Indigenous Communities in the Northern Territory
Uniting Church In Australia, Northern Synod | 17 October 2007
Click here to read the statement
NT intervention delivers mixed results
ABC: 7.30 Report | 16 October 2007
Click here to read the transcript
Yuendumu residents want Brough to hear intervention concerns
ABC: Message Stick | 17 October 2007
Members of the remote community of Yuendumu in central Australia say they are tired of speaking to Federal Government messengers and want Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough to talk to them face-to-face.
Centrelink staff met Yuendumu residents last night to discuss how the quarantining of welfare payments will work in the community.
Yuendumu Community Council president Harry Jakamara Nelson says many people have more questions for the Government and want their concerns about the intervention to be heard by Mr Brough
"Just to meet him and talk to him and words coming out from their own mouths, their own feelings," he said.
"People in this community are very strong, they can speak up their rights. Our rights we feel were taken away when the permit system was taken away."
See: ABC: Message Stick
ALP - Constitutional Recognition Of Indigenous Australians
Australian Labor Party | 11 October 2007
Federal Labor notes the Prime Minister's announcement tonight on constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians.
Constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians has been long held Federal Labor policy, and this was affirmed at the ALP National Conference in Sydney earlier this year.
Obviously, we will need to examine the detail of Mr Howard's proposal with particular regard to its legal and constitutional implications.
Nevertheless, Federal Labor offers bipartisan support to a commitment for constitutional recognition, regardless of the outcomes of the Federal election.
A referendum will succeed if it has strong public support, and bipartisan leadership, and in the spirit of the 1967 referendum, Federal Labor offers this support.
See: ALP
The Keating Call - Cartoon
The Australian | 11 October 2007
You have to laugh ...
View here: The Australian
NT Children To Get DVO Protection: Govt
Sydney Morning Herald | 15 October 2007
Children will be able to apply for Domestic Violence Orders (DVO) on their own behalf under legislation to be introduced by the Northern Territory government.
Victims of economic abuse and intimidation also will be able to make applications, following widespread reforms to the Domestic Violence Act to be put forward this week.
NT Minister for Justice Syd Stirling said the act was overhauled after a thorough review of the legislation.
The changes are expected to be passed during the November sittings.
"These reforms are about protecting the most vulnerable members of society, making the community a safer place and providing victims with safe options," he said.
"Violence against women and children is unacceptable and the Martin Labor government is working to ensure that all members of the community feel safe."
Under the new legislation, children will be able to apply for domestic violence orders while the maximum penalty for breaching an order will increase from six months to two years.
There also will be a presumption in favour of a DVO applicant who has children in their care and mandatory sentencing in cases where a perpetrator is guilty of a second breach of an order when that breach has caused the victim harm.
Economic abuse and intimidation are now grounds for orders, as well as violence that impacts on the welfare of a child.
The overhaul of the Act follows the federal government's radical intervention in the Northern Territory to combat child sex abuse in Aboriginal communities.
See: Sydney Morning Herald
Yuendumu Says Questions Remain Over Intervention
ABC News | 12 October 2007
Yuendumu Council in central Australia says residents are frustrated because they still do not know how they will be affected by the Federal Government's intervention.
Council community liaison officer Ned Hargraves Jampijinpa says he organised a meeting earlier this week with a representative from the federal Department of Workplace Relations so community members could ask questions about the changes.
He says people wanted to know about the abolition of Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) in Yuendumu, but the public servant could not answer all their questions.
He says residents made their anger clear.
"People really, really, really were upset," he said.
"Government needs to slow down, Government needs to listen and to respect the community.
"We are Australian citizens, aren't we?"
See: ABC News
Howard's NT Policy Slammed
Debra Jopson, Sydney Morning Herald | 14 October 2007
A group meeting in Sydney representing 3,000 women who are campaigning for a better deal for Aborigines have called on all candidates seeking election to declare their opposition to the Federal Government's Northern Territory intervention, describing it as a "discriminatory, top-down, brutal policy."
"We ask for a change in policy or a change in government will be essential, so all Australians are treated with equal respect," the seven-member organising committee of Women for Wik said in a statement to the Herald this afternoon as about 300 women filled an Elizabeth Street hall to overflowing at a forum on the intervention.
Describing John Howard as the most racist, divisive Prime Minister the country had ever had, committee member Claire Smith, who is also president of the World Archaeological Congress, said she feared that if John Howard was re-elected, he could extend the intervention to other parts of Australia.
"If the Northern Territory intervention is the model for how Howard is going to develop indigenous policy nationally, heaven help us," she said.
Rachel Willika, from Eva Valley in the Northern Territory said:"When I heard that election announced my heart was racing and I felt frightened. If he is going to be elected, where is that going to leave us? We need to get rid of this bad government and get a good government that will help Aboriginal people."
See: Sydney Morning Herald
One Minute To Midnight
Malcolm Fraser, ABC: Unleashed | 12 October 2007
The Government makes a commitment one minute to midnight to hold a referendum to mention Aboriginals in the Preamble to our Constitution. Such a referendum will almost certainly confirm that Australians generally want a fair go and a decent future for indigenous Australians, but that latter day commitment to a referendum by itself has little meaning.
Throughout the 10-11 years of its existence, Aboriginal policy has been in denial. The brutality of settlement across Australia in the clash with Indigenous Australians was denied and in current terms funding for health, for education, for housing, for the future, has been miniscule and inadequate.
Earlier this year there was a comprehensive report "Little Children Are Sacred" indicating many things that needed to be done to assist Aboriginals to overcome child abuse. The government ignored that report. It's more recent intervention in the Northern Territory, military in style did not adopt a single recommendation. The initial results of this intervention do not appear to be giving positive results for Aboriginal communities.
Of the first 700 children examined, apparently only two have been referred for examination in relation to sexual abuse, which was given as the reason for this arbitrary and unheralded move. It was a six month commitment. What is needed is a 20 year commitment.
We need to learn from the experience of Canada, which 30 years ago started to move well ahead of Australia in establishing the circumstances enabling their indigenous population to take charge of their own lives. Instead of the Canadian approach, with many positive results, the condition of Australian Aboriginals has not advanced, in some respects it has reversed. Less study at university, abstudy, by decision of a government made harder to get, and arbitrary paternalism replacing respect and esteem.
Australia is wealthier than ever before. It has for decades had the resources to provide adequately for Aboriginal advancement. Through 10-11 years of this government policy has generally moved backward. Many have welcomed the presumed change of heart by this government, but is it a change of heart? Is it a core or a non-core promise? The government is almost out of time. It has to call an election shortly, it faces the possibility of annihilation rather than welcoming the presumed change of heart and has welcomed it, but does it really mean change?
Without a commitment to the broad policy outcomes the government statement will mean nothing. A real future for Australian's indigenous population will depend upon respect and esteem. That starts with an apology for earlier wrongs. The government still refuses that apology.
See: ABC: Unleashed
Actions Speak Louder Than Words
The Age | 13 October 2007
Anyone seeking to understand the proposed changes to Aboriginal rights may find
last year's debate and vote on the NT Land Rights Act illuminating. The Law Council
of Australia said "
there is a significant risk the proposed bill will lead to further
disenfranchisement of Aboriginal people in the NT
these amendments may
potentially result in the dispossession of entire indigenous communities, an
eventuality against which there appears to be no safeguard
(This is) a significant
step backwards from the progress of the last three decades".
The compassion and hopes for reconciliation may be heartfelt, but they are at odds
with how the Government dissembled, bullied and finally voted in Parliament in July
last year.
Ann Birrell, Albert Park
Mere symbolism
JOHN Howard has had more than 10 years to tackle the need for reconciliation
between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians. Why has he suddenly "seen
the light" weeks out from a federal election? I agree with Malcolm Fraser, a
successful referendum won't of itself change anything on the ground for indigenous
Australians. What Australia needs is a Prime Minister who has the heart and
courage to say "sorry" for the mistreatment of indigenous Australians over the past
200 years of our nation's history.
Robert Humphreys, Coburg
Speak for yourself
JOHN Howard's admission that his middle-class background prevented him seeing
the need for Aboriginal reconciliation only emphasises that he allows his personal
prejudices to override the national interest.
The majority of middle-class Australians brought up in the '50s and '60s want to
achieve better relationships with indigenous Australians and acknowledge the
injustices that have occurred by apologising for them. Howard insults them by trying
to use them as an excuse for his old-fashioned, narrow and prejudiced views.
Andrew Begg, Drummond North
But is it genuine?
JOHN Howard at yesterday's speech on reconciliation: If elected, I would commit
immediately to working in consultation with indigenous leaders and others on this
task. John Howard at his election victory speech in 1998: And I want to commit
myself very genuinely to the cause of true reconciliation with the Aboriginal people of
Australia by the centenary of Federation. The only difference between then and now
is that the pledge 10 years ago was apparently very genuine.
Tim Moore, Olinda
What's next, PM?
ODDS on that in the next few days, Howard will:
1. Sign the Kyoto Protocol.
2. Join a union.
3. Attend a gay marriage ceremony.
Meg Paul, Camberwell
AS WITH climate change, so now with reconciliation, its Johnny Come Lately.
Malcolm Morgan, Brunswick
I CONGRATULATE Mr Howard for recognising the Aborigines at last.
J. D Neeson, Rosanna
WE ALL make mistakes. Acknowledging them is a sign of strength. But doing so in
a desperate bid to save the bacon is sickening.
Col Finnie, St Kilda
MR HOWARD, to reconcile means "to make two apparently conflicting things
compatible" and requires each party to listen to the views of each other. If you say
outright that an apology won't help reconciliation, you are not listening.
Graeme Martin, Alphington
I HAVE no trouble admitting that our ancestors killed, exploited and oppressed
indigenous people. I didn't do it, but I feel sorry that they did and that Aborigines still
sufferer from the remnants of these actions. A moral person could say sorry.
Janice Florence, Preston
JOHN Howard, champion of the little Aussie battlers and now indigenous
Australians. Not bloody likely.
Lawrie Bradly, Surrey Hills
JOHN Howard's eleventh hour rethink on reconciliation is not so much a road to
Damascus, but looking for a road back to the Lodge.
Chris Burgess, St Kilda
JOHN Howard, the caravan moved on long ago. No one is listening any more.
Jon McMillan, Mount Eliza
See: The Age
Letters To The Editor
The Australian | 13 October 2007
AJohn Howard’s conversion on the road to Damascus is almost as dramatic as the
original. If I thought our road systems could handle the flood of extra traffic, I’d
suggest we hold elections annually.
Martin Klavins
Crafers West, SA
The chances are voters will find Kevin Rudd’s carefully modelled impersonation of a
fiscal conservative a lot more convincing than John Howard’s last-minute
impersonation of a small l-liberal.
Steve Forsyth
Tumut, NSW
"We are not a federation of tribes, we are one great tribe," says John Howard.
Obviously it’s just Africans we don’t want in our tribe.
M.Pearce
Richmond, NSW
Given John Howard’s sudden about-face on the treatment of indigenous Australians,
when will he announce that our troops are being withdrawn from Iraq?
Ian De Landelles
Hawker, ACT
Can we have a republic now too?
Elizabeth Henderson Northbridge, NSW
I’m sorry John Howard isn’t sorry he didn’t say "Sorry". He will be too.
Nick Woolfenden
Surry Hills, NSW
WHAT watershed change in national attitudes has John Howard detected? Has he
finally heard what many of us have been yearning for for well over a decade: the
need for a respectful national dialogue with indigenous Australians? My hunch is that
he is still deeply convinced that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people need to
become just like us and then they’ll be accepted.
The Prime Minister has perhaps been surprised that so many people welcomed a
government doing something _ albeit the wrong thing _ to address indigenous
circumstances in the Northern Territory. But the special place Howard seems to
have given indigenous people in the nation to date is not a place most of them want
to be _ denigrated, demonised and racially discriminated against.
A change of heart is long overdue, but this time Howard’s recent actions speak
louder than his words. Let’s see a real shift in actions and then the words can follow,
and we’ll all welcome that.
Janet Hunt
Dickson, ACT
IS this the same John Howard who unleashed a fear campaign against Aboriginal
Australians in 1997, when he went on national TV with a map purporting to show
that 78 per cent of Australia’s land mass could be claimed under native title? History
shows that with this outrageous assertion he set the tone for his Government’s
contemptuous and exploitative approach to indigenous Australians.
Howard saw the political uses of a fear campaign then, just as he sees the uses of a
more conciliatory approach now. The tragedy is that he has never been able to see
beyond political expediency to the real needs of our first peoples.
Liam McDavey
Auburn, NSW
JOHN Howard may have finally accepted the need for symbolism as well as
practicality to heal the wounds of past (and present, if we are being honest) injustice
to Aboriginal Australians, but by insisting that the symbolism must be on his terms,
he clearly still does not get the concept of "reconciliation".
Philip Machanick
Taringa, Qld
JOHN Howard’s blaming of the era in which he was brought up for his former
attitudes to Aboriginal reconciliation is a slur on all Australians aged 64 and over
who have never held such views or who have moved with the times and long ago
discarded them.
Margaret Dingle
Norwood, SA
REMEMBER John Howard’s heartfelt pledge on election night in 1998 to make
reconciliation the cornerstone of his second term? All that happened was more of
the same pig-headedness and relations with indigenous Australians continued to
deteriorate.
This latest pledge is just another political stunt from a prime minister on the way out,
desperately searching for any diversion hecan find.
Gary McCarron
Clayton, Vic
A REFERENDUM within 18 months? It’s obviously an afterthought, otherwise we
would be saving money and having it coincident with the forthcoming election.
Alan Parkinson
Weetangera, ACT
THIS is no conversion or evolution. It is a cynical pre-election stunt to try to convince
the Australian people there really is a beating heart and a few new ideas. It is
insulting and will be properly dealt with at the ballot box whenever the Prime Minister
finds the courage to call the election.
Sue Lindsay
Marrickville, NSW
See: The Australian
Letters To The Editor
The Canberra Times | 13 October 2007
It is unpleasant to doubt Prime Minister John Howard's motives, particularly over a
subject as sensitive and urgent as reconciliation. But his declaration that he may be
part of the problem over the period he has been Prime Minister is as self-evident as
it is self-serving.
There is a strong sense of desperation around Howard's statement, driven not by
concern for indigenous Australians, but the desire to neutralise his poor record and
make him more acceptable coming to an election. He has contrived to make this
about him, not the indigenous community.
It is a measure of his untrust-worthiness that so many commentators instinctively
say he has once again demonstrated he is prepared to do "whatever it takes" to get
re-elected. It's shameful, does nothing for reconciliation and, if it took him a decade
to understand what the indigenous community was saying, is best to let others do
this work.
Peter Funnell, Farrer
John Howard is offering a referendum for Australia's indigenous people.
Will it be another referendum with one "no" option and two "yes" options? Or is this
not a core promise, and will it never come about at all?
M. Pietersen, Kambah
John Howard's sudden backflip on reconciliation stands as one of his finest acts of
self-denial and political expediency. He must not have been listening when he was
coming of age in the 1950s and 1960s. He must have been absent in the 1970s and
1980s as government after government struggled with Aboriginal rights and social
justice, and he must have been deaf in the 1990s and this century when demands
for reconciliation were at their loudest.
Many brought up in the those decades can thank our parents, who sacrificed to
raise us to meet the challenges of our day and mature for the future. They and our
teachers taught us to respect our fellow man regardless of religion, race or politics.
To blame his past resistance to reconciliation on the attitudes of the 1950s and
1960s is an insult to the parents of that time. Over the last 11 years, Howard has
denied the equality for Aboriginals he now so cautiously embraces. The man has
and will continue to be best described as prepared to do anything for political
advantage. By his own words, he is an artefact, but not one to be treasured or
retained.
Ken Stokes, Mundingburra
John Howard should forgive me for being confused by the beautiful words and ideas
in his speech on reconciliation. Words like recognition and preservation of Aboriginal
heritage, ideas like Aborigines sharing the comparable social, economic and cultural
wellbeing of other Australians. This at a time when it's hard to imagine there has
ever been a wider gap between the living standards of white Australians and
Aborigines. Is this the equality he has preached?
In 1998 he committed to endeavour to achieve reconciliation by 2001. What action
did he take? He says his failing was that while he was emotionally committed, he
mistakenly believed this would have nothing to do with the old paradigms of shame,
guilt and apologies. Is this really what happened? This emotional commitment has
proved fruitless for action in the past. I'm sure I'm not the only one more than a little
sceptical of these well-written words.
Luke Dent, Holder
BUT NO SORRY
Isn't it miraculous that a spate of truly awful poll figures could lead our Prime
Minister, after more than a decade in power, to tread the path of symbolic
reconciliation with indigenous Australians.
If one were cynical, one might query whether he is proposing the expenditure of
about $60million of our money on a referendum simply so that he can avoid having
to utter the dread word, "Sorry".
(Dr) William Maley, Reid
ALREADY RECONCILED
Well done, John Howard, for your plans for Australians to be reconciled with
Aboriginal people, but count me out I've never been irreconciled with them.
Bill Deane, Chapman
See: The Canberra Times
Howard Actively Stood In Way Of Reconciliation
Sydney Morning Herald | 13 October 2007
I challenge John Howard's contention that his sheltered, suburban upbringing is the
reason he has only just now seen the light about the suffering of Aborigines and the
need for reconciliation.
John Howard was a couple of years ahead of me at Canterbury Boys' High in the
1950s. He came from Earlwood; I came from Campsie, then both Anglo-Celtic,
skilled working-class suburbs. Getting into Canterbury High in those days, the
government selective high school for boys from the struggling western suburbs, was
a privilege based on one's primary school performance and IQ tests.
For almost all Canterbury boys, the high standard of education we received
launched us into worlds undreamt of by our blue-collar or bank-clerk parents. We
were privileged boys from battler families who knew what it was like to be poor and
from the wrong side of town.
I recall my history teacher, a devout Catholic, constantly reminding us always to
remember where we came from and to use whatever influence we may have in our
future careers to seek justice for the poor and underprivileged.
During the 1990s I was a member of the executive of the National Council of
Churches and chairman of its committee for land rights and reconciliation. We were
involved in constant lobbying on behalf of Aboriginal Australians, including on one
occasion presiding at a forum in Parliament House, supported by the presence of
national heads of churches, to inform parliamentarians on the urgency of
reconciliation.
Howard, despite the high level of church leadership present, did not attend. In fact,
the committee experienced Howard as a major obstacle to our attempts to promote
reconciliation. We were certainly among those whom he derided as advocates of a
"black armband" view of history.
Howard now says he understands the urgency of reconciliation. Has he at last
remembered where he came from? I pray that is so.
Or has he simply remembered an election is due? I will be more convinced about
the sincerity of the Prime Minister's awakening when, with due empathy, he says
"sorry" about the stolen generation.
Bruce Wilson Retired Anglican bishop, Mount Victoria
Aspirational conversion on the road back to Wollstonecraft
So now we have a Clayton's reconciliation plan. And there's the taxpayer-funded
bribery still to come. Sigh. What issue will be manipulated next? Announcement of a
partial troop withdrawal from Iraq "if I am elected"; closure of Nauru detention centre
"if I am elected"; mandatory global warming measures "if I am elected"? The whole
thing is despicable, but oddly laughable. Pathetic.
Sister Susan Connelly St Marys
I can assure John Howard that he can't attribute his racist and indigenous blind
spots to a Sydney suburban childhood in the '40s and '50s. It had the opposite
impact on me.
Ian Shepherd Tighes Hill
How dare John Howard blame his generation and his upbringing. My husband
shared a history class with him but shares none of his views.
Sue Martin Avalon
John Howard has been dragged into making a half-hearted attempt to acknowledge
his racist background and lack of empathy regarding the fate of Aboriginal people in
Australia during his time as leader of this country. A looming election seems to have
dragged him there. Bring me a bucket.
Margaret Gottlieb Waverton
Look, I welcome Howard's belated platitude. Anything is an improvement. However,
it needs to be seen in context. Howard has just taken away the land that Gough
gave back. And his attempt at compensation is a couple of lines in a constitution -
one which Howard has repeatedly trashed during his term in office. It's not a good
look.
Kenrick Riley Georgica
Well, well, whatever next. Joe Hockey joins a union? Kevin Andrews takes up
missionary work in Africa? Helen Coonan switches her phone carrier to Telstra? The
mind boggles.
John Tuckfield Abbotsford
Sounds like aspirational reconciliation to me.
Drew Thomas Russell Lea
More like a conversion on the road back to Wollstonecraft.
Don Luong Oatlands
I don't think it's Aborigines with whom Mr Howard is hoping to reconcile.
John Littler Kirribilli
Reconciliation/re-election. As long as one leads to the other, eh John?
John Bye Elwood
And the Oscar for best actor goes to
L.A. Groblicka Turramurra
So the Prime Minister is trying to pull a rabbit-proof fence out of his hat.
Jason King Mosman
I hope the Prime Ministerial epiphany season will last long enough for him to realise
it's also time for the federal recognition of same-sex relationships.
Peter Fyfe Newtown
See: Sydney Morning Herald
One Great Tribe, One Australia
Phillip Coorey, Sydney Morning Herald | 12 October 2007
A contrite John Howard has reversed a decade of opposing symbolic gestures towards Aborigines by promising constitutional change to begin what he calls "new reconciliation".
In an important shift, he promised last night that if re-elected he would hold a referendum within 18 months to incorporate a "statement of reconciliation" into the preamble of the constitution.
It would recognise the history of indigenous people as the land's first inhabitants, their culture and heritage, and "their special, though not separate, place within a reconciled, indivisible nation".
"We are not a federation of tribes," he said. "We are one great tribe; one Australia."
There would be no formal apology.
In a speech to the Sydney Institute, the Prime Minister said he had always "struggled" with symbolism while concentrating solely on what he called practical reconciliation. "My instinct has been to try and improve the conditions for indigenous people within the framework of a united nation and unified Australia citizenship."
He admitted his 1998 election-night promise to achieve reconciliation by 2001 had failed.
Mr Howard, 68, said his age was part of the reason he had underestimated the value of symbolic gestures. "The challenge I have faced around indigenous identity politics is in part an artefact of who I am and the time in which I grew up.
"I recognise now that, though emotionally committed to the goal, I was mistaken in believing that it could be achieved in a form I truly believed in."
Mr Howard's speech, designed in part to lend him an aura of freshness, could be his last big announcement before the election, which senior ministers expect to be called in the next three days.
There were mixed blessings yesterday when unemployment hit a 33-year low of 4.2 per cent, but nevertheless increased the prospect of an election-campaign interest rate rise.
For more than a decade, Mr Howard has shunned the symbolic. He has refused a formal apology for past misdeeds towards Aborigines, declined to join Peter Costello on the 2000 reconciliation walk across the Sydney Harbour Bridge, rejected on technical grounds the notion there was "a stolen generation", and ridiculed proponents of symbolic gestures as beholden to a "black armband view of history".
In 1999, his proposed constitutional preamble to recognise indigenous Australians as the first inhabitants and their culture was heavily defeated in the same referendum as the republic.
Last night Mr Howard said his proposed referendum would not be cluttered with any other proposed constitutional changes. He accepted he must share the blame for when dialogue between him and indigenous leaders "dwindled almost to the point of non-existence", but said he remained opposed to a collective national apology.
"Just as the responsibility agenda is gaining ground, it would, I believe, only reinforce a culture of victimhood and take us backwards," he said.
He had come to accept symbolic gestures were as important as practical measures. "There was a stage where I didn't think the symbolic approach could work at all.
"In the end, I could not accept that reconciliation required a condemnation of the Australian heritage I had always owned.
"At the same time, I recognise that the parlous position of indigenous Australians does have its roots in history and that past injustices have a real legacy in the present."
Mr Howard attributed his shift in attitude to the response to his intervention this year into Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory to stamp out child and substance abuse.
See: Sydney Morning Herald
Strong Voices. Paul Wiles Interviews Mike Monroe
NT Intervention: Kids Grilled On Housing Standards
Anna Lamboys, Crikey | 11 October 2007
Aboriginal kids as young as six participating in the Child Health Checks under the National Emergency response into Aboriginal communities are being asked to give environmental health assessments of their houses-and their interrogators are not housing experts, but the doctors and nurses carrying out the medical checks. Some of these question sessions have been occurring without the presence of adults.
A document given to Crikey (see below - click on the image for a full size version), titled "Housing Condition Referral List" has been used in central Australian Aboriginal communities over the past 12 weeks and starkly reveals the appalling living conditions experienced in the region, with four houses accommodating 39 people - including 14 children.
However, the sample "Referral List" is completely useless as a survey instrument, let alone a planning tool. Data fields on the sample page have been answered inconsistently or incorrectly-and certainly have not been checked in situ against actual housing stock.
The state of so-called housing "health hardware" has been a major focus in Aboriginal housing since the late 1980s and the release of the Uwankara Palyanyku Kanyintjaku (UPK) Report in 1987. In essence, the UPK Report found direct links between Aboriginal health and "health hardware", that is, access to clean water and washing facilities; access to functional toilets and waste disposal; access to cooking and refrigeration facilities and the like. This might sound intuitively obvious, but has had a dramatic impact since that time on housing - and more importantly long term housing maintenance and general environmental health issues.
The UPK Report led to the setting of standards, as well, in training of Environmental Health Officers - the majority of whom are Aboriginal employees these days - in carrying out housing and "health hardware" surveys.
It was the basis of the latest Community Housing and Infrastructure Needs Survey (CHINS), finalised late last year. It is carried out across the Territory, involves exhaustive physical checks of housing, and augments local environmental health programs. The Australian Government already knows what the needs are through the biennial CHINS program ... instead it now seems to want to rely on untrained and unskilled medicos quizzing children about housing conditions.
It would be laughable if it were not so serious. These "Housing Condition Referral" lists will do nothing to lift Aboriginal housing standards - and nothing to save the kids over who this whole exercise is supposed to be about.
See: Crikey
Uranium Sweeteners - The Push For Nuclear Industry
Katherine Murphy (The Age) on CAAMA Radio | 10 October 2007
Click here to listen
Labor Spells Out Indigenous Plan
Annabel Stafford, The Age | 6 October 2007
A Labor government would retain the 30-year old Aboriginal work-for-the dole scheme in the Northern Territory, in its first major departure from the Government over its controversial emergency intervention in the NT.
The promise to keep the Community Development and Employment Program is the first instalment of what Labor says will be a "strategy for indigenous economic development".
But it will change the scheme to ensure it focuses on training, developing job strategies with industry and government, and hatching indigenous businesses - rather than being a welfare scheme, something that it has become to many.
"We see CDEP as a way of getting people work-ready, making sure they get on-the-job training . through wage subsidies . and incubating new businesses," Labor's indigenous affairs spokeswoman, Jenny Macklin, said.
One of the problems of abolishing CDEP and replacing it with the mainstream dole was that once recipients started to work, they lost dole payments quickly, creating a large disincentive to work, "whereas under CDEP you can earn a lot more before you start losing your payments", she said
Ms Macklin said CDEP workers who did essential government or community work - such as night patrols or youth work - would be transferred to the payroll of the responsible government agency and paid a proper wage, freeing up CDEP funds to develop job opportunities.
As part of this reform, Labor would also spend $90 million over five years to train and employ up to 300 indigenous environmental rangers around Australia, she said.
There are already an estimated 700 indigenous rangers carrying out activities such as environmental protection, eradication of feral pests and fire management, but many were paid low CDEP wages.
Labor would also increase spending on indigenous protected areas from $6 million to $50 million over five years.
And it would spend $10 million to help develop carbon trading opportunities, including a legal framework to allow indigenous communities that were reducing carbon emissions through fire management to collect carbon credits and trade them.
Joe Morrison, executive officer of the North Australian Indigenous Land and Sea Management Alliance, who has been pushing for the creation of 2000 indigenous ranger positions said the Labor plan was "a step in the right direction".
"It will be interesting to hear what the Government comes up with, because this is a growth area that has a lot of potential to outstrip the supply (of rangers)."
But Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough said Labor was backing away from the NT emergency response and would "lead Aboriginal people back down the road of passive welfare, just when they are beginning to embrace the Howard Government's reforms".
While the Government has kept CDEP operating in remote areas in other states, it has scrapped CDEP in the NT because it says the payments cannot be quarantined like welfare. The Government is taking the action in remote towns to reduce cash available for alcohol.
See: The Age
Keeping It Civil In Cases Of Controversy
Neil James, ABC News | 2 October 2007
Governments of all political persuasions need to take great care not to risk the acknowledged and respected apolitical status of our defence force in Australian society. This underlies the historic reluctance to use the ADF in controversial activities such as domestic law enforcement and strikebreaking.
The Federal Government's extraordinary intervention in several Northern Territory Aboriginal communities has bipartisan support among the mainstream political parties but has attracted wider political and social controversy. The use of defence force elements in the intervention has involved the ADF in this controversy.
It is not unusual, of course, for federal or state governments to call on ADF assistance in national emergencies. The two most common criteria governing the provision of ADF assistance are that the resources of the civil community are exhausted and require supplementation (as with natural disasters such as bushfires, floods and earthquakes), or that capabilities peculiar to the ADF are required (as with open-ocean search and rescue).
The military assistance rendered to civil authorities falls, constitutionally and professionally, into two definite categories: force and non-force situations. ADF use of force to aid civil authorities enforce law and order is extremely rare and has only occurred three or four times (all cases of riot) since federation.
Non-force assistance covers everything else including bomb disposal; firefighting; search and rescue; logistic, communications or ceremonial support to events from the Olympic Games down to local fetes; infrastructure construction in remote communities; and the continuance of essential services during natural disasters or (very rarely) prolonged industrial action. ADF involvement in the Northern Territory intervention is wholly a non-force situation.
Poor coverage
This history, and the well-established bodies of law and professional procedure applying, have not been reflected in media coverage and other commentary on the intervention. Most of this appears accidental ignorance but some seems deliberate polemics.
Some initial media reporting and public commentary referred to the intervention as an invasion and highlighted ADF involvement to emphasise this partisan viewpoint. In some cases this degenerated into outright scaremongering, which tragically caused some members of the communities concerned to believe, wrongly, that the Army was somehow coming to remove their children by force of arms.
Unfortunately, much of the commentary appears to have come from journalists and polemicists with little knowledge of our defence force, the Northern Territory, Aboriginal communities or the law. It missed the essential point that the ADF is providing only logistic and administrative support to what is a whole-of-government effort.
Furthermore, most of the commentary has ignored that the ADF, particularly the Army, has been working in outback Aboriginal communities since before World War II. Army surveyors mapped most of Northern Australia from the 1920s to the 1980s.
The Navy's coastwatcher networks have utilised Aboriginal members for nine decades. Various Army Reserve medical units have conducted their annual camps helping outback Aboriginal communities since the early 1950s.
The Army's various regional force surveillance and regional intelligence units across northern Australia have similarly had many Aboriginal diggers since the late 1970s.
Army engineers have been building houses and environmental health infrastructure in such communities, and running associated trade training schemes, for nearly a decade.
Since the early 1990s many members of the ADF have studied Aboriginal culture in detail while qualifying on Defence-sponsored cross-cultural awareness courses at Nungalinya College in Darwin.
Army officer
While the ADF assistance to the intervention in the Northern Territory is in a non-force role, the whole-of-government intervention overall necessarily includes a civil policing function. The difficulty here is that the whole operation is also currently headed by a serving senior Army officer, Major General David Chalmers.
A precedent cited for a senior Army officer heading an emergency task force is Major General Alan Stretton's appointment following Darwin's devastation by Cyclone Tracy in 1974.
But this was a conventional natural disaster, Stretton was the head of the National Disasters Organisation (NDO), he was only so appointed for a period of weeks while the emergency was at its height, and he handed over to the civil authorities as soon as he could.
It is worth noting that the NDO evolved into Emergency Management Australia in 1993, was taken out of the Department of Defence in 2001, and has long been headed by a public servant rather than a military engineer.
Because of the attendant and growing controversy about the federal intervention in Aboriginal communities, and because it encompasses law enforcement, it would be better if this long-term operation, emergency or not, was now headed by a civilian official (say a senior physician) rather than a military officer.
This Government has often relied on the professional 'can do' approach of the ADF to overcome bureaucratic and other obstacles, but leaving Major General Chalmers in the position much longer is inappropriate on a range of constitutional, professional and national-unity grounds.
Neil James is executive director of the Australia Defence Association.
See: ABC News
Indigenous Politics: The Language Of An Intervention
Rosemary Aldrich, New Matlida | 2 October 2007
As the red dust settles on the legislation enabling Federal intervention into the lives
of Northern Territory Aboriginal people, the surrounding debate has polarised - into
the rock-hard resolve of the Government and its supporters, versus the passions
and pessimisms of those not persuaded.
At last, serious dollars are being spent to address the flinty social landscape that is
the experience of many who live in the NT. But given that yearly cascades of
evidence have documented the extent of social disadvantage experienced by many
Territorians, and given that the Government has had more than 11 years to do
something about it, some are skeptical about the timing of the action. Is it a
challenge to Federal/State demarcation? An attempt to wedge Labor? Is it about
securing the uranium lands? What else might explain why this is happening now?
In any case, the chosen solution to these issues reflects the Federal Government's
beliefs about the nature of the 'problem.' In this, the Prime Minister and his Ministers
are continuing a long history.
Talk is revealing. An examination of speeches and documents delivered by Federal
politicians since 1972 shows two things: first, that four key ideas about Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander peoples have pervaded official conversations; and
second, that the policies enacted have been consistent with those conversations.
The four ideas concern frames of control and responsibility; capacity and
competence; the nature of the 'problem;' and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
peoples as 'not us' or 'Other.' If language used in the policy environment represents
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as not competent, irresponsible, the
source or cause of the 'problem' and 'not us,' then it is no wonder that policy
emerging from that environment entrenches a limited view of Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander people. In other words, the 2007 NT intervention fits with the
prevailing wind of the policy climate.
Yet the wind has switched direction during the latter Howard years. The rhetoric of
'practical reconciliation' has been replaced by 'securing the ground' and is therefore
a very visible rejection of the idea that Australia's Indigenous peoples must, with
'our' help, become 'us' to succeed.
Such thinking had produced Howard Government policies aimed mostly towards
integration and assimilation, requiring their subjects to become 'us' to become
independent (albeit in a form which meets with the approval of those in power). Thus
far, outcomes in education, health, welfare, employment and housing illustrate that
most Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have not become 'us' in terms of
the quality of life enjoyed by most Australians.
But it would seem that, in the absence of comprehensive social gains, the thinking
underpinning assimilationist public policy has been replaced by the idea that 'they'
are so different (as made manifest by the widely-portrayed 'uncivilised' behaviours of
alcoholism and child abuse) that 'they' will never quite be 'us.'
And because 'they' are not 'us,' and never will be, 'they' are therefore unable to look
after 'their' most vulnerable - 'we' have to protect 'them.' This explains the
ideological position and policy imagination from which the NT intervention emerged:
protection, control, supervision.
This is further supported by administrative events. Between December 1972 and
November 2001, a stand-alone bureau advised the Federal Government on
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs. In November 2001, the function moved
to the Department of Immigration, Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs. One might
surmise that the underlying policy goal of a Department which linked immigration,
multicultural and Indigenous policy was to bring the 'others' into the realm of
Australian citizenry as defined by the Howard Government. Much effort was
expended to shape, deliver and control programs which sought to help Indigenous
people become 'us.'
But something changed. Ministers complained loudly (right up to and including the
Press Conference in June that announced the NT intervention) that they could not
see value in a decade of policies and programs. With failure to secure population-
wide improvements in health and education attributed (at the time of its abolition) to
the 'ATSIC experiment,' politicians were emboldened to discard any notions of
political correctness about reconciliation.
Despite 'our' efforts to bridge the divide through 'practical reconciliation,' Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander people were never going to get over 'their' past and
develop the social cohesion to form functional, safe communities. The proof was on
the ground and on the television for all to see.
But also easy to see was that 'they' needed to be protected from the worst excesses
of social breakdown exacerbated by 'their' own failures to behave in a civilised way.
The portfolio was moved in January 2006 to Families and Community Services, and
a policy frame of protection - rather than participation and self-management -
came to determine policy.
The NT intervention has its roots in that portfolio shift. The intervention -
ingeniously promoted as a response to Anderson and Wild's Little Children Are
Sacred report - makes manifest a return to the frame of protection, even requiring
special measures under the 1975 Racial Discrimination Act. Welfare, economic
participation, health decision making and, by default, where some citizens live are
again under the control of the Federal Government.
Clearly something had to be done, and despite commentary that elements of the
legislation have little to do with protecting children, Minister Mal Brough says his
program will serve that purpose in the long run.
But how often have we heard that before? Is it really different this time, or is it
another 'flesh-coloured bandaid' - a short-term remedy that happens to have the
same complexion of Howard's view of the world?
About the author:
A former journalist, Dr Rosemary Aldrich is a public health physician in Newcastle
NSW. Her doctorate examined the language used by Federal politicians concerning
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples and their health between 1972 and
2001.
See: New Matlida
Aboriginal Intervention
ABC Radio, Phillip Adams - Late Night Live | 3 October 2007
An update on the progress of the federal government's intervention into Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory.
Guests:
Professor Jon Altman
Director of the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research at the ANU
Harry Scott
Chief Executive Officer of the Titjikala Community Government Council.
Presenter:
Liz Jackson
Listen: ABC Radio, Phillip Adams Late Night Live
Director Up-Beat About Indigenous Tourism Business Returning
ABC News | 3 October 2007
A director of an Aboriginal tourism joint venture in central Australia says he is confident the business will be able to reopen in the future.
Gunya Tourism was set up with the Titjikala community three years ago, but has had to close because of the Commonwealth's welfare reforms.
Joe Rawson says the 60 community members who have been involved on a casual basis would lose their entitlements if they continued working there now that Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) have been scrapped.
But he says with training and more time, it will be possible to bring the tourism business back.
"That's what we're trying to do is put them on full-time as soon as we can get some money behind us and pay all our debts ... we've paid most of it back and look forward for the younger generation to take over and let them run the organisation," he said.
Meanwhile, Gunya Tourism says it will honour accommodation bookings that have already been made for later this month.
The company's Paul Conlon says the scrapping of CDEP under the Commonwealth's intervention means people who continue to work casually with the venture will be taxed at 70 per cent.
"We weren't holding any bookings for the last about 10 days, nor the coming two to three weeks, so it was an opportunity to step aside and enable the community to just reassess and refocus," he said.
Mr Conlon says there are people in the community who have said they are still willing to work.
"But we're concerned that moving forward we won't have the total support of the community that we've been extremely fortunate to have to date," he said.
See: ABC News
CDEP Changes Brings End To Indigenous Tourism Venture
ABC News | 3 October 2007
A joint Aboriginal tourism venture praised by the chair of the Federal Government's intervention task force has been suspended as a result of welfare changes.
The Titjikala community has been helping to run tented accommodation and cultural experiences with Gunya Tourism since August 2004.
Task force chair Sue Gordon said the venture was the envy of Aboriginal people across Australia during her visit to the community in July, and suggested it be used as a model for other communities.
Community CEO Harry Scott says secondary school attendance has gone from zero to 24 in the three years since Gunya has been operating.
But he says the rules have now changed with the scrapping of CDEP under the Commonwealth's intervention and it has had to stop running the venture.
He says while 50 people will be employed delivering Government services, the remaining 60 will be on work for the dole projects, mainly beautifying the community.
See: ABC News
Indigenous Welfare Quarantine To Go National
ABC News | 3 October 2007
The Federal Government plans to extend a system where the welfare payments of parents in Aboriginal communities are quarantined if their children are not sent to school.
The system was introduced as part of the Government's intervention in the Northern Territory.
Federal Human Services Minister Chris Ellison is travelling to Borroloola on the Gulf of Carpentaria to open a Centrelink office before a visit to Mutitjulu later today.
Senator Ellison says Indigenous parents subject to the intervention could have all of their welfare payments quarantined if their children are not enrolled or do not attend school, and the Commonwealth plans to use the scheme throughout Australia.
"Over the next 18 months we'll be implementing it nationwide," he said.
"What we're learning in the Territory will be extremely important for our nationwide roll-out in relation to income management."
See: ABC News
Intervention Will Cost Clinics Thousands: Doctors
ABC News | 3 October 2007
The Australian Indigenous Doctors Association (AIDA) says clinics in remote communities in the Northern Territory could stand to lose tens of thousands of dollars because of the Commonwealth's intervention.
The head of the emergency task force, Major General Dave Chalmers, announced last week that almost 2,500 children have had health checks.
Local clinics do not receive Medicare payments for the initial check-up and the children can not be rechecked for 12 months.
The association's president, Dr Tamara MacKean, says the restriction will result in a large income loss for local clinics.
"It's really about looking at how an emergency health team works with an existing health team on the ground," she said.
"Ensuring that they [health checks] don't impact on income that is generated through normal service delivery is really important."
See: ABC News
Australia Is Not An Island
Megan Davis | 3 October 2007
The United Nations General Assembly's adoption of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is a triumph for the world's 300 million Indigenous peoples.
It is a particularly important development for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Australia. With each backward step taken by the Coalition: the discriminatory amendments to the Native Title Act in 1998; the abolition of ATSIC; the intervention in the Northern Territory; the winding back of land rights and the absolute prohibition on the use of customary law in bail sentencing, the Federal government has incrementally institutionalised its ideological rejection of the inherent rights of Indigenous peoples.
The Prime Minister's recent glib assertion that while we are "special", our future "lies with mainstream Australia" confirms that. Yet the UN General Assembly's decision to adopt the Declaration is an unequivocal and emphatic rejection by the international community of the Coalition's old fashioned and outdated, assimilationist thinking on Indigenous rights.
The Declaration is unique within the UN system because it recognises in international law, Indigenous peoples inherent rights including the right to self-determination and the collective right of Indigenous peoples to enjoy and realise fundamental rights and freedoms.
The Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Mal Brough misled the public by insisting that the Declaration elevates Aboriginal customary law and other Indigenous rights above national law. The Declaration does no such thing. It is in fact a non-binding human rights instrument of the General Assembly. This means that it has no status in the Australian legal system and cannot elevate customary law or any other Indigenous right over domestic law.
The Declaration is aspirational because it elaborates upon standards that states and their public institutions should aspire to and respect and achieve in their relationships with Indigenous communities and organisations. It is an instrument of dialogue and creates no new rights in international law: rather it establishes a framework of those human rights that already exist in international law as they apply to Indigenous peoples.
The specious argument that self-determination invites secession or a separate Aboriginal state is also mischievous. The concern about the right to self-determination has been appropriately addressed in the Declaration which painstakingly safeguards the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the state. In fact the Declaration is subject to all existing principles of international law which renders the secession arguments nugatory. The text also provides that the rights contained within must be read in accordance with principles of justice, democracy, respect for human rights, equality and non-discrimination.
Given that the Declaration specifically provides that all states shall take measures to ensure that Indigenous women and children enjoy the full protection and guarantees against all forms of violence and discrimination, one would assume that the Federal government, for whom the rights of the Indigenous child are ostensibly paramount would have been supportive of its adoption.
It is true that the Working Group was hamstrung by protracted debate, intransigent states and occasionally ill conceived Indigenous negotiation strategies, but since 2004, states and Indigenous peoples have worked closely together to reach consensus and seek agreement and compromise on the text. While most states abandoned polemic to ensure the safe passage of the Declaration through the Human Rights Council in 2006, Australia and the United States remained the most defiant. It is true, as Canada's Toronto Globe and Mail reported that "The US and Australia had become so isolated that in the last few UN sessions, when they were attempting to put their proposals on the floor, they were all but being shouted down by the other states".
For many there is a tension between acknowledging this as a momentous development when the Declaration is non-binding in the Australia legal system and unfinished business on sovereignty remains.
It has always been difficult to penetrate community suspicions of the effectiveness or relevance of international law to "grassroots", everyday lives of Indigenous peoples. The Australian (September 17, 2007) similarly editorialised that "Indigenous rights in the abstract does nothing to help all those individuals who live in poor health and poverty, who suffer from the ravages of their own drink and drug use, or those of the people around them".
The importance of the adoption lies in the fact that until now much of the content of emerging norms on Indigenous rights have been contested and controversial. The Declaration is now solid evidence of evolving standards pertaining to Indigenous peoples in international law. The adoption of the Declaration by the General Assembly is confirmation of the crystallising of these rights into a widely accepted normative framework.
The rights contained in the Declaration will be useful and relevant to Indigenous Australians because it was originally drafted by Indigenous peoples in the UN Working Group on Indigenous Populations, and this included many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander representatives.
Every article in the Declaration responds to known existing and historical human rights abuses of states. When the Declaration was in draft form, it was already referred to and used extensively by public institutions and many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations. In fact it was so widely cited by Indigenous organisations, public and educational institutions, courts and states worldwide that some international lawyers argued aspects of the draft text were already part of international law.
The Declaration represents a building block toward binding law and the next step for any Declaration in the UN system is attaining the status of a Convention, this would mean that any signatory would be legally bound by the text.
The reality is that if successive governments had greater respect for the recognition and implementation of "abstract" international human rights, the welfare of Indigenous Australians would be greatly advanced and improved.
Insinuated in recent public discourse on Indigenous rights is the idea that past Indigenous advocacy for a "rights agenda" is somehow equivalent to those rights having been recognised. Yet advocacy and realisation of rights are two very different things. The argument that the "rights agenda" and therefore "human rights" are inimical to advancing the situation and fundamental freedoms of Indigenous peoples has taken hold surreptitiously when in fact the emergency response in the Northern Territory is a result of decades of neglect and government violation of the most fundamental rights of Indigenous Australians.
The rights contained in the Declaration confirm in international law, what many critics of the NT intervention have been saying, that Indigenous peoples do have a right to be consulted on the decisions that affect their lives. The Declaration emphasises consultation as the guiding principle between states and Indigenous peoples. This right was embedded in the first recommendation of the Anderson Wild report:
That Aboriginal child sexual abuse in the Northern Territory be designated as an issue of urgent national significance by both the Australian and Northern Territory Governments, and both governments immediately establish a collaborative partnership with a Memorandum of Understanding to specifically address the protection of Aboriginal children from sexual abuse. It is critical that both governments commit to genuine consultation with Aboriginal people in designing initiatives for Aboriginal communities.
A human rights based approach in the Northern Territory would have emphasised the salutary influence of consultation with Aboriginal people on the initial plan for an emergency intervention, drafting the legislation and its eventual implementation. The Declaration emphasises that that fostering a sense of ownership over solutions will result in real and beneficial outcomes for Aboriginal communities.
Evidence-based research shows that Indigenous peoples must be included in formulating solutions to difficult problems and few policies and laws are effective if Aboriginal people are not consulted.
It is not surprising then that the Government did not support the Declaration. Until 1996, federal Labor governments supported the Declaration. After Labor's defeat, Australia withdrew its support. The Labor Opposition has now declared it will support the Declaration when it is elected. Similarly Canada had always supported the Declaration and withdrew its support on the election of Stephen Harper. The vote against the Declaration in the General Assembly by the CANZUS alliance (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and United States) was not about the integrity of the text, it was about politics and ideological fashions.
Having said that, Australia is the only state in the CANZUS alliance who has no Treaty or agreements with Indigenous peoples, no Indigenous political representation, no entrenched right of non-discrimination.
The need for this aspirational Declaration is augmented by the Coalition and Labor's starkly different approaches to Indigenous rights: one party establishes a land rights regime, the other winds it back; one establishes ATSIC, the other abolishes it; one establishes a native title claims process, the other claws it back.
This highlights the insecurity of Indigenous peoples' status in Australia, a liberal democracy dominated by party politics, without any entrenched human rights protection or guarantee of non-discrimination. Australia's rights wasteland and unfinished business between the state and its Indigenous peoples simply means that Indigenous policy will always be inextricably linked to the goodwill of the governing political party of the day.
No one can say that the Declaration is a panacea to the problems we face in Australia. But this development should not be diminished because of populist prejudices about the ineffectiveness or irrelevancy of international law or the UN.
History clearly shows that changed attitudes in Australia on race discrimination and the legislated Race Discrimination Act; inherent rights such as land rights; and the High Court decision in Mabo were all overwhelmingly influenced by developments in international law. It is true the system is imperfect and has limitations. But we must never forget that the genesis of the modern international system lies in international consensus that states can not always be trusted to do the right thing by its citizens; if anyone understands that, Indigenous Australians do, and it is for this reason that the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous peoples is a welcome development.
See: Online Opinion
How The NT Intervention Will Devastate One East Arnhem Community
Crikey | 2 October 2007
By John Greatorex, a member of the Intervention Reform Coalition of Darwin who
previously worked as a teacher in Arnhemland for around 30 years
I would guess that there are few people who have even a moderate understanding
of the breadth of the impact that the intervention is going to have on the East
Arnhem population. There has been no consultation with Yolngu. People are aware
that small teams of people are visiting Yolngu towns, in some cases with no notice.
Reports from some Yolngu are that the teams have been unable to answer many of
the questions being asked.
I'd like to comment on only one aspect of the intervention, the transference of all
CDEP (Community Development Employment Program) wages to Centrelink
payments. If you would like information on other aspects of the intervention please
visit this website. http://da.r-w.in/
At the time of writing, all peoples living in Indigenous areas prescribed by the
Minister will have their CDEP payments converted to Centrelink payments. Without
exception all people receiving Centrelink payments (including such benefits as
service pensions) will have 50 per cent of their money quarantined. This is a racist
policy that unnecessarily targets the most vulnerable and marginalised peoples in
Australia, and again treats them as wards of the state. This quarantined money can
only be spent at designated shops.
This will have severe ramifications for people such as the residents of Mapuru, the
place where the Arnhem Weavers live. Mapuru is a small town on the mainland
adjacent to Elcho Island in north-east Arnhemland. It has a population of about 150,
and with about 40 children attending school every day. The residents of Mapuru
have struggled to stay on their country for over 35 years because they are
determined to forge a future for their children, but it now seems with the
"Intervention" these struggles might have been in vain.
For nearly six years the people of Mapuru have been successfully running their own
community co-op. The co-op runs on a non-profit basis and benefits all community
members. In the co-op people can only buy healthy foods, fishing lines, tyres and
other necessities needed to stay at Mapuru.
Two years ago the Mapuru co-op won a National Heart Foundation award for their
initiative. In the co-op you cannot buy soft drinks, chips, lollies or many of the other
foods that are bad for health.
The co-op is not a registered organisation but is run on a trust basis by the
residents. With the changes from CDEP to Centrelink payments and the compulsory
quarantining of 50 per cent of people's income, people will not be able to shop at
their local co-op. They will be forced to shop at Galiwin'ku which is a charter flight
away or drive many hours to Gapuwiyak.
People will not have enough money to pay for charters and food. If a solution cannot
be found then implementation of this policy will force people to leave their country at
Mapuru, and move them into the town of Galiwin'ku where they are unwelcome,
unsafe and unrepresented. This will have a severe and detrimental effect on the
health of the Mapuru residents and their children.
These forced changes will also result in the closure of the ecotourism business that
the residents have been successfully running for five years. The ecotourism
business Mapuru residents operate like the co-op has been initiated and funded
entirely by Mapuru residents without any external assistance.
See: Crikey
NT Taskforce Should Be Civilian Run: ADA
Sydney Morning Herald | 1 October 2007
The controversial Northern Territory indigenous intervention taskforce should be
moved from the army to civilian command, the Australia Defence Association says.
In its latest Defence Brief bulletin, the defence lobby group said the intervention,
aimed at ending widespread child sex abuse in remote communities, enjoyed
bipartisan support but had attracted wider political and social controversy.
That had drawn the Australian Defence Force (ADF) into the controversy, despite
long defence involvement with remote Aboriginal communities.
Major General David Chalmers currently leads the Northern Territory Emergency
Response Taskforce (NTERT).
"Because of the attendant and growing controversy about the federal intervention in
Aboriginal communities, it would be better if this long-term operation, emergency or
not, was now headed by a civilian official, say, a senior physician, rather than a
military officer," ADA said.
"This government has often relied on the professional can-do approach of the ADF
to overcome bureaucratic and other obstacles.
"But leaving Major General Chalmers in the position is now inappropriate on a range
of constitutional, professional and community-unity grounds."
ADFA said the ADF was often called to assist in national emergencies, most often
when needed to supplement the civil community, such as in floods and bushfires, or
where the ADF possessed special capabilities, such as ocean search and rescue.
Only rarely has the ADF been called to use force to aid the civil authorities, and
there were sound reasons for that, ADA said.
"There are also sound reasons why the defence force takes great care to preserve
its acknowledged and respected apolitical status in Australian society and why
governments of all political persuasions should take great care never to risk this
status by involving the ADF in controversy," it said.
ADA said the precedent for an army officer heading an emergency taskforce was
the appointment of Major General Allan Stretton following Cyclone Tracy's
devastation of Darwin in 1974.
But that was a conventional natural disaster. Major General Stretton also headed the
then Natural Disasters Organisation (NDO) and led the taskforce for a period of
weeks before handing over to a civilian.
NDO has now evolved into Emergency Management Australia which in 2001 was
moved from the Department of Defence to the Attorney-General's Department.
See: Sydney Morning Herald
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