Govt Still 'Disregarding' Stolen Generations Report
Jennifer Macey, PM, ABC Radio | 28 September 2007
A forum being held in Sydney to mark 10 years since the release of the 'Bringing Them Home Report' on the Stolen Generations has heard that governments are still ignoring the report's key recommendations.
Speakers have pointed to the Federal Government's intervention in the Northern Territory as a prime example of politician's disregard for the report.
Aboriginal Social Justice Commissioner Tom Calma says the intervention is a missed opportunity.
"If we measure it up against the 'Bringing Them Home Report' and other reports I think we'll find that it's wanting," he said.
"One of the key elements that's missing in all this is engagement with Indigenous people to be able to actively involve us in the process."
The forum has also heard that time is running out for members of the Stolen Generations to receive compensation.
Des Donley, now in his 70s [sic, actually 90s], told the forum of how he was taken from his Aboriginal mother as a child and put to work on a cattle station, but never received any wages.
"My fight is everybody's fight. I'm going to go out and see that people get justice," he said.
Commissioner Calma says the successful compensation case of Bruce Trevorrow in South Australia last month shows attitudes towards reparations are starting to change despite governments being too slow to adopt recommendations set by the 'Bringing Them Home Report'.
Read the full transcript
Audio: Stolen Generations compared to plight with recent Indigenous violence (PM)
Approval Of Radioactive Waste Facility Site Nomination
27 September 2007
The Minister for Education, Science and Training, the Hon Julie Bishop MP, has accepted the Northern Land Council's nomination of land as a potential site for the Commonwealth radioactive waste management facility.
The nominated site is on Muckaty Station in the Northern Territory, 120 kilometres north of Tennant Creek.
The Northern Land Council made the nomination following its endorsement by the full council meeting held at Gulkula on 25 May 2007.
"After consideration of the evidence presented to me by the Northern Land Council I am satisfied that the Council's decision to nominate the land accords with the wishes of the traditional Aboriginal owners of that land," Minister Bishop said.
"I am also satisfied that other Aboriginal groups potentially affected by the nomination have had adequate opportunity to express their views to the Northern Land Council."
Detailed assessment of the nominated site's physical and biological environment will now be conducted.
Such assessments have already been carried out on the three other potential sites on Defence land at Harts Range, Mt Everard and Fishers Ridge in the Northern Territory.
The Australian Government will make a decision on a preferred site for the facility at the conclusion of the site assessment study at Muckaty Station.
The preferred site will then undergo assessment under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999.
Licences to site, construct and operate the Facility will also need to be sought from the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA).
 |
Indigenous Doctors Call For More Community Consultation
ABC News | 30 September 2007
The Australian Indigenous Doctors Association (AIDA) says the Federal Government should consult more with Aboriginal people on its intervention into Northern Territory communities.
The doctors met in Adelaide yesterday.
The association's discussions yesterday centred on how to involve Aboriginal people more in the federal intervention health strategies.
AIDA's president Tamara Mackean says a strong theme at the symposium was how to ensure more community involvement in designing the strategies.
"If a person doesn't have control over their life, then that is a negative impact on their health and wellbeing," she said.
Dr Mackean says the Federal Government has claimed the international spotlight with its new system of compulsory health checks for Aboriginal children.
The president says her counterparts at the New Zealand Maori Association of Doctors are keenly watching the Australian Government's intervention strategies and analysing them for long-term sustainability.
See: ABC News
Task Force Head 'Pleased' With NT Welfare Rollout
ABC News | 27 September 2007
The operational head of the Commonwealth's emergency response task force says
he is pleased with the initial rollout of welfare changes to Northern Territory
Aboriginal communities.
Last week, four central Australian communities became the first to have half of their
payments quarantined to pay for items such as food and rent.
A further four communities will come on line next Monday.
Major General David Chalmers says Centrelink is working hard to ensure people
understand the changes.
"They've done that through a range of means which have included community
meetings, meetings with the community council, advertising in the radio and
newspaper, both in language and in English and of course letters written to each
individual Centrelink customer, and then finally an interview with each individual
customer," he said.
He also says people failing to meet new work for the dole requirements in some
Northern Territory Aboriginal communities are being dealt with.
Clean-up projects are being carried out in 15 communities under the new
arrangements.
While he can not say how many, Major General Chalmers says he is aware some
people are not meeting their obligations.
"Some people have had their initial interview which occurs if they fail to meet their
obligation," he said.
"It's not a 'one strike and you're out' process. There is a process of counselling
people and encouraging them to attend before they reach that point.
"I understand there's three points at which a person is formerly counselled - that
they've failed to meet their obligation before they are then breached."
The welfare reforms will not be fully rolled out in the Territory until next June.
The task force also says only two thirds of children have had free medical checks in
the Aboriginal communities where health teams have been rolled out.
The are 10 medical teams working in seven remote communities at present.
Major General Chalmers says more than 2,400 children have been checked in 34
communities.
See: ABC News
Media Release - Yolngu Leaders Respond To MOU Between Mr Yunupingu & Mal Brough
Click here to read the media release
Retrenched Factory Fodder & Public Servants Better Off Than CDEP Rejects
Henri Ivrey, Crikey | September 25, 2007
Three contrasting circumstances sum up why it's much harder to survive in the
workforce if you are Aboriginal these days. Sacked factory workers, Aboriginal
workers and public servants fare quite differently in the brave new world of the
federal intervention.
The news a couple of months ago that 600 car workers were to be made redundant
at Ford's Geelong factory saw admirable responses from both state and national
governments. The redundancies won't hit until 2010, but already $24 million has
been set aside so the workers can slip easily back into the workforce.
The then Victorian premier told reporters "we will stand by Geelong, we'll stand by
the workforce, we'll assist and support the workforce." This was echoed by federal
industry minister, Ian Macfarlane, with promises to subsidise private enterprise up to
half the costs of moving their operations to Geelong.
Not so lucky the 400-500 CDEP workers employed in Aboriginal art centres in the
Northern Territory. There is increasing evidence that the federal government is quite
happy to let the majority of them lose their jobs, with little more than rhetoric about
"real jobs" to ease the majority from work to welfare.
Despite a unanimous recommendation from this year's Senate inquiry into the
Aboriginal visual arts and crafts sector "that the Commonwealth pursue the
conversion of CDEP-funded positions in art centres into properly funded jobs, taking
an approach similar to the 2007-08 Budget initiative in other portfolio areas", an
increasingly desperate Aboriginal art sector fears the closure of a number of smaller
art centres; a collapse in Aboriginal employment and a growing threat from
carpetbaggers in the industry.
Although there has been some sympathy, lobbying efforts in Canberra by arts
representative bodies such as Desart and the Association for Northern Kimberly and
Arnhem Aboriginal Artists (ANKAAA) have been frustrated by widespread hostility
from key ministers such as Mal Brough, Joe Hockey and Sharman Stone towards
anything that smacks of CDEP in the post-intervention world.
According to one source: "CDEP (in the context of the arts) is dead-it stinks in
Canberra. Any mention of CDEP in the Northern Territory is unacceptable in
Canberra
(some speak) with vilification and poison on the CDEP issue".
Already, with wind backs in town-based CDEP programs around Australia, some
smaller art centres in South Australia have folded, and unless the issue of
employment in the art centres is resolved, it is likely other centres, especially in
central Australia, will collapse. Western Australian art centres have been told they
will be next.
And the plethora of government bureaucrats from DEWR now running around the
bush in the Territory have done nothing to alleviate the worries. Despite public
assurances from Dr Sharman Stone that no one would be "demoted", and that "real
jobs" would be available in viable employment areas, workers at a number of central
Australian art centres have been told that CDEP art centre administrators would be
transferred to Work for the Dole-and not into real jobs.
As ANKAA chairman Richard Birrinbirrin pointed out last month:
Nearly all of our art centre workers and artists rely on CDEP payments which
have supported jobs in art centres for the past 20 years. Due to years of under-
funding of Indigenous education, many or our people are not [mainstream] job ready
and some never will be. They do have meaningful work though; their job is the
expression and teaching of our culture. They are artists.
Keringke Arts at Santa Theresa faces a bleak future in which their moves into
national and international marketing of the work of their artists will soon "not be
possible". According to Judy Lovell from Keringke:
Thus far this year Keringke Arts has hosted over 300 community visits from
buyers, one International Austrade collectors' tour, a university student group of 25
from USA for a cultural visit to Keringke Rockhole, as well as servicing a healthy
wholesale business in ceramics. The men have begun their leatherwork enterprise
and have undertaken successful introductory training in this area. They were due to
begin a six month course in leather goods production. Preliminary talks, a site visit
and plans have been held with art buying air tours from Victoria, and several local
tour companies. Cultural and horseback tours were planned to begin in 2008. The
RIBs broadcasting was going to join with the art centre and there were to be trainees
placed in broadcasting and recording. The Ltyentye Apurte Band was set to record a
second CD. The art centre has invested heavily towards being able to build a
stronger on-site sales point at the community. We are producing two high quality
arts publications this year, one is bi-lingual.
These activities will not be possible given the proposed changes from CDEP to
Work for the dole, which does not recognize the enterprise or the enterprise
activities of the art centre. We will lose our enterprise based activities soon after 30
September unless a respite is called immediately to allow time for real succession
planning and consequent transition to a model which does not erode the core art
centre enterprise.
Such stories are causing shock waves through the industry on the ground, one of
the few industries in Australia in which Aboriginal people have a competitive
advantage.
Meanwhile, the real growth in employment is being experienced in the
Commonwealth public service, with an estimated 740 additional public servants
being employed through the "National Emergency". This includes an extra 140
DWER staff to manage the "transition" out of CDEP, backed up by 350 new
Centrelink workers to manage the compulsory quarantining of 50 per cent of welfare
incomes; and 150 new FACSIA staff. There will be around 42 extra staff in Health
and Ageing, and 66 extra federal police.
How many of these are "real jobs" is debatable. Certainly very few, it would appear,
are to be dedicated to family and child protection, the supposed motive for the
National Emergency.
See: Crikey.com.au
Response of Laynhapuy Region Leaders to 99 Year Lease Proposal
Laynhapuy Region Leaders - Media Release | September 25, 2007
Response of Laynhapuy Region Leaders to Memorandum of Understanding between Galarrwuy Yunupingu and Commonwealth of Australia
99 Year Lease Proposal
Laynhapuy leaders in no way wish to interfere in the decisions by the relevant Traditional Owners regarding the use and management of their land at Gunyangara (Ski Beach) and Drimmie Head, we remain very concerned about the approach the Government has pursued in seeking this MoU and moving towards a 99 year lease. It appears to have the potential to set a precedent that could undermine the protection of our rights under the Aboriginal Land Rights (NT) Act.
Specifically, we have the following concerns about the process:
- The NLC, under the ALR (NT) Act has responsibility for identifying the relevant TOs for the land which is subject to a proposal. It is not acceptable for the Government to preempt the proper NLC process of assessment to determine who these TOs are. Claims by individuals to Traditional Ownership must in general also be properly verified, although we are in no way questioning Galarrwuy's interest in Ski Beach.
- Meetings between Government officials and individual TOs to strike agreements is unacceptable. All the affected TOs must be afforded the same opportunity through processes under the ALR (NT) Act to receive information, consider proposals, and seek independent legal and financial advice.
- It is not acceptable for the Government or individual TOs to preempt the consultation and consent processes by the relevant TOs collectively, or the decisions of the Full Council and Lands Trust. The signing of such an MOU has effectively put the ALR(NT) Act processes, and other Traditional Owners, under a degree of duress.
- It is unacceptable for the Government to be party to an agreement/MOU which an individual TO has sought to enter into 'on behalf of their clan' - despite an apparent lack of advance knowledge and informed consent by those other clan members.
- As these 99 year leases impact on the 'inalienable freehold' rights of future generations of Yolngu Traditional Owners, the compensation for the loss of these rights (ie. rent) must be structured so that current and future generations during the course of the 99 year lease benefit equitably, and there is not just a windfall for the current TOs.
The Gunyangara (Ski Beach) Traditional Owners will make their own decisions about how to proceed from this point. However, we are very concerned that such processes should not be repeated in other areas, so that the rights of other communities, Traditional Owners and the NLC are not compromised.
We expect the NLC to ensure that the proper processes under the ALR(NT) Act are followed in this and all future matters. If the Government seeks to circumvent these processes we expect the NLC to vigorously contest such moves, including through court action if necessary.
'Mala Leaders Group' to consider the Emergency Intervention
In his article in the Weekend Australian, Mr Yunupingu rightly criticized Minister Brough for inadequate consultation with Yolngu Leaders about the Emergency Intervention. We support Mr Yunupingu in this view but stress that the Government must consult with Yolngu leaders representing all land owning clans - not just a hand-picked few. If the proposal by Mr Yunupingu for the NLC to form a 'Mala Leaders' group for East Arnhem Land proceeds, it must be on the basis that:
- both male and female leadership of all the many clans of the East Arnhem region are represented, including both homelands and major communities
- clans are free to nominate their own leadership without influence from either Government or Mr Yunupingu
- the meetings are convened and chaired independently by the Regional office of the NLC
- the group represents the East Arnhem region only, so it can focus exclusively on the circumstances and interests of Yolngu, and not be influenced by interests outside the region.
- Government and the NLC must recognize that Mr Yunupingu's status in this forum must be as one amongst equals, and not the purported 'leader' of Yolngu people. Future consultation and decision-making about the Emergency Intervention measure and the future of East Arnhem Region must occur through and broad based group of Yolngu leaders truly representative of the land owning clans.
This Media Release is endorsed by senior men and women of the following clans at a meeting at Yirrkala on 25 September 2007, attended by David Farlam, of the NLC Regional Office:
Wangurri Clan
Yarrwidi Gumatj Clan
Djapu Clan
Manggalili Clan
Marakulu Clan
Dhalwangu Clan
See: Nuclear Territory News
Time To Look At The Big Picture Of Indigenous Art World
The Canberra Times | September 24, 2007
Helen Hughes's comments on indigenous artists and the CDEP scheme
("Downtrodden by too much aid", September 19, p21) require a response.
Like most artists in Australia, indigenous artists, mainly residing in remote regions,
cannot survive through their art alone.
Most non-indigenous artists are able to access part-time work to supplement their
incomes. Such opportunity is rarely available to indigenous artists.
A mere handful of the most successful indigenous artists do not require income
support, but the majority do.
And as Hughes, as an economist should know, the way global art markets work only
a fraction of the estimated $300 million of final indigenous visual art sales are ever
paid to artists.
While not all art dealers are exploitative, the community-based indigenous arts
centre model has emerged over the past 35 years as a cost-effective means to
provide a point of brokerage between artists and the market.
I note that Hughes is not advocating for the closure of the Australian ballet or opera
because they are not financially viable.
I also note that Hughes argues, wrongly, that artistic success is linked to moving
away from "homelands".
This is erroneous. Most successful indigenous artists live on or near the land that
they own: their inspiration comes from "painting their country".
Such political and cultural subtleties have clearly eluded Hughes.
Professor Jon Altman, Australian National University
See: The Canberra Times
Changes 'Kill Off Incentive To Work'
The Australian | September 22, 2007
Aboriginal people who hold down casual jobs to supplement their welfare
payments could earn less than $4 an hour under changes introduced as part of the
federal Government's intervention in the Northern Territory.
The changes, according to a group of business leaders including former senior
Macquarie Bank executive Bill Moss, could have a devastating effect on local
indigenous businesses.
Mr Moss has helped a small Aboriginal community, Titjikala, 120km south of Alice
Springs, create a tourism venture that is making a profit and employing large
numbers of locals.
The effects on the town have been dramatic, increasing self-esteem and introducing
entrepreneurial spirit. Mr Moss recently released a green paper outlining an
indigenous economic development scheme based on the encouragement of such
cottage industries across Aboriginal communities.
But he said yesterday the axing of the long-running Community Development and
Employment Program in Aboriginal communities in favour of work-for-the-dole had
placed his scheme and others like it at risk.
The problem is that an Aboriginal person moving from the CDEP scheme to work-
for-the-dole will lose welfare payments when they earn extra money.
Currently an Aboriginal person on CDEP is allowed to earn extra money without
losing any of their $12,500 a year in benefits. But under work-for-the-dole, the same
person will lose up to 70c in the dollar for every extra dollar of income earned.
"This is going to take away theincentive for people to work," Mr Moss told The
Weekend Australian.
The combination of income tax on the extra earnings and the loss of welfare
benefits creates what is known as high effective marginal tax rates (EMTRs).
The Howard Government has long boasted of its record in reducing high EMTRs in
the general community. But warnings from Mr Moss and others about their
introduction into indigenous communities has so far fallen on deaf ears.
Mr Moss said the office of Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough was not interested
in the issue, while Workforce Participation Minister Sharman Stone defended the
policy.
"You can't compare welfare with earned income. A real job is always better than
welfare," she said. "The rules we have in place reflect the Howard Government's
commitment to ensure welfare goes to those in most need. If you earn income it is
reasonable to reduce the amount of welfare you receive."
The Government's reforms are aimed at getting indigenous people off welfare and
into full-time jobs but Mr Moss said the policy doesn't appreciate the need for
fledgling commercial enterprises to begin employing people as casual workers.
Paul Conlon, the managing director of Titjikala's Gunya tourism venture which
provide luxury tent accommodation to well-heeled travellers looking for an authentic
Aboriginal experience, said his workers would normally have worked about 10 hours
a week each for $15 an hour taxed at 30 per cent.
After the same workers were transferred to work-for-the-dole or Newstart payments,
the same amount of work would attract an effective marginal tax rate of 69.8per cent
on the additional income of $150, leaving them a little over $45 in the hand at the
end of each week.
"The federal Government is on the verge of a huge mistake," Mr Moss said. "We're
calling on John Howard to have a major rethink."
Opposition indigenous affairs spokeswoman Jenny Macklin said: "The Howard
Government should take these disincentives to work seriously. They need to make
sure that it's worthwhile for Aboriginal people to work."
See: The Australian
How Think Tanks Are Misleading Us On Aboriginal Children's Health
Crikey | September 23, 2007
By Dr David Scrimgeour, lecturer in public health and co-ordinator of Aboriginal
health policy studies at the University of Adelaide
In recent years think-tanks such as the Institute for Public Affairs and the Centre for
Independent Studies, and their associated organisation, the Bennelong Society,
have promoted policy changes in Indigenous affairs. In a CIS-published book, Lands
of Shame, Helen Hughes repeats a common think-tank contention, that Aboriginal
disadvantage is largely confined to remote communities, with the corollary that
moving Aboriginal people away from remote areas would be beneficial.
Bogus health statistics are used to support this contention. Hughes suggests there
is a conspiracy to hide the fact that Aboriginal health is much worse in remote areas,
because the only available statistics are national averages. In fact, the most
accurate statistics available are from remote areas, and are readily available.
She says that a Western Australian survey showed that "remote child health is
worse in every instance than overall Aboriginal child health". This is wrong: it
showed that on many indicators, particularly mental health, remote Aboriginal
children do better than urban Aboriginal children. There is also evidence that the
health of people living in the most remote communities - those currently targeted for
closure - is better than those on larger communities. Hughes ignores this data.
The recent Commonwealth intervention in the Northern Territory includes a raft of
components which appear to have little connection with protecting children. They
were, however, foreshadowed in Hughes' book, published in May, which included
the following recommendations:
* Small communities should be consolidated into "core concentration centres"
* A health audit of all children should be conducted;
* Local government should replace local councils, if necessary under a
government-appointed administrator;
* Communal title should be converted to leasehold;
* Public housing should be privatised, with new houses and funding for
maintenance to go only to those communities with 99-year leases;
* The permit system should be abolished;
* CDEP should be ended;
* Customary law should be ended.
Most of these recommendations have since been implemented, under the guise of
protecting children, despite the fact that they are supported by questionable
scholarship.
A 2005 article in Quadrant by Peter Howson (founder of the Bennelong Society),
reveals much about the real reasons for such recommendations. He says there are
two reasons to reform land rights: the "disintegration of many Aboriginal
communities", and because "the NT has long been regarded ... as a uranium
province of world class, and the prospects of uranium exports worth billions of
dollars is ... a very enticing one".
Is it really for the sake of the children?
This is an edited version of a talk to be given this afternoon at the Public Health
Association of Australia's annual conference in Alice Springs.
See: Crikey
Whose Coup? Canberra & Clan Both Celebrate A Deal
Jo Chandler, The Age | September 20, 2007
It's a powerful image: Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough, casually dressed, at ease and at home with one of the most strident and powerful opponents of his charge into remote Northern Territory Aboriginal communities, Galarrwuy Yunupingu.
But as the Federal Government celebrated the land rights champion's surprise turnaround as a potent endorsement of its emergency intervention in territory communities over child welfare, other Aboriginal leaders and commentators say the document underwriting the alliance represents a backdown of key elements of the Government strategy.
The proposed 99-year lease remains in the hands of the local community, delivering a coup to the Gumatj clan, and recasting the shape of the intervention.
The memorandum of understanding signed this week by Mr Yunupingu and Mr Brough after a secret meeting in Arnhem Land ¬ brokered by eminent Cape York Aboriginal campaigner and supporter of the intervention, Noel Pearson ¬ ensures that Mr Yunupingu's clan retains control of much of its land at Gunyangara (Ski Beach).
It also recognises the voices of local elders "to remind governments that they are not in control of our lives", as Mr Yunupingu wrote in The Australian yesterday, enlarging on talks which will also deliver unspecified millions of dollars to the community.
Mr Yunupingu described it as a "new model" which put his concerns of a land grab to rest and empowered traditional owners.
Olga Havnen, a prominent territory leader and a member of the new National Aboriginal Alliance ¬ which opposes the intervention ¬ said a key part of the draft deal was that the land-holding entity under the lease would be a local Aboriginal body. "This is a significant shift," she said. "Will those options be available to other people, other communities?"
She also questioned whether the deal would allow the community to bypass some of the emergency response, such as the quarantining of welfare money. A spokesman for Mr Brough said the emergency measures would still apply.
Early last month, at the annual Garma Festival in Arnhem Land, Ms Haven and Mr Yunupingu were among leaders condemning the intervention as a land grab. "I don't want his money. I want my land," he said then. In yesterday's opinion article, Mr Yunupingu said he had changed his position on meeting Mr Brough and being assured they shared a commitment to improving children's lives.
Ms Havnen's analysis of the draft deal was that Mr Yunupingu has kept control of his land ¬ and got the money, though Mr Brough said yesterday there had been "no talk at all of money ¬ this is not about being bought off . this is about what is right for the next generation".
David Dalrymple, a Darwin barrister and expert on Aboriginal land issues, said the Gumatj agreement differed importantly from talks with other communities by not handing over the lease to a government entity. This was critical because under section 71 of the Land Rights Act, indigenous people lose their statutory entitlement to live and practice culture on land leased to a body other than an Aboriginal corporation.
"The beauty of Galarrwuy's deal is that the head lease goes to an Aboriginal corporation, so they retain that entitlement," Mr Dalrymple said. "The other important thing about this deal is that the Gumatj mob themselves are determining what commercial leasing will happen there and in what terms.
"It's the antithesis of the government model. The community in Wadeye had been trying to negotiate something virtually identical before the intervention, and Brough knocked them back.
"Here, Brough has had to eat humble pie. He has surrendered, and what he has got in exchange is a public relations coup."
Mr Brough said the Gumatj deal related to different circumstances because the traditional owners wanted an arrangement that would allow them to "unleash the value" of landholdings beyond the township. Such an arrangement was "available to anyone in the territory".
Professor Mick Dodson, a senior Aboriginal leader, said of the draft deal: "The problem I have is that this doesn't appear to be a sound public policy approach ¬ reacting to criticism in this way. It's bad policy . The precedent is now set. Jump up and down, and the Government will come in and bring some prominent Aboriginal people who agree with them to talk to you and to do a deal with you to keep you quiet. Is that how it works?
"Galarrwuy has been one of the most strident and outspoken critics of the intervention, particularly this aspect of it ¬ the leases," Professor Dodson said. "It must be a large inducement to turn his view around."
Of the intervention, he said "there seem to be major problems arising each day. And this is symptomatic of bad planning, and planning on the run."
David Dalrymple, a Darwin barrister and expert on Aboriginal land issues, said the Gumatj agreement differed importantly from talks with other communities by not handing over the lease to a government entity. This was critical because under section 71 of the Land Rights Act, indigenous people lose their statutory entitlement to live and practice culture on land leased to a body other than an Aboriginal corporation.
"The beauty of Galarrwuy's deal is that the head lease goes to an Aboriginal corporation, so they retain that entitlement," Mr Dalrymple said. "The other important thing about this deal is that the Gumatj mob themselves are determining what commercial leasing will happen there and in what terms.
"It's the antithesis of the government model. The community in Wadeye had been trying to negotiate something virtually identical before the intervention, and Brough knocked them back.
"Here, Brough has had to eat humble pie. He has surrendered, and what he has got in exchange is a public relations coup."
Mr Brough said the Gumatj deal related to different circumstances because the traditional owners wanted an arrangement that would allow them to "unleash the value" of landholdings beyond the township. Such an arrangement was "available to anyone in the territory".
Professor Mick Dodson, a senior Aboriginal leader, said of the draft deal: "The problem I have is that this doesn't appear to be a sound public policy approach ¬ reacting to criticism in this way. It's bad policy . The precedent is now set. Jump up and down, and the Government will come in and bring some prominent Aboriginal people who agree with them to talk to you and to do a deal with you to keep you quiet. Is that how it works?
"Galarrwuy has been one of the most strident and outspoken critics of the intervention, particularly this aspect of it ¬ the leases," Professor Dodson said. "It must be a large inducement to turn his view around."
Of the intervention, he said "there seem to be major problems arising each day. And this is symptomatic of bad planning, and planning on the run."
See: The Age
Land Deal 'A Model For The Future'
Patricia Karvelas and Ashleigh Wilson, The Australian | September 20, 2007
Aboriginal leader Galarrwuy Yunupingu has suggested the Howard Government
establish a senior elders' group to help advise on management of lands in the wake
of a landmark lease deal.
Securing Aboriginal agreement for a 99-year lease on land in north-east Arnhem
land came after local leader Mr Yunupingu was convinced it was not a "land grab" ,
Indigenous Affairs minister Mal Brough said.
The Howard Government has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with
Mr Yunupingu which would see him surrender control of his traditional land under
one of Government's controversial 99-year leases.
"The MOU recognises that the traditional owners can hold a head lease over a town
and surrounding areas, with a 99-year sub-lease over the town to be negotiated with
government," Mr Brough said.
"This model will become another avenue for other traditional owner groups if they
wish to pursue it."
Mr Brough said Mr Yunupingu also raised the prospect of establishing a senior
elders' group in the Northern Territory made up of "respected and legitimate
Aboriginal law men and women" drawn from local communities across the Northern
Territory.
"It comes from a pioneer of the land rights movement, it shows that what the
Government has been offering to Indigenous people in the Territory does not take
away rights, it does not strip away rights it empowers people.
"This is an extremely historic occasion, and one which I commend him for his
leadership."
The head of the Northern Territory intervention's team, Major General Dave
Chalmers, said the intervention was going well but said the ongoing issue was still
lack of communication with Aboriginal people, who did not fully understand what the
Government was doing.
He also said that 30 per cent of children who had undergone health checks had
medical problems and needed further help.
In a move that could set Mr Yunupingu in conflict with several prominent Aboriginal
leaders who oppose the Howard Government's reforms, the former chairman of the
Northern Land Council is understood to be broadly supportive of the intervention.
Mr Yunupingu met secretly with Minister Brough last month in northeast Arnhem
Land, along with Cape York leader Noel Pearson, who brokered the meeting.
Their meeting came just one week after the annual Garma festival of Aboriginal
culture in Arnhem Land, when Mr Yunupingu described the federal reforms as
worrying and sickening.
However, The Australian now understands his position has shifted following Mr
Brough's visit, and Mr Yunupingu is now backing key elements of the intervention.
Mr Yunupingu's support threatens to split the nation's indigenous leadership
following the creation last week of a new Aboriginal lobby group that urged
indigenous communities to actively resist the intervention.
Some in his community are understood to be against the agreement and will oppose
it.
Mr Yunupingu is known to support restrictions on alcohol and the ban on kava, with
the latter reform introduced by the federal Government following his own lobbying.
The Arnhem Land leader has also received an understanding from the federal
Government that it would do everything possible to protect traditional Aboriginal
culture and sacred sites while helping to modernise northeast Arnhem Land.
He retired from the Northern Land Council in 2004, and continues to oversee the
annual Garma festival in Arnhem Land with his brother Mandawuy.
The Tiwi Island community of Nguiu, north of Darwin, last month became the first
Aboriginal community in the Northern Territory to sign up to a 99-year lease.
Nguiu traditional owners agreed to the deal despite concerns by some community
members, with Territory cabinet minister and Tiwi Islander Marion Scrymgour telling
Mr Brough that she had never seen the community so divided over any other issue.
The Northern Territory Supreme Court rejected an attempt by one prominent
community member to obtain an injunction against the lease.
Some of the people who have expressed serious concerns about the intervention
include former Territory cabinet minister John Ah Kit, Pat Turner and an author of
the child abuse report that sparked the emergency intervention in June, Pat
Anderson.
Mr Yunupingu, a 25-year veteran of the Northern Territory's indigenous land rights
struggle, has met several senior government figures over the past month.
Mr Brough will today also announce that television channels broadcasting R-rated
shows will not be allowed to broadcast them in Aboriginal communities in the
Northern Territory. He will introduce amendments to legislation as part of the
Northern Territory emergency response.
They include amending the Broadcasting Services Act to prohibit the provision of R-
rated TV programs in prescribed areas of the Northern Territory.
The move comes as the Northern Territory Government says it will take
responsibility for the delivery of municipal and infrastructure services to all towns
and communities in the territory, including outstations and town camps.
Mr Brough said the move on outstations was "simply giving expression to what I
have been saying on the issue of outstations for some time, in respect of
normalising services."
But the NT Government said yesterday it did not yet know what kind of work it was
expected to do under the new arrangements. Acting Chief Minister Syd Stirling said
he was expecting a letter today from the Prime Minister detailing the deal.
See: The Australian
New national Aboriginal body to counter govt policy
Tara Ravens, AAP | September 20, 2007
Aboriginal leaders have formed a national representative body to counter what they say is government dominance of the Indigenous policy agenda in the wake of Canberra's intervention in the Northern Territory.
The National Aboriginal Alliance (NAA) was formed following a three-day gathering held last week in Alice Springs of over 100 representatives from across Australia.
They came from land councils, legal services, Stolen Generations organisations, health and housing bodies, the national youth forum, media organisations, bush communities and town camps.
In a statement released last Friday, the NAA said the void created by the abolition of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) had left Indigenous Australians vulnerable to heavy-handed government policies.
"These attacks against Aboriginal people in the NT are a consequence of the lack of representation," the group said.
Bev Manton, chairwoman of the NSW Aboriginal Land Council (NSWALC) which has 23,000 members, said her organisation would offer financial support.
"We have supported the Aboriginal people of the NT since John Howard announced this so-called intervention," she said.
"I urge, encourage and call upon everyone to financially support the NAA to establish a fighting fund to develop a plan of attack against this invasion...
"By Howard's actions, he has reignited the fire in our bellies and united Aboriginal people across Australia."
The NAA has rejected discriminatory elements of the Commonwealth's emergency intervention, called for the immediate removal of business managers from Aboriginal communities and the restoration of the permit system. It also urged Canberra to restore integrity to the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 and called on Aboriginal people to actively but peacefully resist the intervention.
"This is something we hope that all of our brothers and sisters and the many fair-minded Australians will stand shoulder to shoulder with us on," said National Indigenous TV CEO and former ATSIC head Pat Turner.
Pastor Geoffrey Stokes, a Wongatha man from Kalgoorlie in Western Australia, said the Australian government had long known about problems in Aboriginal communities and done nothing.
"We need a body that can express our aspirations in our way," Pastor Stokes said.
"It is time that we as Aboriginal people take our rightful place in this country. It is time that we and our cultural heritage are treated with respect."
The NAA statement said there was not a single reference to child protection in the hundreds of pages that comprise the Commonwealth's legislative package in the Territory.
"We affirm our profound commitment to protecting our children from harm," the statement said.
"We acknowledge those within our communities who fought for decades to address the complicated issue of child abuse, and we deplore the successive Australian governments who ignored our cries for help." - AAP
See: Nuclear Territory News
Statement from the Delegates at the 9th Annual Congress of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Nurses (CATSIN) conference in Alice Springs
Nuclear Territory News | September 20, 2007
The delegates at the 9th national conference of CATSIN today declared their opposition to the process of the rollout of the Howard Government emergency intervention in the NT and also questioned the legitimacy of the legislation that has made the intervention possible.
The way that the intervention has been conducted, the lack of consultation and communication with Indigenous service providers, and the secrecy around its implementation has created fear, confusion and uncertainty amongst communities, Indigenous services providers and government representatives.
The statement said:
"CATSIN acknowledges the outstanding health delivery through Aboriginal Health Services.
"The delegates at the conference consider that this intervention is not in the best interests of the children, families and communities in the NT and will further marginalise the already impoverished and disenfranchised people living in poorly serviced and isolated communities, and fails to recognise the importance of land to the maintenance of Indigenous health and wellbeing.
"The cultural and spiritual wellbeing of Indigenous people is also inseparable from their connection with land.
"It comes as no surprise that this Australian government has refused to support the UN Declaration of Indigenous Rights signed by 143 member nations earlier this month since it articulates all the Indigenous rights that are under threat from this intervention.
"The intervention has failed to build on some of the significant success stories in the NT in delivering culturally appropriate comprehensive primary health care by neglecting to involve service providers who, but for a lack of federal government investment, could be better addressing the health and social inequalities in the communities they are serving.
"The federal government does not realise the fragility of these communities and the effect that these imposed interventions have on Indigenous mental health and wellbeing and community self esteem.
"It has failed to acknowledge that empowerment is intrinsic to improvement in Indigenous health and that the process has been completely disempowering for Indigenous people.
"The intervention has focussed specifically on the NT which ironically has the strongest land rights in Australia. The delegates queried the underlying motivation of the intervention as having more to do with the acquisition of natural resources than the protection of children.
"Children are being used an excuse for an invention that is disempowering the very communities it purports to assist. It has meant Indigenous people in the NT now feel as though they are under surveillance and their every move is being monitored. Government documents record their Indigenous status - who else in this country is so identifiable?
"While the legacy of many past federal government policies could once be considered to be 'smoothing the pillow of the dying race', this intervention threatens to _ank the pillow out entirely.
The delegates also expressed concern with regard to the mainstream media coverage of the intervention so far which has focussed on perpetuating negative stereotypes of Indigenous people and failed to report the widespread deep concerns and hurt being expressed by Indigenous people.
The legislation that has made this intervention possible has been widely criticised, including by the Law Council of Australia, as in contravention to the Racial Discrimination Act but this has also been little reported. This has created concern that the legislation was develop in order to legitimately discriminate against Indigenous people.
"What's the recourse now for people who are discriminated against within the NT?" the delegates asked.
"As has been already noted by many Aboriginal groups in the NT, the intervention was undertaken without consultation with either Indigenous groups or communities.
"The intervention totally ignores the international evidence about the importance of land rights and community controlled services in improving health and social inequality and in developing successful Indigenous communities.
"The quarantining of welfare payments will push people, already without access to fresh food in community stores, already on the brink of poverty, into further financial difficulty."
The delegates called on the federal government to transfer the funds for this intervention to appropriate comprehensive primary health care services, such as Aboriginal community controlled health services, and other vital community agencies such as education, housing, and policing to address the social determinants of health.
See: Nuclear Territory News
The Challenge Begins
Galarrwuy Yunupingu, The Australian | September 21, 2007
Only when we are empowered to take full responsibility at a local level will change occur.
In August, I called Aboriginal leaders together at the Garma Festival in Arnhem Land to talk about the federal Government's intervention in the Northern Territory. I sat for three days with many clansmen and leaders including Pat Dodson, who has been my friend for many years.
Everyone expressed their concern about the intervention, which had been announced with great haste a few weeks earlier. With my daughter I carved message sticks that were sent to Canberra seeking a halt to proceedings so we could obtain input into the debate, which affects every aspect of our lives.
I was surprised, and pleased, when in response federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough made the decision to visit me at my homeland at Dhanaya on Port Bradshaw. He came and told me that he wanted to protect children and improve lives. I told him that my life had been spent working on such tasks and if this was genuinely what he sought to do then he had my full support. Not only that, but I would join him, as I would join any minister with the same good intentions, and put my shoulder to the wheel.
Brough was confused about why I had criticised the Government when I had addressed thousands of people attending the Garma Festival.
The answer is simple. I told him I was a landowner and leader and he had not spoken to me. He had acquired my land and sought control of my life without talking to me, let alone seeking my consent. Nor had he spoken to the hundreds of people like me throughout the NT who spent their lives coping with Third World conditions, a lack of services and the abject failures of governments. That simple failure to consult, I told him, would eventually undermine his good intentions. The conditions that hurt children and that he was pledging to fix would remain while he sought to impose a solution.
It really is that simple. He could not work for us unless he worked with us.
Today, I have signed a memorandum of understanding that satisfies my concerns about the land-leasing issues and will ensure that the changes to the permit system will be workable and not undermine land rights. I believe this new model will empower traditional owners to control the development of towns and living areas, and to participate fully in all aspects of economic development on their land.
I have also sought and received the minister's agreement to the establishment of the Mala Elders group.
These elders are those who hold the highest authority in Aboriginal law. The Mala Elders group will take responsibility for the future of our children.
I will ask the Northern Land Council to work with me in the formation of the Mala Elders group. We will not be a construct of government but self-forming and self- funded. The concept, I hope, will translate throughout the NT. I think this is the opening we need to create a new era of empowerment for Aboriginal people.
Governments must stop babysitting us because we are not children. But if treated like children, people will behave like children. It is time for us to be given responsibility in the right way. And let me be clear, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission was not the right way.
The Mala Elders group will remind governments that they are not to control our lives but to empower our people. We will remind all politicians with great seriousness that the land is our backbone and that for Aboriginal children land remains central to their identity. This is something that must never be forgotten. Land ownership is the past, the present and the future for each child in Arnhem Land. Without their land they will not be people. That is why I said at the Garma Festival recently that I was worried sick. And I was, worried sick by the prospect of a land grab.
I am not worried at all by the other aspects of the Government's plan. In fact I welcome them. I welcome the tight controls being placed on alcohol. I ask the Government to go further and shut the two takeaway outlets in Nhulunbuy, the Walkabout and the Woolworths. And I welcome the abolition of kava. What a ridiculous argument to make that kava is good because it stupefies people. And I urge zero tolerance for other drugs.
We must have real jobs, which community development employment projects have not delivered. Nearly all the real jobs in our communities are taken by non- Aborigines, which is an unacceptable situation.
And we must have real schools and we must have real training.
On these matters -- low levels of education, training and employment, and the crippling of our people by alcohol and drugs -- I am in agreement with Noel Pearson of Cape York. He came to meet me and we discussed these matters.
I have seen many challenges in my life. This is the greatest challenge.
We must take advantage of the efforts of governments to ensure that benefits flow and that change is lasting. But we must take responsibility for our future.
Only when we are empowered to take full responsibility at a local level will change occur.
The Government cannot do it for us but it can clear the path, which has never been done before.
And this can be done with respect for land, law and culture.
From there on it is up to us.
Galarrwuy Yunupingu is a former Australian of the Year and veteran land rights campaigner.
See: The Australian
Club Yunupingu: Brough's Land Deal Of Last Resort
Henri Ivrey, Crikey | September 21, 2007
The Black Prince of north east Arnhem Land, long time chairman of the Northern Land Council Galarrwuy Yunupingu, has set himself up at loggerheads with Aboriginal leaders throughout Australia with the signing yesterday of a memorandum of understanding with Indigenous Affairs minister Mal Brough.
Brough will countersign the agreement in Canberra today, and claim it as a major victory under his National Emergency intervention.
The deal-predicted by Crikey a month ago-has been massaged through a series of high level meetings by Queensland Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson and secretary of the department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Peter Shergold, who visited Yunupingu at the end of last month. Four weeks ago, Crikey reported:
... rumours have been circulating amongst the close knit communities of north east Arnhem Land about "deals" having been done to either swing or neutralise the former NLC boss.
It commenced with a secret meeting between Brough, Pearson, Yunupingu and the latter two's respective minders, Llew Griffiths and Sean Bowdon.
And now it has resulted in Yunupingu agreeing to lease parts of his traditional lands at Gunyangara - known in English as Ski Beach - for 99 years in return for "millions of dollars" in infrastructure to the community. All this flies in the face of statements at the Garma Festival in the first weekend of August when Yunupingu described the Brough led intervention as "sickening, rotten and worrying".
It's just an MOU at this stage-and it will be some time before a final lease is signed off on-so details of the agreement are still sketchy. While the role of the Northern Land Council (NLC) in negotiating and signing off on any lease is to be upheld under the Land Rights Act, it was not a signatory to the MOU-unlike the Tiwi Land Council, which was up to its armpits in dealings with Brough over a 99 year lease over Nguiu on Bathurst Island last month.
However, it is understood that the agreement will differ significantly from the Nguiu deal. It is unclear whether the lease will be under s.19, or s.19A, of the Aboriginal Land Rights Act. The latter was created by Brough, and entails the leasing of entire townships and the holding of the lease by a "government entity" - for which read a Canberra bureaucrat.
It is understood that - unlike Nguiu and Brough's proposal to lease entire townships - Gunyangara will be limited to "blocks" of residential and infrastructure assets - with some exclusions, including cemeteries and commercial assets. Furthermore, a head lease will be held by a new Aboriginal corporation rather than by the Canberra's "government entity".
But Yunupingu is not called the Black Prince for nothing - he would have made Machiavelli proud.
And the rumours continue. It would appear he has staved off compulsory acquisition in exchange for the lease; and at the same time appears to have avoided the kinds of external controls Brough initially demanded.
Yunupingu has wanted to build a resort near the sailing club on Melville Bay, on the road out to Gunyangara. There have been lengthy delays to the lease deal allegedly due to the NLC dragging its feet. Ironic, given that Yunupingu ran the show for more than two decades. It is said that Yunupingu sees the Brough deal as breaking this deadlock, giving him and the Gumatj Association access to government funds and commercial loans to construct the resort.
See: Crikey
Land Rights Revisited: Good politics But Terrible Public Policy
Professor Jon Altman, Australian National University, Crikey | September 21, 2007
News that agreement has been reached between the Commonwealth and the Gumaitj Association in north-east Arnhem Land to sign the first mainland deal for a s19A 99-year lease over the Aboriginal township of Gunyangara (Ski Beach) broke today. This deal followed a secret meeting between senior Gumaitj traditional owner and champion of land rights Galarrwuy Yunupingu, Noel Pearson and Minister Mal Brough in early August 2007 and a follow up meeting in late August between Mr Yunupingu and Dr Peter Shergold head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet and a member of the NT Emergency Response Task Force.
Details of the agreement are not yet available, they will be tabled in the federal parliament today no doubt touted as evidence that the NT Emergency Intervention is working and gathering momentum. And this may be great politics again testing the commitment of the ALP to the Howard government's ill-conceived NT intervention and more worryingly probably effectively wedging the emerging Indigenous political alliance that is opposing the intervention.
Making the deal with the Gumaitj is puzzling in part because not long ago the Office of Indigenous Policy Coordination was (unsuccessfully) investigating the Gumatj Association for apparently illegal use of mining royalty equivalents that it receives as a community affected by the major Alcan bauxite mine and alumina processing plant and port. Mr Yunupingu himself has been the subject of considerable negative media attention and vilification owing to his strong personal adherence to elements of Yolngu customary law.
This purported agreement must be properly contextualized. At present one must assume that it is only an MOU, as under the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 it is the statutory function of the Northern Land Council to ensure that the Gumaitj traditional owners of Gunyangara as a group are properly informed and consent to the s19A 99 year lease proposal and that affected communities in North East Arnhem Land have been properly consulted. Even the Australian government has to abide by its laws.
The proposed 99 year head lease would only cover the township of Gunyangara and not the traditional lands of the Gumaitj. It is noteworthy that this township is itself not far from the mining town of Nhulunbuy and is surrounded by a 42 + 42 year mining. This lease is based on an agreement between the mining company Nabalco and the Commonwealth in 1968 that was bitterly opposed by the Yolngu traditional owners of the mine site. This opposition was the subject of the celebrated case Milirrpum and others versus Nabalco and the Commonwealth that was lost in the NT Supreme Court in 1970.
Under the Aboriginal Land Rights Act traditional owners are at liberty to lease their land (including townships) for 99 years and this has occurred historically in places like Kakadu and Uluru national parks and more recently with the corridor for the Alice Springs to Darwin railroad where it crosses Aboriginal land. But it is unfortunate that there is an apparent element of compulsion in current agreement making. The choice that communities like Gunyangara face is to accept the compulsory acquisition of their townships for five years with the risk that just terms compensation will not be paid; or acquiesce to negotiating 99-year head leases with the certainty that those who sign up early are likely to gain considerable sweeteners that most Australians would consider just their citizenship entitlements.
On the political front, it might be a significant symbolic victory for the Howard government to have co-opted a renowned leader of the land rights movement to its current view that traditional owners of townships should trade their freehold title for 99-year leases to gain equitable access to public housing and utilities. But on the longer-term policy front this victory might be pyrrhic. One has to ask how replicable is such deal making across the remaining 71 prescribed communities in the Northern Territory that have not signed up to this approach (the other signatory being Nguiu on Bathurst Island), how much will this cost, who will be paying, and is it good public policy to resource those who acquiesce to the 'stick and carrot approach rather than those who are in greatest need?
See: Crikey
Many Aboriginal People 'Confused' By Intervention
ABC News | September 20, 2007
The head of the Commonwealth's emergency task force in the Northern Territory says explaining the intervention to community members remains the biggest challenge.
Major General Dave Chalmers today discussed the progress of the intervention at a ministerial meeting held in Canberra.
He says many Aboriginal people are confused.
"It's a challenge for me to talk to as many people as I can, and to have my team talk to as many people as they can, to explain what we're doing and explain it in a way that they can understand," he said.
See: ABC News
R-Rated ban In Aboriginal Communities
AAP | September 20, 2007
Pay television providers will be banned from screening R-rated shows and movies in remote Northern Territory Aboriginal communities under changes to the federal government's radical takeover laws.
The government last month outlawed the possession, control and supply of X-rated films and hardcore magazines in 73 remote Northern Territory Aboriginal communities as part of its intervention to "normalise" Aboriginal communities.
Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough today said the new amendment, which he introduced into parliament today, would address concerns raised by the Northern Territory government and Aboriginal people themselves.
The amendment effectively bans the adult channel in prescribed communities.
It bypasses racial discrimination laws by labelling the move a "special measure" designed to help Aboriginal people, not harm them.
Mr Brough today signalled the government was still working towards similar laws to apply to free-to-air stations, particularly SBS.
"[Aboriginal people I spoke to] confused me, to be honest - they said 'are you going to get rid of the pornography channel?'
"And I thought they were talking about subscription television, but they were talking about SBS," Mr Brough said today.
SBS in one of only a couple of free-to-air channels available in some remote communities.
Mr Brough said he was not concerned about being criticised for introducing a second set of amendments to the government's intervention legislation so soon after the initial package was passed.
"If we had waited to get the perfect measures it would never have happened - no doubt about it," Mr Brough said.
The new bill would also allow the federal government to sidestep requirements of the Northern Territory Residential Tenancies Act.
Another measure would ensure that roadhouses which are effectively used as community stores in remote areas will have to comply with new licensing standards, introduced last month.
Labor has given bipartisan support to the government's intervention and is likely to support the latest amendments.
See: AAP
Top Leader Now backs Territory Intervention
Lindsay Murdoch | September 20, 2007
The Government has won the support of Galarrwuy Yunupingu, the Northern
Territory's most powerful Aboriginal leader, for its radical intervention in remote
indigenous communities.
Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough will announce today that he has reached a
landmark agreement with Mr Yunupingu.
The agreement is a massive breakthrough for the Howard Government, which had
been accused by Aboriginal leaders of trying to undermine the decades-long battle
for land rights.
The agreement includes land tenure reform in Arnhem Land, including some land
being leased to the Government for 99 years - a move that had been rejected by
many Aboriginal leaders.
Until Mr Yunupingu met Mr Brough in a secret meeting on his land in Arnhem Land
last month, he had been one of the fiercest critics of the intervention, telling people
at an indigenous festival only days earlier that the Government's actions were
"sickening, rotten and worrying".
The meeting is believed to have been brokered by Noel Pearson, director of the
Cape York Institute for Policy and Leadership, who also attended.
Details of the negotiations have been kept secret, angering other indigenous leaders
who have been campaigning against the intervention.
But Mr Yunupingu's decision to do a deal is a big win for the Government as police
start to enforce alcohol and pornography bans in 73 targeted communities across
the Northern Territory.
A former chief executive of the Northern Land Council and a one-time Australian of
the Year, Mr Yunupingu is widely respected throughout the Territory's indigenous
communities.
Mr Brough will announce details of the deal with Mr Yunupingu in Parliament today
when he introduces changes to legislation relating to the intervention.
This will include amending the Broadcasting Services Act to prohibit the screening of
adult-only television programs in prescribed areas. The Government has received
complaints from indigenous women about adult programs on cable and free-to-air
television.
He will also announce changes to ensure roadhouses meet tougher restrictions on
liquor sales and allow Defence Housing Australia to help with housing in remote
areas.
Mr Brough is also expected to report on the progress of the emergency response.
See: The Age
Healing Missing From Indigenous Intervention
AAP | September 19, 2007
The need for healing is missing from the Commonwealth's intervention plan to
combat child abuse in the Northern Territory, Aboriginal social justice commissioner
Tom Calma said today.
Even if the near $600 million intervention program was successful, children were
protected and policing became effective, Mr Calma questioned how long-term
healing for indigenous communities would come about.
"Where will the culturally appropriate and ongoing healing programs come from if
the government doesn't acknowledge that they're needed at all,'' the former senior
adviser to the Federal Government told the national conference of the Secretariat of
National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care.
The Commonwealth takeover of 73 Aboriginal Northern Territory communities,
under five year leases, was passed by the Senate last month.
Measures under the intervention include welfare restrictions, alcohol and
pornography bans and medical checks for children.
Survey teams have so far visited 73 communities and 1658 children have
undergone health checks.
However, Mr Calma said most of the money allocated for the Federal Government's
plan had been absorbed in employing and housing public servants, contractors and
police, and in administering the measures included in the strategy.
"There is no federal budget allocation, at this time, for new indigenous housing, new
schools and additional teachers and child protection programs,'' he said.
Mr Calma said the Australian Government had a responsibility to ensure that the
emergency measures in the NT improved the well-being of indigenous communities.
"The legislation must operate in a way that is consistent with Australia's human
rights laws and obligations,'' he said.
See: AAP
PM's Victory On Land Deal
Patricia Karvelas and Ashleigh Wilson | September 20, 2007
One of Australia's wealthiest and most powerful Aboriginal leaders has delivered the Howard Government a coup by agreeing to sign a 99-year lease over his traditional land in the Northern Territory.
Former Australian of the Year and veteran land rights campaigner Galarrwuy Yunupingu has agreed to privatise his land for 99 years under a landmark agreement to be signed today with the Howard Government.
The Australian understands his community will receive millions of dollars for the deal to allow individuals to buy their own homes.
Mr Yunupingu's involvement recasts the equation of Aboriginal politics in northern Australia, bringing together the most prominent traditional leader in the Northern Territory and the leading intellectual inspiration for the Howard Government's dramatic reforms, Noel Pearson.
In a move that could set MrYunupingu in conflict with several prominent Aboriginal leaders who oppose the Howard Government's reforms, the former chairman of the Northern Land Council is understood to be broadly supportive of the intervention.
Mr Yunupingu met secretly with Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough last month in northeast Arnhem Land, along with Cape York leader Noel Pearson, who brokered the meeting.
Their meeting came just one week after the annual Garma festival of Aboriginal culture in Arnhem Land, when Mr Yunupingu described the federal reforms as worrying and sickening.
However, The Australian now understands his position has shifted following Mr Brough's visit, and Mr Yunupingu is now backing key elements of the intervention.
Mr Yunupingu's support threatens to split the nation's indigenous leadership following the creation last week of a new Aboriginal lobby group that urged indigenous communities to actively resist the intervention.
Some in his community are understood to be against the agreement and will oppose it.
Mr Yunupingu is known to support restrictions on alcohol and the ban on kava, with the latter reform introduced by the federal Government following his own lobbying.
The Arnhem Land leader has also received an understanding from the federal Government that it would do everything possible to protect traditional Aboriginal culture and sacred sites while helping to modernise northeast Arnhem Land.
He retired from the Northern Land Council in 2004, and continues to oversee the annual Garma festival in Arnhem Land with his brother Mandawuy.
The Tiwi Island community of Nguiu, north of Darwin, last month became the first Aboriginal community in the Northern Territory to sign up to a 99-year lease.
Nguiu traditional owners agreed to the deal despite concerns by some community members, with Territory cabinet minister and Tiwi Islander Marion Scrymgour telling Mr Brough that she had never seen the community so divided over any other issue. The Northern Territory Supreme Court rejected an attempt by one prominent community member to obtain an injunction against the lease.
Some of the people who have expressed serious concerns about the intervention include former Territory cabinet minister John Ah Kit, Pat Turner and an author of the child abuse report that sparked the emergency intervention in June, Pat Anderson.
Mr Yunupingu, a 25-year veteran of the Northern Territory's indigenous land rights struggle, has met with several senior government figures over the past month.
Mr Brough yesterday would not comment on the agreement but a spokesman said: "In introducing the amendments, the minister will report on the progress of the emergency response and outline emerging issues and developments in land tenure reform
and engagement with Aboriginal people."
Mr Brough will today also announce that television channels broadcasting R-rated shows will not be allowed to broadcast them in Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory. He will introduce amendments to legislation as part of the Northern Territory emergency response.
They include amending the Broadcasting Services Act to prohibit the provision of R-rated TV programs in prescribed areas of the Northern Territory.
The move comes as the Northern Territory Government says it will take responsibility for the delivery of municipal and infrastructure services to all towns and communities in the territory, including outstations and town camps.
Mr Brough said the move on outstations was "simply giving expression to what I have been saying on the issue of outstations for some time, in respect of normalising services."
But the NT Government said yesterday it did not yet know what kind of work it was expected to do under the new arrangements. Acting Chief Minister Syd Stirling said he was expecting a letter today from the Prime Minister detailing the deal.
See: The Australian
Intervention Spending Doubles
Stephanie Peatling, Sydney Morning Herald | September 19, 2007
The cost of the Federal Government's intervention into remote Northern Territory communities has more than doubled, with a further $740 million in spending announced yesterday.
The project, which began in June, has a running total of $1.33 billion in funds for the housing, health and jobs the Government hopes will return communities to what it calls "normal".
The Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Mal Brough, said the money would help protect children and "give them a real future as part of normal Australia".
Mr Brough's announcement included $514 million for housing, $100 million for health, $18.5 million for policing and another $30 million to partially fund jobs created by the Northern Territory public service.
Part of the intervention involves scrapping the Community Development Employment Project, a 30-year program which paid people to do local work instead of putting them on the dole.
People will now be put on the dole and receive a top-up payment to cover the difference while they are required to look for work. But $78.2 million will be spent on identifying positions the Federal Government can fund such as in art centres, health clinics and schools. It will employ as many as 2000 people through the public service.
Indigenous leaders continue to doubt the money spent as part of the intervention will make any long-term positive changes.
Olga Havnen, a co-ordinator of the Combined Aboriginal Organisations of the Northern Territory, said the group had not been consulted about the spending, despite producing its own policy paper after the intervention was announced in June.
"[The Government] is not interested in talking to us because there's a view we either know nothing or that we have a fixed agenda," Ms Havnen said.
See: Sydney Morning Herald
Intervention Stretching NT Education Resources
ABC News | September 19, 2007
The Australian Education Union says a lot more teachers and resources will be
needed to deal with the impact of the intervention into Aboriginal communities in the
Northern Territory.
The union is reporting an increase in student numbers at bush schools as a result of
the intervention and says resources are being stretched to the limit.
The union's Nadine Williams says teachers are stressed with the workload and the
confusion surrounding the intervention, and it is only going to get worse as welfare
quarantining comes into place.
"We believe that we need at least another 500 teachers immediately to actually staff
schools appropriately in remote areas that are in the prescribed areas," she said.
"We believe that there is an unmet need that's crying out for urgent resourcing and
the crunch is we can't recruit teachers now for the numbers that are officially
allocated."
While the Education Department is providing information where it can, Ms Williams
says the intervention is moving so quickly it is hard to know what is happening on
the ground.
"I do believe this term, because of the intervention, there has been much more
stress on teachers," she said.
"They have been advised to not to speak with the incoming task force teams, they've
been advised to speak to them, they've been advised that they can do certain things
and provide information to visiting people inquiring about education, then they've
been told they shouldn't.
"There's been a great deal of confusion."
See: ABC News
Intervention Bill Blows Out To $1.3bn
Patricia Karvelas, The Australian | September 19, 2007
The cost of the intervention in Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory has
soared to more than $1.3billion over the next four years, with most of the investment
earmarked for the repair and construction of houses.
Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough said yesterday the Government
would now spend an extra $514million on top of funds previously committed for
improving and replacing destroyed homes, bringing the total to $793million.
The extra money comes from a pool that was allocated in the federal budget for
remote housing before the intervention was announced but not committed to
specific regions.
Mr Brough said indigenous people had suffered too long in rundown, overcrowded
and poorly designed and built houses. The Government would work with local
communities to determine how the money would be spent and people would not be
forced into private home ownership. "That will be (decided) in conjunction with local
people and if there's no interest in home ownership then, obviously, more money will
go into public housing," he said.
"But not public housing which is controlled by local community organisations where
nepotism reigns supreme, where rents aren't collected, maintenance isn't
undertaken and houses last an average seven years. That is unsustainable. We will
be driving to ensure that there are proper tenancy arrangements, that maintenance
is undertaken, that appropriate rents are collected, that the appropriate tenants are
in place and that they take responsibility for the care and maintenance of their
home."
Labor indigenous affairs spokeswoman Jenny Macklin said that although her party
welcomed the additional funding announced yesterday, the Howard Government
must make it clear the housing component was not new. "The funding is actually
rebadged money from old housing programs," she said.
Mr Brough said he wanted to introduce normal public housing arrangements into
Aboriginal communities, with rental levels linked to the quality of the housing and the
capacity of the tenants to pay.
He said houses would be built for less money and they would be designed more
appropriately.
"Simple things such as having access to kitchens and toilets and bathrooms inside
and outside are really important," he said.
"Large areas where people can congregate and be part of a wider family unit - not
small rooms which become dysfunctional."
More than 2000 children in 30 communities have already received a health check.
Yesterday's commitment of an extra $100million will be spent on follow-up
treatment. Health Minister Tony Abbott said the Government would consider paying
doctors more to work in remote communities.
The Government also announced it would make an additional $78.2million available
over three years to create jobs for people moving off the Community Development
Employment Projects program.
The Government will also provide the state Government with up to $30million over
the next three years to help it convert CDEP positions into real jobs.
See: The Australian
NT's Emergency Placebo
Jack Waterford, The Canberra Times | September 19, 2007
Spending $100million on swimming pools for Aborigines in remote settlements, and
even alongside Alice Springs' fringe camps, would be far more likely to have a
lasting impact on improving child health than the medical flying squad scheme
announced this week.
Under the scheme, hundreds of doctors, nurses and others will fly into communities
doing a blitz on chronic problems such as ear disease, dental care, gastrointestinal
conditions, and trachoma. Federal Health Minister Tony Abbott promised
$100million over two years for the scheme, based on the theory of either getting
doctors to the patients or the patients to doctors.
It sounds like a good idea, not unlike Fred Hollows' national trachoma project 30
years ago. But the differences, I expect, will be telling, and there is every chance the
ministerial, bureaucratic and military ideology now guiding the Northern Territory
emergency will guarantee that its effect will be temporary at best. The most that can
be hoped for is some amelioration of disease, but not the elimination of the factors
that cause it, nor the factors that sustain it. After the publicity photos of beaming
doctors and nurses alongside ministers and army officers, the children will again
have runny noses, suppurating perforated ear drums, gastro and chronic eye
conditions. While the ministers and bureaucrats grandstand about intervening
against infectious diseases, which are comparatively easy to deal with, the children
and their parents will continue to develop diabetes, hypertension and depression.
Task forces can't do anything about that. The children who grow into young men will
likely continue to kill themselves at the rate of about 10per cent a year until they
settle down a bit at age 40, if they make it. Thirty years from now, after many more
articles describing and deploring it all, another set of ministers will announce they
"mean business this time".
It's not that Aboriginal health doesn't warrant medical task forces. It could do with a
stack of them, and the first few might as well be on middle-ear and chest infections,
and dental disease. I would put a high priority on women's sexual health (especially
chlamydial disease), but that is perhaps not as attractive as everyone grandstanding
about children, even if about the sexual abuse of them. But the point of some of the
prevalent medical conditions in our most remote, poor and vulnerable settlements is
they stem primarily from living conditions. They can't be "cured", or, if they can, the
condition will quickly return because it flourishes in the ordinary living environment.
I've been in many Aboriginal communities where more than 80per cent of children
under seven have middle-ear disease. It's usually clustered with other conditions,
like trachoma, chest infections (manifested by a mucopurulent running nose),
scabies, diarrhoea and, sometimes, obvious malnutrition.
Although the general picture of ill health is clear, even to the most casual outsider,
specific diagnosis is not always easy. Most Australian ophthalmologists can't
accurately diagnose trachoma because they don't see it in ordinary Australia. Many
doctors have great problems accurately diagnosing aspects of otitis media,
particularly "glue ear". Likewise with dentists and dental caries.
To a degree, it's better to see infected individuals as islands in a sea of infection,
and attack the water instead with mass treatments or, better still, improve the living
environment. A course of antibiotics can clear the acute aspects of most childhood
conditions, thought not conditions such as diabetes and heart disease.
One doesn't need a specialist or a flying squad for acute treatment. It's the
consequences that need specialist intervention. Hearing loss in children leads to
problems in learning and communication, and can be the basis for problems with the
law. Skin infections set the stage for rheumatic heart conditions, trachoma for a host
of blinding corneal conditions. Doctors can do some repair work which better equips
victims for the future, but their interventions will usually be of no account unless they
also help the victim avoid recurrence.
Thirty years ago, Fred Hollows said a doctor had a duty to go beyond applying
bandages. He or she had to help mobilise the community to fight the conditions
causing disease, educate about what could be done, help change organisations to
make best use of their facilities, and make long-term changes to standards of living
vital for good health. Most critical, he said, was securing the consent and
involvement of the people concerned. Without that, anything done would be
temporary.
But this lesson has not been absorbed by Abbott, Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal
Brough, their bureaucrats nor, seemingly, the Australian Medical Association. Theirs
is a top-down approach. It's about taking over from the silly blackfellows who
messed everything up, shoving them aside and showing them how it's done. It's
about noble doctors rushing in to save people and collect medals. It's even about
shoving aside the health practitioners on the ground and operating not alongside or
with them, but in effect in competition.
We have seen this already with the mass inspections for evidence of child sexual
abuse, which have failed to see large numbers or confirm the initiating propaganda
that hardly a child remains unmolested.
Salvation, I predict, will fail for another reason. The doctors will sit in clinics, waiting
for the sick to come to them. They will save everyone who does, oblivious of the
scores who don't.
I once heard a public-spirited ophthalmologist say, proudly, that he had been visiting
an Aboriginal community at his own cost for five years, and was confident we would
see no significant eye pathology there. We saw 34 people who were legally blind
who he had never seen. Why? We searched for them, with Aboriginal liaison
officers, house by house, camp by camp. He had waited at the clinic. His intentions
were good, but he was wasting his time.
About the same time, another eye doctor was chartering jets to fly teams of doctors
to Africa, where they would perform a few dozen operations, have documentaries
made about themselves, and fly home with a warm inner glow. The cost of the
charters alone sometimes exceeded total local health budgets.
There are many people involved in Aboriginal health who are reluctant to criticise too
loudly. They welcome more resources. They hope that with some good leadership,
not yet in evidence, some of the obvious deficiencies can be eliminated, and
programs developed that make a difference. They do not want to be monstered as
"negative" or accused by Brough of not caring, as happens routinely if anyone
doubts his passionate, but silly, ideas. Abbott is perhaps not as silly, or as arrogant,
but has a long record of being as irresponsible with taxpayers' cash and indulgent
with hero complexes.
See: The Canberra Times
Children 'Being Hidden' To Avoid Doctors
Patricia Karvelas & Ashleigh Wilson, The Australian | September 19, 2007
At least 30 Aboriginal children are allegedly being hidden from doctors to avoid
health checks in remote Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory, raising
suspicions that parents are covering up abuse.
Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough said yesterday Australian Federal Police
were investigating the allegations.
Mr Brough would not confirm how many children were being hidden.
One source told The Australian yesterday that at least 30 children had evaded
health checks in communities including Santa Teresa, Hermannsburg and Papunya.
One family with about 10 children is understood to have left Papunya, northwest of
Alice Springs, to avoid the health checks.
The source said some of the children who missed out on health checks had been
suspected of having sexually transmitted infections, others were young mothers.
"These are the children we need to be really concerned about," the source said.
Mr Brough said he was receiving reports that children were being moved from one
community to another "by people who you would suspect would not have been
strong supporters of this, but wanting to inform us that they're worried about that and
wanting to know how we can work together to ensure those children's health and
wellbeing is being undertaken".
"I can't give you the numbers on the number of people who've been referred to child
authorities," he said.
"I'm looking at ways in which we can conduct those checks in the children's best
interest."
Mr Brough said the AFP was working in collaboration with the Northern Territory
Government and, where necessary, other jurisdictions to find the children.
"There is broader understanding about where some of these children are and all of
that has been fed in for their operational excellence," he said.
Mr Brough said if there was a strong suspicion of child abuse, then authorities had
the power to ensure the protection of that child.
"We should not shrink from that responsibility, and we won't," he said.
Mr Brough backed Health Minister Tony Abbott's claim that the Government was not
afraid of the plan even though it was not "politically correct."
"I'll say it's politically incorrect - (I) don't care," Mr Brough said. "I mean the reality is,
it's not what matters. We're after outcomes. We shouldn't get hung up with those
things. The people on the ground don't talk to me about political correctness; they
talk to me about children that they want to protect."
The clinic manager at Hermannsburg, John Wright, denied the allegations that
children were being hidden from health checks and said the majority of the
community's 350 children had participated.
"The population fluctuates from week to week but I'm not aware of anything like that
happening," he said.
See: The Australian
The Federal Aboriginal Intervention Policy Is Failing Its Mission
Claire Smith, The Age | September 18, 2007
Children in remote areas need coherent strategies to ensure a positive future.
I WAS supposed to go to the funeral of a young Aboriginal man from a remote community yesterday. He killed himself just a month ago and I'm close to his family - culture-way I call him "grandson" - but I didn't go. There are just too many funerals to be able to attend them all. Where I work, there is a queue of people to be buried. When this young man died, he had to wait in line to be buried - an elderly lady, a middle-aged woman, and a 14-year-old girl (also a suicide victim) were scheduled before him.
The death of this young man is nothing new to this community. It is new to the family, but such tragic events happen regularly in the community. At one point, we had 31 young people attempt suicide in the space of eight months - 8 per cent of the population of 452 people. Some of these young people had been the victims of white pedophiles.
Both Liberal and Labor governments, territory and federal, have known of the high suicide rate among young Aborigines for at least the past decade but have done nothing substantive to change the situation.
This year it appeared that something was going to be done. In response to the Little Children are Sacred report the Howard Government announced national emergency measures to protect Aboriginal children in the Northern Territory from abuse. Almost three months later, it is time to consider whether the action is improving the lives of children in remote communities. Sadly, the answer is that it is not.
The federal action was instigated on the basis of high sexual abuse rates of children, but in a recent ABC Radio interview Northern Territory Police Commissioner Paul White stated that not a single case had been referred to the child sex abuse taskforce as a result of increased police resources. Moreover, out of more than 700 checks, there have been only four referrals: two related to child sexual abuse, one for possible neglect and one for family support.
Sadly, the hasty and ill-considered implementation of this policy is damaging the very people it is meant to protect. It is introducing new, insidious forms of child abuse - children are damaged when money that could be used for their health care is spent on buying new Toyotas for administrators from "down south", who do not have the appropriate experience or cultural knowledge to successfully implement programs. Children are damaged when their parents lose their jobs, as they will through the disbanding of the Community Development Employment Projects Scheme. While income may be the same, a move from CDEP to the dole takes away the dignity that comes with being employed, and causes frustration and unhappiness within the family.
Similarly, children are damaged by the income "quarantining" provisions, implemented yesterday, through which a significant proportion of the family income is held back so that it can be used only to buy food in specific places, such as community stores (where the prices are up to two or three times those in town), or Woolworths, if you happen to have a car and fuel to drive several hundred kilometres.
The fundamental problem is that the action is being introduced at such a rapid rate that there is not enough time for proper planning or for essential support measures to be put in place. For example, the bans on alcohol came into place on September 15, but regional and community health centres have not been given the additional support they need to deal with those suffering from alcohol withdrawal. There are no extra rehabilitation beds, no additional counselling services, and no extra medicines.
Women distressed by this situation have re-formed Women for Wik (www.womenforwik.org) with the purpose of monitoring these events. In two weeks the group, of which I am a member, has received almost 2000 personal endorsements, including support from prominent women, such as Lady Deane, Lowitja O'Donoghue, Justice Elizabeth Evatt, Gabi Hollows, Helen Caldicott, Margaret Pomeranz and Tamie Fraser.
Our interest is in policy, not political parties. We are concerned about the current actions of the Coalition Government, and we are concerned that there is no indication that a Labor government would do anything differently.
Our discussions with people in politics make it clear that members of both parties disagree with the way in which the intervention is happening but nobody is willing to speak out. After all, this is an election year and no one ever won an election on policy for Aboriginal people.
The young man who was buried yesterday comes from a very good family. His grandmother is a community leader. His mum and dad both have jobs - itself a small miracle, since at last count only 16 Aboriginal people, of the 252 aged 18 or more, in this community had full-time employment. But the fact that this young man came from such a background is part of the problem. He was aware of the gulf in living standards between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal families. He knew that there were not enough jobs in his community. He wanted to live a good and a useful life, and he could not grasp the basic tools to do this. He needed hope that he would be able to get a job in his community, without having to move to the big towns and leave his family. He needed hope that his own children would have an opportunity to live a good life. He died without hope.
I'm disappointed in the Prime Minister, in the Opposition Leader and in the Northern Territory Chief Minister. I'm also disappointed in every Australian who does not do what they can to defend these young ones in the Northern Territory. We need to shame our politicians into making the care of Aboriginal children an election issue.
Claire Smith, associate professor in archaeology at Flinders University, has worked with Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory for almost 20 years.
See: The Age
$100m Boost For NT Intervention
Jane Cowan, ABC News | September 18, 2007
The Federal Government has earmarked another $100 million to shore up its intervention in Northern Territory Aboriginal communities.
The money will be used to fund follow-up treatment for children with dental, stomach, ear, nose and throat problems.
The Federal Government is keen to show its intervention into the Northern Territory is more than a political flash in the pan.
Health Minister Tony Abbott believes $50 million a year for the next two years proves the Coalition's credentials when it comes to Indigenous affairs.
"We want to make a lasting difference. We didn't intervene lightly in the Territory and this is no PR stunt," he said.
"This is an attempt to make a lasting difference to people who really do need a helping hand."
Since the intervention began, more than 2,000 children have had health checks in 30 different remote communities.
This money will be used to treat the dental, stomach and ear, nose and throat problems uncovered in those checks.
But the Minister says the single most significant long-term innovation will be the establishment of what he is calling a "remote area health corps".
"To try to ensure that the hundreds of medical and other health staff who have volunteered to assist in the emergency response are motivated and organised to provide an ongoing core of personnel," he said.
Funding welcome
More money to fund a longer term intervention is exactly what people like John Patterson from the Aboriginal Medical Services Alliance (AMSANT) have been calling for.
"He's obviously listening to AMSANT, AMSANT has on a number of occasions been meeting with himself and his bureaucracy and it's heartening to see the Minister considering favourably some of the strategies and initiatives we're putting forward to him and his department," he said.
Mr Patterson says the remote area health corps could work - as long as it complements the system that already exists rather than tries to replace it.
"I'm sure the Minister would be supportive, it's not a separate entity but something that will complement existing structures and we'll obviously look forward to working with it," he said.
He says what is needed now is a full review of expenditure on Indigenous health.
"We [need to] get experts on board to really cost out what will it deliver," he said.
"What does it take to deliver primary health care to Indigenous Territorians in some of those rural remote locations, where the cost of living and the cost of service delivery is extremely high?"
The announcement has silenced at least one other of the Government's critics.
The Opposition's health spokeswoman Nicola Roxon could only welcome news of more funding.
"Labor welcomes any indication from the Howard Government that they are prepared to make a long-term investment in Indigenous health," she said.
"If they're committing an extra $100 million over two years to follow up after these kids' checks have been undertaken, that will be a very welcome investment for the Northern Territory and for the future of Indigenous children."
See: ABC News
Revealed: NT Intervention Checks only 10% of children
Anna Lamboys | September 18, 2007
The Federal Government's medical checks of Aboriginal children in the Northern Territory are failing to reach more than 10% of the target ''at risk'' population, according to a confidential document obtained by Crikey.
According to the document, the Child Health Check component of the National Emergency Response is largely incompetent, probably unethical, underfunded and absolutely ignores the long term. It appears unlikely it will help the children that the National Emergency Response is supposed to be all about.
In particular, the document raises major concerns that the $83 million medical intervention is in serious and ongoing breach of medical ethics, including National Health and Medical Research Guidelines, Medicare and guidelines on health screening issued by the Royal Australian College of General Practice. The document, prepared as an internal discussion paper by the Aboriginal Medical Services Alliance of the Northern Territory (AMSANT), reflects growing dismay amongst Aboriginal-controlled health services, as well as an increasing number of government and non-government health professionals. View the full document here.
The document also spells out in further detail the major shortcomings of the so-called "screening" being carried out on Aboriginal kids in remote areas of the Territory, some of which have already been touched on by Crikey.
According to the AMSANT paper, the Intervention Child Health Check "is inconsistent with evidence-based practice" and is potentially unethical by undermining existing care "(and) providing false expectations for the community":
Preventive interventions (such as AG-CHC) are required to have specific resources for follow-up (local clinics, regional specialists and hospitals), and evaluation framework of the program, plans for feedback to communities, and addressing the sustainability of future checks, none of which have yet to be established.
The document confirms that as of early September there have been 1700 children "checked", from a target population of 17,000. On that basis, after two months the medical intervention has only captured 10% of its target. However, the average "participation rate" is only 67%. More extraordinary is the revelation that at least a thousand children who have already had the Medicare Item 708 screening carried out in the past nine months - by the Aboriginal health services so reviled by Brough - will not be screened. This means this data will not be included in the final assessment of childhood ill health in the Territory, and therefore the resources required to meet these problems.
Bizarrely, the much vaunted federal medical intervention is entirely paper-based, and they do not have the training to access digital medical histories and pathologies of the children they are screening.
The document says "there is a significant underestimation of disease burdens in the largest two disease categories, ENT and dental pathology", and provides details:
1) Only 30% of all children required follow-up of any type (of which ear disease is only one). NT researchers have shown the prevalence of Ear Disease alone, is 91% in NT Indigenous Children (Morris et al 2005).
2) 10% of AG-CHC children were referred to ENT surgeon, but no audiology or tympanometry was done (which is usually part of the method of determining need for referral).
3) 20% of children have had Dental referrals (but the screening did not include proper dental review - it was only doctors and nurses looking in childrens' mouths). NT DHCS Dental research has shown prevalence of dental disease in Indigenous children to be 60-70%.
According to the AMSANT paper, "this suggests visiting health teams are failing to identify treatable disease in children":
This reason is likely to be poor training/skills on the part of the health teams and/or a tendency for the team to miss children who are in need of treatment. Both options have unsatisfactory outcomes.
Unsatisfactory outcomes indeed. The medico on the National Emergency Response Taskforce, ex-AMA president Bill Glasson now acknowledges, after revelations by Crikey, that conditions such as ear disease are probably well above the 30% he has previously acknowledged. According to ABC radio last Friday:
Dr Glasson says it is likely the rate of infection is higher, but there is a lack of specialised teams to pick it up. He says there is (sic) only two ear, nose and throat surgeons in the Territory.
"The NT surgeons up there are drowning in the fact that they just can't handle a burden of disease that's there," he said. "So we need to have surgeons coming up there to assist them, visiting probably initially, but hopefully living up there in the long term if ever we're going to meet the requirements for ear surgery in the long term."
Of course this misses the point - by a long way. By the time you need a ear surgeon the damage has well and truly been done. Neither Glasson, Major General Chalmers - nor indeed Brough, Abbott and Howard - have said anything about properly resourcing primary health care in the first instance, so that ear disease does not lead to surgery.
For obvious reasons, AMSANT is concerned that its involvement in the Intervention might be compromised "while there remain unresolved medical and medico-ethical issues".
AMSANT, initially excluded from consultation over the medical side of the intervention, is currently negotiating an memorandum of understanding with the federal government's Office of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health (OATSIH), which would include data sharing.
However, initial indications from Canberra that long term primary health care funding of an extra $65 million a year would be provided beyond the 30 June 2008 cut off for the medical side of the intervention have apparently been reversed. Although OATSIH is known to be sympathetic to the need for long term primary health care funding, the zealots in the Howard/Brough camp-ideologically opposed to funding any Aboriginal organisations-have pulled the pin: "Negotiations have been occurring ... but no money is on the table".
There'll be a few questions asked of the OATSIH boss when she hits Alice Springs this Thursday, with not much hope of positive answers.
See: Crikey.com.au
Aboriginal health: a decade-old election promise
Nuclear Territory News | September 17, 2007
Last week, the Australian Medical Association (AMA) released Key Health Issues for the 2007 Federal Election-a document that highlights areas of the health system which are currently failing some or all of the population. At the top of the AMA's list of 18 issues is Indigenous health. When John Howard's Government came to power over 11 years ago they promised to improve the health and social wellbeing of Aboriginal people. To date there is no evidence that this pledge has been met.
Indigenous Australians have a greater burden of ill health than the rest of the Australian population, experience lower levels of access to health services, are more likely to experience disability and reduced quality of life due to ill health, and die at younger ages.
This dire situation now looks set to worsen. On Aug 17, the Australian Senate passed the Northern Territory National Emergency Response Bill 2007. This Bill, which was rushed through parliament, is Howard's reply to Little Children Are Sacred: Report of the Northern Territory Board of Inquiry into the Protection of Aboriginal Children from Sexual Abuse. The legislation allows the government to take control of 73 Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory, boost police and army presence, enforce bans on alcohol and pornography, abolish the permit system-which restricts access to Aboriginal land by non-Indigenous people-and limit welfare payments.
But few of the aggressive measures in the Bill address child abuse; most are only likely to exacerbate the problem. The proposed interventions also do not tally with the report recommendations and contradict the approach called for by the authors, who emphasised the "critical importance" of consulting with Aboriginal people when designing initiatives for Aboriginal communities.
Indigenous health is a national emergency that requires investment in health services and the social determinants of health-education, housing, economic development-which underlie the appalling inequalities that Aboriginal people face. The Howard administration's latest approach to Indigenous health will not fulfil its decade-old election promise. John Howard's legitimacy to govern seems fatally compromised based on this critical health failure.
See: Nuclear Territory News
Aboriginal Art Under Threat
Stephanie Peatling & Joel Gibson, Sydney Morning Herald | September 17th, 2007
The Federal Government's intervention in remote indigenous communities in the Northern Territory could devastate a lucrative industry and leave artists open to exploitation by carpet-baggers, leading indigenous art academics and artists' representatives say.
They want to keep the Community Development Employment Project, which is being scrapped as part of the intervention, because the industry depends on it to support art centres and workers who do not earn enough to live on from inconsistent art sales.
Jon Altman, the director of the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research at the Australian National University, said ending the program was likely to "jeopardise" the most successful indigenous industry.
"Why would you undermine the most robust sector? [Art] is a huge drawcard for international tourists and has enormous spin-off benefits for the nation," Professor Altman said.
As part of the intervention into Northern Territory remote communities, indigenous people will have up to half of their welfare payments quarantined by the Federal Government.
But employment project payments cannot be quarantined because they are technically income. People receiving these payments will be moved to the lower unemployment payments, which are subject to quarantining, and receive top-ups to cover the difference.
The Minister for Workforce Participation, Sharman Stone, told the Herald all art centres in the Northern Territory would be visited by departmental staff to see if some of their staff could be employed by the public service.
"If there are artists who are able to sell their work and they are doing well they should be self-sufficient and they should be assisted to manage their income," Dr Stone said.
Richard Birrinbirrin, a Ramingining artist and one of the producers of the AFI-award-winning film Ten Canoes, said: "Nearly all of our art centre workers and artists rely on CDEP payments, which have supported jobs in art centres for the past 20 years. Due to years of under-funding of indigenous education, many of our people are not job-ready and some never will be. They do have meaningful work, though: their job is the expression and teaching of our culture. They are artists."
Alan Murn, the manager of Julalikari Arts, said that moving artists to the work-for-the-dole scheme would require them to perform menial jobs such as cleaning communities instead of painting, and would reduce their base pay rate, making them more vulnerable to carpet-baggers.
Professor Altman agreed, saying that if artists were working in other areas as part of the work-for-the-dole scheme they would be susceptible to carpet-baggers coming into communities and offering cash for artworks.
A recent Senate report on the indigenous art industry warned about carpet-baggers, finding it was common practice for Aboriginal artists to be offered small amounts of instant cash for their paintings, much less than they would receive if the paintings were sold through an art centre or gallery.
Harriet Fesq, co-ordinator of the Durrmu Arts centre in Peppimenarti, said that community was protected from carpet-baggers by its remoteness but the end of employment project payments would affect the industry across the Territory.
"It's a fragile thing, having an art program and ensuring the artists are happy and comfortable so they can produce good work."
See: Sydney Morning Herald
Hundreds protest against intervention
Daniel Bourchier, Nuclear Territory News | September 16, 2007
Hundreds of people rallied in Darwin yesterday to protest against the Federal Government's indigenous intervention.
Larrakia people, elders, legal professionals, the anti-discrimination commissioner, and aspiring and current parliamentarians spoke explaining the legislation's legal and social implications.
Aboriginal advocate Olga Havnen said their was nothing in the legislation that protected children.
"It is fantastic to see so many people (attending) who are obviously deeply concerned about what is happening," she said.
"This is the year we are supposed to be celebrating the 40th anniversary of the 1967 referendum.
"That referendum was supposed to give the Federal Government the power to make laws on behalf of aboriginal people.
"You have to ask if the people who voted for that referendum back in 1967, ever possibly intended or thought it was possible for the Government to pass laws to our detriment and without our consent?
"I would think not. You have to wonder what kind of country we live in that we think it is okay to pass racially discriminative laws.
"I am damn sure if similar sorts of legislation was proposed to be effected on women or gays or some other section of our community, there would be an absolute outrage."
The meeting adopted four recommendations in relation to the Little Children are Sacred report, indigenous intervention, child sexual abuse and the support of the National Aboriginal Alliance.
Meanwhile, 97 people, mostly children, held the 97 recommendations of the Anderson/Wild report.
Organisers are planning a "Walk for Strong Communities" as a follow-up and show of solidarity.
The walk will be from Raintree Park to the Mindil Beach Markets at 5pm on Thursday, September 27.
See: Nuclear Territory News
Residents Fear Loss Of Welfare
Simon Kearney, The Australian | September 15, 2007
The federal Government's intervention into Aboriginal communities in the Northern
Territory is in danger of being hijacked by rumour as communication failures lead to
fears that welfare will be withdrawn.
welfare
Indigenous people in four communities in central Australia will have half of their
welfare payments quarantined from Monday -- with the money set aside to cover
household essentials -- as the most hard-hitting of the Howard Government's
reforms come into play.
And as the taskforce prepares for full implementation, those leading the intervention
are keeping at arm's length non-indigenous people in the communities, who are
being blamed for creating a climate of fear.
"I think there are a lot of non-indigenous people in communities who are doing great
work," taskforce commander Major General David Chalmers said.
"And I think there are a lot of others who have their own axe to grind or their own
perspective and often want to put words in the mouths of the community.
"They call those people the madmen, the missionaries or the mercenaries and a lot
of them fall into one of those categories. While I'm happy to speak to them, I'm really
interested in talking to the indigenous people of thecommunity."
Taskforce chairwoman Sue Gordon said she had witnessed non-indigenous people
trying to control what Aboriginal residents were saying. "In a couple of places, in a
meeting at Papunya, there were a couple of non-indigenous people who tried to
control the women there. And I wasn't happy about that," she said.
Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough said he was concerned the taskforce's
message was being undermined. "Communications is a major challenge in the
emergency response," Mr Brough said.
"Apart from geographical and language barriers, there is the constant commentary
from those who seek to undermine for their own purposes the effort to protect
children. I agree that communications is a massive task and is as important as the
overall exercise of protecting children."
Yuendumu councillor Valerie Napaljarri Martin said the rushed nature of the
intervention was fuelling the rumour mill.
"All the wrong stories, the rumours: they (residents) don't know what to believe," Ms
Martin said.
She said there was support for the federal Government's message but suspicion
about the sentiments.
This weekend many of the tougher measures in the federal Government's
intervention begin to take effect, such as new pornography offences, tough new
penalties for running alcohol and the welfare quarantines.
Health checks on children have proceeded more slowly than expected and
uncovered a massive problem with ear, nose and throat infections in one in three
Aboriginal children and as many as 80 per cent of children in some communities in
central Australia suffering from acute infection. About 1400 checks have been done.
Taskforce member and former Australian Medical Association president Bill Glasson
said the health services on the ground did not have the resources to follow up on the
checks.
Recruiting staff for the intervention was also proving difficult. Despite more than 300
applicants for about 70 positions as business managers in NT Aboriginal
communities, only 36 positions had been filled or were in the pipeline, Major General
Chalmers said. A new round of advertising is planned to fill the positions that often
involve working in remote communities in demanding roles during a difficult
transition.
See: The Australian
No Home ... But No Urgency From Taskforce
Ashleigh Wilson, The Australian | September 15, 2007
IT was on a balmy afternoon in July when the house, just up from the beach in the
Arnhem Land community of Milingimbi, went up in flames. An electrical fault was
blamed for the blaze, which gutted the property and left its 23 occupants homeless.
More than two months later, the residents still have no house. They live in tents on
the sand in front of the burnt-out shell that was once their home.
"I don't know what you can do," shrugs Sammy Marritja, 48, whose family shares
one of the five tents.
There are no spare houses at Milingimbi, a picturesque coastal community on an
island about 500km east of Darwin. And with the wet season fast approaching,
Marritja is concerned about the health of the children, including an eight-month-old
boy, who share the tents.
"The rain will be coming soon," he says. "We worry. They can get sick straight
away."
When the Howard Government's indigenous taskforce establishes a presence at
Milingimbi, there will be no shortage of problems demanding attention. Despite a
population of more than 1300, the community has no police, relying instead on
officers from the nearby community of Maningrida. There are several nurses, but no
doctor. Overcrowding is a constant problem, and cannabis use is increasing. And
while the army's Norforce unit provided two of the tents for Marritja's extended
family, community leaders doubt they will have a house any time soon. "When the
taskforce people came to talk about the changes, we asked them what they are
going to do about the burnt house," says Joe Mawunydjil Garawirrtja, a local Uniting
Church minister. "They said they want to give something but it's not tomorrow, not
next month, it will take a while, you know."
This week, a government business manager arrived at Milingimbi to co-ordinate the
commonwealth's work on the ground. Many in the community have heard he's been
living in the local guest house, but few know what he's doing or what to expect from
the intervention.
"We don't want them to keep us in the dark all the time," says council chairman
Keith Lapulung Dhamarrandji. "We want them to bring us into the light."
A few weeks ago, Dhamarrandji's wife was stabbed as she tried to break up a
disturbance sparked by a young man high on dope. It was "ganja's fault", he says as
he explains the need for a police station.
Dhamarrandji, like many other Aboriginal leaders across the Territory, opposes the
abolition of the Aboriginal work-for-the dole program and the permit system that
limits access to communities. But he says the intervention could help if the
Government works in co-operation with local leaders.
"If they want to give us services, then that would be manymak (very good)," he said.
"But there needs to be a common understanding. We don't want political games.
We are open for them to come in, to give assistance, but the federal Government,
and the Northern Territory Government, need to treat us equal."
See: The Australian
National Aboriginal Body Formed
AAP | September 14, 2007
ABORIGINAL leaders have formed a national representative body to counter what they say is government dominance of indigenous policy in the wake of Canberra's intervention in the Northern Territory.
The National Aboriginal Alliance (NAA) was formed following a three-day gathering this week in Alice Springs of more than 100 representatives from across Australia.
They came from land councils, legal services, Stolen Generations organisations, health and housing bodies, the national youth forum, media organisations, bush communities and town camps.
The NAA said the void created by the abolition of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) had left indigenous Australians vulnerable to heavy-handed government policies.
"These attacks against Aboriginal people in the NT are a consequence of the lack of representation," the group said.
Bev Manton, chairwoman of the NSW Aboriginal Land Council (NSWALC) which has 23,000 members, said her organisation would offer financial support.
"We have supported the Aboriginal people of the NT since John Howard announced this so-called intervention," she said.
"I urge, encourage and call upon everyone to financially support the NAA to establish a fighting fund to develop a plan of attack against this invasion .... By Howard's actions, he has reignited the fire in our bellies and united Aboriginal people across Australia."
The NAA rejected discriminatory elements of the Commonwealth's emergency intervention, called for the immediate removal of business managers from Aboriginal communities and the restoration of the permit system.
It also urged Canberra to restore integrity to the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 and called on Aboriginal people to actively but peacefully resist the intervention.
"This is something we hope that all of our brothers and sisters and the many fair-minded Australians will stand shoulder to shoulder with us on," said National Indigenous TV chief executive and former ATSIC head Pat Turner.
The NAA said there was not a single reference to child protection in the hundreds of pages that comprise the Commonwealth's legislative package in the Territory.
"We affirm our profound commitment to protecting our children from harm," it said.
"We acknowledge those within our communities who fought for decades to address the complicated issue of child abuse, and we deplore the successive Australian governments who ignored our cries for help."
See: News.com.au
Lancet Criticises PM on Indigenous Health
Tamara McLean, The Australian | September 14, 2007
PRIME Minister John Howard's legitimacy to govern Australia has been "fatally
compromised" by the Government's poor record on indigenous health, the
prestigious medical journal The Lancet says.
An editorial in The Lancet is sharply critical of the Government, and Mr Howard
specifically, for failing to deliver on an 11-year-old election promise to improve
Aboriginal health and social wellbeing.
"This dire situation now looks set to worsen," it said, arguing against the Federal
Government's emergency response legislation which condones the takeover of 73
Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory.
"The Howard administration's latest approach to indigenous health will not fulfil its
decade-old election promise," the editorial said.
"John Howard's legitimacy to govern seems fatally compromised based on this
critical health failure."
The emergency response bill introduced in August was the Federal Government's
response to the NT Government's Little Children Are Sacred report into sexual
abuse in Aboriginal communities.
The legislation boosts the police and army presence, enforces bans on alcohol and
pornography, limits welfare payments and abolishes the permit system that restricts
access to Aboriginal land by non-indigenous people.
The Lancet said the intervention did not tally with the report's recommendations and
contradicted the approach called for by the report authors who emphasised the
critical importance of extensive Aboriginal consultation.
"Few of the aggressive measures in the bill address child abuse; most are only likely
to exacerbate the problem," The Lancet said.
"Indigenous health is a national emergency that requires investment in health
services and the social determinants of health - education, housing, economic
development - which underlie the appalling inequalities that Aboriginal people face."
See: The Australian
UN Declaration of Rights for Indigenous Peoples Passed!
Cultural Survival, New York | September 13, 2007
At long last, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is a reality. It was adopted today by the United Nations General Assembly by a vote of 143 to 4 with 11 abstentions.
The declaration spells out the fundamental rights of indigenous peoples including their right to their traditional lands and resources; their right to give their free, prior, and informed consent before governments take actions that negatively affect them; their right to be free from genocide and forced relocation; and their rights to their languages, cultures and spiritual beliefs. At long last the world's native peoples have a valuable tool for regaining some of the cultural and physical ground they have lost over the past 500 years.
"Today, by adopting the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples we are making further progress to improve the situation of indigenous peoples around the world," stated General Assembly President Haya Al Khalifa. "We are also taking another major step forward towards the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms for all."
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warmly welcomed the adoption, calling it "a triumph for indigenous peoples around the world." He further noted that "this marks a historic moment when UN Member States and indigenous peoples reconciled with their painful histories and resolved to move forward together on the path of human rights, justice and development for all."
Today's happy moment did not come easily. The declaration underwent a longer period of debate and negotiation--25 years all told--than any other international agreement in United Nations history. During those years, hundreds of thousands of indigenous peoples were routed from their homes, massacred in their villages, had their sacred sites defiled, and their lands and resources appropriated. Even with the declaration now adopted, many of these problems will continue unless nations live up to the principals in the document.
Unfortunately, the United States stands to be one of these problem states. It was one of the four countries (along with Canada, New Zealand, and Australia) that voted against the declaration. Its vote sends a message to Native Americans and to the world that once again the United States is not prepared to take action to support human rights, even when those rights benefit American citizens.
The four "no" votes did not dampen the enthusiasm of Indigenous Peoples for today's outcome. As Indigenous Peoples Caucus president and Cultural Survival Program Council member Les Malezer stated in his statement following the vote, "The Declaration gives [Indigenous Peoples] the platform for addressing the continuing abuses of human rights against Indigenous Peoples and for shaping a future where it can be realized that all peoples are truly equal."
About Cultural Survival
Founded in 1972, Cultural Survival promotes the rights, voices, and visions of indigenous peoples worldwide. We work to increase global understanding of indigenous peoples' rights, cultures, and concerns and we partner with indigenous groups to advocate for their rights.
See: Cultural Survival
United Nations Adopts Declaration On Rights Of Indigenous Peoples
UN News Centre | September 13, 2007
The General Assembly today adopted a landmark
declaration outlining the rights of the world's estimated 370 million
indigenous people and outlawing discrimination against them
- a move that followed more than two decades of debate.
The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples has
been approved after 143 Member States voted in favour, 11 abstained and
four - Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States - voted
against the text.
For more information see: The UN News Centre
Dodson Lashes 'Sinister Intervention'
Stuart Rintoul, The Australian | September 13, 2007
Aboriginal Leader Pat Dodson Has Penned A Savage Attack On The Howard Government
Aboriginal leader Pat Dodson has penned a savage attack on the Howard
Government's intervention in the Northern Territory, describing it as a
sinister attempt to extinguish indigenous culture.
In the first book dealing with the historic intervention three months
ago - Coercive Reconciliation - Stabilise, Normalise, Exit Aboriginal
Australia - Mr Dodson also takes aim at Aboriginal leaders who have
supported the Government's plan, calling them recklessly naive.
Without naming Noel Pearson or other Aboriginal leaders who have backed
the intervention, he writes: "Some indigenous voices in this debate,
motivated by the urgency of ending the suffering in indigenous
communities, have been recklessly naive in aiding and abetting the
Howard Government's agenda.
"Indigenous advocates, campaigning for structural change in government
relationships that aim to liberate their people from the tyranny of
welfare dependency and control, have misread the indigenous political
struggle."
In an essay titled Whatever Happened to Reconciliation?, Mr Dodson, who
has been called the father of reconciliation, paints a picture of a
government using the pretext of child abuse in the Territory to force
Aborigines to integrate into mainstream society.
He says the Government is bent on a radical agenda of "deconstructing
and denying the abilities of indigenous people to live in their
settlements on traditional country" and has set out to "remodel them
into mine labourers, small business people and private entrepreneurs".
He writes that Aboriginal people have so consistently been portrayed as
sexual deviants and sociopaths during the Howard years that it has set
like cement in the minds of ordinary Australians that "there is nothing
noble in the Aboriginal race".
In a separate essay in the book, which is edited by ANU academics Jon
Altman and Melinda Hinkson, Mr Dodson's brother Mick describes the
intervention as "storm-trooper tent diplomacy of health providers
dressed in battle fatigues".
Attacking indigenous policy during the Howard years, Pat Dodson writes:
"The benign use of government language - mainstream services, practical
reconciliation, mutual obligations, responsibilities and participation
in the real economy - cloaks a sinister destination."
He says the Government's goal is "the extinguishing of indigenous
culture by attrition", and describes this as "a searing moral challenge"
for the nation.
In Alice Springs yesterday, Mr Dodson emerged from a briefing by NT
taskforce chairwoman Sue Gordon and operational commander Major General
David Chalmers concerned that little had been done to stem the "rivers
of grog" flowing into Aboriginal communities with still no valid
explanation for taking over Aboriginal land or abolishing the permit
system controlling access to Aboriginal communities.
He said a succession of reports suggested Aboriginal living standards
had worsened during the Howard years. Whole-of-government trials in
Aboriginal communities aimed at bringing together the various levels of
government, shared responsibility agreements and regional partnership
agreements had been "anunmitigated public policy disaster".
"Coercive Reconciliation", a collection of essays by Aboriginal
leaders, academics and social commentators, is edited by Jon Altman and
Melinda Hinkson, and published by Arena.
See: The Australian
Investigation: Indigenous Reforms
Marie Claire | September 12, 2007
When John Howard announced his dramatic intervention to stop child abuse in the Northern Territory, he provoked a storm of controversy over whether it was a brave or "draconian" step. We visit Hermannsburg - the first community to host one of the government's new health teams - to find out how its people feel about the action that has split our nation.
When the army rolled into Hermannsburg on that crisp, cold desert morning in July, fear spread through the community like wildfire. For days, people in this small Northern Territory town, an hour and a half's drive from Alice Springs, had watched news reports detailing claims of child sex abuse and violence in communities just like theirs. They'd heard the Prime Minister declare a "national emergency" amid military talk of "interventions" and a "taskforce" and swift, decisive action. Now, without warning, soldiers in camouflage fatigues had arrived in their town.
To the people of Hermannsburg, still haunted by memories of the Stolen Generation, there was only one possible explanation. "They were saying, 'There's an army team coming to take our children,'" relates local elder Mildred Inkamala.
Pulling on her clothes, Mildred, 50, half-walked, half-ran to the health centre a few hundred metres from her home to see uniformed men unloading equipment from an army truck. From the safety of a small sand hill, a group of frightened women watched, clinging to each other and crying. Many of their children had already run away to hide.
There had been no warning, no application for a permit to visit the community, no consultation with the traditional owners of the land. But on July 10, as Mildred discovered, Hermannsburg's health centre was being requisitioned by a medical team, the first group to be sent to the Territory as part of the federal government's crackdown on child sexual abuse.
Driving to Hermannsburg is a journey through a different Australia. The rough burnt-orange sand of the desert stretches as far as the eye can see, covered with bushes and spindly trees, and flanked on one side by the deep-purple hills of the MacDonnell Ranges. Occasionally, a wild horse wanders up to the side of the road - the same road the grog runners use to bring in alcohol from Alice Springs, 125 kilometres away.
Founded as a Lutheran Mission in 1877, Hermannsburg is the birthplace of famed landscape painter Albert Namatjira. It also has a few historic buildings to tempt passing tourists, but potential visitors are usually discouraged from wandering into the community by the need for a permit.
It feels small and sleepy. Roughly 500 people live here, but it doesn't seem that big. The pastel-coloured houses with corrugated roofs are in varying states of repair: some front yards are tidy and neat; others are strewn with rubbish. Their proximity to the urban hub of Alice means that the two local shops are well stocked, although prices are city-high - $2 for a tin of spaghetti, $3 for a small box of Weet-Bix - and there's a limited selection of fresh produce. Further-flung towns in the Territory such as Tennant Creek aren't so lucky; up there it can cost $7 for a capsicum, for example, and that's if fresh vegetables are available at all.
This morning the community is peaceful. There are only a couple of indicators that all is not quite as tranquil and idyllic as it seems: the heavy-duty grilles over the windows of the smaller shop, which makes it look more like a bunker, and the army tent strung up outside the health centre.
Stretched out in a picnic chair outside the tent, Dr Emil Djakic is enjoying the early morning sun. A tall, unflappable man in an akubra hat, Djakic is a Tasmanian doctor who volunteered three weeks ago to join the federal government's health teams. A week in, he seems settled, barely registering the siren that rings out through the town to signal the start of the working day - a hangover from the mission days.
A week earlier he wasn't quite so relaxed. "The challenge for us was to hit the ground running, building relationships and trust," he explains. "But when we arrived, the people here were uncertain, bordering on quite anxious. They felt the teams were here to accuse them and take their children away - and to be honest they had good reason to feel that way, given their history."
Djakic reveals he only knew that his team, consisting of a doctor, two nurses and the administrative assistant from his local practice, was being sent to Hermannsburg the day before they left. They were meant to be going to another community, Santa Teresa, but a funeral there necessitated a change of plan. That said, he doesn't think they should have delayed their arrival here by even a day. "In five months' time, the wet season will shut things down in parts of the Territory, making many communities inaccessible," he says. "The government boldly wanted to initiate a response to the health crisis and, at least, this is a beginning."
The army was useful in helping to unload supplies and set up the tent, he adds. Two reservists from the Norforce regiment remain in Hermannsburg; their main duties, reveals 23-year-old Brian Liddle, are ration runs, heavy lifting, and entertaining the local children "so they don't get bored".
Among the community, people aren't quite as understanding of the government's eagerness to act. Having lived in Hermannsburg all his life, affable local identity Kenny believes the officials should have consulted the elders. "We didn't know what to think, we thought there was a war out here," he comments, only half-jokingly, of the moment the army arrived. "What they should have done is come quietly to the council, sat down in the office there and said, 'Excuse me, can we put this to you?' And we would have said, 'Yes, that's OK.' But they never came."
Read the full investigation in the October issue of marie claire.
For more information see: Marie Claire
Abuse Link To Poor Housing Justifies Title Seizures: Rudd
Matthew Franklin, The Australian | September 12, 2007
Kevin Rudd says a link between poor housing conditions and child abuse justifies
the Howard Government's decision to seize land title as part of its takeover of
Northern Territory indigenous communities.
In an interview with The Australian, the Opposition Leader said it might not be
possible to deal with abuse of indigenous children without also seizing land title.
And he also said there was a good chance a Labor government would have to
proceed with threats to wrest control of public hospitals from states governments.
In June, John Howard said child abuse in the Northern Territory was a national
emergency and he outlined plans to take over indigenous communities and ban
alcohol and pornography.
Labor supported the intervention.
But indigenous activists have attacked the move as a land grab, questioning why the
Government needed to take control of collective land title to fight child abuse.
Mr Rudd told The Australian late on Monday there was a clear linkage between
housing conditions and abuse. "Our view is that it (land tenure) is relevant only
insofar as it deals with your ability to engineer housing reform, on the one hand,
which goes to the land tenure, and because housing is a fundamental element of the
abuse problem in both indigenous and non-indigenous communities." He said Labor
had its reservations about the intervention but had decided to "give it a go" because
of the seriousness of the abuse problem revealed in a report commissioned by the
NT Government earlier this year.
"Is it a perfect package? No," Mr Rudd said. "But given the dimensions of the child
abuse data ... the judgement we took is that we have to embrace quite radical
reform in order to achieve outcomes for the vulnerable." He said critics should also
remember the intervention would last only five years.
Last month, Mr Rudd said a Labor government would establish a $2billion fund to
provide incentive payments to states to improve public hospital services within a set
of agreed benchmarks.
But if they failed to deliver improvements by the middle of 2009, he would seek a
referendum mandate to assume control of the public health system.
In the interview, Mr Rudd said the commonwealth and the states were jointly
responsible for buck-passing on health. "That policy does not say this is all the
commonwealth's fault."
He said his threats to the states were real and part of a serious public policy plan.
He was critical of John Howard's handling of health because, he said, the
Government had made no serious attempt to improve the problems of public
hospitals.
See: The Australian
Aboriginal Artists To Have Welfare Cut
ABC News | 10 September
Federal Workplace Participation Minister Sharman
Stone says Aboriginal artists in the Northern
Territory will have welfare payments reduced or
stopped when they sell a painting.
Some art centres are worried because welfare will be affected much earlier when CDEP is phased
out and replaced with Work for the Dole.
But Sharman Stone says it means Aboriginal artists will be treated the same as anyone else in
Australia who is on welfare.
"It's not unusual for unemployed Australians to have their welfare payments, literally fortnight by
fortnight, assessed as to what their earnings have been," she said.
"But our whole aim in this is to help Indigenous Australians to become financially independent so
they don't stay unemployed, with their only means of employment the occasional painting sold."
See: ABC News
No Call for Ceremonies
Joel Gibson and Alex Tibbitts | SMH 7-9 September
Aboriginal people in the Sydney area say they are being frozen out of APEC in case they speak out about the Government's intervention in the Northern Territory.
The Chairman of the Metropolitan Land Council, Rob Welsh, said his organisation, which represent indigenous people in the central Sydney area, had not been asked to perform a singel welcome to country, smoking ceremony or cultural performance during the week-long scehdule of events.
'Normally we do welcomes for the Federal Government when they come to town. We've welcomed the Dalai Lama and the Queen here, but when 21 leaders come to the country, we're not being asked to be involved. Maybe it's in case we get up and say the wrong thing.'
The Bangarra Dance Theatre will be involved in a concert today and indigenous dancers performed at the National Maritime Museum on Thursday during a visit by the US President, but traditional ceremonies have been otherwise missing from the program. The APEC Taskforce did not respond to a request for details of the indigenous participation.
One dancer at the museum reportedly tried to discuss the intervention with Geroge Bush.
Meanwhile an Aborgiinal tent embassy has been set up in Victoria Park, on the site it occupied during the Sydney Olympics
Arnhem Land Man Speaks Out On Rights
Brendan Nicholson | September 7, 2007, The Age
DJAMBAWA Marawili staged his own international protest when he was called on to
welcome US President George Bush to the National Maritime Museum yesterday.
The quietly spoken Aboriginal artist from Arnhem Land shook the President's hand
and told him he was concerned about the Australian Government's intervention in
the Northern Territory. Mr Bush thanked him but did not respond to the intervention
comment.
Mr Marawili explained that 80 bark paintings in the museum's "salt water collection"
were the equivalent of legal documents that explained the traditional ties of the
indigenous people to their land.
Later, fellow artist Clarence Stockwel told journalists accompanying Mr Bush that
Australian indigenous culture was the oldest living culture on the planet.
"Our rights are diminishing. They have diminished over a long period of time."
This year marked the 40th anniversary of the 1967 referendum, which included
Aborigines in the national census, Mr Stockwel said.
"Now we have interventions
interventions in communities where the culture is
strong."
Mr Bush also visited the museum's US gallery which was dedicated by his father,
then president, in 1992.
The gallery reflects the shared maritime history of the US and Australia, from the
days of the American whalers who operated in the southern oceans more than a
century ago to the battles fought in the Pacific against the Japanese in World War II.
One key exhibit is the bell of the US cruiser USS Canberra, believed to be the only
American warship named after a sunken ship of a wartime ally.
HMAS Canberra was sunk near Guadalcanal in 1942 and 85 members of her crew
died.
See: The Age
Indigenous communities finding a voice
SBS: Living Black | September 5
The Federal Government's Northern Territory Emergency Intervention Plan is now well under way. But since the NT National Emergency Response Bill was passed in Federal Parliament, Aboriginal groups in the Territory and on a national level are being formed to provide a voice, which some say has slowly been silenced since the demise of ATSIC.
VO1 A group called Combined Aboriginal Organisations feel the silencing of Indigenous voices is now more evident in the wake of the Northern Territory/Federal Government's emergency intervention plan.
EILEEN CUMMINGS: They want to take over our territory and our issues when our people have been dealing with them. In recent months, this group has been gathering support throughout the Northern Territory.
EILEEN CUMMINGS: As a group we're trying to put up our own views in how this should be dealt with in the Northern Territory because at the moment we feel that the Aboriginal voice is being left out of all discussions and consultations.
WESLEY AIRD: The intervention was kicked off quite quickly and I can understand that. I think it's important that, knowing the abuse and the neglect that was going on, it was important to get in and act very quickly.
VO2: But it's not just Aboriginal groups meeting. Made up of prominent Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, Women for Wik was formed in 1997 to show their support for native title. 10 years later they feel it's time to reunite.
EILEEN CUMMINGS: We're hoping through that forum, we can start talking about some of the intervention action plans that we'd love to see in our communities.
V03: Olga Havnen, coordinator of Darwin-based Combined Aboriginal Organisations, says there are many flaws with the Federal Government Emergency Intervention legislation.
OLGA HAVNEN - CO-ORDINATOR OF DARWIN BASED ABL COMBINED ORGS: All of the legislation that's been passed is quite simply one of the Minister taking absolute control over the people as individuals - over their financial affairs, over community organisations and community assets. There was absolutely nothing in there that went to the heart of child protection or family services or the kinds of initiatives that would do anything to improve the wellbeing of children. Listen, people, everybody say - in a nice voice say, "Hello, Mr Howard." CHILDREN: Hello, Mr Howard! Hello, children.
VO4: In his recent trip to the Northern Territory, Prime Minister John Howard stood firm on his intervention policy.
PRIME MINISTER JOHN HOWARD: Unless they can get a share of the bounty of this great and prosperous country, their future will be bleak. And the motivation behind the intervention is to ensure that that happens.
V05 Wesley Aird, member of the Howard Government's handpicked National Indigenous Council, welcomes the plan.
WESLEY AIRD: It really is time to take drastic measures and I encourage the Minister in trying to fix it.
VO6 But he agreed more consultation is needed.
WESLEY AIRD: I think it's important that communities are empowered, that their capacity is improved and that they are able to work very closely with Government, so it's a partnership, and I think that's a challenge for the Government at the moment.
KARLA GRANT: Angela Bates with that report. Well, one person who has been vocal on the Federal Government's recent plans, and instrumental in gathering support for the new coalition of NT Combined Aboriginal Organisations is one of its members, and CEO of NITV, Pat Turner.
KARLA GRANT: Pat, welcome to the program. Thank you, Karla.
KARLA GRANT: Well, first of all, what are your main criticisms of the NT emergency intervention?
PAT TURNER: Well, I would prefer to refer to it as an invasion, and it's an absolute invasion of our people's privacy, their rights. They're not being treated as citizens. There has been no collaboration with Aboriginal people, let alone any level of reasonable negotiation. So the way the Federal Government has gone about this is absolutely, totally unacceptable, and the way they are treating Aboriginal people is totally unacceptable.
KARLA GRANT: Well, doesn't the Government's actions demonstrate that they are serious about addressing this issue? The fact that they are increasing policing, they're looking at better health outcomes for Aboriginal people, doesn't that signal that they are serious?
PAT TURNER: They are not serious at all. And if they were, they would have done it in full collaboration with Aboriginal people, and they would have done it in collaboration with the Northern Territory Government. That was the first recommendation of the Wild-Anderson report, and they have totally ignored it. There has been no collaboration with our people. What is happening is that the invasion is imposing what the Government thinks is right. The Prime Minister is saying that Aboriginal people have to become part of the broader society and community, in other words we have to be assimilated. That is not what we want. Our people have 60,000 years of living heritage and we don't have to give that up just because of the Prime Minister and a misguided Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Mal Brough.
KARLA GRANT: Well, you along with other Indigenous leaders, are now planning to form a new independent national representative body. How do you plan to do this?
PAT TURNER: First of all, we're having a meeting in Alice Springs - starts next Wednesday, through to Friday. It is a national meeting. We want the CEOs and chairs of Aboriginal organisations from throughout the country to get themselves there. We have a lot of work to do. We will be, of course, briefing on the NT invasion and the complete and utter waste of Commonwealth resources in the way that they're handling this. They have created jobs, you know, for 700 new bureaucrats. Centrelink alone is getting a $88 million for the first year to quarantine 50% of any Centrelink payments of the Aboriginal people living in the affected areas. It is an absolute outrage. And you know what, Karla, not one program for children, not one safe house, not one rehabilitation service. The majority of the money is going towards the payment of bureaucrats who have been brought in from interstate, and that is not counting the police or the army. It is disgraceful.
KARLA GRANT: Well, just going back to your representative body that you are looking at forming, how do people become involved? Will it be an elected body or will it be self-appointed?
PAT TURNER: Well, that is up to the meeting to determine exactly what they want. What we need, though, and is long overdue over the last few years, is a national voice for our people. And we have to stand united and stand up against these atrocities such is being perpetrated against our people in the Territory. And not only that, they won't stop at the Territory, they will roll out these measures - for Centrelink payments in particular - in the Kimberleys, in the north-west of South Australia and in western New South Wales, you mark my words.
KARLA GRANT: OK, have the community approached you about forming this representative body? And has there been consultation? I mean, that has been one of the main criticisms of the Federal Government - the lack of consultation, so will you be consulting people?
PAT TURNER: Yes. Well, of course, Aboriginal organisations are constantly in touch with their membership. They service them every day, they have boards who come from communities, they do know exactly what the situation is in their communities. And they need to bring that together and look at things on a national level because we cannot afford any government - it doesn't matter whether it is this current government in power or whether Kevin Rudd wins the next election - Aboriginal people have got to influence the national agenda, and we have to be listened to, so we will be acting responsibly to do that.
KARLA GRANT: Well, you can understand that there could be some scepticism from the community about the formation of this new group. I mean, we have had DAA, ATSIC, NIC. I mean, what makes you think that this body can do anything better and create positive change for Indigenous Australians?
PAT TURNER: Because they're not government creations, as each of those three bodies that you just mentioned have been, in the past. And the NIC of course, still is a government, you know, created body. This is from the community. This is from the people. This is for the people, by the people, about the people. That will be the difference and that's what will make it work.
KARLA GRANT: OK. Well, we do thank you very much for joining us today, Pat.
PAT TURNER: Thank you very much, Karla.
KARLA GRANT: That was Pat Turner, one of the members for the NT Combined Aboriginal Organisations. Still to come on Living Black, we follow a Federal Government health team into the Central Australian community of Yuelamu.
KARLA GRANT: In June this year, the Federal Government announced its national emergency response to protect Aboriginal children in the Northern Territory. As part of that response, a taskforce was set up to oversee the survey and health teams which have been assessing the needs of the 73 communities under the intervention plan. Video journalist Kris Flanders travelled to the community of Yuelamu where he experienced at first-hand a Federal Government health team at work.
MARY KOSTAKIDIS: The Federal Government is planning to override Northern Territory law to implement wide-ranging tough new measures.
JOHN HOWARD: It is interventionist. It does push aside the role of the Territory to some degree, I accept that.
JOURNALIST: The first group of doctors are on the ground. The Government says it's very satisfying progress.
VOICEOVER 1: After the dust had settled on the Federal Government's announcement that compulsory health checks would become voluntary, health teams assembled in Alice Springs for a 2-day orientation.
JIM THURLEY, REGIONAL CLINICAL ADVISOR: We try and give them a background into the health issues and we spend a lot of time going through the actual health checks because that is what they are here for.
SABINA KNIGHT, SENIOR LECTURER NURSING & REMOTE HEALTH PRACTISE: To be honest, I was a bit perplexed because I thought, "Why are we sending in teams to do things which is currently done?" But if this is the way that we collect some good data that will allow the Australian Government to plan and to resource properly remote health services, then so be it. We've been underresourced for a very long time, and underpowered.
VOICEOVER 2: Many of these health professionals had been brought in from all round the country. Some have minimal experience with Indigenous health, but that wasn't the only hurdle for the health teams of doctors and nurses. Maria is a local Aboriginal woman and her role is to advise the teams about cultural awareness and protocols when entering communities.
MARIA PALMER-THOMPSON, ABORIGINAL CULTURAL AWARENESS OFFICER: What we are doing is giving them a glimpse into Aboriginal society here in Central Australia. We start off with a session where we come to the common understanding of culture and then we look at it from an Aboriginal point of view. And then we give them some cultural etiquette and tips, I guess, in terms of how to communicate with Aboriginal people.
VOICEOVER 3: This crash course in cultural awareness will prepare teams for life in the community. It also highlights the serious health problems being experienced by children in Central Australian Aboriginal communities.
VICKI GORDON, REMOTE AREA NURSE: There are a lot of issues really to do with the kids' ears particularly, ears, chest infections, diarrhoea, skin infections, rheumatic heart disease. There's a whole gamut of things that are not commonly seen within other communities in Australia that are very common in the remote Aboriginal context.
VOICEOVER 4: Dr Sue Gordon is chair of the Emergency Response Taskforce. She backs the Government's swift intervention.
DR. SUE GORDON, CHAIR EMERGENCY RESPONSE TASKFORCE: This was an emergency response by government. If you've got an emergency like a cyclone or a tsunami, you go straight in to get something done. This is about - and my total focus is child protection. That's why the Government asked me to do this - because I've been a magistrate for 18 years, dealing every day with child abuse.
VOICEOVER 5: It's early morning in Alice Springs and the health teams are preparing to head out to communities in Kintore, Papunya and Santa Teresa. The health team that I'm following are heading for Yuelamu, and Anna Johnston, a nurse from Queensland, is part of that team.
ANNA JOHNSTON, NURSE: It's really the same as any health check that you would have when you went to your normal GP. It's how tall are you, how much do you weigh. If they're babies, what do they eat. And gathering some social data - who do you live with, do people smoke. Just so we'll look at some issues of overcrowding and things like that. It's basically what you do when you go to your normal GP.
VOICEOVER 6: Head of the Yuelamu health team is Dr Alan Baldam, a GP from Victoria.
DR ALAN BALDAM: We'll be checking and giving immunisations if they are overdue. Any medical problems that are found we are not just reporting them to another agency, we're actually doing some actual health initiatives as well. So if we find a problem - and I think the usual ones that we will find will be ear infections, maybe trachoma, skin infections, that type of thing - then we are part of the treatment as well.
VOICEOVER 7: Yuelamu, also known as Mount Allen, is situated about 300km from Alice Springs and has a population of around 380 people. Yuelamu Council members Ron Hagan and Michael Tommy were initially unhappy with the lack of consultation and information about the Federal Government's plans.
RON HAGAN: Well, we just heard it on the news they were flying around all over the country and I didn't know what to say because we didn't have any choice, you know. I didn't know what's going on. Like they're talking about there's child abuse and all that type of thing. Some of the people who are telling us, there were misunderstandings - maybe come out and take your kids away or something like that. We weren't really sure about it.
VOICEOVER 8: After a meeting with the Yuelamu Council and the Government's survey team, the community now welcomed the health team coming in.
RON HAGAN: I reckon it's a really good idea, like Government was thinking about to check all the kids, whether they might be healthy or something like that.
VOICEOVER 9: The health checks began as a controversial part of the Federal Government's crackdown on child sexual abuse. However many of the health workers agree that it will be very difficult to detect sexual abuse.
JIM THURLEY: These checks are not designed to pick up sexual abuse, they won't pick that up. And that's not just my opinion, that's virtually everybody involved that sexual abuse will not be picked up. And we're not trying to.
VOICEOVER 10: The community at Yuelamu are demanding that real action be taken with the information gathered.
SABINA KNIGHT: There's no identified information kept but the de-identified information goes to Canberra for planning. And as far as we know, that it's on the basis of that data that the health resourcing and planning will occur. And that they already have begun the processes for planning the follow-up, and the initial follow-up that is absolutely critical. There's a saying in remote health - no survey without service, and we think that is absolutely critical.
VOICEOVER 11: Taskforce member Dr Bill Glasson is also committed to making sure that these health checks be acted upon.
DR BILL GLASSON, HEALTH TASKFORCE MEMBER: I will be ensuring with all my might that we are going to follow up on this. This is not just the team comes in, they find these figures and they're never heard of or seen of again. Well, I promise you that we have to ensure that this goes on for the whole of this generation into the next generation.
KARLA GRANT: Let's take a look at what's making news. Traditional owners of the Tiwi Islands have become the first to sign up to the Commonwealth's 99-year land lease agreement. The entire township of Nguiu has been leased for $5 million, which will cover the first 15 years. After eight years of negotiations, the traditional owners of Tennant Creek have finally been recognised as the native title holders to 25 hectares of land in the town. Under the agreement, the Patta Warumungu people will gain freehold title to the Devil's Pebbles as part of the land use deal. This is the first native title determination in the Northern Territory to be reached through negotiations instead of litigation. The Aboriginal Tent Embassy is using this week's APEC summit as a platform to highlight the ongoing issues faced by Indigenous Australians. The group has set up a camp site in Victoria Park, in Sydney, and say they want their voices to be heard by world leaders.
ISABEL COE: Well, we want to let the world know what Johnny Howard has been doing to Aboriginal people, how he has attacked Aboriginal people, he's closed down all of our organisations, all of our infrastructures. Now he has come back to finish the job off, to complete the genocide, and we object.
KARLA GRANT: North Queensland Cowboys captain Jonathan Thurston has been named the Dally M Player of the Year. Thurston was presented the medal by Prime Minister John Howard at a ceremony last night at Sydney's Town Hall. This is Thurston's second Dally M win, having also won the award in 2005.
KARLA GRANT: And that's all for today. On next week's program, video journalist Angela Bates follows a government survey team into the Aboriginal community of Yarralin. That's next week on Living Black. Don't forget, if you'd like to visit our website, you can do that by logging on to sbs.com.au, and click on News. This week we hear your views on the Federal Government's intervention in the Northern Territory. Thanks for joining us. I'm KARLA GRANT. Goodnight.
MAN 1: Do I agree with the intervention? Hell, no.
MAN 2: It's probably one of the most racist acts any government in this country has ever attempted.
MAN 3: I suppose, it's hard to say really, like maybe in the long run. But just the way they went in - you know, they went in it seems like all guns blazing.
WOMAN: It's all a scam. They're going back to where they want to take our kids away.
See: SBS: Living Black
A Roadmap For Indigenous Upliftment
September 4, 2007, Canberra Times
Never mind the depth. Feel the width. The Northern Territory Emergency Response to the crisis in Aboriginal communities has already led directly to new jobs for nearly 528 people (albeit nearly all whitefellas), created a bonanza in the Northern Territory training industry, and given the Toyota franchise in the territory perhaps the greatest shot in the arm that it could ever have hoped for about $15 to $20 million will be spent on four- wheel drives over the next six months.
By rough figuring, that's an extra pale- white right hand for every 40 Aborigines, costing the federal taxpayer about $250,000 each in salary and immediate on-costs, or about $6000 per Aboriginal person served. Added to the helping, caring and cajoling establishment of about 4500 already directly involved in looking after these benighted people, we will pretty soon be up to one whitefella (bureaucrat, teacher, cop, health worker, welfare worker or manager) per Aboriginal family of five, at a cost somewhere in the order of $50,000 per man, woman and child. So far, alas, the very cost of maintaining this establishment will probably preclude doing much to improve the living conditions of the subjects of this attention.
One can expect that air conditioning in every temporary shelter built for white fellows as a result of this exercise will take priority over new housing or clean water for the communities involved. Of the $293 million currently announced as new expenditure nationally for Aboriginal housing, for example, one might expect that shame will force the feds and the Northern Territory Government to spend about $120 million on new dwellings, and maintenance of old dwellings, in the territory this year. Given the rate of depreciation of old dwellings, and the population explosion there, spending at that rate should see all territory Aborigines in satisfactory housing by about 2090.
For the foreseeable future, Aboriginal men, women and children must cope with an average occupancy, per substandard three-bedroom house, of about nine. We are not, however, setting this as the living standard for the new white helpers, even if, according to the department, some of them will, from time to time, have to use swags. By one figure I was given last week, the Toyota bonanza alone ought to be worth more than $40 million, but this, based on what some of the new white public servants on the ground have been told (that they will get a Toyota each), has been denied by a spokesman for the department of Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs.
''There is no allocated 'car' for 'volunteers','' the spokesman, not a million miles from the minister's office, said. By ''volunteers'' he meant ordinary public servants who have volunteered to go to the territory for set terms, partly from altruism and the desire to save Aborigines from themselves and partly in pursuit of the generous bonuses and allowances on offer. ''The appropriations received for the NTER do include funds for vehicles, and staff posted in the NT will have access to vehicles ...
where there is an operational requirement.'' So far, he said, 131 Commonwealth public servants have been sent to the Northern Territory under the ''volunteer'' scheme. Twelve more have yet to be sent.
''Not all agencies have settled numbers of personnel, and will adapt requirements as necessary.'' There are also 30 Australian Defence Force personnel already allocated to the task force, with another 33 yet to be sent. The existing 40 or so Australian Federal Police and state police officers sent to supplement the Northern Territory Police presence in Aboriginal communities, are to be bolstered by a further 66 from the AFP.
The NT itself is kicking in 40 more cops in communities than were present before the emergency was discovered. Here in Canberra, we manage with a cop for every 450 people or so. Remote territory Aborigines were getting by, until the crisis was discovered, with about one for every 400, but, now that their problems are appreciated by the Minister, there is to be a cop for every 100 Aborigines or so.
Propaganda for the invasion has already shown many of these police leading little kids to school each day, as part of a fresh concerted effort to bolster school attendance. A worthwhile exercise, indeed, perhaps capable of garnering some incidental intelligence on who is and who is not being sexually abused, and doing something about it the official public point of the expedition. At current rates of progress, after a lot of case-finding assistance from health workers and social workers, there will prove to be, over the next year, about one case worth investigating per two cops on the ground, with about one matter able to be prosecuted per 10 cops on the ground.
They will not want for help from the Northern Territory Government. To prove that it means business on Aboriginal child protection, it has announced 223 new jobs which I expect to be at a rate of about five jobs per case, and 10 per successful prosecution. Its package involves, as new jobs, a Children's Commissioner, 10 child-protection workers, 37 new ''specialist'' jobs in its welfare branch, 40 cops in a remote- policing child-abuse task force, four specialist alcohol rehabilitation workers, 26 new family-violence support workers, 10 new ''community corrections'' officers, 10 new school counsellors, 47 new teachers and assistant teachers for remote schools and pre-schools, three new staff in the Northern Territory Department of Employment, Education and training, one Aboriginal and Islander education coordinator (whatever that is), two court clinicians, eight alcohol- compliance inspectors, one witness- assistance officer, and 23 specialist staff in the child-abuse task force.
It is not obvious that very many of them will be Aboriginal. It's a bit harder to get a fix on the new on-the-ground Commonwealth bureaucrats, in part because no one yet seems to know. Scores of people have already arrived in the Northern Territory with no one seeming to have the faintest idea of what they are expected to do.
For the moment some are undergoing hurriedly improvised ''cultural-awareness courses'' (two days seeming to be enough for that), instruction in first aid, and lessons in how to unbog Toyotas. According to the Minister's office, ''Currently there are 15 Government Business Managers deployed into communities. A further 21 GBMs have been selected and will be allocated once training is completed.
''Other APS staff have not been allocated to specific communities but make visits as required. Centrelink employees for example are working in field teams (of three Customer Service Advisers and one Social Worker/Psychologist) visiting communities. These field teams are involved in providing Centrelink services, including general Centrelink services, lifting of Remote Area Exemptions and explaining Income Management initiatives to customers.
DEWR staff, for example, have key responsibilities around coordinating the delivery of employment-related DEWR services.'' So how is it run? ''The administration of the NTER is shared between the NTER Operations Centre (based in Alice Springs) and the National and State offices of the relevant Australian Government agencies. ''The NTER Operations Centre, under the command of Major General Dave Chalmers, is responsible for: coordination and implementation of NTER stabilisation phase measures in prescribed communities, including required logistical and field support; NTER planning and reporting; and liaising with Australian Government agencies regarding NTER related policy and program development.'
' Got that? ''The Operations Centre reports to the Prime Minister and the Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs [Mal Brough] through the [NTER] Taskforce (NTERT). ''The Operations Centre structure consists of a Commander and Deputy Commander, a Chief-of-Staff (responsible for overarching management of Operations Centre staff), and senior liaison officers from relevant Government agencies. ''In recognition of the complexity and magnitude of the NTER a sub-group of the Australian Government Secretaries' Group on Indigenous Affairs has been established to provide strategic whole- of-government oversight of the NTER policy framework and implementation.
''This group reports to the Prime Minister and [Mal Brough] and is chaired by the Secretary of [PM&C], Dr Peter Shergold. ''The Secretary (Jeff Harmer) and Associate Secretary (Wayne Gibbons) represent [FACSIA] on the Secretaries' sub-group. FACSIA has the lead role in supporting and coordinating NTER policy development and implementation across Australian Government agencies for all NTER measures.
''Day-to-day management of specific NTER measures is the responsibility of relevant Australian Government agencies as follows: housing and land (FACSIA); employment and CDEP transition (DEWR); health checks (DOHA); welfare reform and income management (FACSIA and Centrelink); pornography (FACSIA, AGD, DCITA); and alcohol management (FACSIA). ''The Northern Territory Government is also responsible for assisting with the implementation of a number of measures and has taken lead responsibilities on the implementation of police in remote Northern Territory communities''. Yes.
But how will we know whether this bureaucrats' picnic is achieving anything? I asked Mal Brough to ''articulate a mission'' for the intervention, which was capable of being judged by performance on June 30 next year, and by measurable, quantifiable and qualitative standards of performance on matters such as prosecutions, housing standards, children in classes, etc, in five years time. How would we know in short whether the intervention had worked? Too early to know just what it is intended to achieve, it seems. Here's the draft response for the Minister: ''The Australian Government has a long-term, commitment to ongoing monitoring and reporting on the [NTER].
Baseline data on the affected communities is being collected and compiled. Progress will be closely monitored and an evaluation methodology established and implemented''.Yes, but no doubt the task force on equine flu could say the same thing. Is there any detail? Of course.
''The Government's strategy has several components including: stabilisation the current phase to protect children and make communities safe; normalisation of services and infrastructure; and longer term support based on the same norms and choices that other Australians enjoy. ''In the initial ... phase, monitoring will focus on the implementation of the emergency measures and securing the safety of communities.
It is important to note that in the absence of a permanent police presence before now in many of the affected communities, the existing indicators on such things as reported offences and other measures of community safety may be understated. ''Further, for other indicators such as children's health and school attendance, there will be intermediate and longer term impacts, reflecting the staged approach to the emergency response and to particular components such as welfare reform.'' Heaven knows what exactly the caveats in the last sentence mean, if anything.
But I think I detect in them the Year Zero approach of the Minister, by which it is to be assumed that nothing whatever had happened until he turned the show around. If this proves to be the case, one can take it that everything capable of being positive will be triumphed as being new, while everything which is negative can be dismissed as a hangover of the past, with great care taken to make sure that no new statistics are capable of being compared with old ones. The Defence Department seems to have much the same problem in defining its mission, or standards by which we will know, ultimately, whether they had a famous victory or an ignominious defeat.
I asked the the Chief of the Defence Force, Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, for a brief statement of ''explanation of what the ADF was doing in the Northern Territory and in Aboriginal affairs generally, to what purpose, within what brief from government, with what budget and under what rules of engagement''. In response, I was given four A4 pages of complete guff to the broad effect that the ADF loved Aborigines, employed lots of them, and had a long and proud history of working with them. But it was a bit vague on detail, apart from saying that its NTER work was termed by it Operation Outreach, began on June 27, and that Colonel Mark Shephard had been made commander of Operation Outreach's Joint Task Force 641.
''ADF support to the [NTERT] currently includes mobility, communications and sustainment assistance to police and civilian health teams, interagency liaison and assistance with the procurement and provision of medical stores and contracted trade services.'' Ah! Now I get it. Think back to the Raj.
The invading army is actually the army of clerks, there to liberate the blacks by bringing them into the mainstream. This is to achieved by means of controlling their income, what they can read and see, and closely supervising all aspects of their lives. The ADF is merely acting in the honourable, if not entirely military, capacity of camp-followers: basewallahs, junglewallahs, oontwallahs, biltiwallahs, goowallahs, chawallahs, boxwallahs, paniwallahs and punkahwallahs.
No such people have ever been defeated in combat. Not by blackfellas. Not by whitefellas either.
Jack Waterford is editor-at-large of The Canberra Times.
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