Intervention dispute not over
The Australian | 30 November 2007
A High Court challenge against the commonwealth's intervention in Aboriginal communities will continue, despite proposed changes to the reforms by the Rudd government.
A traditional owner and a community organisation at the remote Arnhem Land community of Maningrida, 500km east of Darwin, launched the legal bid in September, claiming the Howard government's takeover of Aboriginal land diminished indigenous rights and was not done on just terms.
The legal action was taken by Reggie Wurridjal and the Bawinanga Aboriginal Corporation, which provides employment services and runs several businesses in the community. Retired Federal Court judge Ron Merkel agreed to represent Maningrida, with Labor law firm Holding Redlich acting as solicitors.
Key elements of the intervention are set to be changed by the incoming federal Labor government, which has promised to reintroduce the Community Development Employment Projects, or Aboriginal work-for-the-dole, and the permit system. Kevin Rudd is also under pressure from within his party to bring forward and extend its proposed 12-month review of the intervention.
Bawinanga chief executive Ian Munro confirmed yesterday that the legal challenge would continue, regardless of the change of government: "The (Rudd) government does not have control of the Senate, and the laws remain in place."
Mr Munro also said the Rudd government had given no indication it would change the compulsory five-year acquisition of Aboriginal land, which formed a major part of his case against intervention.
The case was adjourned last month for a further directions hearing on Monday.
See: The Australian
It's time to stop playing politics with vulnerable lives
Sydney Morning Herald | 30 November 2007
Marcia Langton
The crisis in Aboriginal society is a public spectacle, played out in a vast reality show through the media, parliaments, civil service and Aboriginal world. This obscene and pornographic spectacle deploys a special mode of dehumanising abuse and parody, and ultimately shifts our attention away from the everyday crises that Aboriginal people endure, or don't endure, dying as they do at excessive rates.
This spectacle is not a new phenomenon in Australian public life but the debate about indigenous affairs has reached a new crescendo, fuelled by the uncensored exposé of the extent of Aboriginal child abuse.
More than a century of policy experimentation with Aboriginal people climaxed with the Commonwealth Government sending the army and a specialist taskforce into the Northern Territory, the only jurisdiction where it has such broad powers.
It legislated more than 500 pages of emergency intervention measures that subvert self-government powers of the Northern Territory in the most extraordinary federal takeover in Australia's history. In some critical respects, the outcome is what many have recommended for decades: interventions to prevent the abuse, rape and assault of Aboriginal women and children and decisive action against the perpetrators.
The federal legislation and the emergency taskforce constituted a slap in the face for the Northern Territory Government led by the then chief minister, Clare Martin - a bracing vote of no confidence in her government's capacity to deal with the Aboriginal crisis.
Even though the Commonwealth provides funds to the Northern Territory Government on the basis of the disadvantages of the population, it was the Commonwealth, rather than the Territory Government, that became the villain of the piece in the public debate about the intervention.
Last Sunday Labor's Trish Crossin and Warren Snowdon reportedly demanded that the intervention be halted, with a list of demands: the reinstatement of the Aboriginal work-for-the-dole scheme; the removal of measures to limit alcohol sales; and the reinstatement of permit restrictions for Aboriginal communities that had been not just isolated from the outside world but effectively quarantined from the larger society and economy. It remains to be seen whether the Prime Minister-elect, Kevin Rudd, will honour his commitment to the intervention.
Now Martin and her deputy, Sid Stirling, have resigned.
There has also been a spill in the chairman's position at the powerful Northern Land Council. Wali Wunungmurra, one of Galarrwuy Yunupingu's cousins, was elected to the position. Just before the federal election, Yunupingu supported the principal intention of the intervention in a public lecture at the University of Melbourne.
The political earth is moving after so much pretentious, vain, and ultimately anti-humanist dancing with symbols while the practical responses to the crisis never came.
There's a cynical view afoot that the emergency intervention was a political ploy - a Trojan Horse - to sneak through land grabs and some gratuitous black head-kicking disguised as concern for children. These conspiracy theories abound, and they are mostly ridiculous.
Those who did not see the intervention in the Northern Territory coming were deluding themselves. It was the inevitable outcome of the many failures of policy and of the strange federal-state division of responsibilities for Aboriginal Australians. Added to this were the general incompetence of the civil service and the non-governmental sector, including some Aboriginal organisations, lack of political will and the dead hand of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission.
The combined effect of the media campaign for action and the emergency intervention has been a metaphorical dagger sunk into the heart of the powerful, wrong-headed Aboriginal male ideology that had prevailed in indigenous affairs, policies and practices.
It's time for the voices of women and children to be heard. It's time for both the federal and the Territory government to stop playing politics with the lives of the vulnerable and shut down the alcohol take-away outlets, establish children's commissions and shelters in each community - as Noel Pearson has suggested - and treat grog runners and drug dealers as the criminals that they are. Otherwise, they will all have the blood of the victims on their hands.
Professor Marcia Langton is the Inaugural Chairwoman of Australian Indigenous Studies at the University of Melbourne.
See: Sydney Morning Herald
GP group hopeful of finding doctor for Pintubi
ABC News | 30 November 2007
General Practice and Primary Health Care NT says it hopes the Indigenous intervention will result in more doctors and nurses willing to work in the Territory.
The group's Jim Thurley says he's spoken to several doctors and nurses involved in the intervention who've expressed interest in returning.
Dr Thurley says he hopes they will ease the staff shortage problems in remote communities.
"There's been quite a lot of criticism [of the intervention but] what that has done is expose a lot of health professionals to what it's like working in the Territory. And I know from my contact with the people who have gone out to do the child health checks there has been an interest in coming back in a more permanent position."
Dr Thurley says it's likely the doctor's position at the remote Pintubi Homelands Health Service will be filled shortly.
The service, which is near the border west of Alice Springs, had warned it may have to close over Christmas and New Year, because of a lack of staff.
But he says the service may still have to close for short time over Christmas.
"Christmas is a time when people obviously want to take holidays, so that does put a bit of a strain on our locum service at times."
See: ABC News
'Sorry' issue splits Libs
Sydney Morning Herald | 30 November 2007
New deputy Liberal leader Julie Bishop has failed to fall in immediately behind her leader's opposition to saying sorry to the Stolen Generation.
Commentators believe Malcolm Turnbull's strong support for saying sorry may have helped cost him the leadership in yesterday's party room ballot, which he lost to Brendan Nelson by 45 votes to 42.
Dr Nelson says he will not support prime minister-elect Kevin Rudd's plan to say sorry for past governments' removal of indigenous children from their parents.
While he said he would discuss the issue with colleagues, Dr Nelson said last night: "In my view we have no responsibility to apologise or take ownership for what was done by earlier generations".
Ms Bishop declined to offer a view on the issue today.
"It's now up to the new government to take a position on this and then we will respond accordingly," she told ABC Radio.
"I think we need to consult within the party to ensure that everybody understands where we are going with this issue."
Ms Bishop said saying sorry "became one of those symbolic issues from which the party would not retreat".
"We are very proud of the fact that we responded so immediately to the Northern Territory report and ... we must continue with that Northern Territory intervention so that we can make a practical difference to indigenous people in this country.
"We've still got to focus on the practical solutions for indigenous disadvantage and that's what our focus will be."
Ms Bishop said Mr Rudd had been "very shy" in spelling out the terms of a Labor Government apology.
"I mean, he has been consistently baulking at actually saying these are the words we will use.
"So, I think it would be incumbent on us to consider what the government is putting forward and then take a position on it."
Dr Nelson has maintained Mr Howard's stance by saying he is not convinced of the need to say sorry.
"In my view, we have no responsibility to apologise or take ownership for what was done by earlier generations," he told ABC TV last night.
"Our generation cannot take personal or generational responsibility for the actions of earlier ones which in most, but not all cases, were done with the best of intentions."
Today, Dr Nelson said he had cried while reading about the plight of Aboriginal Australians in the past, but Australians should not be sorry about it.
On Aboriginal history, he said: "I am not ashamed to say I was in tears reading a lot of it".
"From the early 20th century through to about 1970, in most but not all cases they were good intentions, devastating outcomes in a lot of cases, arguably good outcomes in others," he told Southern Cross Broadcasting.
"Our generation will look back with a sense of shame in some of those outcomes, but we don't own them," he said.
See: Sydney Morning Herald
Nelson pleads with Rudd not to retreat from NT intervention
NI Times | 30 November 2007
New federal Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson has pleaded with Prime Minister-elect Kevin Rudd not to retreat from the coalition's radical intervention into Northern Territory Aboriginal communities.
Dr Nelson made special mention of the intervention today during his first press conference as leader of the Liberal Party.
His plea came shortly after Mr Rudd announced Jenny Macklin would become Indigenous affairs minister, after having responsibility for the portfolio in opposition for the past year.
"Whatever the differences between the two major sides of politics, Aboriginal babies born today still, after all we have done, have only a one-in-three chance of seeing the age of 65," Dr Nelson said.
"The appalling circumstances that led to the intervention need to be changed and addressed.
"They're the things ultimately by which we'll be judged.
"It is extraordinarily important that it not be the subject of partisan party politics, and literally young Aboriginal Australian lives rely on it."
Dr Nelson said Mr Rudd would come under "enormous pressure" from within his own party to retreat from the intervention.
Labor pledged bipartisan support for the intervention when it was announced in June, even though many in the party opposed it.
It has already pledged to roll back two key planks of the intervention: the abolition of Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) program - known as an Aboriginal work-for-the-dole scheme - and changes to the permit system.
But Mr Rudd today indicated continued general support for the intervention.
"There will be a 12-month review and it won't be earlier," Mr Rudd told reporters after announcing his frontbench.
"And I said repeatedly before the election this has to be given an opportunity to work, I was serious about that, I'm serious about it now."
Mr Rudd said the year ahead would be "crucial" in indigenous affairs and Ms Macklin was well qualified to deal with the challenges.
Olga Havnen of the Combined Aboriginal Organisations of the NT said Ms Macklin's appointment to the portfolio would provide vital continuity in Indigenous policy, particularly regarding the intervention.
Ms Havnen said she wanted to see Labor push forward with a "realigned and better focused" intervention.
Tasmanian Aboriginal leader Michael Mansell welcomed Ms Macklin's appointment but called on Mr Rudd to directly involve himself in Aboriginal issues.
"Aboriginal people will be looking for statements and actions from Mr Rudd and Ms Macklin to indicate things are going to be different from the dark and traumatic Howard years," Mr Mansell said. - AAP
See: NI Times
Outback welfare cards sold for cash
The Australian | 29 November 2007
The quarantining of welfare payments in central Australia has hit its first serious snag, with evidence emerging that stored-value cards issued to Aboriginal people for food and clothing are being traded on the black market for cash.
Aborigines in 10 communities to the south and west of Alice Springs have been issued with the cards in recent weeks as part ofthe roll-out of the commonwealth's Northern Territory intervention.
The small, plastic cards are an income-management tool aimed at ensuring that Aborigines spend 50 per cent of their welfare money on food, clothing and rent.
The Australian has learned that the cards, issued to purchase goods at Coles, Woolworths and Kmart, are routinely being traded for less than their real value.
A $200 card, for example, is sold for $150 cash, which can then be spent on alcohol, junk food or other commodities not sold at the supermarket chains.
Tangentyere Council executive member Barbara Shaw said the problem could be overcome only by issuing the cards to specific individuals and making them non-transferable.
"It's not just drink," Ms Shaw said. "People like to have the takeaway food, they like to have the cash to buy it. They can't go to KFC with a voucher, you can't go to a video shop with a voucher."
Titjikala traditional owner Joe Rawson told The Australian he had also heard that people were selling the cards in return for cash. "What they are doing is trading them with taxi drivers," he said.
Titjikala is the closest to Alice Springs of the 10 communities that have income-management plans. There has also been evidence of the trade in Finke, further to the south, and in Mutitjulu, to the southwest.
But the size of the black market is set to grow drastically in coming weeks when Aborigines living in Alice Springs's 19 town camps are issued with the cards.
Currently, people in the 10 communities whose income is being managed have half of their income quarantined at their local store. But they may choose the stored-value cards as an alternative. This enables them to buy food and clothes at cheaper prices in Alice Springs supermarkets.
Because indigenous people in Alice Springs town camps do not have community stores, it is anticipated that the majority of their quarantined income will be put on a stored-value card.
Ms Shaw said Tangentyere, the organisation that manages the 19 town camps, already had in place a voluntary system of food vouchers for 800 town camp residents.
When it was introduced three years ago, this scheme also had a problem of vouchers being traded for cash. But it had now been improved by printing names on the vouchers to ensure that welfare benefits were actually being spent on food.
"People will try whatever they can to get money because it's money, rather than a card," Ms Shaw said.
The council is hoping their voluntary food-voucher program will remain in place for those who are already on it.
The Australian spoke to several taxi drivers and the operator of a second-hand shop in Alice Springs who said they had not been offered stored-value cards. However, each said they were not surprised it was happening, and expected it would occur more when town camp residents started being given the cards.
A spokeswoman for Centrelink said they had not heard of the practice.
See: The Australian
Snowdon calls for health service staffing
ABC News | 29 November 2007
The Labor Member for the Northern Territory seat of Lingiari, Warren Snowdon, says he is not surprised an Aboriginal medical service in the western desert is having trouble attracting staff.
The Pintubi Homelands Health Service in the community of Kintore says it might have to close its doors over the Christmas period because only one nurse is available to work.
Mr Snowdon says many remote health services face difficulties recruiting staff.
But he says people in the Kintore community need a health service.
"So I think the priority ought to be for the government agencies which are involved to work with the Pintubi Homelands Health Service to try and recruit staff [and] provide additional resources to them to get staff, if they don't have enough money to attract staff or alternatively arrange for some volunteers in the short-term," he said.
See: ABC News
Daly, Fry depart Northern Land Council
ABC News | 29 November 2007
There's been further political upheaval in the Territory with changes at the top of the Northern Land Council.
Just a day after John Daly was voted out as its chairman, the NLC's long-serving chief executive Norman Fry has resigned.
"My reasons for resigning from the Northern Land Council stem from the sheer weight of time that I've been there," he said.
"I'm tired. I've got to rejuvenate and move on."
The council's new chairman Wali Wunungmurra paid tribute to Mr Fry saying he was instrumental in many major projects, including the Blue Mud Bay seas case which is on appeal to the High Court next week.
The council says it will continue with projects supported by Mr Fry, including the nuclear waste dump at Muckaty Station near Tennant Creek.
Mr Fry had held the position for 12 years, and says a change of leaders in the council, the Territory government and in Canberra is an opportunity to create new and better relationships.
He denies that he was pushed to leave.
When asked if he was planning a future in politics, he replied with a flat no.
"I certainly don't like the look of politics in anyway in the Northern Territory and I'm really not interested in the local scene," he said.
The Territory's new Chief Minister Paul Henderson says he'll seek to establish a good working relationship with the new chief executive.
See: ABC News
The NT intervention is unravelling: Altman
Crikey | 28 November 2007
Professor Jon Altman from the Australian National University writes:
I have to declare my interest. I opposed the so called "national emergency" intervention from 21 June 2007, the afternoon it was announced (see Crikey piece 22 June 2007). It looked to me like political opportunism by a government that had become increasingly oppositional to Indigenous interests.
On 25 November 2007, in an undisciplined and gloomy post-election moment on the ABC's Insiders, Alexander Downer revealed that the intervention's aim was to generate electoral bounce. Downer thought the intervention was popular, but not in the opinion polls, nor it now seems among Aboriginal voters in Lingiari where all 73 prescribed communities are located.
This raises worrying questions about with whom it was popular: the uninformed? Those who condone racially discriminatory measures? Those who are conspicuously compassionate about the nationally significant issue of Indigenous disadvantage, like ex-Minister Mal Brough?
By September 2007, about $1.4 billion had been committed to the intervention but, in the five months since 21 June, little has been achieved on the ground. If this is a national emergency, the response has been implemented in an ad hoc and unsystematic manner at a snail's pace.
A survey I conducted with five communities last month indicated that the only areas where there had been consistent implementation was in conducting voluntary health checks (with generally incomplete coverage and no reporting of child s-x abuse); in appointing government business managers with unfettered "emergency" powers; and in constructing expensive, but unsightly, housing for intervention staff from converted sea containers.
Quarantining people's welfare payments without proper processing systems in place is a disaster in some situations; and moving people from work to welfare by abolishing the CDEP scheme and without alternative employment is unconscionable.
Fortunately, the full intervention fiasco has only been rolled out to a handful of communities. This was not because of thoughtfulness or caution by the Intervention Task Force, but the result of incompetence arising from lack of adequate consultation and reluctance to collaborate with effective community-based Indigenous organisations.
So calling an immediate moratorium on the intervention and urgently reviewing its workability and sustainability would make good policy sense.
The incoming Rudd government has committed to stop the nonsensical abolition of CDEP and to reinstate the permit system (that has not yet been effectively abolished anywhere) because neither has anything to do with the protection of children. Other measures might quickly follow: the proposed compulsory acquisition of prescribed communities that will be legally contested; the quarantining of welfare that will be expensive to administer, that is racist and will prove ineffective; and the appointment of government business managers with dictatorial powers. How many spokes of the intervention wheel will need to be removed before it collapses?
Only two tests need to be applied to intervention measures to see which should go and which should stay. The racial inequality test should dictate that any blanket measures that would not be applied to non-Indigenous Australians (e.g. income quarantining and alcohol prohibition) should go immediately, or at the very least be modified to introduce defensible discretion in implementation. The racial equality test should dictate that elements like adequate community policing and funding commitments to enhanced housing, education, health and employment should stay to provide citizenship entitlements to Indigenous people on an equitable needs basis.
What should also disappear as quickly as possible from public discourse is the offensive and carefully crafted negative language of 'national emergency' and 'intervention'. Instead, we should talk about urgent policy focus and adequate resourcing to address the disadvantage experienced by Indigenous Australians in the NT and elsewhere.
The focus on one jurisdiction only is both demeaning and statistically indefensible. Such language also demeans the NT polity. It is little wonder that Clare Martin found her position untenable with over 30 per cent of the NT constituency and 50 per cent of the NT geographic jurisdiction being administered remotely by bureaucrats in Canberra. As the Memorandum of Understanding signed between the NT and Commonwealth on 17 September for nearly $800 million recognizes, it is NT not Commonwealth agencies that will need to deliver programs and services.
Ultimately, it is Indigenous community-based organisations that will do the real on the ground delivery of programs and services. This reality provides the principal reason for halting the intervention immediately¬before too many of these organisations and key staff disappear. Fortunately, much of the ALP's Indigenous economic development strategy released on 7 November (see www.kevin07.com.au) recognises this; on top of the $1.4 billion already committed, there are additional resources to facilitate innovative and sustainable development opportunities.
The intervention is unravelling, but a national focus and considerable goodwill and funding commitment remains. Five requirements, based on principles of participatory development, will be essential if we are to see progress in the NT:
- Recognising Indigenous diversity and difference as a positive that benefits the Australian nation
- Partnerships with communities and the establishment of appropriate channels to hear Indigenous aspirations
- Building local intercultural organizations and institutions and capabilities
- Realistic investments, in catch up to close the gaps and to support innovative programs to enable local livelihood opportunity
- Planning for sustainable outcomes based on rigorous needs-based analysis with ongoing and transparent evaluation.
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Mr Sartor's plan for planning
Sydney Morning Herald | 17 November 2007
FRANK SARTOR has been champing at the bit to reorganise planning in NSW. Now the Planning Minister has published a discussion paper, so home builders, renovators and developers can see what he wants to do. Most of his improvements genuinely deserve that name. But some do not.
Mr Sartor wants to make the system flexible so it will fit the nature of developments being proposed. Small renovations and simple projects will go through a simple process, which becomes progressively more complex for larger developments. This makes eminent sense. For the home owner or builder hoping to gain approval for a small project, Mr Sartor's changes would bring a welcome cut in red tape. By widening the definition of a complying development, he hopes to cut the number of development applications in half. It is only common sense, for instance, that someone wanting to install a solar water heater on the roof of a home in these times should not need to apply for development approval. And where disputes do arise, Mr Sartor suggests submitting them first to arbitrators as a way to keep them out of the courts.
He has also suggested ways to amend the management of strata-title properties to ensure developers of new projects do not undermine the legal rights of other owners. He might have gone further. With whole streets of ageing strata-title blocks now ripe for rebuilding, the law needs to ensure the wishes of a majority of owners are not thwarted by the opposition of one or two objectors.
At the other end of the scale are projects of state significance. For these, Mr Sartor proposes a Planning Assessment Commission to take over part of his own role as the consent authority. It puts the Minister at arm's length from the process - but he would still choose the commission members. Much, clearly, would depend on that choice.
On the issue of private certifiers, however, his proposals fall short of what is needed. Mr Sartor wants improved accreditation and auditing of certifiers, though he must also provide the Building Professionals Board with the resources to carry this out. But the basic conflict of interest remains: the developer employs the person who is to say whether a project meets planning criteria. Until that structural flaw is solved, the problems with the existing process, which have been highlighted by the Herald's reporting, will continue.
Beyond sorry, making amends
KEVIN RUDD is setting foot on more difficult ground than he thinks in promising to make a formal apology early in this parliamentary term for the nation's past treatment of its Aboriginal people. Wrongly handled, it could end up like one of the numerous apologies uttered by Japanese politicians for their country's pre-1945 depredations in Asia - formalities hiding a lack of true historical consensus and contrition on one hand, and seen as insincere and lacking practical consequences on the other.
The moment for Australia's political leader to say "sorry" may have passed. The election has not settled the "history wars", and reconciliation of issues like the stolen generation will happen at different speeds around the states. Rather, the test for the new government is the one it set itself: not looking back but forward, and ending the appalling gap in life expectancy for indigenous Australians.
Clare Martin's sorrowful exit as chief minister of the Northern Territory highlighted the contentious aspects of the federal "intervention" into 73 indigenous communities in June. She attacked the outgoing Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, for admitting the Howard Government expected some electoral benefit from this. Yet she left the way open, by sitting on the damning report into sexual abuse of Aboriginal children and by failing to tackle the Territory's glaring epidemic of alcohol-induced crime, violence and neglect.
Something like the intervention was needed, even if the Coalition had an eye to its political spin-off. With new governments in Canberra and Darwin, the intervention should be quickly reassessed and given tighter focus on delivering services. Political grandstanding has to be stripped out, duplication of health facilities ended, and care taken that the result is more doctors, nurses, social workers and police caring for the communities, not layers of managers consuming the funds.
Unnecessary measures that undercut Aboriginal self-management should be wound back. The permit system might have hindered journalistic and other scrutiny, but it also helped bar sly-groggers, dodgy salesmen and predatory art buyers. Why was it necessary to resume control of community land and assets? Why make all or most Aborigines virtual state wards, when only some were squandering welfare on booze, rather than buying food for their families? Why end the Community Development Employment Project, when this provided the only work experience available in some remote settlements?
When there's a resurgent, healthy and engaged indigenous population, our sorrow at historical wrongs will have been expressed genuinely, and to some purpose.
See: Sydney Morning Herald
One of the brains behind NT intervention retires
Sydney Morning Herald | 28 November 2007
THE Commonwealth's most senior indigenous affairs bureaucrat, and one of the public service's most controversial figures, has retired, leaving the cupboard of policy architects for the Northern Territory intervention almost bare.
Wayne Gibbons, who is an associate secretary at the Department of Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs and the head of the Office of Indigenous Policy Co-ordination, retired after 39 years of public service yesterday.
With the former prime minister John Howard, indigenous affairs minister Mal Brough and Peter Shergold, the secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Mr Gibbons was one of the authors of the Howard Government's practical reconciliation policies and its radical measures to "normalise" NT communities.
In recent years he has been described as "the intellectual architect of the intervention" and a "determined" and "sober bureaucrat not afraid of getting a job done" as he oversaw the clean-up and dismantling of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission and the Government's radical measures to tackle child sexual abuse in indigenous communities.
He has also been responsible for some of the more colourful imagery in indigenous affairs, such as a claim in 2004 that the advent of Shared Responsibility Agreements would mean an end to Aboriginal nepotism, which included "everything from people being excluded to people having their legs broken with a baseball bat".
When the number of indigenous staff employed at the Office of Indigenous Policy Co-ordination dropped by a quarter between July 2004 and November 2005, Mr Gibbons said in his defence that the office had "a merit system, not an affirmative action system".
The Canberra Times reported "catcalls and walkouts" in response to his take-no-prisoners approach at the OIPC in 2005, but then-minister Amanda Vanstone liked his direct approach.
More recently, he was criticised for approving the appearance in disguise of a staffer, Greg Andrews, on the ABC's Lateline in June last year, alleging pedophilia was rife in Aboriginal communities.
See: Sydney Morning Herald
'Stay with intervention'
The Australian | 29 November 2007
RESPECTED Aboriginal academic Marcia Langton has warned Labor to stop playing short-term politics with the commonwealth's intervention in remote communities and expressed concern about moves to wind back key elements of the reforms.
Urging Kevin Rudd to work with indigenous leaders, Professor Langton yesterday told The Australian the main thrusts of the intervention, such as alcohol restrictions, should continue.
But she said the incoming federal government had an opportunity to redefine the intervention "in line with human rights standards".
"There's never a good time to play short-term electoral politics with the life-and-death issues in Aboriginal communities," Professor Langton said.
"This is especially not the time to do so, and I urge Northern Territory politicians, whether they are elected to federal or Northern Territory seats, to desist from playing electoral politics with the lives of Aboriginal women and children."
The prime minister-elect faces growing pressure to wind back key elements of the intervention, with a chorus of voices - including Territory Labor MP Warren Snowdon, former Fraser government indigenous affairs minister Fred Chaney, former ATSIC chair Lowitja O'Donoghue and ANU academic Jon Altman - yesterday arguing for significant changes to the plan. But Professor Langton said the work of the intervention, unveiled by John Howard in July, was too important not to proceed.
"I think the rush to review the intervention might be motivated more by short-term electoral gains, such as commitments made during the election, rather than working for good, long-term sustainable outcomes," she said. "I note with interest that Kevin Rudd has asked his members of parliament to visit two schools in each electorate and to visit homeless people.
"Well, I would ask further that each of them visit an Aboriginal community and talk to women and children and ask them what they want."
Professor Langton said Mr Rudd should take note of a speech in September by former Northern Land Council chairman Galarrwuy Yunupingu, who broadly backed the intervention after signing a memorandum of understanding with the Howard government to establish a 99-year lease over his Arnhem Land community of Ski Beach.
"There's a very good case for consultation with the appropriate Aboriginal people without delaying the intervention," she said. "As far as I can see, the best means of doing that at this stage is to work through Aboriginal leaders such as Galarrwuy Yunupingu, who has proposed an elders council, or Mala elders (group)."
Aboriginal Territory Labor MP Alison Anderson has also urged continued support for the intervention. "I hear a lot of people ... talking about the intervention and saying there are good and bad things about (it)," she told Territory parliament on Tuesday night.
"But when there is a national crisis and emergency, it means that things are bad. We know things are bad in our communities. We attend the funerals. We know our children are being raped. We know our women are being violated, and it takes guts for someone to do something."
Mr Chaney said the style of the intervention should be rethought.
"To just lump everybody together and condemn them is just very demoralising," he said yesterday. "It is a pity they (the Howard government) added so much baggage to it that it led to a sense that it wasn't really bona fides among Aboriginal people."
Although Mr Rudd has promised to review the intervention after 12 months, Territory Labor senator Trish Crossin this week said the review should be brought forward.
New Territory Chief Minister Paul Henderson has asked to be consulted in any redesign and has called for the re-introduction of the permit system, the CDEP work-for-the-dole scheme as well as scrapping rules requiring identification to buy more than $100 of alcohol.
But Professor Langton was appalled at the easing of alcohol bans. "One of the most serious problems we have to deal with is the easy access to alcohol and drugs in the Northern Territory. That's clearly the view of Aboriginal women living in these communities. They are, after all, second to their children, the most vulnerable citizens in the Northern Territory."
She also urged caution in any moves to reintroduce CDEP in its previous form. "Of course there's great interest in retaining it, because without secure incomes, people will starve," Professor Langton said. "Aboriginal life is on the knife-edge in these communities, but the ... goal must be to create conditions for Aboriginal men and women to be economically active to participate in the economy, not be trapped in welfare programs."
Professor Altman yesterday called for an "immediate moratorium" to review the intervention.
Ms O'Donoghue said she wanted the intervention to be substantially changed.
"He (Mr Rudd) ought not to let it run to 12 months," she said. "He needs to look at it quickly, and he will be pressured by people to do it."
See: The Australian
Scheme 'based on flawed opinions'
The Australian | 29 November 2007
PRESSURE to water down the federal intervention in the Northern Territory increased yesterday when former Family Court chief justice Alastair Nicholson said parts of the scheme were based on flawed assumptions about Aboriginal society.
Provisions imposing penalties on parents for the misbehaviour of their children wrongly assumed that all Aborigines lived in nuclear families, Mr Nicholson said.
This had little relevance in many indigenous communities and ignored the fact that the birth parents of many Aboriginal children did not have the final say on their conduct.
Mr Nicholson, who retired from the Family Court in 2004, made a sweeping critique of the intervention last night while delivering the Lionel Murphy memorial lecture in Sydney.
As well as identifying flawed assumptions about the nature of Aboriginal society, he also accused the Howard government of harbouring an assimilationist agenda and defended the use of Aboriginal customary law.
Preventing judges from taking account of customary law when passing sentence was disgraceful, he said. Such an approach did not apply to Jewish or Islamic people or others with different customs or practices, he added.
"It is utterly unjust and stupid for judges to be prevented from taking these matters into account in determining the degree of criminality of the offender," he said.
Mr Nicholson's critique comes after the incoming Rudd government indicated its willingness to change parts of the intervention. These included reintroducing the controversial permit system, which regulates non-indigenous access to communities, and modifying rather than scrapping the Community Development Employment Projects work-for-the-dole scheme.
Mr Nicholson said abolishing the permit system and the CDEP scheme were among the key measures that were "heavy and punitive and calculated to gain maximum political capital".
The intervention had restricted the rights of indigenous people in ways that would not be tolerated by the wider community.
"It is discriminatory and racist and bundles all indigenous people together as potential pornographers, child molesters and persons habitually addicted to the excessive consumption of alcohol," he said.
Although the intervention had been presented to the community as a way of saving children from abuse, Mr Nicholson said most of the measures had litle to do with the sexual abuse of children.
Property and land acquisition powers were troublesome, "particularly given the (former) government's apparent assimilation agenda".
He said withdrawing government benefits from the parents of children who failed to attend school took no account of the fact that in many indigenous communities decisions on what children did were taken by the extended family, not the birth parents.
It also ignored the child adoption practices of Torres Strait Islanders in the territory.
"There is a well-established custom of children being 'given' to siblings or other blood relatives," he said. "However, the obligation of making them attend school will fall on the biological parents under this legislation."
A spokesman for Kevin Rudd declined to comment on Mr Nicholson's lecture until the new government takes office.
See: The Australian
Friction over indigenous intervention
The Australian | 17 November 2007
THE incoming government's support for John Howard's intervention to combat child abuse in Northern Territory Aboriginal communities faces growing opposition within Labor's Left faction.
Territory Labor senator Trish Crossin told The Australian the review of the intervention that Kevin Rudd promised to deliver when he was Opposition leader should be brought forward and extended.
Senator Crossin's call for an early review came as the taskforce rolling out the intervention in Aboriginal communities stopped winding up employment programs axed by the Howard government as it awaited a new policy direction from the Rudd government.
As the taskforce waits for Mr Rudd to select an indigenous affairs minister, the new Chief Minister of the Northern Territory, Paul Henderson, has asked to be involved in discussions with the federal government about where the intervention goes under Labor.
Mr Rudd, who supports the broad thrust of the intervention despite reservations with some aspects, had previously promised to review the intervention's results after a year.
Mr Rudd has vowed to reintroduce the controversial permit system and modify rather than scrap theCDEP work-for-the-dole scheme.
But Senator Crossin wants CDEP reinstated immediately and said she was not willing to accept the intervention's five-year takeover of Aboriginal controlled-land in the Territory. "I still think we need to make some assessment of the five-year leasing. I still believe you can develop communities without the acquisition. That's why I think we should review whether it's necessary," she said. "I think it's something we should review early in the new year."
She said she would be making the case to the new indigenous affairs minister. She said she and federal Labor MP for the NT seat of Lingiari, Warren Snowdon, were "on the ground regularly and constantly and I think our knowledge and feedback from indigenous people should be taken very seriously".
Other federal Labor MPs have told The Australian they support Senator Crossin's position, and are pushing for an "evidence-based" approach.
One MP said: "We didn't want to get into a debate about this before the election but we have to relook at it now. Not everything the previous government did was about helping children."
But former Labor president and Aboriginal activist Warren Mundine said the intervention should not be wound back within 12 months.
"Before we start fiddling around with the intervention, we should stick to our review. We said it would be in 12 months," he said. "I know some of my dear friends on the Left want us to scrap many elements but the reports are clear something radical still has to happen so we have to give this a go."
Mr Mundine said he also believed the CDEP work-for-the-dole scheme had trapped indigenous people on welfare jobs forever. "It has to be dramatically reformed if we bring it back," he said.
He urged Mr Rudd to stick to it and then assess its merits through a major review.
The Territory Government had consistently opposed some elements of the intervention, including the abolition of the permit system that regulates non-indigenous access to communities and the five-year acquisition of land. The new chief minister will lobby Mr Rudd to modify the intervention now that Labor has won the federal election.
Labor vice-president Linda Burney, the first Aboriginal minister in the NSW parliament, this week told The Australian she was hoping Mr Rudd would make more changes than already promised.
See: The Australian
Way forward exists on NT intervention
The Australian | 28 November 2007
The opportunity is there to build on solid gains
THE benefits of the commonwealth intervention to protect Aboriginal children in the Northern Territory can in part be measured by the dramatic growth in food sales on indigenous communities. The Australian's Simon Kearney, who has spent six months on the frontline of the intervention, says welfare money that was once spent on alcohol, gambling and drugs is now being used to buy food for children, as was always intended. Takings at some stores have increased more than fivefold. The welfare reforms continue to enjoy widespread support, particularly among women. About half of all children on indigenous communities have received a health check-up under a well-intentioned scheme that was badly weakened in its ability to identify victims of sexual abuse when it was made non-compulsory. Elsewhere, the extension of alcohol bans to include all Aboriginal lands has made life much more difficult for sly grog runners. No one is pretending that the longstanding problems of remote communities have been fixed but the evidence is there that the intervention has started to build a foundation for change. The next phase of the intervention includes the deployment of police to each community to improve safety and to add to efforts to stamp out child sex abuse, which was the great justification for the intervention in the first place.
Having come this far, it would be a tragedy if the momentum that has started to build was allowed to simply drain away as a consequence of the defeat of the Howard government and the removal of Aboriginal affairs minister Mal Brough. Kevin Rudd is no doubt sincere that he is determined to lift the life expectancy, health and education outcomes for indigenous Australians to better match those of the mainstream community. To achieve it, returning to the policies that have failed for the past three decades is surely not an option.
Mr Rudd has an opportunity for a fresh start with the new NT Chief Minister, Paul Henderson, to negotiate a plan that delivers the practical outcomes he is seeking for the benefit of all indigenous children in the NT. Mr Henderson has said he supports most of the aspects of the commonwealth intervention - additional police resources, better housing and health services, in particular.
The NT wants the rules concerning a register of big alcohol sales eased but is not seeking to overturn the ban on alcohol consumption on Aboriginal land. Mr Rudd has said the commonwealth will consider introducing a revised Community Employment Development Projects program. If a new CEDP is established, it should be not be allowed to become a vehicle for passive welfare, as has happened in the past. Nor should it be used by the NT Government to cost-shift what should be Territory expenses to the commonwealth by using participants to do real jobs that would otherwise receive proper wages and entitlements.
The Australian is most concerned about calls for the reintroduction of a permit system to restrict public and media access to Aboriginal lands. Lack of proper scrutiny has played a big role in allowing the appalling conditions on many communities to develop unchecked. Proper policing is what is needed to protect children and keep predators out, not self-appointed gate-keepers who are not responsible for their actions. Restoring the permit system is popular because it protects powerful people in communities but it leaves vulnerable people, including children, open to exploitation.
See: The Australian
Henderson prepares for NT Govt top job
AM: ABC News | 28 November 2007
TONY EASTLEY: The Northern Territory's new Chief Minister, 45-year-old Paul
Henderson, has moved about a bit over the years from France, to the UK, to Zeehan
in Tasmania, and then all the way to the Top End.
After eight years as an MP, he is now Chief Minister and has got a tough job ahead
of him. He's got to unite his government, build some bridges to Canberra, and
somewhere in between adopt the right plan for helping implement the federal
intervention in the Territory.
After Clare Martin's shock resignation, Paul Henderson, who is unknown outside of
Darwin, has been thrust into the limelight. The leadership change also sees Marion
Scrymgour elevated to deputy leader, the highest level for an Aboriginal politician in
any government.
Paul Henderson joins us this morning.
Good morning Mr Henderson, and congratulations on your new position. You've got
tough times ahead by the sound of it. Do you support the continuation of the federal
intervention in Aboriginal communities?
PAUL HENDERSON: Good morning Tony, and thank you for your welcome. There's
not only tough times for the Northern Territory, there's very exciting times for the
Northern Territory, Tony. We've got an economy that's outperforming most of the
rest of the nation.
We've got jobs growth that's outperforming the rest of the nation, and we've got real
opportunities now with an incoming Rudd Labor Government to form a new
partnership around improving the social, economic outcomes for Indigenous
Territorians, and it's a role that I'm going to take on board with a new portfolio of
Territory Federal Relations.
TONY EASTLEY: Do you support the continuation of the federal intervention?
PAUL HENDERSON: What I support is a new partnership with the incoming Rudd
Federal Government, and most of the aspects of the intervention we want to turn
into a plan to improve the lives of Indigenous Territorians, and most importantly I'll
be putting to Kevin Rudd, as soon as I can meet with him.
We've got to engage Indigenous Territorians in these reforms in the way forward,
and certainly if we can harness Indigenous Territorians in terms of supporting this
plan, moving to improve health, policing in the communities, improving housing,
we're going to go a long, long way to improving the lives of our children in those
remote communities.
TONY EASTLEY: Are you suggesting there, there isn't widespread support for this
intervention at the moment, and you're going to have trouble convincing Mr Rudd
otherwise?
PAUL HENDERSON: Look, there is widespread support for many aspects of the
plan, the additional police, the additional commitment to housing, the improvements
to the health aspects.
There is contention around the blanket removal of CDEP (Community Development
Employment Projects) in remote communities where there is no economy, and
certainly Kevin Rudd and the Federal Labor Government have said that they're
going to stop the blanket removal of CDEP.
So, it's about working together, it's about engaging Indigenous Territorians in these
reforms, all of us putting our shoulders to wheel to improving the lives of Indigenous
people in the Territory, and I'm absolutely committed to doing that, and have created
a new portfolio of Territory Federal Relations to commit myself to that task.
TONY EASTLEY: Do you agree, Paul Henderson, with your deputy's old comments
about the intervention being a new style McCarthyism and being the "black kids
Tampa"?
PAUL HENDERSON: No, I don't agree with what Marion said and she has said that
she has retracted those comments, and she made those comments at a time when
she was immense personal stress.
TONY EASTLEY: But even though she has taken back those comments can you
rely on her to back the intervention if it continues, well as it will continue for the next
12 months, and perhaps beyond?
PAUL HENDERSON: Absolutely. Marion will make a fantastic Deputy Chief Minister.
She has got enormous capacity and integrity. She is well respected in Indigenous
communities right across the Northern Territory, and what we have to do Tony, is to
engage and harness Indigenous people in terms of their commitments to these
reforms.
And we've got to work together. We just can't have plans from Canberra imposed,
without consultation, on the Northern Territory. If we can engage Indigenous
Territorians, Marion Scrymgour is certainly up to the task.
We're going to go a long way to the goals that we all want Tony, which is to improve
the lives of Indigenous people, both socially and economically, and also keeping
Indigenous kids safe, getting them to school, getting them an education so they can
make some real choices in life.
TONY EASTLEY: Do you expect to have a major say in the review that the Federal
Labor Party has promised about the federal intervention?
PAUL HENDERSON: Well, I do because we want a new relationship with Canberra,
a forward thinking relationship based on collaboration and respect. The Northern
Territory's history is littered with big plans from Canberra being imposed on the
Northern Territory where there is absolutely no understanding of a population of just
over 200,000 people across the sixth of the landmass of the Northern Territory, and
the genuine difficulties in terms of providing services to small, remote, isolated
communities.
Let's work together, let's engage Indigenous Territorians, and we're going to see
some really big gains.
TONY EASTLEY: Paul Henderson, thanks for joining us this morning on AM.
PAUL HENDERSON: Thank you Tony.
TONY EASTLEY: The Northern Territory Chief Minister, Paul Henderson.
|
Opposition, independents back changes to child protection laws
ABC News | 28 November 2007
The Northern Territory Parliament this afternoon passed the most significant changes to child protection laws in more than 20 years.
The Opposition and the independents have unanimously backed the NT Government's Bill.
The Bill has taken about three years to draft, but the need to overhaul the laws became more urgent after the release of the 'Little Children are Sacred Report' in June, highlighting the extent of child abuse in Aboriginal communities.
The centrepiece of the legislation is the appointment next year of a Children's Commissioner.
This will be an independent position that oversees and scrutinises the child protection system.
Deputy Chief Minister Marion Scrymgour says other elements include the tightening of mandatory reporting for abuse or child neglect.
See: ABC News
Clinic's former director criticises NT intervention
ABC News | 28 November 2007
The former director of the Mutitjulu Health Clinic has condemned the Commonwealth's intervention into Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory.
Bob Randall says the Commonwealth is punishing all Indigenous people for the crimes that only a few are committing by quarantining welfare payments and placing restrictions on Aboriginal communities.
He says it is time the Federal Government started treating Aboriginal people the same way they treat other Australians.
"You punish the perpetrators and the criminals and deal with them as you deal with any other criminal doing the same sort of criminal acts," he said.
"Wherever it's happening just deal with the perpetrators, not a mass blame and a mass punishment system which is what they've done with the intervention."
A spokeswoman for the Northern Territory Government says they still support the intervention.
But she says the government will approach the Prime Minister-elect, Kevin Rudd, in the near future to discuss how it can be improved.
See: ABC News
No Roll-Back Of NT Intervention: NT Govt
AAP | 27 November 2007
New Northern Territory deputy chief minister Marion Scrymgour is expected to get the Aboriginal affairs portfolio, despite her strident opposition to the federal intervention.
Incoming prime minister Kevin Rudd disagreed with the Tiwi Islander last month when she called the reforms to combat child abuse the "black kids' Tampa" and a "vicious new McCarthyism".
The then federal indigenous affairs minister, Mal Brough, called for her resignation, while Mr Rudd said he supported a new approach to Aboriginal affairs.
Ms Scrymgour was forced to back down from her comments.
On Monday, she became the most senior indigenous politician in government in Australia's history after Clare Martin and Syd Stirling resigned from the top jobs.
New NT Chief Minister Paul Henderson said there would not be an "wholesale roll-back" of the Howard government's intervention in Aboriginal communities.
"(There are) issues around the edges that we disagree with and we're going to resolve those with the new Rudd government," he said.
"Let's move forward in a spirit of cooperation rather than intervention."
Mr Henderson said his deputy would have a key role in determining "a new plan" and hinted that she would be given indigenous affairs in a portfolio reshuffle on Friday.
"I don't think there will be any surprises," he told reporters.
Mr Henderson came under fire on his first day in the job after backbenchers Matthew Bonson and Len Kiely were appointed to cabinet.
In an embarrassing gaffe for the government last year, Mr Bonson penned a memo in which he attacked Ms Martin for her handling of indigenous issues. He was also accused of brawling in the bathroom at a basketball match.
Mr Kiely was exiled to the backbench after he made a sexual slur to a female security guard in a government-sponsored box at a cricket match.
"(Len) made a mistake and he apologised for it, and I believe that he has fixed the issues that he has with alcohol," Mr Henderson said.
"I believe in giving everybody a second chance."
But NT Opposition Leader Jodeen Carney said the appointment of the two men was a "shocking lapse of judgment" and an "appalling choice".
On Monday, the incoming federal deputy leader Julia Gillard said the permit system would be reviewed, but the government would not hand back control of Aboriginal communities to her Territory colleagues.
Ms Scrymgour said the compulsory acquisition of land, the removal of permits and the scrapping of Aboriginal work-for-the-dole scheme were at the top of her agenda, although she said you don't "have to be blind Freddy" to realise help was needed.
"Whilst I have been quite critical and my criticisms have been well known, I have always said there are aspects of the intervention I fully support," she said.
"There is a dollar commitment there and we want to make sure that commitment goes into the right areas."
Ms Scrymgour said she supported the quarantining of welfare payments, grog and pornography bans and increased police numbers.
She again attacked a 99-year head lease over a community on the Tiwi Island which was signed in August, saying people remained confused and unsure of the process.
~ aap
|
New NT deputy chief to push Rudd on intervention
The Age | 28 November 2007
MARION Scrymgour says she has never pulled her punches and is not about to start now she has become the highest-ranked Aboriginal leader of any Australian government.
"We are kidding ourselves if we said there is a child sleeping out there who is safe tonight - that is not the case," said Ms Scrymgour, speaking about the intervention in the Northern Territory's remote indigenous communities that has the support of Labor Prime Minister-elect Kevin Rudd.
Ms Scrymgour, who was elected the territory's deputy leader on Monday, told journalists yesterday that six months after the Howard Government started spending hundreds of millions of dollars on the intervention there was still "social devastation" in the communities.
"We have seen Aboriginal people leave their communities en masse and they have come into our suburbs because of the confusion, the anger and the anxiety that is out there," she said.
Ms Scrymgour, a feisty and controversial mother of three who will take charge of indigenous affairs after a reshuffle of the NT Government's cabinet this week, has put Mr Rudd on notice she will push for changes to key elements of the intervention - which the Howard government described as an emergency response to protect vulnerable indigenous children.
"I've always said quite clearly the acquisition of land and the removal of permits does not go to the protection of children," Ms Scrymgour said.
Ms Scrymgour, 47, whose father was a member of the so-called "stolen generation", made clear she intends to take the lead in "putting a new plan" to the Rudd Government to tackle indigenous disadvantage.
She said she supported some aspects of the intervention, including extra police and money to build schools and houses.
But she added: "We need to put forward a plan that will be strategic in areas of real need."
The NT's new Chief Minister, Paul Henderson, who replaced Clare Martin after she stepped aside on Monday, is seeking a meeting with Mr Rudd to discuss the plan as hundreds of people working for the intervention taskforce in 73 prescribed communities wonder about their future.
Ms Scrymgour lashed out yesterday at the impact 99-year leases had had on indigenous people on the Tiwi islands, north of Darwin, where her mother was born and which she represents in the NT Parliament.
"It's clear people didn't understand the concept of what was happening," she said.
"They are not happy ... they didn't know what they were getting themselves into."
Mr Rudd and whomever he appoints to be his indigenous affairs minister will find Ms Scrymgour a formidable Aboriginal advocate.
She created splits in Labor when she last month described the intervention as the "black kids' Tampa" and a "vicious new McCarthyism" before she was forced to concede her comments were "a bit over the top".
One of six Aboriginal MPs in the NT government, Ms Scrymgour often clashed in private with Ms Martin.
See: The Age
Barrie Cassidy speaks with Alexander Downer
ABC: The Insiders | 25 November 2007
BARRIE CASSIDY, PRESENTER: And now, we're joined now from the Adelaide Hills by the man who has been Foreign Minister for the past 11.5 years, Alexander Downer.
(to Alexander Downer) Good morning and welcome.
ALEXANDER DOWNER, FORMER FOREIGN MINISTER: Good morning, Barrie.
BARRIE CASSIDY: You doubted the polls for a long time but the country has turned against your government despite a strong economy.
ALEXANDER DOWNER: Well, I think, look, the honest truth is we've been there for a very long time, 11.5 years. After a while people do start to get that sense that they'd like a change. We had that with the Hawke and Keating governments, though they had of course a very deep recession.
I think by the time we got to 1993, it was really only 'Fightback' that stopped the Liberals being elected then. This time I think as we've got to 11.5 years there has been a sense in the community not of hostility, or, you just heard a lot of party political pap there for a few minutes.
I don't think much of that is true. I think at the end of the day, people just thought it was time for a change.
BARRIE CASSIDY: If you sense that, and you sense that now, why did you not accept that during in the last six or 12 months, do you think you did enough self examination on issues beyond the economy?
ALEXANDER DOWNER: Ah, look, what's the point of going back over the last 12 months, we can't relive that. It's all over. We just, I think for the Liberal Party, it won't be doing itself much of a favour by a constant retrospective.
The one election we will never fight again is the 2007 election. So we didn't win the election, so that's fair enough. We'll leave commentators to trawl over the entrails of the 2007 election, but I think the main thing for the Liberal Party so to look to the future, to try to win the 2010 election.
And the first thing the Liberal Party should do in order to win the 2010 election is get behind Peter Costello as the new leader of the Liberal Party, because I think he will be a very formidable Leader of the Opposition and I think he will very much get Kevin Rudd's measure. So I think that is the important thing for the Liberal Party to do, not think about whether we should have said this or we should've said that.
BARRIE CASSIDY: We will talk about the future in a moment, is there any comment you want to make on the Coalition's campaign? Do you think in retrospect it was an adequate campaign?
ALEXANDER DOWNER: Well it wasn't a winning campaign, so I thought Brian Loughnane, the federal director and the campaign director, did an outstanding job. He really did work hard on the basis of the research we had he made sure the messages were tightly focused as they should be.
But as I said, it's very hard after 11.5 years to present yourself as fresh and new. It's kind of hard to do that. It's the nature of politics in Australia. People do think after a while that maybe it's time for change.
BARRIE CASSIDY: One way to present yourself afresh and new is to come up with a new leader. Perhaps in retrospect should you have said to the Prime Minister, get out while you're ahead?
ALEXANDER DOWNER: Well, conversations that we had, I think, will always be what they should be: private conversations.
But look, in the end what was decided was decided, and John Howard continued as the leader with a transition plan to Peter Costello.
Had we changed to Peter Costello, what would've happen, nobody knows. Nobody has any idea. That might be again something that commentators can amuse themselves with through sort of retrospective speculation, but I just don't know what would've happened, to be honest with you, I really don't.
But in any case, the Prime Minister wanted to stay on and, he was confident he could win the election and you know, we didn't, so there you are.
BARRIE CASSIDY: But was it a mistake, though, to revisit the issue during APEC, to take soundings and then to essentially ignore the advice that came back to him?
ALEXANDER DOWNER: Well, I think it was sensible for the Prime Minister to look at our situation.
Look, to be honest with you, I'll tell you one thing retrospectively, my view through this year was that it didn't look to me as though we were going to win the election. I didn't of course say that publicly and you wouldn't have expected me to. It would be suicidal to do that sort of thing, but as the year wore on there wasn't a very positive public response to a range of different initiatives, for example the $10 billion Murray Darling initiative was very well supported by the public, was a wonderful thing to do, something I've wanted to see happen all my adult life.
But it didn't shift the opinion polls. When we brought down a very popular budget in May, yes, popular with the public in terms of the initiatives, didn't shift the opinion polls.
And when we intervened in the Northern Territory in the Indigenous communities there again, the actual initiative was very popular with the public but it didn't shift the opinion polls.
I must tell you that throughout the year I have had a fairly gloomy view of our prospects. So inevitably in those circumstances, a lot of us talked about it and what we could do to try and impervious our situation, so I do think that's wise?
I think that was very wise, but who knows what a better solution could be. History just doesn't record that.
BARRIE CASSIDY: But surely that underlines it. If you a gloomy prognosis on your prospects, Peter Costello was available, you're now saying he will be an excellent leader of the Liberal Party, surely it would've been worth a try?
ALEXANDER DOWNER: Well, who know what would've happened, frankly. I mean, who knows? We just will never know the answer to that. I think also it's important to remember that I think John Howard has been the best Prime Minister Australia's ever had, he's been an extraordinarily successful Prime Minister. He has been a formidable political figure, he's been one of the great political figures of Australian history and you know, people were certainly not going to turn aggressively on somebody of that stature.
That there's just no question of it.
BARRIE CASSIDY: You have no doubt Peter Costello will be elected leader of the Liberal Party unopposed?
ALEXANDER DOWNER: Look, I've not spoken to too many people since last night. I've spoken to about two people. So I hope, as a former leader myself, let me say I hope that the party will just get behind Peter Costello and elect him unopposed.
I think that's the right decision for the Liberal Party. Peter Costello has enormous talent and remember he does have a great deal more experience, almost infinitely more experience than Kevin Rudd, and it will be a tough job for Mr Rudd to confront somebody who is as experienced as articulate, and as formidable as Peter Costello.
I think Mr Rudd will find, of course he will have a honeymoon for a while, but I think he'll find dealing with Mr Costello very heavy going as time goes on.
BARRIE CASSIDY: Malcolm Turnbull won his seats against the odds, will that boost his stocks within the party?
ALEXANDER DOWNER: Well, he has been in Parliament for 3 years and I think he's gradually building up a bank of experience there, and I think he has a very good future in the party.
He is a very good friend of mine and I think very highly of him as a person. But look, you need to build up experience in politics and he's doing that. Nobody in the party, well, I suppose at least in theory with the exception of me, but I'm not running for leader, but no one in the party has the experience of Peter Costello and I think there shouldn't be a contest to the leadership. It should just go straight to Peter Costello.
BARRIE CASSIDY: You have been Foreign Minister for 11.5 years. Is it going to be tough to settle on the opposition benches, will you commit to 3 years?
ALEXANDER DOWNER: Well, I you know, I've been elected for 3 years, that's my current plan. What I'll do, I'm not sure, you know, I'm not decided, I'll have a talk with my family during the course of today and with my staff, many of whom have now lost their jobs and we'll have a talk about it and talk with some friends, but, my plan is to remain in the Parliament because I've been elected for 3 years by the people of Mayo.
I have more than 50 per cent of the vote in the electorate. I don't want to turn my back on them but what I'll do beyond that in the Parliament I'm not sure.
BARRIE CASSIDY: Shadow treasurer, does that appeal?
ALEXANDER DOWNER: I've been a shadow treasurer, actually. I just don't know. I really don't. I haven't really thought it through to be honest with you.
I just genuinely am completely uncommitted about these things.
BARRIE CASSIDY: Deputy, would you be interested in the deputy's position?
ALEXANDER DOWNER: Ah, I again, same. I just need to think it all through.
I've been as they say, focused...
BARRIE CASSIDY: There was one other theory put out at one stage, the Liberal Party of course has to rebuild in the states as well. It was suggested you might take a look at that, perhaps get involved in state politics?
ALEXANDER DOWNER: (laughs) No thanks. I don't think so. After you've been a Foreign Minister for 11 and three quarter years, the lure of a State Parliament is not all that great, I can assure you.
BARRIE CASSIDY: Appreciate that point. We appreciate your time this morning, and throughout those 11.5 years as Foreign Minister.
Thank you very much.
ALEXANDER DOWNER: It's a pleasure.
See: ABC: The Insiders
Indigenous rangers welcome Rudd
ABC News | 27 November 2007
Aboriginal land and sea rangers in the Northern Territory have welcomed the change of government and hope there'll now be more consultation about the intervention in indigenous communities.
The Liberal Party was heavily criticised on new alcohol laws, the removal of land permits and the loss of the work-for-the-dole employment program C-D-E-P.
Sea-ranger coordinator at Borroloola, Steve Johnson, says he hopes to work more closely with the Labor Party, and he's particularly pleased that Kevin Rudd mentioned indigenous Australians in his acceptance speech.
"I think that it's great and it is conciliatory, but there are things that have to be done with the intervention," he says.
"It is great that there is focused attention on those years of neglect in remote communities, but there's complete lack of consultation.
"What consultation there is takes place behind closed doors and normally amongst a bunch of professional whitefellas, without any of the people it'll impact on most being involved."
See: ABC News
Oenpelli community gets Heart Foundation tick
ABC News | 27 November 2007
The Kunbarllanjnja Community Government Council in Oenpelli, 320 kilometres east of Darwin, has received a national award from the Heart Foundation.
The Council runs a remote indigenous stores and takeaway program focusing on increasing the sale of fresh fruit and vegetables to improve heart-health in the community.
The council will be given a commemorative plaque and $2,000 during a ceremony at the community tomorrow.
A spokesman for the Heart Foundation is hoping to use the Kunbarllanjna program as a model for other stores around Australia.
See: ABC News
Researcher calls for scrapping of 'racist' intervention policy
ABC News | 27 November 2007
An Indigenous economic policy researcher has urged the new Labor Government to do away with what it describes as the "racist" elements of the Commonwealth intervention.
The new Government is expected to reinstate the Community Development Employment Project (CDEP) and keep the permits system the previous government planned to scrap.
John Altman from the Australian National University's Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research says it needs to go even further.
"I think the compulsory acquisition of townships shouldn't be allowed, but I think also it's important that the quarantining of people's welfare shouldn't be allowed to happen," he said.
"This is being introduced in a non-discretionary way, so it's assuming people don't know how to deal with their incomes where in fact we know that most Indigenous people do."
See: ABC News
Brough, Pearson, Yunupingu rejected by Aboriginal voters
NI Times | 27 November 2007
Editor of the National Indigenous Times, Chris Graham, writes:
I never quite understood how Mal Brough managed to escape genuine mainstream media scrutiny so often during his brief but, shall we say, "exciting" time in Indigenous affairs. I always just put it down to the "conga line of suckholes" phenomena identified by Mark Latham (albeit as a "Liberal" inclination in dealings with Americans... but as we all know a trait which also besets some in the media when confronted with a
"Minister").
The media liked Brough - known as "Sideshow Mal" within Indigenous affairs - because he was always prepared to "say anything, do anything" to get a headline. That makes for great copy. Unfortunately for Brough, however, the media didn't get to decide the outcome of the contest for his parliamentary seat.
That privilege was afforded the fine residents of the federal electorate of Longman who, it turns out, decided that Mal Brough was even more odious than the "average" Queensland Coalition member... which is quite something.
Across the state, Queenslanders registered an eight percent swing against the Howard government. But in Longman, the swing against Brough was almost 11 percent. Even worse, of the 29 seats up for grabs in Queensland, only three recorded swings to Labor above 11 percent, and two of those were in seats where the sitting Coalition member had retired.
I accept that opposition to the NT intervention did not translate to any significant swing against the Coalition at a national level. But given the huge swing against Brough personally, it's hard to escape the conclusion that his boy's own adventure in the NT didn't play a part, albeit a relatively small one.
Perhaps, when it came time to vote, at least some of the good people of Longman stopped to think about the NT intervention and decided that using the s-xual abuse of children for your own personal/political gain was really quite... well... disgusting. Either that or the Longman punters decided that Mal Brough was just a really sh-t local member.
As for the Aboriginal vote in the Northern Territory, well they also got to cast judgement on Brough (and Howard). And what a judgement they delivered! Conveniently, one federal seat - Lingiari - encompasses all of the 73 Aboriginal communities affected by the NT intervention.
Media have correctly noted that "Aboriginal booths" in Lingiari delivered votes to the ALP in the 90 percentile range. True enough, but once again the reporting has been sub-par. Just quoting the percentages from a few booths doesn't come close to telling the real story.
It's correct to say that at the Wadeye booth, for example, the ALP collected about 95 percent of the vote. But what does that actually mean in real numbers? Of the 723 people who cast a ballot, just 26 of them voted for the CLP. 26! And doubtless almost every one of those was white.
In Angkarripa, in central Australia, the CLP managed just five primary votes out of a potential 503. That's 0.99 percent of the total vote.
But the really big story - one which went begging for the media - was from a small booth in Arnhem Land. Yirrikala is home to Galarrwuy Yunupingu, the prominent Aboriginal leader who outraged colleagues by reversing his opposition to the NT intervention on the eve of the official start to the election campaign.
Brough, no doubt, thought he had an ally in Yunupingu, but the electoral returns reveal otherwise. Of the 266 votes up for grabs, the CLP secured just two of them - 0.75 percent of the primary vote.
And what of the other great story that went begging? The vote for the ALP in the booth of Hopevale - Noel Pearson's hometown. 75%.
One of the great hypocrisies not just of media coverage of Indigenous issues, but of Australian thinking generally is our inability to apply the "good for the goose, good for the gander" principle when it comes to black issues.
For example, WorkChoices. The Australian public rejected it. No one's debating the mandate to wind it back.
Yet the Aboriginal people of the Northern Territory overwhelmingly, comprehensively, spectacularly reject the NT intervention, and we're all still arguing about whether it too should be scaled back.
The fact is, Aboriginal people still want the $1.3 billion spent in their communities, plus a lot more to make up the massive gaps in health, housing and education that have grown amid decades of appalling government neglect. They just don't see why they have to give up their basic human rights in the process.
Aboriginal people rejected the methods of the intervention. They want consultation, not confrontation. They want assistance, not insistence.
And they want to be heard. As usual, Aboriginal Territorians have spoken loud and clear at this federal election, but I fear that as usual, not enough people are listening.
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Federal election ripples capsize NT leadership
Sydney Morning Herald | 27 November 2007
CLARE MARTIN fought back tears yesterday as she told how tough her life had become under the Howard Government's indigenous intervention, before she resigned as Chief Minister of the Northern Territory's Labor Government.
Denying speculation she was forced to step aside, Ms Martin yesterday said she made the decision on Sunday after watching the defeat of John Howard on Saturday night.
"One of the things I didn't want to do was the hang on way past my time," she said as she also announced her deputy, Syd Stirling, was stepping aside.
Ms Martin said her Government, reeling from criticisms that it had neglected Aboriginal disadvantage and was soft on crime, could now refresh and form a new partnership with the incoming Rudd government.
"You have to look at how you can refresh the team," she said.
Territory Government MPs have elected the Education Minister, Paul Henderson, as Chief Minister, and the controversial indigenous minister, Marion Scrymgour, as his deputy.
Mr Henderson, a senior cabinet minister since Labor took office for the first time in the Territory in 2001, has been an ambitious heir apparent for several years but was prepared to wait for Ms Martin to decide when to step aside.
But Ms Martin came under renewed pressure at the weekend after Labor's veteran Territory MP, Warren Snowdon, blamed local issues such as law and order for large swings against him in urban Alice Springs booths at Saturday's federal election.
Labor strategists also blamed Territory issues for the Country Liberal's Dave Tollner withstanding Labor's national swing in the Darwin-based seat of Solomon.
Mr Tollner hopes to hang on to the seat after the counting of pre-polling and postal votes.
Ms Martin told journalists she had been considering stepping aside for 12 months but that the election result became the trigger.
Asked if she was pushed to quit, she said: "No, not at all.
"I won't deny the intervention had a big impact on my decision," she said.
Ms Martin was widely criticised when she failed to act quickly enough on a damning report on child abuse in the Territory, prompting the Howard Government to seize control of 73 remote indigenous communities.
"The last six months have been the toughest of my political career," Ms Martin said. "Every single day has been tough."
She said she felt "quite ill" on Sunday when she heard the outgoing Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, say in a television interview the Howard Government intervened in the communities to save itself from political defeat.
See: Sydney Morning Herald
'We will say sorry': Rudd
The Age | 27 November 2007
KEVIN Rudd has vowed to act quickly after he is sworn in as prime minister to make a formal apology to Aboriginal Australians on behalf of the nation.
More than a decade after a landmark inquiry found that past policies to remove indigenous children from their families amounted to "genocide", Mr Rudd said yesterday he would make a statement of apology "early" in the new Parliament.
After his historic election win on Saturday, Mr Rudd has also taken the first steps to launching his so-called education revolution, ordering MPs to visit schools to gain insights on how to implement Labor policies.
And he has demanded that the Coalition support the repeal of WorkChoices in the Senate, after Queensland Liberal George Brandis suggested his party might not vote for the changes. "I thought the Australian people had a fairly clear message on that, only a couple of days ago," Mr Rudd said.
The apology to Aborigines will mark a symbolic break with John Howard's refusal to apologise to the "Stolen Generations" during his time in office.
Mr Rudd's vow came days after he alarmed some indigenous leaders by saying there would be no referendum on reconciliation in the first term of his government, if at all.
Cape York indigenous leader Noel Pearson said at the time it was a disgraceful abandonment of a promise, and called Mr Rudd a "heartless snake".
Mr Rudd also wavered repeatedly during a recent radio interview when asked if he would use the word "sorry" in his apology. He finally clarified - after the question was asked for a sixth time - that "of course the substance of it is sorry".
Yesterday he moved to smooth relations by confirming that a formal apology would come "early in the parliamentary term", and reaffirming his pledge to eradicate, within a generation, a 17-year gap in life expectancy between indigenous and non-indigenous children
Indigenous leaders welcomed the promise of a formal apology, saying there could be no healing without one. But they warned that saying "sorry" had to be backed up with a commitment to improve the health and living standards of Aborigines.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner Tom Calma said an apology would have a "cathartic effect" for indigenous Australians, similar to that felt by Vietnam War veterans after being welcomed into Anzac Day parades. But he said the apology would still be "just the start" and Labor also had to follow through with the funding it had promised to support healing and mental health programs.
The new co-chairman of Reconciliation Australia, Mick Dodson, agreed a formal apology was "important to all Aboriginal Australians because it acknowledges the suffering of too many of our people. But it's only part of the story of reconciliation."
Mr Dodson said the promise to close the life expectancy gap was also crucial and would involve a national plan to look at health, education, housing, employment and . (building) a respectful relationship with indigenous Australians".
Judy Atkinson, director of the Gnibi College of Indigenous Australian Peoples at Southern Cross University, said many people who had been subjected to removal policies were now in prison or on the streets, and the "symbolic essence of saying sorry would have no literal meaning in their life". That was why it was important for Labor to commit to healing and bettering the lives of Aborigines, she said.
In another signature act yesterday, Mr Rudd ordered his MPs to visit both a public and a private school in their electorates by tomorrow, and to come to Canberra on Thursday with insights for a debate on implementing Labor's education policies.
Nominating education as his "absolute priority" in government, the Prime Minister-elect also commissioned his first cabinet submission: an implementation plan to buy computers for every student in years 9 to 12. Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet secretary Peter Shergold has been instructed to prepare the submission in time for the first meeting of the new cabinet, expected next week
Arriving to a rapturous welcome at Southern Cross College, a Catholic school in the northern Brisbane seat of Petrie, which fell to Labor on Saturday, Mr Rudd and his deputy Julia Gillard were greeted by students chanting, "Kevin 07, Kevin 07."
Mr Rudd stressed that his computers plan would aid both government and non-government schools, underscoring Labor's pledge to fund education regardless of the choice made by parents about public or private education.
"We are blind to these matters because we want the best government schools in the world and the best non-government schools in the world - we want a world class education system while preserving parental choice," he said.
As he considers the composition of his first ministry, Mr Rudd also hinted that some high-flying new recruits might not be automatic starters.
"I believe that when it comes to selecting a frontbench team that parliamentary experience is very, very important," he said. That could leave recruits such as Maxine McKew, and union leaders Greg Combet and Bill Shorten, serving apprenticeships as parliamentary secretaries before joining the ministry.
Mr Rudd also flagged a broader, more activist role for Treasury in helping to shape policy, after department chief Ken Henry said in a speech earlier this year that his agency was eager to play a greater role in issues such as water policy and indigenous affairs.
"I believe the Treasury is staffed with high quality personnel, it has a strong tradition in independence in provision of advice, I would therefore welcome a broader role for their advice across the whole of government."
He made the comments at his second media conference as Prime Minister-elect, which lasted less than 17 minutes. His first, on Sunday, went for barely 13 minutes.
See: The Age
Dawn of a new era
ABC News | 27 November 2007
Kevin Rudd, prime minister-elect, has declared his hand openly on the issue of a national elected Indigenous representative body and hopefully Labor will implement it within the first 12 months of their new term.
It is refreshing to hear that Rudd has committed Labor to building a national consensus to improve the social and economic wellbeing of Indigenous people, to enable them to exercise their rights and meet their responsibilities as members of the broader Australian community.
Labor recognise that governments have a responsibility to turn this disadvantage around and have said through policy papers that it is determined to see change through evidence-based programs which avoid bureaucracy and are designed in partnership with Indigenous people.
Jenny Macklin, the party's Indigenous affairs spokeswoman, said in her speech to the Labor National Conference earlier this year that Labor would form a national Indigenous representative body.
So what are the issues and what type of representation do we want?
Throughout the past couple of years I have been a public critic of both major federal parties, especially of their bipartisan support on the abolition of ATSIC.
Sure I was one of the first Indigenous commentators to go on record as saying the old ATSIC was past its 'used by' date - but I insisted, as did Jackie Huggins and her national review team later, that it needed to be replaced by a more accountable and transparent elected model.
So what are the issues and what type of representation do we want?
As I've travelled this vast country attending an assortment of large Indigenous gatherings I've gained a broad perspective of what Indigenous people feel is required to address the current imbalance in both the representation and service delivery for their respective communities.
I'll preface my comments on ATSIC by saying the majority of past ATSIC representatives were honourable leaders who tried their best to deliver programmes in a fair and equitable manner.
ATSIC problems
But many community members who spoke to me feel they personally contributed to the demise of ATSIC through their inability to speak out on the lack of accountability and transparency of their leaders. Most agree that they voted the usual suspects into public office hoping they would change their questionable habits, but as with past experience they were proven wrong again.
I recognise that many responsible voters cast their vote without fear or favour on a candidate they thought could best represent them and their community, but in the final analysis that vote regrettably didn't deliver enough leaders of substance to positively influence major policy initiatives by Commissioners at the national level.
Scores of people I've met around the nation have questioned the suitability of some ATSIC Regional Councillors assessing the allocation of funding for domestic violence programmes when it was common knowledge in their community that they were the perpetrators of violent beatings of their partners on a regular basis.
Others commented on the appropriateness of some of ATSIC Regional Councillors passing judgement on detailed business applications when many of them were compulsive gamblers or simply careless with money and who have difficulty meeting payment on regular household bills.
And again similar comments have been passed on to me by community members who were aghast at Regional Councillors assessing programmes on alcohol and drug programmes when paradoxically some of them would be suitably qualified, as alcohol and drug dependent people, for entry into the programmes in question.
I'm confident this time around that the voting public will be more cautious when casting their crucial vote as I believe they all know that they will not get another opportunity from a sympathetic government to elect a national representative body if they get it wrong again.
The big issues
On an issues front you only need to look at recent newspaper articles to see what today's major crisis is.
The West Australian (November 8) reported a senior police officer telling a coronial inquest into Aboriginal deaths that up to 25 planes a week with up to 90 cartons of alcohol on board had been flying into the remote community of Oombulgurri.
The Courier Mail (September 20) had bold headlines of warring tribal clans (Wik Mungkin and Wik Ngathan tribes) fuelled by a boatload of "sly grog" turning on police in a riot involving up to 200 people at the Aboriginal community of Aurukun.
Mostly communities want what other mainstream communities have and that is an adequate police presence to implement a law and order programme and for their people to access to high levels of education, employment, health and housing opportunities.
The Indigenous community members seek to have social parity with mainstream society which requires a long term financial commitment from government to 'closing the gap' on life expectancy and the multitude of accompanying health and social disadvantages that continues to be a blight on Australia's human rights record internationally.
A recent report said 90 per cent of the Northern Territory prison population was of Indigenous descent. This, and an appalling over-representation of Indigenous youth and women in gaols nationally, is unacceptable.
Many Indigenous people feel they have run into a brick wall on their native title claims due to the incompetence of far too many inept Native Title Representative Bodies who favour some traditional owner groups over others and distribute their minimal resources accordingly.
So I suggest all Indigenous people of voting age to seriously engage with one another in communities so they can enter into dialogue with government officials and be part of the decision making process on the name, composition and terms of reference of the proposed national elected representative body.
But the most important thing I would like Indigenous people to think of when they go to cast their vote in an AEC sanctioned secret ballot for a new national representative body is the famous old saying of philosopher and novelist George Santayana who once said; "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
Stephen Hagan is a lecturer in the Centre for Australian Indigenous Knowledges at the University of Southern Queensland.
See: ABC News
Alice mayor wants Brough's work to continue
ABC News | 27 November 2007
The mayor of Alice Springs has praised the contribution of the outgoing Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough, who was a casualty of Labor's election whitewash.
Fran Kilgariff is urging the new Federal Government not to rollback the Commonwealth intervention in the Northern Territory's Indigenous communities.
She says the intervention is working in Central Australia and says it will be a lasting legacy of Mr Brough.
"I would like to pay tribute to Mal Brough, who was really the architect and the instigator of the intervention," she said.
"It's a pity that in the brand of politics that we have in Australia there isn't a room for a man like him, who is absolutely committed and a man of integrity and passion who did actually get the intervention going, brought a bit of hope to many communities.
"The apprehension I have ... is that the intervention will be rolled back.
"In Central Australia in particular there are so many people who think that it is a very, very good thing."
The Prime Minister-elect Kevin Rudd has pledged to review the intervention after it reaches the 12 month point.
Meanwhile, the Territory's top public servant says it's vital the focus on Indigenous affairs doesn't stop when he steps away from his job as the head of the Chief Minister's Department.
Paul Tyrell yesterday joined the Chief Minister and Deputy Chief Minister in announcing his retirement.
He says the Territory Government's $286 million promise to tackle Indigenous disadvantage must remain a priority.
Make 'Sorry' a priority
Other groups are hoping a new Government will bring a new approach to Indigenous affairs.
Both the Northern and Central Land Councils have called on Mr Rudd to reinstate the Aboriginal work-for-the-dole program and the permit system which governs who can enter Indigenous communities.
The Howard Government scrapped the permit system and CDEP as part of its intervention in the Northern Territory, and it also made changes to the Land Rights Act.
The Central Land Council's David Ross is hoping for a different approach under Labor.
"Considering the down side of what's happened to Aboriginal people and organisations over the last 11 years, I think this has got to be a great outcome for Aboriginal people," he said.
The Northern Land Council's Norman Fry says Labor should make saying "sorry" a priority.
The National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation hopes Kevin Rudd may be able to create real partnerships between Aboriginal people and government.
NACCHO, which represents 141 Aboriginal community controlled health services, has called on Kevin Rudd to increase spending on primary health care.
Chair Dr Mick Adams says outgoing Prime Minister John Howard and his Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough failed to listen and act upon the organisation's concerns. He described their pledge of $460 million in the latest budget as a mere trickle.
See: ABC News
Labor politicians call on Rudd to roll back NT intervention
NI Times | 27 November 2007
Labor politicians in the Northern Territory are calling on Prime Minister elect Kevin Rudd and his ALP government to act quickly and roll back aspects of the intervention into Aboriginal communities.
When the man behind the radical reforms, Minister for Indigenous Affairs Mal Brough, lost his Brisbane seat on Saturday night he asked that the measures to stamp out child abuse continue.
"Not for me, not for some ideology, but for the children of the next generation - please give this a chance to work," Mr Brough said.
But federal Labor MP Warren Snowdon - who retained the outback Territory seat of Lingiari - said the swing against the Liberal government sent a clear message.
"The CLP (Country Liberal Party) said this election was a referendum on the intervention, well if that's what they see it as being they've got their answer," he said.
"(Aboriginal people) want to be dealt with fairly and they want people to sit down and talk with them, not talk at them."
Mr Snowdon said he hoped the new Labor government - which supported the reforms through parliament - moved quickly to reinstate Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) and reverse the scrapping of permits that control the access of non-Indigenous people onto Aboriginal land.
"(Aboriginal people) want to make decisions jointly not have decisions made about them or for them," he said.
Dislike for Mr Brough is strong within the NT government and thunderous applause greeted the news he had lost his seat during ALP celebrations in Darwin on Saturday night.
NT Chief Minister Clare Martin said a federal Labor government marked a new era in Aboriginal affairs in the Territory.
"There are things I'll be taking straight away to Canberra to have turned back and that's the abolition of CDEP, the second phase of the permit system.
"And then that stupid $100 liquor law (under which someone purchasing more than $100 worth of liquor must provide identification and say where they intend to consume it) - that's got to go," she said.
"We will work with the Rudd Labor government in partnership and that's what's been missing so far."
The Territory CLP's Nigel Scullion, who will remain in the senate but lose his community services portfolio, said Mr Rudd had backed the intervention and should continue to support it.
"Kevin Rudd has said that he will ensure that we have the fundamentals of the intervention will be maintained," he told ABC Radio.
"I would appeal, as has Mal Brough, to the Australian Labor Party to maintain the rage in terms of the intervention.
"Our first Australians deserve no less."
It is unclear what steps will now be taken by Mr Rudd, who was quick to back the intervention and give it bipartisan support despite sharing some of the concerns of his colleagues. - AAP
See: NI Times
Srymgour likely to get Indigenous portfolio
ABC News | 27 November 2007
The Northern Territory's new deputy leader has given the strongest indication yet that she'll take on the Indigenous affairs portfolio.
Marion Scrymgour's promotion makes her the most senior Indigenous woman in an Australian government.
Ms Scrymgour has been a fierce critic of some aspects of the Northern Territory intervention, but says she wants the role that will help her oversee it.
"I would love to ... hold the portfolio of Indigenous affairs for the Northern Territory."
New Chief Minister Paul Henderson all but confirmed it. "I'm not going to make an announcement now, but I don't think there will be any surprises on Friday."
Ms Scrymgour says the money the Federal Government has committed to the intervention needs to stay, but should be redistributed to the areas of most need.
See: ABC News
Future of NT intervention uncertain
ABC News | 26 November 2007
Only yesterday, Clare Martin was saying she would be heading to Canberra to reverse some of the changes made by the Howard government as part of its Indigenous intervention in the Northern Territory.
Today, she resigned as the Northern Territory chief minister, along with her deputy Sid Stirling.
Now the campaign to undo the federal intervention will be left to the new Chief Minister, Paul Henderson.
In the federal election on the weekend, Indigenous communities across the Northern Territory voted heavily in favour of Labor.
They are now expecting the ALP to deliver on its promise of retaining the Indigenous work-for-the-dole scheme and permit system, and consulting more with Aboriginal people about the intervention.
But some senior Labor figures say those reforms may take up to a year to put in place.
As the mobile polling booths worked their way through 270 Indigenous communities, the focus of the federal intervention, locals lined up to clobber the Government.
A senior ALP source says Labor got 88 per cent of the votes at the mobile polling booths.
And in the community of Wadeye, where outgoing Indigenous affairs minister Mal Brough did so much work, the result was worse for the Coalition, with Labor taking almost 95 per cent of the vote.
Liberals' urgings
Despite their defeat, both Mr Brough and outgoing prime minister John Howard specifically appealed on election night for Prime Minister-elect Kevin Rudd to keep the intervention.
Mr Brough said the intervention would give Indigenous children a chance in life.
"There's not a lot of things that make me emotional, but can I tell you, the work that we have started in the Northern Territory - and I hope that goes right throughout Australia - is going to give children a life," he said.
"It's going to give them a chance. They are not going to have to put up with the things that people have just forgotten about and that is because of a Howard government."
Mr Howard urged Labor to continue the intervention.
"I hope that the new Government of this country maintains that intervention to the full because it's very important to the long-term benefit of the first Australians," he said.
Mr Rudd has promised to the keep the Government's task force, but not without changes. The entry permit system for remote communities will be returned, with exceptions made for journalists and government contractors such as health workers.
Most importantly, a system of consultation with Indigenous leaders will be created.
Push to hasten review
The question now is, can those changes be made fast enough to keep communities happy? Even Labor's promised review of the intervention is not expected to take place until mid-2008.
But Professor Mick Dodson has told Radio National he wants it sooner.
"Mr Rudd has indicated five months ago that he would review it," he said.
"It may be useful to bring his planned review forward rather than wait the 12-month period.
"I understand it's... running into some difficulties. Perhaps it's time to assess and evaluate."
While the Northern Territory Emergency Response Task Force waits for a new minister to be appointed, its work on the ground continues.
CDEP 'vital'
A senior Labor Party figure has told The World Today he will be watching the task force closely to see if it continues to move people off the Indigenous work-for-the-dole scheme, or Community Development Employment Project (CDEP).
Another key Labor promise was to retain and reform CDEP, not just in the NT but across Australia - a task that is expected to take some time.
The Labor Party's vice-president and Australia's first Indigenous state minister, Linda Burney, says the CDEP is vital.
"The number of people working in health clinics, working in schools, working in national parks that were supported by CDEP was absolutely fundamental to pride and wellbeing and a sense of self worth, plus some really practical applications in terms of those workers and what they were doing in those communities," she said.
Ms Burney says it is not up to her to say how soon Labor's intended changes should be implemented.
"It will be the leader, the new Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. I just love saying that - the new Prime Minister Kevin Rudd," she said.
"And it will be up to the parliamentary wing of the party to make those decisions.
"The great thing is that what the new Prime Minister has at his fingertips is in fact some very knowledgeable and enthusiastic and absolutely willing Aboriginal people right across this country to work collaboratively and absolutely in consultation.
"And I know that there's a commitment to that - to not only the Northern Territory and whether or not the intervention needs reforming, but actually a whole range of other really important Aboriginal issues right across this nation."
See: ABC News
Martin cites NT intervention in decision to quit
The West | 26 November 2007
Labor's Clare Martin says the Howard government's intervention in indigenous communities contributed to her decision to step down as chief minister of the Northern Territory.
Ms Martin announced she was quitting the leadership today, six years after leading Labor to victory to end 27 years of Country Liberal Party (CLP) rule in the territory.
Deputy chief minister and Treasurer Syd Stirling also announced his resignation, but both he and Ms Martin will stay on in parliament until the next election in 2009.
Following their announcement, Labor caucus met and voted Education Minister Paul Henderson as the new leader and Family and Community Services Minister Marion Scrymgour as his deputy.
They were to be sworn in today.
Almost a year ago, Ms Martin denied her leadership was in trouble after the media reported mounting tension between the leader and six of her Aboriginal MPs.
Asked if she was pushed into her decision to quit, Ms Martin told a press conference in Darwin today: "No, not at all.
"After nine years (as ALP leader), you have to look at how to refresh the team," she said.
"We have to look at when the time is right and a new Labor government in Canberra is an opportunity to make that decision now.
"We have enormous pride in what has been achieved by the first Labor territory government."
But Ms Martin's last year in office has been marred by talk of internal rifts and criticisms of her handling of Aboriginal affairs.
She was bruised by federal government attacks that she had failed to act quickly enough on a damning report on child abuse in the territory.
Citing her slowness to act, the federal government in June ordered its own radical intervention into territory Aboriginal communities.
"I won't deny that the intervention has had a big impact on my decision," Ms Martin said.
"The last six months for me - and it is probably why I use a level of emotion here today - have been the toughest of my political career. Every single day has been tough.
"With this job you need to have a lot of energy, you need to have lots of ability to meet the challenges and that has been part of my decision making."
The former journalist accused the outgoing federal government of "political opportunism" and said an admission by Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer that the government had hoped the intervention would prove popular and lift results in the polls made her "feel ill".
"It just underpinned the cynicism that I have always felt was there," she said.
"The way it was done - and not what needs to be done - but the way it was done."
Ms Martin said she decided yesterday to stand down after considering it for almost a year. She struggled to contain her tears as she thanked her family for their support.
The Labor government led to power in 2001 by Ms Martin was the first in the territory's history and ended 27 years of CLP rule.
She was re-elected in a landslide in 2005, winning 19 of the 25 seats in parliament.
Mr Stirling said Labor had inherited a "basketcase of an economy" that it had turned into the second strongest economy in Australia.
The Labor government had also brought "decency" to the NT government, which was now more accountable and transparent, he said.
See: The West
NT's new Chief Minister wants meeting with Rudd
ABC News | 26 November 2007
The Northern Territory's new Chief Minister says he was elected unopposed and has already asked to meet with Prime Minister-elect Kevin Rudd.
Paul Henderson says he has been preparing to become the Chief Minister ever since Clare Martin raised the prospect of resigning in September.
His first move was to name himself the first ever Minister for Territory Federal Relations and says Canberra's good intentions have failed in the past because it has ignored NT advice.
"Canberra needs to listen more to the Northern Territory," he said.
"We have to work together to overcome the overwhelming social and economic disadvantage of so many of our Indigenous Territorians."
Mr Henderson says it is essential to improve the lives of Indigenous people in the NT and named education as one of his top priorities. He also stressed the need for party discipline.
"I'm particular excited about what can be achieved by getting more Indigenous kids to school more often and that's a challenge I'll pursue relentlessly."
He would not say who will hold key portfolios under his leadership.
Mr Henderson says the chief executive of the Chief Minister's department, Paul Tyrell, chose to leave.
"He had determined that the time was right for him to announce his retirement, and that's effective as of the 31st of January," he said.
"I asked Paul to stay as long as he could to facilitate an effective transition to the most senior position in the Northern Territory's public service.
Mr Rudd say Ms Martin has provided solid leadership.
"I've regarded her as a good friend over the years and a person who has made a good contribution," he said.
"The fact that we now have a non-CLP government in the Northern Territory is a large part due to her leadership of the Labor Party."
Ms Martin and the departing treasurer, Syd Stirling, say they will be spending their remaining time in Parliament on the backbench.
See: ABC News
NT deputy Scrymgour makes history
Sydney Morning Herald | 26 November 2007
The Northern Territory's new deputy chief minister, Marion Scrymgour, is the highest-ranked indigenous person in government in Australia's history.
The promotion of the passionate Aboriginal advocate, after a political career marked by controversy, follows the resignations of Clare Martin as chief minister and Syd Stirling as deputy on Monday.
Ms Scrymgour, from the Tiwi Islands north of Darwin, is one of six Aboriginal ministers in the Northern Territory government.
She made history by becoming the first indigenous woman to be a minister in any government in Australia.
The mother of three has been a vocal opponent of the federal government's intervention in Northern Territory Aboriginal communities and was last month forced to back away from her criticisms.
Calling the reforms the "black kids' Tampa" and a "vicious new McCarthyism", the member for Arafura questioned their motivation and operation.
Her comments sparked divisions within Labor ranks over the intervention after it was given bipartisan support through federal parliament.
Labor leader Kevin Rudd said Ms Scrymgour was wrong and that he believed a new approach was needed for Aboriginal affairs, while then federal indigenous affairs minister Mal Brough called for her resignation.
Mr Stirling moved to quell talk of rifts in the territory government and confusion over where Labor stood on the matter, saying Ms Scrymgour was "a passionate advocate for her people" and was entitled to express her concerns.
It was not the first time Ms Scrymgour had made a vocal stance on issues close to her heart.
In May, she split with her party over a 99-year lease on a community on the Tiwi Islands.
She said that despite the fact traditional owners of the community had agreed to a head lease over their land, there were divisions within the wider community and questions about the proposal had gone unanswered.
Ms Scrymgour also opposed the controversial $110 million expansion of the McArthur River Mine (MRM), which involved the diversion of a river near the Gulf of Carpentaria.
The minister absented herself when a bill approving it passed through the NT parliament while three of her Aboriginal colleagues crossed the floor on the third reading.
Ms Martin's replacement, Paul Henderson, on Monday welcomed Ms Scrymgour as his deputy.
Asked if he was concerned about her breaking party ranks, he said he considered her to be a loyal party member.
"I have worked with Marion for many, many years and she is a person of enormous capacity and enormous integrity," he said.
Mr Henderson refused to say if his right faction had backed transport minister Delia Lawrie instead of Ms Scrymgour for deputy.
Ms Scrymgour was not available for comment on Monday.
See: Sydney Morning Herald
Optimism for fresh consensual approach on Aboriginal affairs
Central Land Council | 26 November 2007
The Central Land Council says it is looking forward to working with the new Rudd Labor Government and is hopeful that it will take a fresh, consensual approach to Aboriginal affairs.
The CLC called on the Government today to honour its promises to Central Australian Aboriginal people to restore permits for communities and CDEP.
The abolition of CDEP has caused hardship and undermined hard-won gains in the area of Aboriginal employment and the transition from welfare to work.
CLC Director David Ross said that any government cannot hope to achieve significant positive change unless it engages with the people it's trying to help.
"For too long we put up with a Minister who felt he could trample on Aboriginal people's rights but still achieve an objective which purported to improve their lifestyle," Mr Ross said.
"That approach is doomed to failure and now we want to see a considered and informed approach which doesn't play with people's lives.
"The issue of compulsory five-year leases over entire communities was unnecessary and provocative and we call on the Rudd Government to immediately abandon that element of the intervention in favour of more practical leasing solutions," he said.
"The CLC has immediate, pragmatic and appropriate solutions which involve leasing parts of communities for housing and infrastructure to improve the delivery of services and we expect these to be taken up," he said.
"We will be doing everything we can to progress other issues associated with the intervention including domestic violence and the protection of children.
"On the question of the apology to the Stolen Generations, we believe that such a potent symbolic gesture would improve the lives of so many people damaged by their experiences," he said.
"The intervention under the Coalition Government did commit large scale funding to the Northern Territory and recognise the great problems of child welfare and social disadvantage in Aboriginal communities but this was lost in the huge expansion of bureaucracy and bad will generated through its autocratic approach.
"We urge the Labor Government to recommit this funding to enable some of the better objectives to be achieved in a more successful way," Mr Ross said.
See: Central Land Council
Indigenous leaders welcome Howard defeat
ABC News | 25 November 2007
Some indigenous leaders have welcomed the end of the Howard government and expressed relief that Mal Brough has been forced out of parliament.
Mr Brough - the outgoing minister for indigenous affairs - lost his Queensland seat of Longman to Labor candidate Jon Sullivan after suffering a swing of more than 10 per cent.
With the likely exception of outgoing prime minister John Howard himself, Mr Brough was the most high-profile coalition MP to be unseated.
Mr Brough, the architect of the government's dramatic and controversial intervention into Northern Territory indigenous communities, was a divisive figure.
His approach was supported by such high-profile Aboriginal leaders as Noel Pearson and Galarrwuy Yunupingu, but others deemed it racist, draconian and unworkable.
Mr Brough has called on Labor to continue the NT intervention, to which it gave bipartisan support earlier this year, but it will almost certainly be watered-down.
Indigenous affairs more generally also will undergo change.
Olga Havnen, CEO of the Combined Aboriginal Organisations of the NT and spokeswoman for the National Aboriginal Alliance, said the change of government could be transformative for indigenous people.
"Mal Brough has lost the trust of Aboriginal people and John Howard has lost the trust of the Australian people," she said.
Mr Havnen said the magnitude of the swing against Mr Brough showed the intervention was a critical factor in the election.
"Not only is this intervention a travesty against Aboriginal people's rights, but it has been a shambles."
Eileen Cummings, former policy adviser to the NT chief minister said the election result was a "moral victory" for Australia.
"Aboriginal people have supported the Labor Party," Ms Cummings said.
"Now it's time for the Labor Party to show us that our support is justified."
Indigenous policy expert Professor Jon Altman said he was relieved Mr Brough was gone.
"I thought that he was a very poor minister for indigenous affairs," Prof Altman said.
"I think there was no prospect that his approach would have delivered for indigenous people on a long term sustainable basis.
"And I think that ultimately his major initiative, the intervention, is going to be a very costly mistake."
Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation national director Gary Highland said the change of government could start "a new era" for indigenous affairs.
"But we certainly can't take anything for granted and we'll still need to effectively make the case for change to achieve the sorts of things that we want," he said.
Tasmanian Aboriginal leader Michael Mansell said Aboriginal people across Australia would be relieved to see the backs of Mr Howard and Mr Brough.
"Both Brough and Howard missed the cynicism the electorate had towards the motives of the coalition for invading Aboriginal communities in the lead up to the election," he said.
See: ABC News
Rudd will 'say sorry' in first term
ABC News | 26 November 2007
Prime Minister-elect Kevin Rudd says he will say sorry to Indigenous Australians early in his first term of government.
Former prime minister John Howard was adamant that he would never deliver a formal apology to the Stolen Generation.
But Mr Rudd says his government will apologise.
"It will be early, early in the parliamentary term," he said.
"However we would frame it in a consultative fashion with communities and that may take some time."
See: ABC News
NT Chief Minister Martin resigns
ABC News | 26 November 2007
Northern Territory Chief Minister Clare Martin has resigned today after six years in the job.
Education Minister Paul Henderson is expected to put his name forward for the top position.
Ms Martin's deputy Syd Stirling has also resigned.
The Chief Minister has been under intense pressure after the Howard Government announced its emergency intervention which effectively undermined her own efforts to address child abuse in Indigenous communities.
It is unclear why the Chief Minister is announcing her resignation today.
On Saturday night Ms Martin talked about working with the new Rudd Government to reverse elements of the intervention.
The leader of the Northern Territory Opposition says she is not surprised at the news.
Jodeen Carney believes the Labor caucus is "divided and disillusioned" with the Chief Minister's leadership.
Ms Carney says the decision may have been prompted by a smaller swing than the national trend to Labor's Damian Hale in the Federal election.
"This sends a very clear message to Clare Martin and her colleagues and it may well have been the case that her and others had discussions over the weekend and is now in the position of saying it's all too hard and I'm going."
See: ABC News
Gillard coy on 'sorry' deadline
ABC News | 26 November 2007
Incoming Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard says she supports saying 'sorry' to Indigenous Australians, but has refused to say just when it will happen under the new Labor Government.
Federal Labor came under fire from Queensland Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson on Friday after The Australian newspaper quoted Kevin Rudd as saying a referendum on Aboriginal reconciliation would not happen in his first term as Prime Minister.
Ms Gillard says Labor policy remains the same, but a Rudd Labor Government is also resolved to closing the life expectancy gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.
"It's certainly Labor policy," she said.
"Obviously we haven't made an announcement about timing and that's a matter for Kevin to deal with.
"I think we understand and ultimately Prime Minister Howard, I believe, came to understand that these things are interconnected, that you need to be working on both sides of the policy agenda," he said.
See: ABC News
'Patronising' intervention must end
The Australian | 25 November 2007
The newly re-elected Labor MP representing the regions affected by the intervention in Northern Territory Aboriginal communities has called for the process of moving people onto work for the dole to cease immediately after a strong vote from remote communities.
Speaking at his election party last night, Lingiari MP Warren Snowdon, said his victory, with returns for Labor of up to 95 per cent in some remote communities was a vindication of Labor's position on the intervention.
After watching outgoing Prime Minister John Howard concede defeat, where he pleaded with his replacement Labor leader Kevin Rudd to continue the intervention, Mr Snowdon said the vote showed the ''patronising and paternalistic approach of John Howard and Mal Brough had got to go.''
Mr Snowdon said measures like income management would continue but Labor's promises to re-introduce a reformed Community Development Employment Program and reinstate the permit system would be delivered.
''What we will be doing is what we said we'll do . reinstating CDEP and permits,'' he said.
He said the move off CDEP to work for the dole should cease immediately.
"(They) should be told tomorrow morning (Sunday) to stop. There's a new Government," he said.
"They've got to stop."
Mr Snowdon said Mr Howard's pledge for a referendum on a pre-amble to the Constitution recognising indigenous people was not a "relevant issue" in his electorate.
He said he got an unprecedented vote in remote communities with their Maningrida booth in the Top End getting a 94per cent vote for Labor. He said four other mobile remote area voting booths received between an 84 and 95 per cent vote for Labor.
''What's important is that people have expressed themselves so strongly,'' he said.
There were cheers at Mr Snowdon's election party at the Alice Springs RSL Club last night when the news came through that former indigenous affairs minister Mal Brough had lost his seat.
Mr Brough was not commenting yesterday, but he repeated Mr Howard's call for the intervention to continue after conceding defeat last night.
''The work that we have commenced in the Northern Territory - I just hope and pray it continues,'' he said.
''I took the chance during this campaign to go back out to places like Hermannsburg and Mutujulu, and I saw in the eyes of the women out there their desperate need for this to continue.
''So I have a plea to Mr Rudd - I know you don't agree with much of what I've done out there but not for me, not for some ideology, but for the children of the next generation, please, give them a chance, give this a chance to work.''
See: The Australian
Labor stands by 'practical' Indigenous policy
ABC News | 25 November 2007
The Labor Party has defended its stance on Indigenous policy, as an ALP Senator and an Aboriginal activist welcome the political demise of former indigenous affairs minister Mal Brough.
Last night Labor claimed up to 18 seats in Queensland, including Mr Brough's seat of Longman.
During the final week of the campaign, Indigenous leader Noel Pearson attacked Mr Rudd for saying he would not hold a referendum on the recognition of Indigenous Australians in the constitution.
On Friday, Mr Pearson said he dreaded a Kevin Rudd prime ministership if Labor was not committed to symbolic recognition.
Labor Senator Penny Wong has told the ABC's Insiders the party is committed, but during the first term a Rudd government would focus on practical, rather than symbolic, measures.
"Last night when Kevin made his speech, he said he would govern for all Australians and he made particular mention of Indigenous Australians, those Australians born here, and those arriving from overseas," she said.
"What he said was his priority is to do what I would have thought all Australians would want, and that is narrow the gap - the unacceptably wide gap - between Indigenous Australians and other Australians."
An 'arrogant minister'
NT Labor Senator Trish Crossin is celebrating the demise of Mr Brough, who she says was an incredibly arrogant minister.
She says the intervention in Indigenous communities will be handled very differently now.
"I'm glad Mal Brough has lost his seat. I give Indigenous Territorians a guarantee that I will actually consult them and sit down and talk to them about any more changes that we make to their communities," she said.
Aboriginal activist Michael Mansell says the Aboriginal community will be glad to see the back of outgoing Prime Minister John Howard and Mr Brough.
Mr Mansell, who is the legal director of the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre, says the Coalition's election loss shows voters were cynical about its intervention in the NT.
Mr Mansell says Mr Brough's last-minute plea to Mr Rudd to continue with the intervention shows he is out of touch with the electorate.
"In the finish, John Howard and Mal Brough believed their own propaganda and got so caught up in it that they lost touch with the electorate," he said.
"In the finish, it was the voters who saved Aboriginal people, not John Howard and not Mal Brough."
NT Chief Minister Clare Martin says she is looking forward to a more cooperative approach from a Rudd government on the intervention.
See: ABC News
Australia hails Rudd as it finally votes for Howard's end
Guardian Unlimited | 25 November 2007
After more than a decade in power, the veteran conservative has conceded defeat to a Labor party leader who is seen as more modern and in touch.
For eleven years he dominated his country's politics, an often controversial figure who led Australia into a war against Iraq and resisted efforts to curb global warming. But yesterday John Howard, the leader of its conservative Liberal Party, was decisively defeated by a bookish Christian promising a gentler and more unified country.
As Labor party leader Kevin Rudd swept to victory in Australia's elections yesterday, he told jubilant supporters he would 'write a new page in our nation's history'.
His victory marked a humiliating end to the career of Howard after voters turned on their aging Prime Minister with ferocity. The scale of the 'Rudd-slide' surpassed all expectations, with the Labor party winning more seats than it had hoped for. The new leader said Australia was 'moving forward to plan, prepare and embrace the future'.
Howard's defeat was finally delivered by the key defection of the group that had for so long supported him - the 'Aussie battler' - the disillusioned blue-collar voters that Howard had won over from Labor in his sweeping victory in 1996 -renamed 'Howard's battlers'.
Supporters - including the Hollywood actress Cate Blanchett - turned out to back Rudd, and his party. Rudd arrived at his victory celebration to meet a crush of rock star proportions as 600 campaign volunteers chanted 'Kevin, Kevin' as he took the stage at a convention centre in his hometown of Brisbane, flanked by his wife, three children and son-in-law.
'Okay guys,' were his first words to the Australian public as Prime Minister-elect as he gestured for quiet.
Nicholas Stuart, a journalist and author of a recent Rudd biography, said few people even within the Labor party know what the new Prime Minister really stands for.
Howard, who said it was likely that he would also lose the seat he has held for 33 years as an MP in Benelong - the first time for an Australian Prime Minister since 1929 - was magnanimous in defeat. In a dignified speech in Sydney Australia's second-longest serving prime minister, who had won four terms, said he accepted full responsibility for the rout of his right-wing Liberal/National party coalition, but added defiantly: 'We bequeath to him a nation that is stronger and prouder and more prosperous than it was eleven and a half years ago.'
Rudd, 50, was elected leader of the Labor party only last year and has taken the nation by storm by offering himself as a youthful leader with fresh ideas and new policies on everything from climate change to Iraq. He has also won the unprecedented prize of presiding over the first Labor clean sweep of federal and state governments.
The former diplomat, who speaks Mandarin and has been likened to Tony Blair, promised to be a Prime Minister for all Australians in his acceptance speech in his home state of Queensland.
Appearing overwhelmed by the enthusiasm of his supporters, he said: 'Many people have voted Labor for the very first time and many people have voted Labor for the first time in a long time.'
In a pointed reference to the social divisions that grew during the Howard era, he said: 'I will be a Prime Minister for all Australians, a Prime Minister for indigenous Australians, Australians who have been born here and Australians who have come here from afar and who have contributed to that great diversity that is Australia.'
He said he would bring back the great Australian tradition of a 'fair go' for everyone, and said he wanted to work with friends and allies all around the world, mentioning the United States, Asia and the Pacific, Europe and beyond.
Stuart said: 'Rudd is like a glass and we're pouring our hopes and our ideas into him and, because he is empty, we see them reflected back.'
Indeed, so little is known about Rudd that when it was revealed last August that he briefly visited a New York strip club, but was too drunk to remember the details, his approval rating went up and Australians were relieved to know that he doesn't work all the time.
During the campaign Rudd pinned hopes of Labor's revival on promises to improve hospitals and education - turning schools into 'digital' classrooms with a computer for every student - and to scrap controversial labour laws.
Rudd is expected to hit the ground running on issues such as climate change, marking his first weeks in power by ratifying the Kyoto protocol and heading Australia's delegation to the United Nations climate change conference in Bali. His attendance will signify a huge shift in Australia's attitude towards environmental issues, overturning Howard's boycott of the protocol.
Rudd has also promised to bring back Australia's 550 combat troops from Iraq in a phased withdrawal, although his foreign policy, which includes maintaining troops in Afghanistan, is not expected to change fundamentally.
However, the election was fought mainly on domestic issues, with Labor capitalising on voters' anger at workplace reforms and rising interest rates which have increased pressure on home owners even as the economy is booming.
Rudd is expected to head a government that will be Labor-lite in style, distancing himself from the unions and the more radical members of the party. He has warned he will not be pressurised by demands from the more radical left or the unions. While his swing of more than five per cent is expected to guarantee him an easy run for a while, more radical Labor members might challenge him to be more progressive.
Rudd has already marginalised some issues championed by Labor during its 11 years in opposition. He has indicated that he will continue Howard's tough line on border security, turning back boats carrying would-be asylum seekers before they enter Australian waters, and detaining refugees on Christmas Island while their cases are heard.
He has rejected the idea of a referendum on the issue of Aboriginal reconciliation, and has said there are no plans to consider Australia becoming a republic. This stance may cause him problems in future, but for now Australia is witnessing a momentous shift on the political landscape.
Woman at the top
Kevin Rudd's election has turned the spotlight on the role of Australia's deputy prime minister. Julia Gillard is credited with helping Rudd to energise Labor, and make the party electable after years in the political wilderness.
Gillard was born in Barry in Wales, her parents emigrating in 1966 on the '£10 Pom programme'. She became interested in politics at university, qualified as a trade union lawyer and rose rapidly through the ranks of Labor.
During the election a senior Liberal politician said Gillard, who is unmarried and childless, was unfit for office because she was 'deliberately barren'. Gillard said she was used to sexist comments from dinosaur politicians. However, she cheerfully plays on female stereotypes, saying that the reason she crashed her car was that 'a bollard ran into me'.
See: Guardian Unlimited
ALP must move on Indigenous policy: Snowdon
ABC News | 25 November 2007
The Labor Member for Lingiari, Warren Snowdon, says the election results in his seat are an endorsement of Labor's position on the Commonwealth intervention in the Northern Territory.
The call comes as NT Chief Minister Clare Martin welcomes Kevin Rudd's landslide win.
With 60 per cent of the vote counted in Lingiari, Mr Snowdon has a swing of 3 per cent and has 60 per cent of the vote after preferences.
He says he hopes the new Labor government moves quickly to reinstate the Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) and to ensure permits in remote communities are not removed.
Mr Snowdon says Indigenous people have used their vote in Lingiari to show they want to be treated with respect.
"They want to be dealt with fairly and they want people to sit down and talk with them, not talk at them," he said.
"They want to make decisions jointly not have decisions made about them or for them."
Cooperation
Ms Martin says Labor's win, and Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough's loss in Longman, mark the start of a new era of cooperation on the Indigenous intervention.
She says she will now speak to Mr Rudd about keeping CDEP and permits for accessing aboriginal communities, as well as removing unpopular bottleshop ID laws.
Ms Martin says she expects a friendlier response from the new Labor government in Canberra.
"What it means for the federal involvement in the Territory in a very important issue is that we will work with the Rudd Labor government in partnership and that's what's been missing so far," she said.
"We've struggeld to make it a partnership and what we hear now is really goodwill coming from a federal government to work with this Territory Government for the best outcome for Aboriginal people in the territory."
Calls for continuity
The Northern Territory CLP Senator Nigel Scullion says it has been a great privilege to serve Australia as the federal Community Services Minister.
Senator Scullion is set to retain his seat in the Senate and says Australians care about the Commonwealth intervention into Northern Territory Aboriginal communities and it must continue.
"Kevin Rudd has said that he will ensure that we have the fundamentals of the intervention will be maintained," he said.
"I would appeal, as has Mal Brough, to the Australian Labor Party to maintain the rage in terms of the intervention.
"Our first Australians deserve no less."
A member of the Labor Party's Alice Springs branch does not want to see the Commonwealth intervention in the Northern Territory watered down.
Tricia Smith was at Labor Party headquarters in Alice Springs last night.
She says she has worked as a teacher in remote communities and says an intervention was needed in the Territory.
She says motions were passed at the Northern Territory Labor Party conference in 2005 to act on the social and emotional wellbeing of children, the need for police in communities and compulsory attendance at school.
"All the very things that the intervention addressed so I'm going to have to passionately fight that it continues," she said.
"As with any national emergency there'll be hiccups, nobody's going to get it straight off, but the infrastructure has to be built up and the issues have to be addressed."
See: ABC News
Literacy software pilot begins
ABC News | 23 November 2007
Northern Territory Indigenous children are taking part in a pilot project at Charles Darwin University which aims to improve literacy with a new software program.
Indigenous children aged four to eight from Ludmilla, Milikapiti and Tennant Creek Schools are taking part.
The University's Director of School for Social and Policy Research Tess Lea says using the software is fun way for children to learn.
"They're like games in terms of enchantment for the child. It's called edu-tainment, ie it doesn't bore the child to do this. They are keen to do their abracadabra lessons."
See: ABC News
Calma raises intervention concerns
ABC News | 23 November 2007
Social Justice Commissioner Tom Calma has questioned why quarantining welfare is mandatory in the Territory when a similar scheme run by Noel Pearson in Cape York is voluntary.
"Why is it ok for people in Queensland to accept that, and yet in the Northern Territory it's an imposition?"
He says whoever wins on Saturday should review welfare changes to ensure people aren't left worse off.
Mr Calma has also raised concerns that people in Indigenous communities will not be able to repay debts because of the phasing out of CDEP.
The Government has emphasised that the phasing out of the program is essential in getting Aboriginal people into real jobs with benefits such as superannuation.
Mr Calma says at the moment not everybody is getting full time jobs and some are facing financial difficulty.
"Even though there is provision for a bit of a handover period of six months for those going off CDEP, when you purchase a vehicle for example, or even most mobile phone contracts are more then 12 months, and so people are having to change their whole lifestyle to be able to accommodate a whim where we're just abolishing a program."
Calma was not the only one yesterday raising concerns about the Federal Government's recent action on Indigenous affairs.
Pre-election tensions bubbled to the surface when protesters in Darwin set up outside the Member for Solomon's electorate office yesterday afternoon.
They questioned the Government's response to this year's Little Children Are Sacred report, asking what was being done to protect children in the current Commonwealth intervention in Indigenous communities.
The intervention was also attacked by an independent candidate for the seat Lingiari. Maurie Japarte Ryan said many Indigenous people failed to understand how the quarantining of welfare payments would affect them because not enough interpreters were being used to explain the new rules.
See: ABC News
Arriving: Day One Gapuwiyak
Anna Davis, ABC News | 21 November 2007
As we board the plane for Gove it is a chance for Annie and I to reflect on what we hope to achieve with this trip. We are heading to Gapuwiyak for six days to collect stories which will hopefully paint an accurate picture of life on a community. It is an idea that Annie has championed and a journey that I will capture through pictures and text.
Disembarking in Gove gives us just enough time to feel a bit anxious about boarding a very small aircraft for the next leg of the journey. About half an hour's flight south-west of Nhulunbuy (Gove), and inland from the base of Arnhem Bay, Gapuwiyak is an Indigenous community and home to 1300 people - with a small contingency of balanda (white fellas). It has been described as one of Arnhem Land's best kept secrets and to get there is a bit of a trek.
Within minutes we've taken off in an aircraft a little bigger than a dodgem car but as we rise above the dusty red airstrips of Gove I forget all about the size of the plane and focus out the window.
A blue ribbon of river twists and turns upon itself as we travel inland from the sea across Arnhem Bay and the beautiful views are not only below us but alongside us and I look over to see Annie transfixed as we duck and weave amongst the fairy floss clouds.
After about half an hour, our flight nears its end as we spot the majestic Lake Evella to one side, the historic man-made airstrip to the other and the buildings of the community of Gapuwiyak in the middle. The starkness of the scene is a bit confronting.
Kate Monger, CEO of Gapuwiyak community, greets us upon our arrival and invites us to jump in the troopie for a quick tour. I am struck by how little and basically laid out the community is. The main street runs from the airstrip down to the lake and along it lays the council offices, the general store and the basketball court. Adjoining roads tentacle off it with housing.
With so much focus on remote community housing, it is interesting to see a mix of architecture amongst the 73 homes allocated to Indigenous housing. There are some severely run-down and condemned places right through to beautifully maintained homes and gardens.
We get out at the Gapuwiyak community council offices - one of the main atriums of the community - yet one of the more rundown looking buildings. It is a hive of activity and interestingly enough, all staff bar Kate and Keith (the soon to be retired book-keeper) are Indigenous. Meanwhile, an ever growing crowd of people gather on the front porch. The busyness of today could have something to do with the date. Today is a Friday, and we have arrived on the Friday in which fortnightly CDEP payments are made. Unfortunately the Centrelink office doesn't appear to be manned.
As we sit down for a cup of coffee with Kate in her office, there is a constant stream of people, mostly staff, knocking on the door with messages, requests and queries and it's a similar situation over the phone. In the time that we are there, we are paid a visit from Joyce, the Centrelink officer who has had a late night dealing with her son and is too tired to work; elder and chairman of the Gapuwiyak community council Micky Wunungmurra who has a mountain of paperwork to sign off, and Clancy Marrkula on crutches who is hoping to arrange a lift back to Raymangirr.
Meanwhile, phonecalls reveal reports of break-ins and petrol sniffing. Kate, having spent 6 months since May in the role of CEO, is obviously getting used to these demands and deals with things that can be managed and shrugs at those beyond her control.
It is the mountains of paperwork piled up on Kate's desk though which seems to tell another story - CDEP (Community Development Employment Program) forms that need signing off. Controversially, the CDEP is being phased out under the Federal Intervention and is a source of anxiety for Kate who appreciates the stress that all of these changes are placing on the leaders of the community.
'It really is a balancing act and I admire greatly indigenous leaders of communities who are able to work both ways and maintain their cultural responsibilities but who are also able to go to meetings and speak knowledgably about matters that they're required to comment on. Currently there's a huge amount of pressure on Indigenous leaders to provide input into non-indigenous Government organizations about what they want and there's also a huge amount of pressure from their own communities to translate what all the changes are. It's a very difficult position.'
We dump our gear at the donger and are asleep for about 40 minutes when there is a knock at the door from Kate who just remembered that the school fete is on. When we arrive there are little kids excitedly getting their nails painted and handing over gold coins for chocolate and strawberry smoothies. It is here that I first spot the NORFORCE army workers and they are quite the juxtaposition as one man, Bob Bunbury, wears his camos and airs his freshly painted fingernails!
Our visit to the school fete is quite timely. Sharon, the Acting Principal, rounds up the kids for an assembly with the news that she's about to introduce some visitors to the community. In Yolngu Matha, she introduces the members of the intervention team and explains the health checks which will be happening. She points to her eyes, ears and belly. The children listen and nod that they have understood.
In the afternoon, Annie and I wander down the main drag and come across some boys playing basketball; some adults playing cards and some kids playing at the lake. We recognize several faces from the fete and it's not long before I have a merry gang of mates! The kids are incredibly inquisitive and affectionate and fire off several questions to us before discovering that we have a camera! It's a definite novelty.
After a long day we decide to turn in for an early night.
See: ABC News
Women back federal action
The Australian | 24 November 2007
Women in remote Aboriginal communities in central Australia are gaining confidence and speaking out for their communities after becoming frustrated with indigenous representatives they see as urban Aborigines who do not understand their needs.
The impetus is coming from those who feel they are being misrepresented over the federal Government's intervention.
Helen Kantawarra, from Hermannsburg, 120km west of Alice Springs, told The Weekend Australian: "I think the main reason for us to speak out is because others are speaking on behalf of our people. Those people don't have a clue about community life.
"You get all these people getting up on television -- they've got no idea. They live in big flash houses and have big pay packets. They don't know about the struggles we've got here, even before the intervention."
Ms Kantawarra supports the aims of the Government's intervention in Aboriginal communities, but feels its implementation has been flawed.
"There was no consultation," she said. "It's not about kids any more -- it's about jobs.
"The women are saying they want their voices to be heard. We've been asking for better health. Long before the intervention came along we've been asking. We do need big changes to happen, especially on alcohol. We do need our kids to go to school, but it's the way they come about doing it."
Two weeks ago, this feeling of discontent spilled over at a rally in Alice Springs, drawing women from remote communities, who bristled with frustration about urban Aboriginal organisations that were mainly absent from the gathering.
Warlpiri woman Bess Price told The Weekend Australian yesterday that the views of remote community members on the intervention were being misrepresented by "people the media recognises as leaders speaking for us".
"They're not our leaders -- they don't live in the communities," Ms Price said. "They haven't bothered to go out to the communities, actually sit down in a community and help people.
"The people in communities, they live the life that has caused this intervention to happen."
Ms Price pointed to a recent debate on the ABC television program Difference of Opinion, in which intervention taskforce chairwoman Sue Gordon criticised her fellow panellists, Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commissioner Tom Calma, Combined Aboriginal Organisations of the Northern Territory co-ordinator Olga Havnen and Lowitja O'Donoghue, for being absent from communities. The criticism went unanswered.
The genie was let out of the bottle when Northern Territory Community Services Minister Marion Scrymgour let loose on the intervention in a speech in Sydney, contradicting the Territory Government's official position of support. Ms Scrymgour's comments that the intervention was a "vicious new McCarthyism" prompted her Aboriginal colleague in the Territory parliament, Alison Anderson, to condemn her speech as the words of an urban Aborigine who did not know what life was like in the communities that were being taken over.
Ms Anderson -- who supports the federal intervention and wants remote communities, such as Papunya where she grew up, to grasp the opportunity for help being offered by the intervention program -- was later attacked for opening up a running sore in the Labor Party in the Territory.
See: The Australian
Intervention 'putting women, children at risk'
ABC News | 23 November 2007
An Aboriginal community health service near Alice Springs says new alcohol restrictions are making women and children feel less safe than they did before the Commonwealth intervention in the Northern Territory.
The Amoonguna health service says a ban on alcohol in communities under the intervention has forced people to drink outside the fence.
Manager Dave Evans says people were safer when they were allowed to drink in their own homes.
"Women are concerned about being abused and raped if they get drunk and go to sleep," he said.
"There's children being taken to those places. If their parents are getting drunk, who is looking after the children?
"Those children are now at greater risk than ever because they're not at home in their yard, they can't go to their bedroom and the parents are there specifically to drink alcohol."
See: ABC News
Still not sorry!?
Online Opinion | 22 November 2007
Two hundred years after the "change of sovereignty" of 1788, the "law of the land" in the whole area of reconciliation between the new dominant "settled" society and the old immemorial system of communal land ownership of the indigenous peoples of Australia was legally laid down by the High Court in the Mabo case (1992).
The Mabo reforms were trenchantly opposed then and are still being opposed now. The opponents of the reforms mistakenly claim that they unjustifiably arose from guilt and shame over our colonial history.
Indeed we are sorry for the mistaken application of the common law in the past and the policies of "shame" in our colonial history. However, those of us involved were motivated by a sense of the rule of law and of justice. We are not the ones who see black armbands all around us. We saw Australia's first people at last legally empowered to become visible, respected and equal citizens with legal recognition of their laws and customs, the gradual re-establishment of self-government and legal recognition of their communal ownership of traditional lands whereever these communities still existed and their native title had not been extinguished. Since the Mabo case, this is the position upheld by the common law and by statutes of every government in the nation.
But it is necessary to be vigilant to ensure that the law laid down in 1992 in the Mabo case is entrenched in Australia. This political policy is still openly rejected by the Howard federal government in favour of the enforced application of the discredited past policy of assimilation. This is the old colonial policy of genocide writ in modern form and known to the United Nations nowadays as ethnocide.
We must remember that the past can happen again since those who either do not know or are not sorry for their history are wont to repeat it - as is now illustrated by the federal government's colonial style take-over of Aboriginal land in the Northern Territory. An early Tasmanian Judge, referring to the fate of Aboriginal peoples being forcibly removed from their lands and way of life to a Mission Island, said "They will all die from broken hearts". And indeed they did. On August 21 this year, Irene Fisher, chief executive of Sunrise Health, referring to the increase of deaths in NT indigenous communities since the federal take-over, said "To me it is almost like some are dying of broken hearts". Quite so .
This is a medical syndrome not often seen and identified today, as it is the result of enforced social denial and destruction - it has happened to indigenous and other displaced peoples throughout the world. It is happening here again because of the Howard government's renewed denial of the local law of the land and its refusal to uphold human rights and international law in this area.
Last September, Australia and the other former British-settled colonies of Canada, New Zealand, and the United States of America refused to accept the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of the Indigenous Peoples; a statement opposed by no other country, but voted against by these four nations. This decision was publicly justified by the Howard government because of a spurious legal furphy concerning "sovereignty".
A return to colonial practices
Australia is now returning to forcible dispossession; denial of rights to control entry onto one's own land; removal of the rights to negotiate with resource developers concerning terms and conditions both of explorations and of proposed developments on one's own lands; the threat of the removal of victimised children instead of the alleged criminals and other abandoned and discredited policies of the colonial era.
That history lingered so long that those who claim they are not sorry because they did not do these things need to be reminded of just how recent the struggles were, to have repealed and changed the laws that still made possible, up to the 1980's, the practices leading to "the stolen children" generations. Reform was opposed both then and now by many of the same people who still adamantly remain opposed to a national declaration of reconciliation that includes being sorry for the mistakes of our past history.
Australia's rejection of the internationally recognised human rights of indigenous peoples is consistent with the policies of the Howard government, but it was done in all our names and on our behalf. Surely a majority of Australians no longer support the long history of by-gone colonial policies that led either to outright genocide or to ethnical oblivion through assimilation into the dominant society. Nowadays, the guiding principle of international policy is to preserve the way of life of the indigenous and nomadic peoples of the earth as long as they wish.
Do not mistake my purpose here. I am of course in favour of all the knowledgeable assistance that can be provided to endangered indigenous communities. I am pointing out that the methods enforced here are based on lack of understanding of the nature of native title in Australia - and so they are inappropriate and unlikely to succeed. Moreover, it seems that there may be a further purpose for there is no apparent justifiable reason to weaken or take-over native title as has been done.
Different property relationships with a society's land were at the heart of the Mabo case. Mabo recognised both the legal existence and the ability to co-exist of Australia's three systems of land tenure. Where native title has survived, it is a communal ownership vested in the Aboriginal community and its members as a whole. It is similar to that of the Meriam people, the Torres Strait Islanders who own Mer Island - the famous Mabo case island. Both these forms of land tenure are quite unlike the individual ownership of our dominant society. These differences must be understood so that muddling of the systems, however well-intentioned, with probable catastrophic consequences, can be avoided.
The Mabo case was the culmination of an Australia-wide movement that corrected past mistaken legal judgments that the colonisation of Australia had been of an empty land owned by no-one - known as a terra nullius in Roman law. Mabo came about because of a sense of justice as well as respect for the rule of law.
The opposition of the Howard government to these policies has now taken a dramatic form with recent take-over of the lands of traditional and native title communities in the Northern Territory - a move executed without consultation, consent, or charm - and as in the past, the army, public service, and police were the instruments used. This is a return to the failed colonial methodologies of our past, underpinned by enormous ignorance and misunderstanding, together with a "we know better than you" mind-set that ensures new failures.
Nothing epitomises this better than the enforced racially discriminatory policy of quarantining individually paid unemployment benefits to be controlled as they were in the past by white managers of the reserve system - of course this results in the trap of powerless "welfare dependency" (just as it was always designed to do).
The misunderstanding of the nature of the traditional communal system of native title is stark. Because of the nature of native title, individual payments made within a communal system of land tenure are a contradiction.
Instead, this thinking should be turned full circle from colonial times to today's world. The community council should receive a proportion of each of these payments as income for the community as a whole to manage for the benefit of the community and its members. Unfortunately, the Howard government has taken a backward step here. Because it rejects the policy of enabling self-government to be exercised by surviving indigenous communities living on their own traditional lands, it has chosen to repeat the past.
Of course, living together but separately, requires the observance of basic minimum standards set by the dominant community. Our system fails young Aboriginal and other children when it does not enforce: the Australia-wide minimum age for marriage; the crime of sexual abuse of children; the obligation to attend school; bans on alcohol, and other similar offences within any community subject to counter-pressures from older members as well as outsiders. The old policies arose from greed for the land, racial discrimination, ignorance, a mistaken Darwinism, and 'born to rule' and 'might is right' attitudes. What is the reason now?
Uranium
The Howard government policy towards the mining of all resources, particularly uranium, is that it is an urgent necessity to be brought about as quickly as possible while the demand lasts. So policy is being enacted to enable the decreased controls over environmental assessments of mining proposals.
A constant criticism by resource interests of Aboriginal land ownership is the restriction on resource companies towards access to native title lands and the requirement that they negotiate exploration rights and conditions for any proposed developments with native title owning communities - a lengthy process that is part of the gradual re-empowerment of indigenous peoples in Australia.
The take-over of Aboriginal lands in the Northern Territory by the Howard government supposedly remedies seriously dysfunctional criminal behaviour towards children within their communities. Yet there has been no employment of resident female workers who could share with female elders the need for through-the-night watches inside houses with children at risk; no building of compulsory over-night hostels for males seen at risk of causing harm. The methods adopted have been those of the colonial past, not today's empowering Aboriginal communities who still own their traditional lands.
Why has this emergency action necessitated the apparently unrelated serious weakening of indigenous land ownership? The measures have included the potentially disastrous removal of permits for entry on to Aboriginal lands and the freezing of all land applications under the National Native Title Act, both extremely harmful for the self-preservation of the communities concerned.
Why have the federal acquisitions of Aboriginal lands without the "just terms" required by the Constitution (a case already seeks to have this found unconstitutional) been accompanied by the suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act, and the weakening, if not the removal, of the traditional communities' rights to negotiate with resource companies on proposals for exploration and development. ALP amendments opposing these provisions were rejected.
Moreover, there is to be a replacement of the existing standards and safeguards of the mining of uranium by new proposals being developed by the Howard Government's "high-level uranium advisory group". Doesn't this indicate an agenda directed to the facilitation of an urgent rush to large-scale mining of uranium both for export and for use in a possible new nuclear industry to be set up in Australia under the pretext of it being a "clean" energy source?
Maintaining Our Souls
Captain Cook had disobeyed his Royal Instructions: "If he found the land inhabited", he was ordered to "take possession of suitable sites ... with the consent of the natives". Yet consent has still not been formally negotiated. To me, this failure to seek consent represents "unfinished constitutional business" for all of us; and the reconciliation process is needed to formalise the legal foundation of the international nation-state of Australia. By re-taking control of the Aboriginal lands in the Northern Territory in this way, the Howard government in their hearts is still not obeying those long-ago orders because it is refusing to acknowledge the continuation of the land ownership "since time immemorial" of the Aboriginal peoples of Australia. There are indeed proper reasons for help to be given and there are proper ways to do it. A land take-over that seems to be part of other agendas being pursued at the same time is not a proper way for us to "maintain our souls".
See: Online Opinion
Greens vow to push Indigenous rights
SBS News | 22 November 2007
The Australian Greens say the major parties are not doing enough to address the disadvantages faced by Indigenous Australian.
Greens leader Bob Brown says the Howard Government has "turned its back" on Indigenous people, while the Labor party has "rubber-stamped" policy like the Northern Territory intervention.
The senator has criticised the intervention for its lack of consultation with Indigenous communities.
Intervention 'a bad look'
"Governments moving in - they did not even discuss it with the Parliament - in they went, and they led off with the army going in," Mr Brown told SBS's Living Black earlier this month.
"It was just a bad look, it was a bad strategy, and it was rude."
The Federal government announced its intervention plan earlier this year to address the problem of child sexual abuse in remote communities.
Communities seized
As part of the intervention, the government seized control of 73 Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory, and introduced sweeping bans on alcohol and pornography.
The federal government also made changes to the permit system, which controlled the entry of non-Indigenous people onto Aboriginal lands.
Mr Brown says despite the intervention, the federal government has done little to address Indigenous issues.
".It needs readjusting by the next government to make sure AboriginaL communities are not only taken into account but have the say in how we get the restructuring, the money put into all the things that need to be done to make up for the lost 11 years when the Howard Government turned its back on Indigenous people in Australia," Mr Brown says.
Apologies to Stolen Generation
Apart from revise the intervention, the senator says the Greens would apologize to the Stolen Generation for their forced removal.
Mr Brown says the move is symbolically important.
"I think it is important because it says we recognise... the enormous destructive impact that there has been on first Australians right across this country since
1788."
'Celebrating first Australians'
Mr Brown says if the Greens win the balance of power in the Senate they will stand up for Indigenous people.
"The Greens will be in there - whether it is Labor or the next coalition government - pushing them to do what they ought to have been doing for decades in terms of health, education, housing, and empowerment of Indigenous people."
'It is up to us as legislators and as people who are representing Australians to make sure not only that that gap is closed, but we really work to get better outcomes and we get parity, at least, for Indigenous Australians on our way to celebrating Indigenous Australians as the first Australians and the people who so much describe what we Australians are.
See: SBS News
Jailed soldier raises intervention screening questions
ABC News | 23 November 2007
Questions have been raised about the screening of workers involved in the Commonwealth's intervention in the Northern Territory.
It follows the court appearance of a soldier who has been found guilty of assaulting his young son.
In the early stages of the Commonwealth's intervention, a Norforce soldier was deployed to Central Australia despite facing charges of aggravated assault against his 4-year-old son.
In 2005 the then-25-year-old hit his son across the ear so hard it bled inside and out.
In sentencing him to two months jail fully suspended, Magistrate Melanie Little told the court that she had argued for those working in services to the community to be screened, and that a bare minimum would involve criminal history checks.
The Defence Department has denied the soldier was part of the intervention, but in Daly River today the soldier's partner told the ABC he was.
That was also confirmed by a Norforce soldier who said he served in Alice Springs with the man.
See: ABC News
Public servant: We lack capacity to protect children
ABC News | 21 November 2007
A senior public servant has told a coronial inquest in the Kimberley that his department lacks the capacity to respond to welfare concerns about children in Fitzroy Crossing.
The inquest also heard that 40 per cent of the town's children are failing to attend school.
Acting executive director with the Department for Child Protection, John Hancock, was giving evidence at the inquest into a number of Aboriginal deaths, most of them suicides at Kimberley communities.
Mr Hancock told the court that he had deep concerns about the "overwhelming prevalence" in the Kimberley of alcohol and drug-affected parents leaving their children with family members who may be unsuited to the task.
Under cross-examination, Mr Hancock agreed with lawyer John Hammond that children were still at risk in Fitzroy Crossing, due to a lack of resources in his department.
After the inquest, a spokeswoman from the department told the ABC that the department was able to provide a protective response when cases were referred to it, but that it did not have the capacity to address generalised welfare concerns about children in Fitzroy Crossing.
See: ABC News
NT Intervention - the Wedge that Couldn't
New Matilda | 21 November 2007
Aboriginal communities in Central Australia are the latest to be hit by the scrapping of Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) as part of the Northern Territory Intervention. In Hermmansburg, 180 kilometres west of Alice Springs, the transition is not going smoothly.
A group of men working as rangers around Hermmansburg have not been paid since their program lost CDEP funding on 26 October - the same day they received a Northern Territory Landcare award for their work.
The Tjuwanpa Rangers were told they would have to sign up for the dole and register for 'transitional activities' to continue receiving payments. But more than three weeks later many of the 37 men have still not received a cent since their last CDEP money came through on 29 October.
The co-ordinators of the program, the Central Land Council (CLC), say this problem is just the latest in the ill-managed rollout of the NT Intervention.
'We're finding it very hard to get straight information,' says David Ross, Director of the CLC. 'All that the Government tells us is that CDEP will be cut - in some places it's already been cut - and that they were not ready to go with a replacement [at the time they cancelled it].
'This is a lovely how-do-you-do, when [the Tjuwanpa Rangers] won a merit award four weeks ago,' says Ross.
CDEP has always been a double-edged solution in Aboriginal communities. In some, the projects are a source of pride and well-earned income; in others, they're little more than a glorified work-for-the-dole scheme or money-saving measure by governments wanting to skimp on wages.
Participants in the CDEP get a base wage and then 'top ups' for extra hours worked. In many communities the garbage collectors, road workers, and even teachers' aides are CDEP participants, despite working full time in what are otherwise regular jobs.
As the Intervention rolls out across the Northern Territory, only around a quarter of CDEP participants are expected to be placed in so-called 'real jobs.' The others will remain on welfare and be expected to undertake 30 hours of work for the dole and apply for two jobs each week or risk being 'breached' and their payments reduced or stopped altogether.
But as people right across the Northern Territory are now asking: What jobs? There are only so many times you can ask the store owner if he has any work going.
In Hermmansburg, the manager of the community supermarket, Charlie Fletcher, expects he'll be signing a lot of dole forms. 'Even if 100 people want to work, there are just not 100 paid positions available,' says Fletcher, who has seven full-time staff on the books.
Fletcher acknowledges that there are huge problems with employment in Aboriginal communities, but after 12 years running the supermarket at Hermmansburg, he says CDEP was often not working.
'I was surprised, to tell the truth, when CDEP started to be axed, about the degree of attachment that people had to it,' he says.
'I think it was perhaps a good scheme, but badly supervised [in some places]. The problem with these places is it's hard to recruit people to [supervisor's positions]. The wages aren't that great, and not everyone is suited to this kind of life. I don't think people realise how hard it is to get good people out here.'
Will Dobbie, co-ordinator of the Tjuwanpa Rangers, is certainly a strong factor behind the success of the Program. He's modest about his achievements but the enthusiasm of the Rangers is proof of the good work he has been able to do in obviously difficult circumstances.
Dobbie's main concern now is that he doesn't have the means or the equipment to meaningfully engage 37 men for the 30 hours a week required for them to keep receiving payments. He points to the sole four-wheel drive vehicle that the Program utilises as a way of illustrating his point.
'I feel responsible,' he says. Morale was low when I spoke to some of the Rangers last week.
'We don't intend employing people in some half-arsed arrangement where people aren't paid properly,' says David Ross. 'We need proper funding to get people employed. If that's what the Commonwealth Government really wants to do, we're happy to do it, but they need to fund it properly. We need proper equipment for them to get out and do their work.'
Ross says the CLC has applied for Federal funding to create up to 75 new full-time positions over the next five years.
But it's unclear what role the CLC will play under the new system, given that the Government-contracted Job Network Providers are the bodies responsible for work-for-the-dole programs. Is this a move to lessen the CLC's influence? Ross says he's not worried.
'I really think the Australian people have woken up to what's happened in the last three years, and will never ever give one Party control of both Houses of Parliament [again],' he says.
'I would hope that they're going to vote the right way and make sure that there's some democratic process that takes place within the Senate, rather than the rubbish that we've seen for the last three years - having things rammed down people's necks because someone thought it was a good idea.'
In the last days before the election, Indigenous advocacy groups across the country appear to be taking it easy on the ALP when it comes to the Intervention - the Coalition's wedge-that-couldn't. There seems to be a 'vote now, ask questions later' attitude among those working on the ground.
Apart from bringing back the permit system for remote communities, retaining and reforming CDEP is the only change Labor has said they will make to the Coalition's Intervention package.
But very few people have been wiling or able to extract details from Labor on exactly how they will reform the program. For those we'll have to wait until after Saturday.
See: New Matilda
Book sent to department to match Brough's policy
Sydney Morning Herald | 22 November 2007
A senior fellow at a prominent liberal think tank sent a draft of her controversial book about indigenous policy to the Federal Government three months before its publication because she wanted to "ensure that it is supportive of what [Minister for Indigenous Affairs Mal] Brough is trying to do".
Professor Helen Hughes, AO, is a senior fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies, which describes itself as "Australasia's leading independent policy think tank" and "politically non-aligned".
Correspondence obtained by the Herald shows she wrote to Wayne Gibbons, the nation's most senior indigenous affairs official, on February 20, saying: "I have been defending the Commonwealth Government's indigenous agenda as the first ever to treat Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders as Australians.
"I have given the draft of the book dealing with this theme in the 'homelands' to Alexis Frazer for comment by your department before it is published as I want to ensure that it is supportive of what Mr Brough is trying to do. I think that the book will attract favourable attention to Commonwealth policies."
Mr Gibbons is the head of the Office of Indigenous Policy Co-ordination, which oversees indigenous policy across all federal government departments.
Professor Hughes's book, Lands of Shame, was published by the centre in May. In its final chapter, it calls for the closure of small indigenous communities in the Northern Territory, a health audit of all children, the appointment of administrators, private home ownership, and the abolition of communal title, customary law, the permit system and Community Development Employment Projects.
Several commentators have pointed out the similarities between its recommendations and the Government's emergency measures in the Northern Territory - although the February letter is the first evidence of a link between Professor Hughes and the Government's indigenous policy.
Dr David Scrimgeour, a lecturer in public health at the University of Adelaide, told the Public Health Association of Australia conference in September that "most of the recommendations . have been implemented by the Commonwealth Government in the Northern Territory . despite the fact that the recommendations are not based on evidence, but on a neo-liberal ideology".
Professor Hughes is a former professor of economics and director of the National Centre for Development Studies at the Australian National University. She has worked for the World Bank and was a member of the United Nations Committee for Development Planning.
She said the book draft was private and not yet a centre publication in February, and had gone through about five drafts without Government input. "What I really wanted was comment to ensure I had made no mistakes. I sent it out widely. I wanted to be supportive of what Mr Brough was trying to do but that doesn't mean we agree on everything."
Mr Brough said ideas for the intervention came from talks with women or communities in the Territory. He said he had not read Professor Hughes's book but had met her since the intervention.
See: Sydney Morning Herald
A natural Labor man - but he's not
The Age | 22 November 2007
Born to migrant parents in Melbourne's working class northern suburbs. Progressive rather than radical in his politics, bright enough to study medicine at Monash. Concerned, he says, about workers' rights, public health and education services.
Richard Di Natale might once have seemed a natural fit for the Labor Party. Instead, the North Melbourne doctor is again running for the Senate in Victoria as a Green.
It says as much about where Labor now stands in the political spectrum as it does about the Greens' positioning as the "third way" in Australian politics.
The ALP is now a party whose leader proudly wears the tag "conservative" on matters economic. The Greens, meanwhile, are anxious to demonstrate they are more than a one-issue party - a stigma Dr Di Natale concedes still afflicts them - capable of crafting electorally acceptable progressive policies on a range of issues.
On most reckonings, as the Greens' No. 1 candidate in Victoria, Dr Di Natale is likely destined for Parliament. Roy Morgan figures have the Greens winning about 10.5% of the Senate vote in Victoria, and a favourable preference deal with Labor should be enough to secure Dr Di Natale the sixth Senate slot.
It isn't his first tilt at public office.
Twice, he has narrowly missed winning the lower house seat of Melbourne in the Victorian Parliament, going within 1000-odd votes in 2002 and 2006. He ran second to John So in the 2004 lord mayoral race and contested the Senate in 2004.
But even if, come Saturday - or likely a couple of weeks later as the tortuous process of distributing Senate preferences is completed - Dr Di Natale finds himself a senator for Victoria, has he, by dint of his choice of party, consigned himself to a frustrated political existence outside the tent peering in, rather than inside, where the power resides?
"That's a question most of us who join a minor party grapple with," he says, sitting in a cafe around the corner from the Greens' grungy city headquarters.
"It was a question I thought really long and hard about. Because I am from a background - a working-class migrant family from the suburbs - where you'd expect I would tend to move towards the Labor Party."
Dr Di Natale says he chose the Greens because they spoke about issues he believed in. "I felt if I had have joined the Labor Party I would have to compromise my principles far too much. You just have to look at what's happening with Peter Garrett at the moment. He's somebody who's wrestling with that very dilemma . we're seeing a man whose heart says one thing, and his party says another, and he's looking increasingly diminished each day.
"I wanted to be able to speak freely about the things I believe in."
A doctor like Greens leader Bob Brown, medicine - rural and remote health in particular - came first for Dr Di Natale. Politics came only after a stint working for Aboriginal community health organisations in Carnarvon and Tennant Creek.
Seeing "Third World" diseases of overcrowding such as rheumatic heart conditions and scabies, and others born of poor education and diet, such as diabetes, pushed him from practice towards policy.
"It was the main thing that got me politicised. There was a whole lot of systemic, structural things that needed to change . and I remember feeling powerless to do something about it."
He remains critical of the Coalition Government's "politically motivated" intervention into indigenous communities in the Northern Territory.
"If you were really serious about it, you'd boost existing infrastructure, you wouldn't use the military, you wouldn't fly in a few doctors and then leave, which is essentially what they're doing."
Unsurprisingly for a Greens candidate, Dr Di Natale says climate change is the major issue he is confronted with out on the hustings.
He believes the public "is way out ahead" of the major parties on global warming. The big parties are, he says, acting only out of convenience rather than any genuine conviction.
Dr Di Natale says the Greens, if they end up with the balance of power, will push Labor to go further on its WorkChoices rollback, such as restoring the right to strike and of unions to enter workplaces, and abolishing immediately the building commission.
He believes the times suit the Greens, with climate change now a mainstream issue, and the ALP and Coalition indistinguishable on so many policy fronts.
See: The Age
Potent marijuana blamed for remote youth suicides
The Australian | 21 November 2007
Highly potent marijuana is being blamed for youth suicides and psychotic episodes in a remote central Australian community, which is struggling to cope with increasing levels of drug use over the past 12 months.
The head of the internationally-recognised substance abuse program at Mt Theo outstation, Susie Low, said the level of marijuana use in her community of Yuendumu was rising.
She said the Government's intervention, launched on June 21, had increased uncertainty among at-risk youth in the community and was contributing to increasing substance abuse problems.
This had led to an upswing in psychotic episodes and suicides.
"In two out of the last three (suicides), the young men were under the influence of alcohol and marijuana," she said.
"That's in the last eight months.
"It's more the older teenagers. We've had some psychotic episodes, quite severe ones."
The most recent psychotic episode in the town of about 1000 people ended with the youth being committed to a mental health ward in Alice Springs.
"It was quite a severe case of marijuana-induced psychosis. I think it's the type of marijuana. If they're really giving it a nudge, there's the potential for self-harm," Ms Lowsaid.
Her anecdotal concerns support the findings of two reports on marijuana use in the Territory, the most recent of which said 60 per cent of people in some Arnhem Land communities were cannabis users.
The survey of 240 people, conducted by researchers from Sydney and James Cook universities, discovered the high levels of use, which were described in the report as akin to eating snack food.
"If there is a bowl of ganja on the table, people will just smoke it from morning to night until it's gone," one community leader interviewed for the report said.
A report by the Territory parliament's select committee on substance abuse also found cannabis use had become widespread.
Ms Low said central Australia usually lagged behind the Top End in substance abuse problems, but she could see the use of marijuana growing.
Yuendumu is 290km northwest of Alice Springs and Mt Theo outstation is a further 150km north. There, young people with substance abuse problems are rehabilitated well away from the source of the addictions.
But as a further measure, Mt Theo's Jarupirrjirrdi (strong voices) program in Yuendumu has opened up a mechanical workshop to give young people real training, including offering apprenticeships to the most promising workers.
Ms Low said highly at-risk young people needed a path to a new life after they had overcome addiction.
"After the young people stopped petrol sniffing, they asked what's next," she said.
The first batch of young men began work two weeks ago. Jamie Nelson, 18, said he was happy to work nine hours a day in the workshop instead of "flopping" at home.
The workshop is being run by diesel mechanic Peter Malden, who gave up a lucrative mining job in Western Australia to work in the community.
"Most of these guys will jump at it if you're offering real training," he said.
See: The Australian
Grog refugees moving south
ABC News | 20 November 2007
The organisation representing the Indigenous people of Coober Pedy in South Australia says it's struggling to provide accommodation for hundreds of migrants from Central Australia.
It follows last week's comments from the Mayor of Coober Pedy Steve Baines that about 300 people from the Alice Springs area have moved to the town to escape alcohol restrictions in Central Australia.
The Umoona Community Council figures show that its mobile assisted patrol service saw close to 1,400 people in September, 838 more than in September last year.
The council says it's struggling to find temporary housing for the new arrivals and wants governments to provide more funding.
See: ABC News
Marijuana 'like chips' in Arnhem Land
ABC News | 20 November 2007
A new study has found extremely high rates of marijuana use in Arnhem Land.
Researchers from James Cook University in Cairns and the University of Sydney surveyed over 240 people in three communities.
One of the authors Kylie Lee says almost 60 percent of people surveyed smoked marijuana, compared with less than 20 percent of the general population.
Ms Lee also says those who smoke, smoke heavily.
"Users smoke using bucket bongs so they are getting the full hit of the drug as well. And they are smoking more than seven cones per occasion," she said.
"One quote from a leader that spoke to me will always stick in my head. He said, if there is a bowl of ganja on the table people will just smoke it from morning to night until it's gone. So he almost likened it to food - like you have a bowl of chips on the table and it just goes."
See: ABC News
Haase against extending takeaway alcohol ban
ABC News | 20 November 2007
The Liberal contender for the Western Australian seat of Kalgoorlie, Barry Haase, say he is opposed to a ban on takeaway alcohol being extended to other towns in his electorate.
Mr Haase has been visiting Fitzroy Crossing, in the Kimberley, where only light beer is sold from the town's bottle shop.
Indigenous leaders have called for similar restrictions in Broome to curb alcohol abuse and an influx of heavy drinkers from Fitzroy.
Mr Haase says while alcohol-related crime has fallen in Fitzroy, many residents are irate about being disadvantaged.
"Making special laws for special areas is something of a nonsense. I very strongly believe that we are one nation, one people and we should have one law enforced without fear or favour by an effective police force that is resourced satisfactorily so as it can maintain law and order," he said.
Labor's candidate for Kalgoorlie, Sharon Thiel, has been contacted for comment.
See: ABC News
Will to win
ABC News | 20 November 2007
I've not known any other period in my adult life where so much constructive dialogue on Indigenous issues has been entered into by leaders of government and the opposition even weeks out from a federal election.
The reason I'm excited about these developments is because our discrete cultural group, Indigenous Australians, is generally not viewed by either party has a big ticket item at election time.
If we are mentioned at all it is raised principally as negative rhetoric when politicians, bereft of original thought, insist on playing the tried and tested 'race card' to draw attention away from shortcomings of their term in office.
The playing of the race card was a successful ploy for Pauline Hanson's One Nation party in both federal and state government election campaigns of the '90s (especially in Queensland) and indeed have been used effectively by the Coalition and more judiciously by Labor when convenient.
In his address to The Sydney Institute on October 11 on the aptly titled paper "The Right Time: Constitutional Recognition for Indigenous Australians", John Howard referred to a new alignment of ideas and individuals; a coming together of forces I have not witnessed in 32 years of public life.
Howard said a major catalyst for the new alignment is the rise of the Indigenous responsibility agenda and the intellectual firepower which a new generation of Indigenous leaders has brought to Australian politics.
New generation
I guess in many ways he is stating the obvious.
Australians of all political persuasions have heard the divergence of opinion through the media from the Indigenous right; NIC Chairperson Sue Gordon, former Labor Party President Warren Mundine and Cape York Institute Director Noel Pearson and the Indigenous left; UTS Professor Larissa Behrendt, Queensland author Sam Watson and Tasmanian lawyer Michael Mansell.
And in between our warring factions of both extremes we have a luminary of Indigenous blue and white collar professionals occupying middle ground on the Indigenous debate and who are equally keen to have their voices heard; if not publicly, then certainly within their circle of associates.
In addition we are also blessed with a luxury of riches in our ever-increasing critical mass of Indigenous university educated affiliates who are eager to share their new outlook on the bigger picture for our people.
In many ways their views may be dissimilar to those of the old school Indigenous right's advocates, but nevertheless their views are equally as important in shaping our future.
Gone forever are the days when we were viewed, without complaint, as homogenous and where our fight was from a position of disadvantage and our supporters were from the socialist left.
By far the biggest surprise from the Prime Minister in his address was his admission that: "I have never felt comfortable with the dominant paradigm for Indigenous policy - one based on the shame and guilt of non-Indigenous Australians, on a repudiation of the Australia I grew up in, on a rights agenda that led ultimately and inexorably towards welfare dependency and on a philosophy of separateness rather than shared destiny".
Statement of Reconciliation
To rectify his shortcomings and admission of guilt for his decades of deliberate abandonment of Indigenous people, Howard offered up before an adoring audience of like-minded conservatives his new goal of a Statement of Reconciliation incorporated into the Preamble of the Australian Constitution.
The new preamble, Howard argued, would reflect his profound sentiment that Indigenous Australians should enjoy the full bounty that this country has to offer; that their economic, social and cultural well-being should be comparable to that of other Australians.
Now, no one would argue with parity of economic, social and cultural well-being for Indigenous Australians espoused by the Prime Minister.
But in order to have this vision accomplished within practical time parameters requires not only a full commitment from him but also a total change in attitude of the vast majority of the populace on this new policy direction for Indigenous Australians.
Howard's election promise of $2 billion for the Northern Territory Indigenous intervention is significantly higher than Rudd's commitment on Indigenous initiatives thus far of $116 million. However Rudd did offer bipartisan support of the $2 billion for the NT intervention policy initiatives.
Howard rounds off his address to The Sydney Institute by saying he is a realist and true reconciliation will be the work of generations. Reconciliation at best, he argues, is, and must be, a people's movement.
Policy advice
I have no doubt that Howard is correct of his final assessment on reconciliation, but it's a pity that he has different views on what matters most to Indigenous Australians when it comes to policy direction and how that advice is achieved.
To this end Rudd has the wood on Howard, as he is on record as saying he will establish a new Indigenous representative body to advise his government on policy direction.
Prime Minister John Howard concludes his paper with a look into the crystal ball at the future and observes that for the first time in a long time, he can see the outline of a new settlement for Indigenous policy in Australia.
I'm wondering if it is the same crystal ball that Kevin Rudd, the National Indigenous Council, the National Aboriginal Alliance and the Cape York Institute are looking into for inspiration as they strategically position themselves in readiness to shape future policy directions for our people.
Bring on the federal election - I just can't wait!
And a final few words to all the combatants as they line up for the spoils of the election outcome - hold your nerve and always remember the famous saying of US Army General Douglas Macarthur who said, "It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it."
Stephen Hagan is a lecturer in the Centre for Australian Indigenous Knowledges, University of Southern Queensland. This piece was originally published by Online Opinion.
See: ABC News
Labor accused of scare tactics over NT intervention
ABC News | 20 November 2007
A Northern Territory senator has accused local Labor politicians of running a misinformation campaign about the Federal Government's Indigenous intervention in the electorate of Lingiari.
The seat is safe Labor, but Nigel Scullion says it has been very difficult for the Federal Government to campaign because many of the voters are naive and easy to frighten.
He claims one Labor politician told people they could lose their homes.
"A member of the Legislative Assembly here, a Labor Party member, was heard by a number of witnesses to say 'they're also going to be taking your houses away,'" he said.
"Asked how that would possibly happen, they've said 'oh look, when they were built there's provision to get jacks under it and put it on a truck' - they were quite specific."
See: ABC News
NT intervention adviser calls for continued support
ABC News | 20 November 2007
The co-author of a report that sparked the federal intervention in Northern Territory Indigenous communities says commitment must continue for many years whoever becomes the next Prime Minister.
Prominent QC Rex Wild contributed to the 'Little Children are Sacred' report that prompted the Federal Government into action.
He says despite criticism about the the Government's approach it could be said the response has been more than adequate.
Mr Wild says not all of his report's recommendations have been addressed and there should be a review after the election to ensure they are carried out.
"But I think this is a project which successive governments need to keep close to their hearts and before the Australian people for the rest of our collective lives," he said.
As a result, Mr Wild says he would like to talk to Kevin Rudd about the future of the intervention and the need for long-term funding for its success.
He says he wants whoever becomes Prime Minister to be more involved in consulting Aboriginal communities.
"It'd be nice to talk to Mr Rudd actually if he's the Prime Minister. I haven't spoken to Mr Howard, or Mr Brough," he said.
"I have spoken to Jenny Macklin for about two minutes one day. It would be nice to get them involved and discussing these issues."
Meanwhile, the federal Attorney-General has defended his Government's decision to make the intervention legislation exempt from the racial discrimination act.
Philip Ruddock says the issue of abuse is too pressing to have legislation designed to reduce it dragged through the courts.
He says elected members of Parliament are the best ones to decide how the new laws should work.
"Courts aren't elected to do that and our view was that these measures were special they were there to assist Indigenous women and children and therefore we ought not leave the measures hostage to unnecessary legal action," he said.
See: ABC News
Advice sought on sacred site toilet case
ABC News | 20 November 2007
The Aboriginal Areas Protection Authority says it might be next year before a decision is made on whether to prosecute a business that allegedly dug a pit toilet on a Northern Territory sacred site.
Building company NT Link allegedly built the toilet at Numbulwar, about 600 kilometres south-east of Darwin, while bringing buildings to the area for the Federal Government's intervention in Indigenous communities.
Authority head Jeff Stead says all of the parties involved have been written to, and a decision on whether to prosecute will be made after they have had a chance to respond.
He says the authority will get advice on whether building a pit toilet would be considered a desecration of a sacred site.
See: ABC News
Fleeing bans to follow the grog
The Australian | 20 November 2007
So-called "grog refugees" are an unfortunate but largely unavoidable by-product of the federal Government's Northern Territory intervention, says an author of the report that triggered the response.
Rex Wild QC says more community consultation might have stemmed the stream of Aborigines swamping South Australian towns such as Coober Pedy and Ceduna, but some "grog refugees" are inevitable.
"It was foreseen but we don't have one easy answer for things like that," Mr Wild said in Adelaide yesterday. "It's almost an inevitable spinoff of alcohol-changing laws."
Coober Pedy Mayor Steve Baines last week told The Australian that Territory Aborigines were fleeing alcohol restrictions imposed under the federal Government's contentious intervention to stem child abuse in Aboriginal communities.
Mr Baines said transients from Alice Springs were sleeping rough in his town, fighting in the streets and harassing tourists.
He called for state and federal governments' help to bolster local services straining to cope with the social problems thrown up by the 300 visitors.
Ceduna had also reported an influx of itinerants. State Aboriginal Affairs Minister Jay Weatherill confirmed a "dramatic escalation" of transients across the north of the state.
Mr Wild, co-author of the Little Children are Sacred report, maintained some displacement must be expected but said it would be "disappointing if South Australia copped more than its fair share".
See: The Australian
Outpost keeps eyes on the ball
The Australian | 20 November 2007
The most remote large Aboriginal community in the Northern Territory has complained it has been missed by the federal Government's intervention.
Sean Jangala Patrick, 13, has set his sights on playing for the Swans. Picture: James Croucher
Lajamanu, 600km to the west of Katherine and 900km to the northwest of Alice Springs, is yet to receive child health checks and could be one of the last of the 73 targeted communities to be subject to welfare quarantines.
"We may be left behind," said local council member Steve Japananga Dixon.
Mr Dixon said the community's most important focus was to get health checks for its children, but no commonwealth medical teams had shown up yet.
Located at the northern-most edge of central Australia, the town of 1200 was passed by as the intervention taskforce changed its focus from central Australia to concentrate on Top End communities before the beginning of the wet season.
In the meantime, the community is waiting to find out what will happen when the focus does come back on to it.
Council president Peter Jangala Jigili said he was confused about what the intervention would mean for his community.
"We don't know what that word (intervention) means, we're still scratching our heads," he said.
While the federal Government's business manager has recently arrived in the community, the residents have decided to go it alone and develop programs for their young.
"We're trying to keep our young people from going out chasing grog," Mr Jigili said.
The town is doing that through football and culture. Early last week, it was football that took centre stage as the town's community Australian Rules football competition, which boasts four teams, held a lightning carnival.
Two weeks previously, it was culture that came to the fore with the Milpirri music and dancing festival.
The town boasts many young dancers and musicians, and their involvement in cultural events makes them the envy of other central Australian communities. Council vice-chairman Geoffrey Jungurrayi Barnes said football was important for the town's young men, but for the same reason they got passed by as the intervention swept northwards, so they were missing out on assistance from the Australian Football League to keep playing.
He said the community's teams were often in demand to play at sporting weekends and festivals, but received no help to travel the 1200km round trip to Katherine each weekend to compete in the senior competition.
While Lajamanu's residents might feel like they are missing out, it seems the town is used to looking after itself and being independent. The landscape is well manicured, there is a good shop offering healthy food and homes in the community appear to be relatively well cared for.
Residents are eager to engage with outsiders, which is not often the case in many Aboriginal communities.
The town's most promising young footballer, Sean Jangala Patrick, 13, illustrates the self-confidence that has been engendered in the youth.
Barely out of Grade 9, he has already set his sights on moving to Sydney and playing for the Swans.
See: The Australian
Meet the Territory's top Aussies
The Northern Territory News | 18 November 2007
A Territorian who has dedicated his life to the health profession was named NT Australian of the Year last night.
Professor Jonathan Carapetis was presented the top honour by Chief Minister Clare Martin in a reception at Parliament House.
Mr Carapetis is the director of Menzies School of Health Research and has been involved with the school for more than 10 years.
His research led to the creation of Australia's first rheumatic heart disease control program.
Mr Carapetis was selected from finalists, health researcher Dr Bart Currie, petrol-sniffing campaigner Blair McFarland and Aboriginal artist and teacher Miriam-Rose Ungunmeer-Baumann.
Joy Green is Senior Australian of the Year. She has been a pioneer for mental health services in the NT.
Simone Liddy, 20, was announced as Young Australian of the Year.
Ms Liddy is a trailblazer amongst her peers and is soon to be one of the first Aboriginal graduates in a Bachelor of Pharmacy.
She is also making a name for herself as an athlete and last year became a rookie member of the Territory Pearls in the Australian Hockey League.
Peter Whelan was announced as the Northern Territory's Local Hero.
Mr Whelan, a medical entomologist has become a respected researcher in his field.
He has been working closely with Charles Darwin University and University of Tasmania researchers, experimenting with a new way to control mosquito-borne diseases.
The crowd of 150 was entertained by 14-year-old Yuliana Pascoe, who performed an original song.
Winners will go onto a national final, to be announced on the lawns of Parliament House in Canberra, on the eve of Australia Day.
See: The Northern Territory News
Activists in Sydney march against indigenous intervention
Brisbane Times | 18 November 2007
Aboriginal rights activists have marched through inner Sydney to protest against the federal government's intervention in the Northern Territory.
The federal government introduced restrictions to welfare payments and buying alcohol as part of its national emergency response to child abuse in Northern Territory indigenous communities.
A peaceful group of about 200 indigenous and non-indigenous supporters stopped traffic today on Cleveland Street, Chippendale, about midday as they marched from "The Block" in Redfern to Victoria Park, Camperdown.
A string of speakers told the protesters assembled later to eject the coalition from office at next week's federal election.
They said the intervention, which began six months ago, had brought no new child sexual charges and had failed to address health and housing issues.
Aboriginal rights activist Valerie Martin travelled from Alice Springs to Sydney where she labelled the intervention an "invasion".
"I call it an invasion to our people," Ms Martin told the rally.
"How are we going to expect to support our grandkids coming up? We don't want to go back to the fifties, having rations and all that, this is our land.
"He [John Howard] should come and talk to us instead of making laws behind closed doors."
Ms Martin also said proper consultation had not occurred.
Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation (ANTAR) president Barbara Shaw said it was time for non-indigenous Australians to speak up on behalf of Aborigines to narrow the life expectancy gap.
Ms Shaw urged the audience to sign a petition to end intervention in the territory and reform Australia's native title legislation.
"I hope we are still here in 10 years, but most importantly I hope we have been able to assist in making significant improvements in Aboriginal rights in the country," she said.
A "sea of hands" exhibition to promote unity, now in its 10th year, was also part of today's protest.
See: Brisbane Times
Dope rates among indigenous high and heavy
Sydney Morning Herald | 18 November 2007
About 60 per cent of Aborigines smoke marijuana regularly and most of those get stoned every day, a Northern Territory study shows.
New figures on cannabis rates among indigenous people show a drug use rate far higher than the Australian average, with researchers saying it is "firmly entwined" in the society.
Researchers at James Cook University in Cairns and the University of Sydney surveyed 164 people in Arnhem Land in 2006 and found 61 per cent of men and 58 per cent of women used cannabis at least weekly.
In-depth interviews with 60 users found that 92 per cent of the men and 78 per cent of the women smoke it daily, according to the study published in the Medical Journal of Australia.
Almost 90 per cent appeared to be dependent on the drug, compared with just 20 per cent of dope users generally.
They were also likely to use dope in far greater quantities, smoking an average of seven 'cones' in one session, more than double the Australian average.
"Quantities of cannabis used appear to be higher than in the general population, unemployment among users is higher and violence related to diminished supply is common," the authors wrote.
One indigenous community leader interviewed by the team was quoted saying 'if there's a bowl of it on the table it is smoked until gone, morning to night'.
Some said it could have good effects, calming people down and "preventing them from engaging in criminal behaviour".
However PhD student Kylie Lee and her senior colleagues said local elders were increasingly realising the significant social and mental health impact of the drug.
"Resources are urgently needed for prevention programs and targeted interventions for chronic cannabis users and those with (co-existing) psychiatric problems," she wrote.
"If these patterns of use continue the implications for ... the potential mental health burden is disturbing."
See: Sydney Morning Herald
Howard to withhold welfare from drug offenders
ABC News | 18 November 2007
People convicted of criminal offences involving heroin, cocaine or amphetamines would have welfare payments quarantined under a new scheme announced by Prime Minister John Howard today.
Mr Howard says under the plan, payments would be quarantined for at least a year and the Government would fund extra job training for people with substance abuse problems.
He says it is an extension of the Coalition's zero tolerance approach to drugs.
"It's not right that people should have control of taxpayer money when they have been convicted of such offences," he said.
"This will mean that they will not be able to spend the money on those sorts of drugs, or indeed, for that matter, on alcohol and tobacco."
Mr Howard says the plan would also include extra employment help for people with substance abuse problems.
"This doubling of the entitlement out of the job capacity account will assist them to the pathway of getting back into the work force," he said.
"The other limb of this policy is that a re-elected Coalition government will seek grater consistency of illicit drug laws across the country."
See: ABC News
Abolishing CDEP: Coming soon to a community near you
Crikey | 16 November 2007
The abolition of CDEP (Community Development Employment Projects) is well under way as part of the federal government's Northern Territory Intervention, with 26 communities already working under other arrangements.
Crikey understands 30 communities will have made the move by Christmas. A number of communities face cut-off dates in March, April, and May next year, with the process due to be completed by 30 June, 2008.
In abolishing CDEP the government aims to move people off welfare into jobs and "increase incentives to work by 'normalising' arrangements so that [Indigenous] people have the same incentives as other unemployed people to leave income support and obtain full time work."
But the government's own figures show only one in four will get a job, with as many as 6000 former CDEP recipients moving onto work for the dole, where they will be given:
. better opportunities for training onto income support, with the normal participation requirements including Job Network Services, Structured Training and Employment Projects (STEP) and Work for the Dole.
With CDEP recipients already engaged in some form of work, critics claim the government's rhetoric is misleading, saying that abolishing CDEP is effectively moving people from work to welfare. It's necessary, they say, to achieve two other Intervention goals: quarantining welfare to ensure that it is spent on children, and linking welfare payments to school attendance.
Further, Crikey understands that Centrelink has employed an additional 300 staff at a cost of around $80 million to manage the transition process, and that Treasury is getting increasingly anxious about the across-the-board cost blowouts. Crikey has made numerous requests this week for an interview with Major General David Chalmers, the operational head of the taskforce, but he was "totally booked out".
Harry Scott, CEO of Titjikala, situated 130 kilometres south east of Alice Springs and which transitioned off CDEP on 28 September, says his community has received a "substantial number of properly funded positions that relate to what we were previously filling with CDEP people, which is a positive for us," but local people have struggled with the speed of transition.
"It wasn't really a consultative process," Scott told Crikey. "The government did not sit down and speak to anyone here about it. Indigenous people are being told, 'You're going to have a house and you're going to have a job and you're going to live like us.' Someone explained it to me really well: this policy is if you beat a black fella hard enough a white fella will jump out. It's not that the government has got it wrong. The approach has got to be better."
Will it be any better under Labor? Jenny Macklin's office told Crikey: "We will be reforming CDEP and making it available to the communities that have been affected by the Intervention," but wouldn't offer any further details.
See: Crikey
Govt looks into Alice liquor licence buybacks
ABC News | 15 November 2007
Northern Territory Licensing Minister Chris Burns says the Government is looking at aspects of buying back liquor licences in Alice Springs.
Aboriginal women from remote communities rallied in Alice Springs yesterday for tougher restrictions on alcohol in the town.
One of the suggestions to tackle alcohol abuse was for supermarkets to be stopped from selling alcohol.
Mr Burns would not be drawn on a timetable for licence buybacks, saying his government is taking a step-by-step approach.
"This has been a consultative process, so far we've had the dry town implemented and I think there's been positive aspects of that," he said.
"There have been liquor restrictions already implemented and the next step is actually an ID system, which will preclude those with prohibition orders against them obtaining alcohol."
See: ABC News
Welfare quarantines cannot be dodged, warns Brough
ABC News | 15 November 2007
Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough says people who have left the Northern Territory to live in South Australia will not be able to escape the quarantining of their welfare payments for long.
People in remote Territory Indigenous communities affected by the Commonwealth intervention are being quarantined 50 per cent of welfare payments.
The Mayor of Coober Pedy in SA has reported about 300 people moved to the town six weeks ago, saying they had come from the Alice Springs area.
Mr Brough says welfare reforms will soon be in place beyond the Territory.
"By the time we have had the welfare reform stuff right across the Territory, in other words the quarantining, it won't matter where people go to whether it be the Gold Coast or whether it go to Coober Pedy that welfare quarantining follows them," he said.
"If their children aren't at school it means 100 per cent of that money won't be able to be spent on alcohol."
See: ABC News
Inquest hears man died alone at airstrip despite warnings
ABC Radio: PM | 15 November 2007
MARK COLVIN: A coronial inquest in the Northern Territory town of Katherine has heard that a 78 year old man died alone at a remote community airstrip despite calls for him to be accompanied on a flight home from hospital.
The frail, old man's body was found near the airstrip a week after the plane left him there.
Family members of the dead man say that the practice of allowing sick elderly people from remote communities to travel unescorted has been widespread in the Territory.
Zoie Jones reports.
ZOIE JONES: Coolum Limbunya was a stockman aged in his 30s in 1966 when he took part in the historic Wave Hill walk-off.
Forty years later the respected elder was recovering from pneumonia, with poor eyesight, difficulty walking and the early stages of dementia when he was dropped of at the Kalkaringi airstrip near Wave Hill, after being treated at the Katherine Hospital.
At the coronial hearing today, Kalkaringi health worker Robert Roy told the coroner planes at the airstrip can be heard from the clinic, but on the day last August when Mr Limbunya was dropped off no-one noticed the plane's engines.
Mr Roy also told the court that he didn't check the clinic's fax machine on the day Katherine hospital says a fax was sent alerting the clinic of Mr Limbunya's return home.
The guidelines for transporting remote patients to Darwin or Katherine stipulate that anyone who is frail, aged or chronically ill needs to be escorted on medical evacuation flights. But first the outlying clinic needs to ring the District Medical Officer on duty in Darwin to get approval.
The nurse on duty the night Mr Limbunya first became sick, Brian McNamara, told the inquest via video link up from Launceston that he assumed Mr Limbunya would be granted an escort, and that a family member was standing by to get on the plane.
But the nurse says when he asked the DMO for approval, saying the patient was old and frail, he was told no.
When asked by the lawyer representing the Katherine West Health Board why he didn't challenge the DMO's decision, Mr McNamara said other than being tired from an 18 hour shift, his main concern was getting the elderly man onto the plane and into hospital and that he'd seen many, many patients go to hospital without an escort.
He also said certain patients shouldn't have to get approval for an escort; "Sometimes they should just be allowed", he said.
The District Medical Officer on duty that night was Dr Juliette Buchanan.
She gave evidence via video link from Western Australia and told the inquest "obviously in retrospect the old man should've travelled with an escort, but I didn't know enough information to make that decision".
She also agreed that the age of 78 was unusually old for a man living in a remote Aboriginal community and that obviously anyone who reaches that age would probably have some quite serious health problems.
Speaking outside the inquest, Mr Limbunya's niece Josie Crawshaw-Guy says she knows of a similar case where an old, frail woman with failing eyesight from the community of Boroloola in the Territory's east has been sent to Katherine unaccompanied for medical treatment.
JOSIE CRAWSHAW-GUY: She's at that hostel right now, as we speak, totally blind, very old lady, no escort.
ZOIE JONES: Ms Crawshaw-Guy says it's a widespread practice that elderly patients don't have escorts.
JOSIE CRAWSHAW-GUY: It's the culture that just exists that Aboriginal people just get substandard care, in everything and especially in health care.
ZOIE JONES: Maurie Ryan is also a family member, and was the Kalkaringi community president at the time of Mr Limbunya's death. He's now campaigning as an independent in the Federal Election.
He says not enough has been done to prevent another death.
MAURIE RYAN: If this happened in Sydney there'd be an uproar, there'd be people dismissed, department heads gone. Nothing's happened here.
ZOIE JONES: The Territory Health Department held an investigation shortly after Mr Limbunya's death, and revised its patient transport guidelines.
The coronial inquest holds its final day tomorrow in Katherine.
MARK COLVIN: Zoie Jones.
See: ABC Radio: PM
Damning the Rivers of God
New Matilda | 15 November 2007
'We are suffering. C'mon government, listen to us. We're crying out. Do something, and help us out.'
After a $1.3 billion intervention, you wouldn't think an Aboriginal person from the Central Desert would need to implore the Federal Government to 'do something.' Something has certainly been done, but according to Valerie Martin from Yuendumu, and other Aboriginal leaders who gathered in Alice Springs yesterday, that something is not addressing the Centre's most pressing problem: alcohol abuse.
Groups from across the Central Desert traveled into town yesterday to call on the Government to take their advice, for once, on how to solve a problem that is ruining lives.
The Northern Territory Intervention train may have moved on to its next stop in Darwin, but busloads of mostly older women from remote communities traveled hundreds of kilometres to Alice Springs to call for alcohol law reform. They want one or two 'takeaway-free' days per week and a minimum price for cheaper drinks such as cask wine.
'Our culture's breaking down through all this grog, and we, the women, suffer,' said Martin. 'The grandmothers have been left with all the little kids.'
'Grog-running' from Alice Springs is a significant problem in the town's surrounding dry communities, and the problem has only compounded since alcohol was banned in Town Camps.
'I think it's wrong that they made our camps dry because now our people are just going up the road, out of town,' said Barbara Shaw from the Alice Springs Town Camp Women's Group.
'The alcohol law was supposed to put a stop to child neglect and abuse and also cut back on anti-social behaviour. [But now] they're drunk driving [more often], and having accidents. There's no one there to help them, no police or ambulance to go out into the scrub.'
'If you get caught possessing alcohol in a public area of town, it's only $100 fine,' says Shaw. 'But if you get caught possessing alcohol on a community, town camp or outstation, it's $1000 - and you go to jail. Our people are already poor, how are we going to pay those fines?'
Not everyone at the rally was anti-intervention. Some, such as the women from Hermmansburg, have been vocal in their support. But everyone I spoke to agreed that both Territory and Federal Governments had missed the point on alcohol.
'Enforced prohibition is not a good thing, and we don't think that will actually contribute at all,' says Dr John Boffa from the People's Alcohol Action Coalition, a group that has been working on the issue since 1995. 'Nothing [has been introduced] to reduce supply - it's just stopped people drinking in certain locations, and all that does is shift the problem.'
'Most remote communities were already dry areas - they have been for a long time.'
Boffa says that over the years Alice Springs has already seen major improvements with the introduction of measures such as restricted takeaway trading hours. But he thinks a lot more could be done.
'Everyone's now recognised that the rivers of grog - which is [co-author of the Little Children Are Sacred report] Pat Anderson's term - is a major issue that needs to be dealt with,' says Boffa.
'Well we know there's an evidence-based approach for dealing with that. Now that the focus is on alcohol, I think it's time that governments did what works and what's needed, not necessarily what's popular.'
The Alice Springs rally provided a rare opportunity to hear a wide range of Indigenous views on the NT Intervention in the one place. For an Opposition in fierce election mode, it could have provided an easy dig: the number one recommendation of the Little Children Are Sacred report - consultation - could have been ticked off in an afternoon.
Unfortunately Kevin 07 is busy not mentioning Black people.
Organisers of the rally, the Central Australian Youth Link Up Service, say they invited politicians from across the political spectrum. Only Greens Senator Rachel Siewart turned up.
See: New Matilda
Campaign for grog-free days in Alice
The Australian | 15 November 2007
The matriarchs of Aboriginal society throughout central Australia have demanded further measures to address the scourge of alcohol abuse as they battle to prevent their communities being torn apart.
The most senior women from the region's Aboriginal tribes met in Alice Springs yesterday to issue a call for the sale of takeaway alcohol in the city to be banned two days a week.
The plea follows a crackdown on the sale of alcohol as part of the federal Government's intervention into Northern Territory Aboriginal communities.
Margaret Smith, Ngaanyatjarra-Pitjantjatjara-Yankunytjatjara Women's Council representative for the Territory, told how she had lost two brothers to an alcohol-related car crash. "I'm left with nine kids out of them two brothers," she said.
Janet Inyika, her colleague on the council - which represents women from communities in the tri-border area of South Australia, Western Australia and the Territory - said it was not a myth that the cemeteries in remote communities were filling up with the victims of alcohol abuse.
"Everybody is dying and going into cemeteries from one thing: grog," she said.
For most of central Australia, even communities up to 1000km away, Alice Springs is the nearest centre for shopping and major services.
The city has a rate of alcohol consumption 70 per cent higher than the rest of the country.
Ms Inyika said that children had been abandoned in most remote communities.
"There's nothing those young children would like more than to be with their mothers and fathers, but their mothers and fathers are in Alice Springs, drinking," she said.
Mavis Malbunka, from the community of Hermannsburg, 100km to the west of Alice Springs, said the sale of takeaway alcohol should be banned on welfare pay day, Thursday.
She said everybody should be limited to drinking at a licensed venue on that day. She also called for additional police.
Rare as it is for women from remote communities to voice their opinions in such a public forum, the Territory Government has said that until the current ban on drinking in public places and the bans in the Alice Springs town camps were evaluated, it would not consider introducing further restrictions.
The Alice Springs Council has also said it does not support investigating the idea.
See: The Australian
Greens Launch Indigenous Health Policy
The Coorabin | 14 November 2007
The Australian Greens today launched their Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health initiative.
Speaking from the 'Turn Down the Tap' rally in Alice Springs, Greens spokesperson for Aboriginal Affairs Senator Rachel Siewert said: "It is an international embarrassment that there is a 17 year gap in life expectancy between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians."
"This is not an intractable problem. It is not a case of not knowing what to do, but is a matter of scale and political will. What is needed is a commitment to better health care on the basis of need, and dedicating more resources to close the gap," said Senator Siewert.
The Australian Greens' policy aims to close the gap within a generation, with an interim target of less than ten years difference by 2015.
The Greens are calling for an extra $460 million per annum to be spent on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander primary healthcare.
"Aboriginal Australians should have equal access to affordable and appropriate primary health care by 2012," said Senator Siewert.
"Right now for every dollar of PBS or MBS spent on other Australians, only 40 cents is spent on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders'
health. The Greens want this gap closed by 2012."
"A key way to turn around the health disadvantage and alarmingly high rates of chronic disease in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community in the future is to target early childhood development and to make the health of mums and young kids a funding priority," concluded Senator Siewert.
The Australian Greens Policy on Indigenous Health
Sorry John, You've Forgotten Indigenous People Again. Will Rudd Do Better?
The Coorabin | 12 November 2007
Democrats' Deputy Leader, Senator Andrew Bartlett, has expressed dismay that there was nothing for Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander people in the Prime Minister's campaign launch speech today.
"It is outrageous that the group of Australians who are clearly suffering the most from inequality in our community barely rate a mention. Nor have they benefited from any new initiatives or commitment from the Prime Minister in his main campaign launch," Senator Bartlett said.
"It well known that Indigenous Australians have a life expectancy seventeen years shorter than the rest of the community. This should be a national scandal and a top priority for all political parties, yet it has not rated a mention by the Prime Minister today or so far in the campaign."
"In a speech of well over four thousand words, the only mention of Indigenous Australians was a misleading, self-congratulatory mention of the Northern Territory intervention and a repeat of his promise to recognise the First Australians in the preamble of our Constitution."
"The Democrats have long been campaigning for all political parties to put the First Australians first in their priorities.
"If this is the best the Prime Minister can come up with after more than a decade in office, he clearly has run out of ideas and has no understanding of where the most serious inequalities are in our nation."
"November 25th will be too late to say sorry or to start making amends. The Democrats will be watching closely to see whether Mr Rudd does any better in his campaign launch speech."
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Church Criticises NT Intervention
The Coorabin | 14 November 2007
The Uniting Church is calling on voters to contact their local politicians and voice concerns with the federal government's intervention into Northern Territory Aboriginal communities.
Letters have been circulated by the Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress (UAICC), set up in August in response to the radical and sweeping reforms to combat child sex abuse.
In the public letter, national administrator of the UAICC Reverend Shayne Blackman urged concerned voters to contact their local MPs and candidates and demand immediate action to address the rights of Aboriginal people.
"It is time to vote for a positive future for our indigenous communities," he said in a statement.
"We encourage people to use the Australia Fair website to lobby members of parliament by email, letter and talkback radio to advocate for a more just approach than is presently being experienced."
Rev Blackman said the concerns of voters would send a strong message to the government.
"Underlying this is the need for long term support for overcoming deep rooted community problems such as alcohol supply, inadequate housing, the high cost of nutritious foods and access to quality education," he said.
"The government has an unprecedented opportunity to deliver long-term proactive programs to address the root causes of community dysfunction and elicit individuals to take responsibility for their actions...
"We call upon the public to embrace this initiative to demonstrate that change can be achieved in a manner which upholds the rights of indigenous Australians."
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Toilet on sacred site to be investigated
The Australian | 17 November 2007
The construction of a pit toilet on a sacred Aboriginal site by a contractor with the Federal Government's intervention will be investigated, says the Northern Territory Government.
It is believed the toilet was built at the remote community of Numbulwar, about 600km southeast of Darwin.
Major General David Chalmers, who is overseeing the radical and sweeping reforms to combat child sex abuse in Northern Territory Aboriginal communities, yesterday said he would investigate the claim.
NT minister assisting the chief minister on indigenous policy, Elliot McAdam, today said the mishap raised serious questions about the Commonwealth's ability to engage with remote Aboriginal communities.
"It begs the questions ... in terms of the capacity of people associated with the intervention to be able to work in a real way with the communities and community members," he said.
Mr McAdam said the Aboriginal Areas Protection Authority (AAPA) would conduct an inquiry into the incident.
The AAPA is a twelve-member board established under the Northern Territory Aboriginal Sacred Sites Act.
The act is legislation pursuant to special powers given to the Territory under Commonwealth legislation to protect sacred sites.
The Aboriginal lobby group Women for Wik today said the construction of the toilet demonstrated "fundamental flaws" with the intervention process.
"This has occurred despite repeated assurances ... that sacred sites would be protected", said Olga Havnen, CEO of the Combined Aboriginal Organisations of the NT.
"The desecration of sacred sites is not something that can be repaired."
Eileen Cummings, former policy adviser to the NT chief minister, said the mishap demonstrated why there should be no changes to the permit system, which controls the access of non-indigenous people onto Aboriginal land.
"You don't just go in and build something without talking to people. How can people know what is sacred and what isn't if they don't ask?" she said.
"I am not surprised that this could happen, given that the federal government is employing a deliberate policy of not consulting with Aboriginal communities.
"Even Telecom wouldn't put a line down without talking to the traditional owners."
See: The Australian
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- NI Times
Grog ban sparks exodus: mayor
Sydney Morning Herald | 13 November 2007
Hundreds and possibly thousands of Aboriginal people are leaving the Northern Territory, sometimes with whole families in tow, to escape the federal government's tough anti-alcohol laws.
Coober Pedy's independent mayor Steve Baines said that the South Australian town - which is about 400km from the Northern Territory border - had experienced a 10 per cent increase in its permanent population of 3000.
Grog bans that are part of the national emergency response to protect children from child sexual abuse have led to "huge numbers of people hanging around the main street with packs of dogs and nowhere to go," he said.
"We estimate there are 300 extra homeless people in Coober Pedy and [nearby] Ceduna has the same, and that's on top of the transient people we normally get ... if that happened in Adelaide it would be an uproar."
He said men, women and children were sleeping in the street or in packed houses with 20 to 30 relatives, which was damaging tourism and putting a strain on local services such as police, health and Centrelink.
"We don't have a 24-hour police station here. It closes at 1am. One of the issues that does arise from that many transient indigenous people is anti-social behaviour and that usually occurs after-hours. They are telling us they've come across the border because they can't get grog up in Alice Springs.
"It's alright for Mal Brough and the federal and South Australian governments to make these decisions but every decision they make has an adverse effect on the communities surrounding those lands and that's something we can't get through to them.
"You need controlled drinking areas up there where people can drink responsibly. Prohibition has never worked."
Mr Baines said the situation in South Australia is set to worsen in 2008, when the federal government has said it will withdraw municipal services funding from indigenous communities in the Pitjantjatjara lands, which he said are the best equipped to handle transient Aboriginal people from the Territory.
In Mount Isa in Queensland, Catholic priest Mick Lowcock said there had been a slight increase in the usual transient population of about 100 Northern Territory Aborigines who typically lives with relatives or camp in the riverbed.
"It depends where they are doing the intervention. I think as it moves closer to here there will be a change, once there are charges made against people [for drinking]."
He said a similar wave had arrived when the Northern Territory government instituted mandatory jail terms for third offences in 1997.
Ceduna Mayor Allan Suter told the ABC that the council there had begun fining people for offences such as illegal camping.
See: Sydney Morning Herald
Councils look for transient population solution
ABC News | 13 November 2007
Three isolated South Australian councils are working together to tackle what they say is an increasing influx of transient populations from the Northern Territory.
Last week, Coober Pedy Mayor Steve Baines said there had been a big jump in transient Aborigines, partly due to the Federal Government's crackdown on drugs and alcohol in the NT.
Ceduna Mayor Allan Suter says a similar situation is happening in his area and the council has begun fining people for offences such as illegal camping.
Councillor Suter says councils are working together to tackle the problem.
"The solution is obviously very complicated, but we do strongly support the fact that there should be a transitional camp at Coober Pedy," he said.
"The transitional camp at Coober Pedy technically isn't our business, but Ceduna, Coober Pedy and Port Augusta are working together to solve a common problem."
See: ABC News
Toilet shows why permits should be kept
The West | 13 November 2007
The building of a pit toilet on a sacred Northern Territory Aboriginal site highlights why the permit system must not be scrapped, says a group of indigenous leaders.
It is believed the toilet was built by a contractor involved in the federal government's intervention process at the remote community of Numbulwar, about 600 kilometres south-east of Darwin.
Major General David Chalmers, who is overseeing the radical and sweeping reforms to combat child sex abuse in NT Aboriginal communities, yesterday said he would investigate the claims.
The Aboriginal lobby group Women for Wik today said the construction of the toilet demonstrated "fundamental flaws" with the intervention process.
"This has occurred despite repeated assurances ... that sacred sites would be protected," said Olga Havnen, CEO of the Combined Aboriginal Organisations of the NT.
"The desecration of sacred sites is not something that can be repaired."
Eileen Cummings, former policy adviser to the NT chief minister, said the mishap demonstrated why there should be no changes to the permit system, which controls the access of non-indigenous people onto Aboriginal land.
"You don't just go in and build something without talking to people. How can people know what is sacred and what isn't if they don't ask?" she said.
"I am not surprised that this could happen, given that the federal government is employing a deliberate policy of not consulting with Aboriginal communities.
"Even Telecom wouldn't put a line down without talking to the traditional owners."
Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough had promised that all sacred sites would be protected, despite modification to the permit system.
"This shows that we were justified in our concern that the abolition of the permit system would result in damage to sacred areas," Ms Cummings said.
"This government is showing a complete lack of respect."
Claire Smith, president of the World Archaeological Congress, said the independent contractors had not been given any proper cultural training or supervision.
"This is due to a failure in oversight," she said.
See: The West
Toilet may be on special Aboriginal site
Sydney Morning Herald | 12 November 2007
A contractor with the federal government's intervention into Northern Territory Aboriginal communities built a toilet on a culturally significant site, it has been claimed.
Major General David Chalmers, who is overseeing the radical and sweeping reforms to combat child sex abuse, said he was investigating the claims.
It is believed the pit toilet was built at Numbulwar, about 600 kilometres south-east of Darwin.
"I'm appalled if that sort of thing happens, I'm always appalled if people don't act appropriately, don't act sensitively, don't respect the people that we're working with," Major General told reporters in Darwin.
Contractors were expected to be conscious of cultural sensitivities in Aboriginal communities, he said, adding that sometimes mistakes were made.
"Occasionally thoughtless individuals are going to do thoughtless things," he said.
So far, the intervention has visited all 73 Aboriginal communities it will take control of under a five-year lease scheme, talking to locals as well as assessing infrastructure and local services.
Major General Chalmers said 3,836 children had undergone health checks in 40 communities and there were currently 12 health teams deployed.
Although there have been no arrests for child abuse to date, Major General Chalmers said help was on hand for the victims.
"Specialist teams will support children found to be victims of abuse," he said.
"The government is assisting the Northern Territory government to expand child-protection services and increase the number of safe houses."
Last week the taskforce operation moved to the Top End, relocating its base from Alice Springs to Darwin.
Major General Chalmers said 41 additional police officers had now been deployed to Aboriginal communities to establish community safety, while new stations were operational in Numbulwar and Galiwinku.
"Legislation banning alcohol and sexually explicit material in prescribed areas of the Northern Territory is in place and penalties now apply," he said.
Meanwhile, the ability to receive Centrelink payments without looking for work or doing training has been lifted in 69 communities and CDEP - otherwise known as Aboriginal work-for-the-dole - is being progressively phased out.
Income management, where money can only be spent on food, rent and other essential items, has started in four communities.
See: Sydney Morning Herald
Intervention a negative for Coalition
The Australian | 13 November 2007
While the rest of Australia still has two weeks of electioneering to endure, democracy has come early to Kybrook Farm, a tiny Aboriginal community about two hours south of Darwin, where all politics is local.
Federal politicians don't drop by too much and debates about interest rates, climate change or industrial relations seem a world away. Out here, the commonwealth's intervention in Aboriginal communities is the topic on everyone's lips.
"This has given us a bit of a fight," said council treasurer John Lee. "We don't know what's going to happen."
Mobile polling began yesterday morning at Kybrook Farm, plus nine other remote communities across the Northern Territory in a process that is expected to collect more than 13,000 votes over the next two weeks.
The majority of the voters at Kybrook Farm yesterday were locals, and most used the occasion to send a message to the Coalition about the intervention.
While some elements of the reforms were welcomed, serious concerns remained about the abolition of the permit system and the Aboriginal work-for-the dole scheme known as Community Development Employment Projects. Polling coincided with the community's first working day without CDEP which officially ended on Friday.
Many locals threw their support behind Warren Snowdon, the Labor MP who holds the enormous Territory electorate of Lingari with a margin of 7.7per cent and has pledged to revive the scheme.
George Huddleston, 54, voted for John Howard in 2004, but he backed Labor yesterday. "Change is better," he said. "CDEP is knocked down. We're worried."
See: The Australian
Govt intervention moves to Wadeye
ABC News | 12 November 2007
The Northern Territory's largest Indigenous community is to be the next place to have welfare payments quarantined, as part of the Federal Government's intervention.
Under the system, half of welfare payments are put aside and can only be spent on essential items such as food.
The head of the intervention taskforce, Major General David Chalmers, says income quarantining will start at Wadeye, south-west of Darwin by the end of November.
He says after that, the taskforce will focus on communities south of Darwin.
"The next group of communities will be in the Katherine region, and that process has also started, the six-week process there, and it would be planned that income management will go live in those communities in early December," he said.
He says two smaller comminutes nearby will start welfare quarantining at the same time.
"Communities which have common language groups which people orbit around, we try to do those communities together, which gives people the most flexibility to move between communities," he said.
"It also enables me to make most efficient use of the resource I have of public servants."
See: ABC News
Claim Toilet Built On 'Tribal Heritage Site'
The Coorabin | 12 November 2007
A contactor with the Federal Government's intervention into Northern Territory Aboriginal communities built a toilet on a culturally significant site, it has been claimed.
Major General David Chalmers, who is overseeing the radical and sweeping reforms to combat child sex abuse, today said he was investigating the claims.
It is believed the pit toilet was built at Numbulwar, about 600km southeast of Darwin.
"I'm appalled if that sort of thing happens, I'm always appalled if people don't act appropriately, don't act sensitively, don't respect the people that we're working with," Major General said in Darwin.
Contractors were expected to be conscious of cultural sensitivities in Aboriginal communities, he said, adding that sometimes mistakes were made.
"Occasionally thoughtless individuals are going to do thoughtless things," he said.
So far, the intervention has visited all 73 Aboriginal communities it will take control of under a five-year lease scheme, talking to locals as well as assessing infrastructure and local services.
Major General Chalmers said 3836 children had undergone health checks in 40 communities and there were currently 12 health teams deployed.
Although there have been no arrests for child abuse to date, Major General Chalmers said help was on hand for the victims.
"Specialist teams will support children found to be victims of abuse," he said.
"The Government is assisting the Northern Territory Government to expand child-protection services and increase the number of safe houses."
Last week the taskforce operation moved to the Top End, relocating its base from Alice Springs to Darwin.
Major General Chalmers said 41 additional police officers had now been deployed to Aboriginal communities to establish community safety, while new stations were operational in Numbulwar and Galiwinku.
"Legislation banning alcohol and sexually explicit material in prescribed areas of the Northern Territory is in place and penalties now apply," he said.
Meanwhile, the ability to receive Centrelink payments without looking for work or doing training has been lifted in 69 communities and CDEP - otherwise known as Aboriginal work-for-the-dole - is being progressively phased out.
Income management, where money can only be spent on food, rent and other essential items, has started in four communities.
~ aap
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Fury after intervention workers 'dig toilet on ceremonial sacred site'
ABC News | 13 November 2007
Traditional owners from Numbulwar on the Gulf of Carpentaria say the actions of five Federal Government workers have caused lasting damage to the Indigenous intervention.
A gang of five intervention workers arrived in the area, nearly 600 kilometres south-east of Darwin, late last month, and were told by council staff to use toilet and shower facilities at a nearby training centre.
Instead the group dug a long-drop toilet in the middle of the most important ceremonial ground in the region.
Traditional owner Billy Gumana has told the 7.30 Report that he is furious.
"They think our culture is a toy culture, they think it's not real, but to us it is real, because we belong to this ground," he said.
The head of the Federal Intervention Taskforce, Major General David Chalmers, says he is appalled and the incident is being investigated.
See: ABC News
Intervention bungle 'left community without money'
ABC News | 13 November 2007
An Aboriginal community in Central Australia says residents have been left without any money or a shop to buy goods as a result of the Commonwealth intervention.
Ken Porter from the Wallace Rockhole community store 100 kilometres west of Alice Springs says residents were due to have their welfare payments quarantined from today as part of the intervention.
He says that has been postponed but people are now saying they have not been paid at all.
Mr Porter says he was forced to close the community store yesterday and the council was meeting this morning to try to resolve the crisis.
"We've got pensioners out here with no vehicles, we've got disabled people here with no vehicles and no chance to get to town," he said.
"I've got people coming and knocking on my door now saying that they've got money locked in Centrelink in Alice Springs that they need to go in to get so they can go and buy their groceries.
"It just means a big headache, big trouble for the people who are looking for food, so it may even mean that people start packing up and leaving the community."
See: ABC News
Contractors accused of violating sacred site
ABC: 7.30 Report | 12 November 2007
The Federal Government's intervention in the Northern Territory has been under the microscope with both supporters and critics out in force but a claim that one of its contractors built a pit toilet on a sacred site, has sparked controversy in one small community.
View Transcript
See: ABC: 7.30 Report
Legislating racism
Green Left Online | 10 November 2007
As the federal government's Northern Territory intervention grinds on with an escalating price-tag and concomitant obfuscation from politicians and bureaucrats about its actual implementation, we are beginning to see media reports - especially from the rampantly pro-intervention Rupert Murdoch stable - of support for the measures from the affected communities. While most of these refer to "whitefella" bureaucrats or store managers, the most cherished, obviously, have been apparent endorsements from Indigenous people as each new phase is rolled out. Most recently, we've seen the same pattern as welfare quarantining has started to come into effect in some communities.
When the intervention was first announced - hiding behind the masquerade of protecting children - there was a proposal to quarantine part of the welfare payments of parents whose children repeatedly failed to attend school. This very quickly transformed into a blanket withholding of 50% of all welfare payments to all Aboriginal people in the target communities. Under this scheme, the quarantined portion of a person's income can only be used to obtain food and sanctioned products from the community stores.
Why would anybody support such an attack on their personal freedom?
The impacts of colonialism, forced assimilation, and dispossession - dislocation and cultural fragmentation - have left many remote communities struggling to cope with problems of extensive substance abuse among some young people. The damage of long-term alcohol abuse, petrol sniffing and chroming leaves communities with people who are prone to aggression and irrational rages. In these circumstances, the old women are often forced - through threats or kinship obligation - to hand over their welfare payments.
Added to this is the price and availability of fresh food in remote Indigenous communities across the country. What would buy you a kilo of fruit in any rural or regional town might only pay for a single piece from a community store. An orange might cost up to $3 to take into account increased transportation costs as petrol prices rise. And to call it "fresh" is an exaggeration given the weekly or fortnightly deliveries which may be six days old when they arrive. Families can regularly face days without food. In many Western Desert communities mai wiya (no food) days have shifted from being a seasonal to a fortnightly occurrence: the last few days of the pension cycle, families may live on sweet black tea, supplemented with meat if they have the means to go hunting.
A very real problem of access and availability of food and goods exists. In this climate, it is totally understandable that some people would welcome a system that seems to guarantee that they'll be able to reliably feed their families.
So should we oppose the intervention if elements of it draw support from Indigenous people or appear to be having a (short term) positive impact? We must look at the truth of the motivation behind any action or program. A person being relentlessly tortured would surely rapturously welcome a regimen of less torture. That limited relief to an individual would not sway us, though, to an endorsement of limited torture as a good thing.
A case might be able to be made for quarantining in a context of community consultation and participation; of determination to resolve the true issues. In fact there are some examples of elderly Indigenous people in remote areas who - whether due to lack of literacy and numeracy or to escape family pressure - have asked that some of their pension money be credited directly to the store as "book up". But the current quarantining system has been imposed on a people with very limited political power by a government marked by racism, headed by a man who will not acknowledge the history of murder and dispossession that so much of the wealth of this nation is built upon. By any stretch of the imagination, this is at best a band-aid response, and the motivation has little to do with making sure children are fed.
From very early on, it was apparent the intervention was unfolding along lines advocated by a right-wing think tank, the Centre for Independent Studies. The CIS, which acts as a defacto policy development unit for the Howard government, has long advocated the removal of welfare support to Indigenous communities, and the market-assisted dismantling of land rights and communal structures and decision making. It is an approach in alignment with PM John Howard's ideological and moral compass.
As was the case with the US-led war on Iraq, the Howard government had a plan of invasion, theft, and subjugation ready to go - they were just looking for an excuse to pull the trigger. The fact that the excuse came in the run-up to an election, where they thought they could spin their new attacks on Aboriginal people to electoral gain, was icing on the cake. Howard has had good cause over the course of his political career to believe there's nothing like a spot of racism to get the polls pumping.
The fact that the only determining factor for whether or not someone is subject to welfare quarantining is that of being Aboriginal shows the stark, racist heart of this legislation. No torturing of language can possibly define it otherwise. Racism - pure, clear, profitable.
If for nothing else, that is reason enough to oppose the intervention. Just as support for the war on Iraq meant support for the murder of Iraqi civilians, to support the intervention measures under Howard's framework is to support the reintroduction of legalised racism in Australia and the attempt to destroy the history and legacy of Aboriginal people.
See: Green Left Online
Howard is sorry he ever brought it up
Sydney Morning Herald | 12 November 2007
John Howard, we know, will not apologise for interest rate rises or for the historical wrongs inflicted on indigenous Australians. During the recent debate with Kevin Rudd, however, he mentioned a third matter which may require an apology. "You lose a close friend, I say to you: 'David, I'm sorry that you lost your mate Jim'," Howard said. "But I don't say I apologise for it. I don't accept responsibility for it."
Howard has spent much time reiterating his refusal to apologise for killing Jim. In the process, the number of groups alienated by the Coalition has risen to three: Aborigines, home owners, and people called David with dead mates called Jim.
If I speak with some feeling on the topic, it is for a reason. I knew Jim. We shared a dentist. Because there was a yacht, a midnight run on the harbour to "look at the dolphins" and a case of scotch involved when Jim died, people will look at the facts and draw the wrong inferences. But Jim was not that kind of person. For a start, he didn't even like dolphins. No, Jim was the best man many of us have known, by turns offensive, drunk and inarticulate.
Howard claims that Jim's death was not his fault. But it was. If Howard had not senselessly presided over an economic boom, Jim never would have had the income to nurture his alcohol addiction. And if Jim had not had to go to hospital after the yachting accident, he never would have died. Hospitals are the Commonwealth's responsibility. Therefore, the Commonwealth killed Jim.
The history of Government inaction on this issue deserves to be catalogued:
March 1996: Howard becomes Prime Minister and vows to govern for "all Australians, including David's drunk mate Jim". He wants Australians to feel "relaxed and comfortable and well clear of Jim". Jim dies a year later.
May 2000: A march across the Sydney Harbour Bridge to campaign for a federal apology for Jim's death fails to attract any participants. Pressed the day after the march on whether he will now say "sorry" for killing Jim, Howard responds, "What? Oh, that guy. No um, no."
October 2007: Howard announces a federal plan for reconciliation with the ghost of Jim. A division of the armed forces is dispatched to the Northern Territory with a Collins-class ouija board to commune with Jim's spirit. Paul Keating laughs this off as "another example of Howard surfing off the necromantic reforms of the Hawke/Keating years".
As Howard rides grimly towards political midnight, his enduring refusal to accept responsibility for the death of David's mate Jim will cast an ineradicable shadow over his political legacy.
See: Sydney Morning Herald
Church urges treaty to help deal with Aboriginal unrest
ABC News | 12 November 2007
The Uniting Church is urging that the South Australian Government sign a treaty recognising Aboriginal land rights in SA.
The Reverend Ken Sumner says the treaty would mirror the intentions of the South Australian Letters Patent of 1836, recognising Aboriginal rights to lands they occupied or enjoyed.
He says the lack of an official treaty is leading to anti-social behaviour among Aborigines which is being passed on to the next generation.
"South Australia is probably in its worst time ever in terms of young Aboriginal people involved in criminal activity," he said.
"I think we've got a long way to go to resolve some of those issues and part of that [resolution] is the past.
"Aboriginal people don't want to pass these issues on to the next generation and nor do non-Aboriginal people. It is not fair and I think we should deal with these issues now."
Rev Sumner says the Uniting Church is developing a treaty working party.
See: ABC News
Claims pit toilet built on NT cultural site
ABC News | 12 November 2007
The Federal Government's Northern Territory intervention task force is investigating claims one of its contractors built a pit toilet on a culturally important site.
Task force head Major General David Chalmers says the toilet was built at Numbulwar, nearly 600 kilometres south-east of Darwin.
He says it is not the way contractors would be expected to deal with cultural sensitivities in Indigenous communities.
"I'm appalled if that sort of thing happens, I'm always appalled if people don't act appropriately, don't act sensitively, don't respect the people that we're working with," he said.
"Occasionally thoughtless individuals are going to do thoughtless things."
See: ABC News
Intervention excludes majority from focus
The Australian | 8 November 2007
The federal Government's Northern Territory intervention has not just alienated the communities affected but shut the other 87 per cent of indigenous people out of this year's election in policy and funding terms, one of its biggest critics says.
Jon Altman, director of the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research, said this month's poll came amid an "unprecedented focus" on indigenous affairs. But that focus had narrowed sharply and destructively on 73 remote Aboriginal communities in the Territory, and left the rest of indigenous Australia neglected in the run-up to the election.
Professor Altman's comments came a few days after NSW Premier Morris Iemma accused the Howard Government of "stripping NSW of vital resources for helping Aboriginal people".
An official in his Government told The Australian that over $30million had been taken out of rent relief and housing infrastructure, amid a redirection of funds to the NT.
About $1.3 billion is pouring into the Territory under the Howard Government's ambitious takeover plan, which aims to stamp out child and alcohol abuse in local communities.
It focuses on about 66,000 out of an indigenous population of 517,000 nationwide.
Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough this week rejected claims that funding had been siphoned from elsewhere, saying the NT intervention came out of new money that had been channelled to where it was needed most.
But Professor Altman said the Coalition and Labor were now framing their election campaigns in terms of a group of Aborigines who were not representative of their city or regional cousins.
"The Australian Government's public views are increasingly defined in terms of the remotest living Aboriginal people," he said.
Even those communities involved in the intervention were seeing only patchy results from the billions of dollars being spent, Professor Altman said.
He said that in the five NT communities he contacted that were involved in the government program, children's health checks had been completed but no follow-up or known referrals of suspected sexual abuse had occurred since.
Government business managers had been appointed, and housing organised for intervention staff, but only one of the five communities had seen new houses built for Aboriginal residents, and only two could report a greater local police presence.
Even the local CDEP employment schemes, opposed by the Government as a form of passive welfare, were yet to be abolished as promised.
Professor Altman predicted the national emergency announced at the time of the intervention would "peter out, if it has not already".
But he warned it would take longer for the trust with local communities and the Australian public to be rebuilt.
See: The Australian
In spirit country
The Age | 10 November 2007
In the third of our series on the mood of the nation, Martin Flanagan goes to the symbol that lies at the heart of Australia - Uluru.
Sammy Wilson says Ayers Rock and Uluru are not the same. "The Ayers Rock dreaming is people climbing to the top," he says. "That not Uluru." Sammy's the president of the Mutitjulu community a few kilometres from the rock.
Few people in Australia cannot have heard of Mutitjulu. It's where the story of sexual abuse of Aboriginal children first exploded into public consciousness. After that came the intervention by the Federal Government, after that came a radical divergence of opinion, but one aspect of the original story remains conspicuously unproven - that there was a pedophile ring in Mutitjulu. There had been a pedophile in the community but he had been run out.
The rock has half a million visitors a year. If the permit system is revoked in Mutitjulu, any or all of them will be free to enter the Aboriginal community at will. If the people of Mutitjulu are said to be demoralised now, imagine them after a few years of that. As it is, the permit system stands and I enter with a whitefeller working at the Uluru Kata Tjuta National Park who speaks Pitjatjanjara.
It's nearly 10 kilometres round the base of the rock. But however big you think it is physically, it's that big again as a story, if not bigger, since stories from the rock travel in all directions - blackfeller stories or, as Sammy Wilson calls them, Tjukurpa.
The Anangu, the people of the rock, don't like the word "dreaming". Whitefeller dreams, they say, are fleeting. Tjukurpa is now and forever and was in the time when the ancestor spirits created the place we're walking about.
Sammy Wilson was born, it is thought, in 1963. His grandfather was well-known elder Paddy Uluru. Sammy says his grandfather gave him his stories. English is very much his second language.
"I was born in the bush, grew up that way. Hard in English." I go for a drive around Uluru with Sammy and an elder in his 70s, Norman Pjakilyiri. Norman has no English, or none he shares with me. He is senior enough in Tjukurpa to paint on Uluru's walls. Sammy and Norman and I sit for a while on the northern side of Uluru, the side you never see in photos, the one where the big men's place is to be found, and talk politics and footy. Our conversation on footy is the subject of my sports column today. On politics Sammy has plenty to say. In fact, he almost sings it.
"Aboriginal people livin' on the land. Someone put name on it - Australia." He's saying Aboriginal people were living on the land when someone from outside came along and put the name Australia on it. Sammy's a desert man. Only uses words that matter.
One of the intervention measures taken by the Federal Government is to ban pornography in the communities. A whitefeller I meet later with Sammy says he's been going into the homes of the people of Mutitjulu for the past year and hasn't seen so much as a Ralph magazine.
Sammy says, "All this pornography - Canberra the worst place. Nothing happening in Mutitjulu. Then the minister sneak in and talk to the women."
This is a reference to a recent visit to Mutitjulu by the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Mal Brough. It made a big splash in the national media, Mr Brough saying he wasn't going to talk to Aboriginal men, he was going to talk to Aboriginal women. At the time I half-believed it could be that simple.
As Sammy sees it, Mr Brough has entered Tjukurpa through women's law. It only occurred to me later to ask Sammy if he had spoken to the 11 or so Aboriginal women who attended the meeting about what the minister said. He shook his head. "I can't. That women's law. If I go and sit with the old women, they stop talking."
Of Mr Brough's behaviour, Sammy says, "You don't learn that way. Someone come in here, go on walk, understand this place. This one sneak in and say - you do, you do." Sammy's big on learning. Learning is Tjukurpa.
Sammy came to Melbourne once. "I was learning myself. I look at old buildings. Gotta learn and listen. Same here. I don't run amok in gallery. They kick me out. Same here."
Everywhere at Uluru are signs from the traditional owners asking people not to climb the rock. Part of Uluru's importance comes from the fact it stores water in its cavernous holes and crevasses. There are no toilets on the rock and you can imagine what is being left there. But the other objection of the local people is that the one or so person who dies each year attempting the climb is of consequence to them. Under Aboriginal law, if someone is killed on your land, you must answer for it. It's like a negative karma left in the earth.
No talk of going to Uluru can fail to bring up Yulara, the tourist complex at the fringe of the national park. You might as well be on Mars. I ask a man serving drinks in one of the hotels what the big election issue is in Yulara. "There isn't one," he says. Yulara's workforce is young, early-20s, on six-month contracts. "City things don't impact much out here," continues the barman.
But the election does matter "out here". Uluru is like the board of the ABC - it's one of those places where the politics of the day are played out in a naked way for all to see.
The first Aboriginal story Sammy tells visitors to the park is about the fight between the poisonous male and non-poisonous female snake guarding its eggs. The non-poisonous snake won but only by summoning the power to create venom. If Uluru is one of our great national symbols, that creation story is significant to us. I also note that the national park is a rare example of Tjunguringkula waakaripai - working together, indigenous and non-indigenous. Sammy Wilson, as I encounter him, is not a venomous man. Do we want him to be? If the answer is no, we need to again ask ourselves the question asked by the joint management committee of the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park - how do we share this land?
I am anxious to speak to some Mutitjulu women. One of the elders, Barbara Tjikatu, is as soft in her speech as she is in her manner. She says she wants better for the children, she wants to teach culture to people, black and white. She doesn't appear to know the difference between the Labor and the Liberal parties. In her early life she went to places 600 kilometres from here, walking all the way. She paints a lot about bush tucker and is on the management committee of the national park.
The feeling in Mutitjulu is orderly, but I note it now has a permanent police presence. I find three old women sitting in the shade with a young woman of Asian appearance who is sitting with them, beaming. She has been admitted to the circle although how long she has been at Mutitjulu - one hour, one day, one year - I cannot tell. Two of the old women are eating kangaroo tails, a bush tucker delicacy, the other is roasting bent wires in a fire and using them to brand a piece of wood with a traditional pattern, presumably for sale.
When I mention Mal Brough they struggle to recall him. One of the old women thinks I'm asking about an election for a committee apportioning the community's share of the gate money to the park. But another, May, is entirely clear in what she has to say. Her kangaroo tail, I note, is only lightly cooked and she's peeling it like a banana, like it's a real pleasure to eat. "That John Howard he go everywhere," she says, pointing with her kangaroo tail to the rock. "He go round the world. He never come to this country."
See: The Age
Communities demand further alcohol bans
The Australian | 10 November 2007
The rivers of grog continue to flow in central Australia, despite the efforts of government authorities to impose restrictions and increase penalties.
Hermann and Mavis Malbunka, from Hermannsburg, want a ban on takeaway alcohol sales two days a week in Alice Springs. Picture: James Croucher
Some bottle shops are even reporting increasing sales.
It is a situation that has Hermann Malbunka shaking his head, as he has for many of his 64 years, watching friends and family members take to the drink.
Like many in central Australia, he's had enough, and on Wednesday Mr Malbunka and his wife, Mavis, will join groups of senior Aboriginal Australians from remote communities across central Australia in Alice Springs to demand that governments stop the flow of alcohol.
Not content with restrictions that have come into force as part of the federal Government's intervention and efforts by the Northern Territory Government, the communities are demanding a ban on takeaway alcohol sales two days a week in Alice Springs, one of Australia's hardest-drinking cities, where consumption is 70 per cent higher than the national average.
"We've tried almost everything," Mr Malbunka told The Weekend Australian. "All them bloody mongrels, even the little kids, they've started drinking."
Welfare groups in Alice Springs say such a measure would reduce within weeks the damage alcohol is doing in Aboriginal communities, but it is unlikely to receive a positive hearing from residents who already have seen new bans on drinking in public places and in the 19 Aboriginal town camps.
The city council has considered such a ban, already in force one day a week in Tennant Creek, but it was rejected by a close vote.
Mayor Fran Kilgariff said it was a bridge too far for many who had accepted the current restrictions.
Mr Malbunka is an unlikely revolutionary, but he has had to be to avoid alcohol. As a young man he rejected pressure from family and friends to drink and retired to his homelands to escape the influence of alcohol.
Since then, Mr Malbunka, from Hermannsburg, 120km west of Alice Springs, has witnessed the effects of grog on his family, lost a son to booze and buried countless young relatives. "I lost one -- he was a proper madman because of drinking. It's a really sad thing to talk about," he said.
The Alice Springs rally has been called by members of the Yuendumu Women's Centre and has been quickly backed by the city's indigenous health organisations and a large number of remote communities.
Women's Centre manager Pam Malden said the current alcohol restrictions had led to a reduction in the number of women using the community's safe house because of alcohol-related violence. She said anything to further reduce that number would be welcomed.
The NT Government said it needed to assess the recent alcohol bans before considering anything more drastic.
See: The Australian
Govt to assess further Alice alcohol bans
ABC News | 9 November 2007
The Northern Territory Government says it needs to assess how other alcohol management plans are working in Alice Springs before new bans on take-away alcohol are considered.
Remote Indigenous communities in central Australia are calling for a two-day-per-week ban on take-away alcohol sales in Alice Springs.
Minister for Alcohol Policy Chris Burns says more information is needed before any drastic steps are taken.
"We're having an independent evaluation of what's gone on before, in terms of alcohol measures," he said.
"We will be communicating that to the people of Alice Springs and canvassing a whole range of measures that could come in in the future."
See: ABC News
Govt promises cash for Maningrida patrol
ABC News | 17 November 2007
The future of a women's night patrol in the Top End community of Maningrida, 300 kilometres east of Darwin, looks more secure after a promise of long-term funding from the Northern Territory Government.
The Child Safety Service was started by local women after the community was shocked by allegations of child sexual abuse.
The service received some initial funding from both the Territory and Commonwealth Governments but organisers were worried about its long-term viability.
Territory Child Protection Minister Marion Scrymgour says her department is working on a $300,000, three-year funding deal.
"I've given full commitment to the ongoing funding of that unit," she said.
"It is a great model and it is a model that we're hoping to replicate in most of the communities to try and deal with the issues of child protection."
Service facilitator Felicity Douglas says it is great news for the women involved.
"We're obviously really relieved and we thank the Northern Territory Government for understanding the importance of what the Maningrida Child Safety Service is trying to achieve here," she said.
Federal Community Services Minister Nigel Scullion says the women are doing a fantastic job, but they are doing the work of police.
"I think the job they're doing is good and important, but I think fundamentally the job should be done by the Northern Territory Police, who are responsible for law enforcement and the safety of everybody, including children in the Northern Territory."
See: ABC News
Govt accused of diverting Indigenous funds to pay for NT intervention
ABC News | 17 October 2007
A Griffith Indigenous leader in southern New South Wales has accused the Federal Government of diverting funding for regional Aboriginal projects to its intervention in Northern Territory communities.
The former chairman of the Binal Billa Regional Council of ATSIC, Robert Carroll, says regional Indigenous coordination centres are being encouraged to develop action plans for Wagga Wagga, Griffith and Deniliquin.
But Mr Carroll says there is no funding to then implement the local priorities.
"They've gone into communities and encouraged the establishment of community working parties," he said.
"There are no resources to support those community working parties. They've encouraged those community working parties to develop community action plans and once the plans have been developed and formulated, there's no funding to implement the plan. It's very unco-ordinated.
"The Federal Government has had to pay for the Northern Territory intervention and they're paying for it out of existing funding that was coming into NSW, Victoria and the ACT.
"All that funding has shifted to the Northern Territory and the Aboriginal communities of those states are going to miss out on funding and services."
Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough rejects Mr Carroll's claims and says the NT intervention is being funded from new money.
He says he is making regional funding more accessible for sustainable projects.
"I've actually tried to remove the bureaucracy out of this and tried to put decision making in the hands of people locally, but where we get outcomes," he said.
"I'm not interested in handing money out hand-over-fist to make some people feel good and put them in a position of power when it doesn't actually help those people who need it."
Mr Brough says Aborigines in general have never been better funded.
The Minister says he has removed a layer of the bureaucracy that enables better access to local projects that are sustainable.
Mr Brough says he has never heard any other complaints about funding being diverted.
"We've injected over $1 billion of new money which we've had to appropriate, had to legislate for [and] has nothing whatsoever to do with the record spending we're having on Indigenous affairs or the record amounts of money we're injecting into Indigenous housing, which is $1.6 billion. These are huge figures," he said.
See: ABC News
Low literacy leading Indigenous students to drop out: Govt
ABC News | 9 November 2007
The Northern Territory's low overall unemployment rate is still marred by high levels of youth unemployment and the State has the worst workforce participation rates in the country for people aged 15 to 19 who are not at school.
Territory Employment Minister Paul Henderson says that is because of the high proportion of Indigenous students whose literacy and skills levels are below the national average.
"Too many of our Indigenous students are dropping out, even in the urban centres," he said.
"That's why the Territory Government is focused on improving pathways through out secondary education, particularly through vocational education and training schools and also through introducing the Clontarf Football Academy in Alice Springs and Darwin."
See: ABC News
Scrymgour pushes for petrol sniffer rehab
ABC News | 8 November 2007
Northern Territory Community Services Minister Marion Scrymgour is investigating why no orders forcing petrol sniffers into treatment have been issued in central Australia.
Under the Government's Volatile Substance Abuse Act, applications can be made for a magistrate to order a petrol sniffer to attend a rehabilitation program.
But youth workers say several people in the region have made the applications but no orders have been made.
Ms Scrymgour says there should be no delays in the process.
"I've now spoken to the Department and said if there has been a request, or a child has been identified as needing a compulsory treatment order put on, that we will make sure that assessment goes immediately and that we get the order signed and that child into treatment," she said.
See: ABC News
Alcohol reforms empower Indigenous communities: NSW Govt
ABC News | 10 November 2007
The New South Wales Government says the liquor reforms it is proposing for the state's Indigenous population would give individual communities the power to make decisions about alcohol control.
Under the reforms, each Indigenous community could decide whether to be a declared 'dry' region, or have limits placed on the type of alcohol sold.
Gaming and Racing Minister Graham West says the proposed reforms could prevent the extensive government intervention currently being experienced in the Northern Territory.
"Our approach is different to the Northern Territory," he said.
"Their approach has been made from the top, this is about communities being able to take control of their problem and initiate it themselves, and we'll give them the tools they need to support that."
See: ABC News
Govt to assess further Alice alcohol bans
ABC News | 9 November 2007
The Northern Territory Government says it needs to assess how other alcohol management plans are working in Alice Springs before new bans on take-away alcohol are considered.
Remote Indigenous communities in central Australia are calling for a two-day-per-week ban on take-away alcohol sales in Alice Springs.
Minister for Alcohol Policy Chris Burns says more information is needed before any drastic steps are taken.
"We're having an independent evaluation of what's gone on before, in terms of alcohol measures," he said.
"We will be communicating that to the people of Alice Springs and canvassing a whole range of measures that could come in in the future."
See: ABC News
NT life expectancy lagging
ABC News | 10 November 2007
The latest figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show people who live in the Northern Territory continue to have the lowest life expectancy in Australia.
The life expectancies for men and women in the Territory are 72 and 78 respectively.
That represents between six and eight years less than people who live in the ACT, who have the highest life expectancy in the nation.
The deputy director of the Menzies School of Health Research in Darwin, John Condon, says the Territory fares badly because of the poor health of its many Indigenous people.
But he also says the figures are due to the unhealthy lifestyles of non-Indigenous Territorians.
"Partly because of high levels of alcohol consumption, higher rates of injury, more people smoke here," he said.
Australian life expectancy is among the highest in the world.
See: ABC News
Chalmers: NT intervention succeeding
ABC News: PM | 5 November 2007
MARK COLVIN: The Commonwealth Intervention into Aboriginal Communities in the Northern Territory moved its headquarters to Darwin today, after three months focused on Aboriginal people living in Central Australia.
The Intervention was triggered after child sex abuse was found to be rife in remote communities, but there's still some confusion over what the Taskforce has actually achieved in terms of child sex abusers arrested or convicted.
The operational head of the Taskforce, Major General Dave Chalmers spoke to Zoie Jones after the move to Darwin today.
ZOIE JONES: After three months based in Alice Springs, Major General Dave Chalmers says there have been lessons learnt from the intervention roll-out so far.
DAVE CHALMERS: We pay careful attention to the feedback we get and I've adjusted my plans in accordance to those lessons that we've learnt, and they're things that revolve around how we communicate with people and how we can better do so, the amount of time that we need to spend in fairly complex changes like the transition of CDEP Community Development Employment Projects and the introduction of income management.
ZOIE JONES: So have there been any cases of child sex abuse that have been uncovered as part of the Intervention?
DAVE CHALMERS: There have been but they are not briefed to me, so the people whom you should speak to about those issues are the Northern Territory Police.
ZOIE JONES: But a spokeswoman for the NT police says there have been no sex abuse charges laid as a result of the Intervention. Dave Chalmers says his focus is on making long-term social change.
DAVE CHALMERS: So that the incidents of child sex abuse, of child neglect and of domestic violence is reduced so that the next generation of children live happy, healthy and safe lives.
ZOIE JONES: So with those aims in mind, do you think the Intervention has achieved those aims so far?
DAVE CHALMERS: I think we're making great headway but we're not going to solve the deep problems that exist in communities' overnight.
ZOIE JONES: Maningrida in Northern Arnhem Land does have a case of child sex abuse going through the courts at the moment but the charges came about after the victim told his family what had happened and they reported it to the local police.
Shane Namanurki from Maningrida Council says, again there's distrust towards the Taskforce, and some people hid their children in the bush during recent child health checks because they had misguided fears that their children could be taken away. But he says the banning of x-rated pornography has been a good move.
SHANE NAMANURKI: That really helped a lot. I mean we don't need that sort of .activities happening in the community.
ZOIE JONES: As for the sex abuse case, he says Maningrida has it's own way of dealing with offenders.
SHANE NAMANURKI: Oh, we take them out bush and they get a flogging.
ZOIE JONES: Major General Dave Chalmers, the intervention has bi-partisan support, although there has been some discontent among Labor MPs. Are you concerned that a change of government could see the intervention altered?
DAVE CHALMERS: Well I certainly couldn't comment on that except to say that the Opposition voted for the legislation, they have indicated bi-partisan support.
MARK COLVIN: Major General Dave Chalmers speaking to Zoie Jones.
See: ABC News: PM
Grog-Runner Arrested In NT
The Coorabin | 9 November 2007
A grog-runner has been arrested attempting to smuggle beer and rum into a dry Aboriginal community in central Australia.
The man was stopped shortly before 5.30pm (CST) Wednesday in a Holden Commodore sedan travelling west along the Tanami Highway, about 15km east of Tilmouth Well, police said.
A search of the car revealed two cartons of rum and cola, one carton of beer, two sixpacks of beer and a 700ml bottle of rum.
The 25-year-old driver will be summonsed to face charges of bringing liquor into a restricted area, possessing liquor in a restricted area and unlicensed driving.
Superintendent Kym Davies said the arrest was part of the ongoing operations by remote area police to stop alcohol getting into dry communities.
"Police at bush stations regularly patrol roads going into dry communities to stop grog-running," she said.
"Last night's apprehension is a typical example of why police continue to target grog-runners and the number of people who continue to flout the laws."
Supt Davies warned that police regularly patrolled back roads leading into communities and not just the main highways.
~aap
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'Sorry' must be part of reconciliation: Canadian professor
NI Times | 9 November 2007
CANBERRA, November 9, 2007: Reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people must include an apology for past injustices, a Canadian professor has told a conference in Canberra.
Paul Chartrand, an Indigenous Canadian professor of law, said he originally doubted the value of an apology from unwilling politicians but changed his mind after speaking with hundreds of Indigenous Canadian women.
"Indigenous women in Canada told me stories of how afraid they were of the police," Prof Chartrand told the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies conference.
"There is a fear of agents of a state that has a monopoly on power.
"The state has a duty to protect all of its peoples, so it's important for those that control the state to say: `Do not fear - no more - not under our watch - you are safe'."
Prime Minister John Howard has promised, if re-elected, to hold a referendum on constitutional recognition for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as the first Australians.
But he continues to rule out a formal government apology to Indigenous people for past wrongs, such as the forced removal of children from their parents.
Prof Chartrand, who served on the Canadian Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (1991-1996), said reconciliation also required Indigenous and non-Indigenous people agreeing on the truth of history.
Artists, poets and other creative people were best placed to influence the way people think about reconciliation and Indigenous people, he said. - AAP
See: NI Times
Intervention a "historic opportunity" for health: Calma
NI Times | 9 November 2007
DARWIN, November 9, 2007: Canberra's intervention into Northern Territory Aboriginal communities is a "historic opportunity" for better health outcomes for Indigenous people, despite flaws in its execution, says an Aboriginal leader.
The $1.3 billion reforms to combat child sexual abuse also show the funds are available to close the 17-year gap in life expectancy between black and white Australia, the Menzies School of Health Research was told in Darwin.
Addressing the gathering, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner Tom Calma said the gravest challenge confronting the nation was the broad inequalities that exist for Aboriginal people.
"It is a simple fact that, in 21st century Australia, Indigenous peoples do not enjoy the same opportunities to be as healthy as the non-Indigenous population," he said.
"The NT intervention has blown out of the water the fallacy that the funding that is required cannot be made available."
Despite opposing elements of the federal government's intervention, launched in June, Mr Calma said achieving health equality was no longer "a pipedream".
"(It's) something that is utterly achievable and realistic," he said.
"It is perhaps ironic that we now have a historic opportunity to achieve this due to the NT intervention ...
"There can be no excuse for avoiding this major issue any more."
But Mr Calma conceded he still had serious concerns.
The commissioner has consistently called for the intervention to be non-discriminatory and developed with the full and effective participation of Aboriginal people.
Despite his misgivings, Mr Calma called on the federal government to use the intervention to set targets - and to work towards them.
"This is particularly evident in relation to access to primary health care, medicines and health infrastructure," Mr Calma said.
"I don't want to hear about how a record amount of money is being spent by the government on indigenous issues ...
"Instead, I want to hear about the vision for what that funding is meant to achieve.
"When will the life expectancy gap be halved and then eliminated? What does the government see as an acceptable rate of progress?"
Targets should include a 25-year span for health and life expectation equality, 10 years for equality of opportunity in relation to primary health care and 10 years for equality of opportunity in relation to health infrastructure, Mr Calma said.
It was also necessary for the intervention to harness the community controlled sector, rather than relying on interstate volunteers.
"These are serious questions and they need to be answered as the intervention unfolds," he said. - AAP
See: NI Times
Govt needs to adopt 'timeframes' for intervention
ABC News | 9 November 2007
Aboriginal Social Justice Commissioner Tom Calma says the Commonwealth's intervention in the Northern Territory needs to have specific timeframes for its objectives.
Speaking in Darwin last night Mr Calma called on the Federal Government to adopt the targets he has proposed in his Social Justice Report.
He says there should be an equal life expectancy between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians within 25 years.
Mr Calma says there should also be a timeframe of 10 years for equality in access to health care.
"In all work that the Federal Government and State Governments do, if we want to get some real outcomes we have to make sure they are timeframed," he said.
"We need to be able to know what we need to achieve over what period of time, because unless you do that, you won't have any mechanism to measure any advancement."
Mr Calma has also urged governments to engage local communities in order to improve the state of Indigenous health.
"Governments must ensure that Indigenous peoples have the opportunity to participate fully in all aspects of policy development and service delivery as it impacts on those communities," he said.
See: ABC News
Call to stem grog flow in Alice
The Australian | 8 November 2007
Remote Aboriginal communities in central Australia have begun a campaign to have takeaway alcohol sales in Alice Springs banned for two days a week to stem the flow of alcohol into communities.
The federal Government's intervention in Northern Territory Aboriginal communities made Aboriginal towns and town camps dry zones, although most already had alcohol bans in place.
Despite tough new penalties for grog running, there is still alcohol reaching communities.
The Aboriginal town camps in Alice Springs were made dry zones, but the changes have not stopped the drinking and the worst camps were still littered with thousands of empty beer cans yesterday.
The initiative came from the Yuendumu Women's Centre, after a group of women from the town, 290km northwest of Alice Springs, said what they wanted most was to stop the drinking in Alice Springs and the flow of alcohol back to the community.
Peggy Nampijinpa Brown - whose work setting up the Mount Theo substance abuse program and Yuendumu Women's Night Patrol earned her an Order of Australia this year - said it was a matter of saving lives.
"We worry," she said. "For grog, some people are fighting or murdering, in the bush and in Alice Springs. We've lost too much family; we have to slow down takeaway.
"Takeaway grog is a big problem in our communities. We've been trying to slow it down for years."
The call has had wide support from remote communities in central Australia, who will come to town to march through Alice Springs next Wednesday to call for the ban.
Alice Springs Mayor Fran Kilgariff said the city's council did not support an alcohol-free day after the issue was put to a vote on whether there should be a study into its potential benefits.
Ms Kilgariff said the view of the council was that the community might not accept greater restrictions on alcohol consumption after the implementation of bans on drinking in public places.
The Yuendumu group is also calling for a minimum pricing structure to make some alcohol more expensive.
Blair McFarland, from the Alice Springs-based CAYLUS Youth Service, said if the ban were implemented, the results would be seen within a week, including fewer hospital admissions and fewer arrests.
"It will immediately show results," Mr McFarland said.
He said the alcohol bans in the town camps - where there is a constant flow of visitors from remote communities - had not made any difference to the amount of drinking.
"The police don't have the resources to stop it; if anything, it has gotten worse," he said.
See: The Australian
Indigenous health officials stage boycott
Sydney Morning Herald | 9 November 2007
Representatives of Aboriginal health workers in the Northern Territory will not attend a meeting in Darwin today because they say it is a four-hour $50,000 gabfest.
Naomi Mayers and Dea Delaney Thiele, who are the deputy director and chief executive of the National Aboriginal Community-Controlled Health Organisation, say the money could have paid for another front-line health worker in indigenous communities.
They say they cannot justify travelling to Darwin for a four-hour meeting of the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Council - and they do not feel the Federal Government should be spending its health budget on the meeting either.
They estimated the event would cost taxpayers more than $50,000, including business class air fares for more than 15 delegates, plus taxis, accommodation and a restaurant dinner.
"The choice is this: do we have a four-hour meeting in a tropical location that costs over $50,000 and requires an average of 10 hours travelling time and a loss of up to two full days' work time or do we employ an Aboriginal health worker to deliver much-needed culturally appropriate health care?" Ms Mayers said.
Along with the chairman of the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Council, Henry Councillor, who will attend, Ms Mayers and Ms Delaney Thiele are the only representatives of Aboriginal community organisations on the council, which provides advice to the Minister for Health and Ageing on indigenous health. Aboriginal community health workers deliver most of the frontline services in the remote Northern Territory communities that are the focus of the Government's emergency intervention.
This latest battle is the most worrying example yet of the deteriorating relationship between frontline health workers in the territory's indigenous communities and the Commonwealth bureaucracy.
Tensions have been rising since the intervention taskforce arrived, bringing doctors and nurses who are being paid up to $600 a day plus expenses to duplicate, in some cases, the work of community health workers.
On Monday the ABC reported that in some communities the taskforce is doing child health checks in portable buildings erected in the car park of the local Aboriginal health organisation.
Ms Delaney Thiele said her association threatened to withdraw from the health council eight years ago amid frustration that its views were being cast aside in meetings. "We put ideas up but they never get anywhere."
She said one bureaucrat had been brought to tears in one meeting and an Aboriginal elder walked out of the last meeting after a presentation by the co-chairwoman of the Commonwealth's national emergency taskforce, Sue Gordon.
But a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Ageing said the health council was "a key contributor to indigenous health in Australia".
The council met "offshore" - away from Canberra - once a year, which was the practice of most advisory committees across all government departments.
See: Sydney Morning Herald
NT police bracing for trouble
The Age | 9 November 2007
Aboriginal residents of a violence-torn Northern Territory community have received almost $200,000 cash in royalties as federal authorities prepare to quarantine welfare payments to stop spending on alcohol and drugs.
Northern Territory police are braced for trouble as some members of the land-owning group from Wadeye arrive in Darwin to spend the $7100 each they received this week as part payment for allowing the construction of a gas pipeline on their land, which is 250 kilometres south-west of Darwin.
When the same group received royalty payments in the past, police had to deal with unruly drunken behaviour, including making some arrests.
NT police spokeswoman Sandra Mitchell said police were aware of the payments and would monitor any antisocial behaviour in line with standard policing practice.
The group will soon receive another $250,000 in royalties for the pipeline, which will transport gas from the Bonaparte Gulf to Darwin.
A gas processing plant will also be built on indigenous land.
Under the Federal Government's indigenous intervention, half of the welfare payments received by residents will have to be spent on food and other family essentials.
Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough said yesterday that large sums of money could prove destructive for indigenous communities.
He said royalties should be invested in long-term economic activity aimed at benefiting families and communities.
Labor's indigenous spokeswoman, Jenny Macklin, said a Rudd government would work with indigenous groups to ensure royalties were used for economic development and not wasted.
"It's not good enough for Mr Brough to cry crocodile tears about this as his Government did nothing for 11 years," she said.
Elders in Wadeye, a former Catholic mission known as Port Keats, have plans to boost economic development, including farms and a motel on a spectacular, rarely visited beach.
They have largely embraced the intervention despite struggling to curb outbreaks of gang-related violence.
Extra police were rushed to Wadeye on October 28 to quell violence that had escalated over several days.
Police fired a warning shot to disperse a group that had attacked police cars with machetes, rocks, spears and iron bars.
For several years two gangs, the Evil Warriors and Judas Priest, have fought running battles on the streets of Wadeye, which with 2500 people is the NT's biggest Aboriginal community.
Until the latest flare-up, elders believed the gang problem was being brought under control with the help of a reformed gang leader and the deployment of more full-time police.
See: The Age
Women's group calls for Alice alcohol sanctions
ABC News | 8 November 2007
Remote Indigenous communities in central Australia are calling for a ban on take-away alcohol sales in Alice Springs for two days a week.
The Yuendumu Women's Centre is leading the push and wants the Commonwealth and Northern Territory governments to step in.
Central Australian youth worker Blair McFarland says a ban would have an immediate impact.
"All the international research shows it's one of the few strategies that actually works and it works straight away," he said.
"For the minor inconvenience to the general population there's a major pay off also for the general population. There'll be less crime on the streets, less drunken behaviour, less cost to the health system."
See: ABC News
Bush home plans up in the air
NT News | 7 November 2007
Confusion reigns over the Federal Government's intervention program affecting indigenous housing program, which is worth hundreds of millions in construction dollars.
Tenders closed last Wednesday for management of the roll-out of the Strategic Interventions Housing Program.
But while the NT Government believes the program is worth $750 million, Canberra said it was worth $793 million.
Five international engineering corporations have applied to manage the housing program.
They were VDM Consulting, Coffey Projects, Arup, Connell Wagner and Parsons Brinckerhoff Australia.
The NT Government said the details of how many houses would be built, and where, was to be determined by the program manager, once the tender was awarded.
But the process has already begun without them: in the last two weeks two tenders were advertised for the construction of up to 52 remote indigenous houses.
The Federal Government's Department of Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FaCSIA) has called for builders to erect up to 30 houses in remote communities by the endof June 2008.
Most NT builders have been locked out of consideration because they have not yet met new federal occupational health and safety (OH&S) standard accreditation requirements, which came into effect on October 1.
The wet season has started and many roads to remote communities will soon be cut, making construction difficult.
Territory builder PTM Homes, which has built remote indigenous housing, said theFederal Government was playing games.
PTM Homes' Tony Papadakis said trying to build 30 houses in the Wet, when most NT companies were not able to take part, was ridiculous.
"Canberra has no idea what happens in the Territory," he said.
"I'm still laughing reading it," Mr Papadakis said.
FaCSIA spokeswoman Liz Smith refused to allow BusinessWeek to talk to anybody from the Department, citing departmental policy.
She said the federal government aimed for construction of the houses to begin as early in the 2008 Dry as possible.
As May 1 marks the first day of the Dry, that would leave two months to construct the 30 houses.
Mr Papadakis said PTM Homes was trying to get OH&S accreditation now but although they were aggressively pursuing it they would not get it until early January.
The NT Government also advertised this week for builders to erect 22 government employee houses in remote communities ranging from Minyerri to Ramingining.
Though part of the federal intervention, the houses will be funded from the NT Government's $100 million contribution - so NT builders without the new OH&S accreditation may be able to participate.
See: NT News
Statement by the NSW Women's Reconciliation Network regarding the Australian Government's approach to the issue of child safety in the Northern Territory
WRN | 7 November 2007
The Women's Reconciliation Network (WRN) recognises that Aboriginal communities have been crying out for help for a long time with regard to the violence and sexual abuse experienced by many people. We also know that a lot of work has been done by communities to address this issue.
In relation to this, we understand that change needs to occur to ensure the safety of children, not only in Northern Territory communities, but within families and communities across Australia.
The WRN believes that listening to Aboriginal people and their needs, and listening to community people on the ground with local experience, trust and knowledge, is of primary importance in designing, implementing and evaluating measures to ensure that children and their families are safe. We believe there needs to be genuine negotiations between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal organisations involved in such interventions and inclusion of Aboriginal expertise in the implementation of strategies to achieve outcomes agreed to by Aboriginal people.
Interventions in relation to the safety of children must be undertaken in ways that are respectful and professional, and do not create further trauma. All workers in this area must be appropriately trained and supported.
The WRN supports Aboriginal self-determination. We have serious concerns regarding the impact of the present package of reforms, particularly as they affect Aboriginal people's independence, power and dignity in their everyday lives as well as their organisations and communities.
We are very concerned about the longstanding government neglect in resourcing physically and culturally safe support for children and families standing up to violence, and the scant resources available to people recovering from alcoholism, substance abuse, and related traumas. Generations of racist discrimination has fuelled this neglect. This must end now.
The WRN condemns the oppressive use of the special measures provisions within Section 51 (xxvi) of the Australian Constitution, particularly the suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act, to the disadvantage of Aboriginal people.
We support the work of Women for Wik and their colleagues in monitoring the Federal 'intervention'. This process must be done in co-operation with Northern Territory Aboriginal people openly and honestly.
Respectfully
Members and friends of the
Women's Reconciliation Network
|
Young rangers humiliated after CDEP chop: CLC
NI Times | 7 November 2007
Darwin, November 7, 2007: Rangers from a remote Aboriginal community in Central Australia are humiliated by the scrapping of the Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) that gave them income, land council leaders say.
CDEP is being phased out across the Northern Territory under Canberra's intervention to tackle child sex abuse.
The aim is to get people off passive welfare and into mainstream employment.
At the community of Hermannsburg, west of Alice Springs, CDEP support was withdrawn from the Tjuwanpa Rangers on October 26.
Now the group of about 25 young men have been forced to sign-up to the dole.
Central Land Council (CLC) director David Ross said morale had plummeted in the group, which won a Merit Award at recent NT Landcare Awards for land management achievements.
"The abolition of CDEP has severely impacted on these young people," Mr Ross said.
"This group which once worked ... are embarrassed and humiliated.
"They have to register with Centrelink, register with a Job Network Provider, have their hours restricted and have their hard earned income reduced and quarantined."
Mr Ross said the ranger group was set up after traditional owners called for more work opportunities to be created for their young people.
Since 2005, the rangers have completed $70,000 worth of commercial contracts, including fauna surveys, walking track maintenance, fencing, weed control and recording traditional plant use.
"These are young people who want to work," Mr Ross said.
"Like most other Australians, they have aspirations for a better standard of living and enjoying the benefits that stable employment brings.
"It's a complete disgrace to play with people's lives like this."
Mr Ross said the rangers had been put on transitional payments until next year when new funding arrangements would have to be made to enable them to continue.
"This group has provided vital and meaningful activity for a lot of young people in that area and are significant role models in the community and losing CDEP is a bitter blow for them," he said. - AAP
See: NI Times
Quarantining of welfare payments to begin in town camps soon
ABC News | 7 November 2007
Tangentyere Council in Alice Springs says the quarantining of welfare payments for town camp residents will begin on December 10.
A spokeswoman says Centrelink staff have been visiting town camps to explain the changes to residents.
She says many members of the council's executive already have their welfare payments quarantined through a voluntary system.
See: ABC News
NT intervention makes impact on voters
ABC: 7.30 Report | 6 November 2007
Reporter: Murray McLaughlin
In the Northern Territory, where only two House of Reps seats are at stake, the
great unknown ingredient of the campaign is the Federal Government's emergency
intervention into Aboriginal communities.
Transcript
KERRY O'BRIEN: Back to politics and the campaign. This time to the Top End
where only two house of reps seats are at stake. And the great unknown ingredient
of the campaign there, the Federal Governments emergency intervention into
Aboriginal communities.
In the Labor seat of Lingiari taking up most of the territory outside Darwin where the
intervention is impacting more, nearly 40 per cent of the voters are Indigenous. The
sitting members seems to be hinting that Labor will wind back key elements of the
intervention although Kevin Rudd is adamant that a Labor government will hold the
line. The country Liberal Party candidate in Lingiari says the election will be a
referendum on the intervention.
The other Territory seat is Solomon based around Darwin and held by the CLP. As
Murray McLaughlin reports the intervention is having little effect in Solomon beyond
the introduction of new liquor laws.
MURRAY MCLAUGHLIN: Behind this fence is the Bagot community. An Aboriginal
enclave only 10 minutes drive from Darwin's CBD. About 400 people live here.
There are many other enclosed housing estates across Darwin, but this fence so
offends Federal indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough that he wants to l pull it
down.
MAL BROUGH, INDIGENOUS AFFAIRS MINISTER: It's appalling circumstances
when a government of any persuasion puts a fence up between one part of its
community and the other and lets what goes on behind it, hide behind it.
ABORIGINAL WOMAN: Hi, Mal.
MAL BROUGH: How are you?
ABORIGINAL WOMAN: I'm very well thank you.
MURRAY MCLAUGHLIN: Bagot is on the list of more than 70 Aboriginal
communities in the Territory which the Federal Government is taking over.
ABORIGINAL WOMAN: How are the people going to get on if they want to have a
party or something?
MURRAY MCLAUGHLIN: Mr Brough came to Darwin the weekend before last, the
intervention had little direct impact in the northern capital.
MAL BROUGH: This is hard, this is challenging but it is also rewarding and mealy-
mouthed words from Mr Rudd are not going to cut the mustard.
MURRAY MCLAUGHLIN: Back in August, Labor voted outright for the emergency
legislation which underpins the federal intervention.
In Darwin at the weekend, Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd was still embracing all its
aspects.
REPORTER: On the question of the intervention, just how far would a Labor
Government roll it back?
KEVIN RUDD, OPPOSITION LEADER: Well we don't intend to roll it back at all.
WARREN SNOWDEN, LABOR MP, LINGIARI: They've done all sorts of stupid
things because they've done it in a hurry without talking to people.
MURRAY MCLAUGHLIN: But the prospect that a Labor Government would roll back
crucial aspects of the intervention is just what the sitting Labor member for Lingiari is
offering. Warren Snowdon is also critical of the way the intervention has been
managed.
WARREN SNOWDEN: This law was passed without any discussion or consultation
or negotiation with Yapa anywhere in the Northern Territory.
MURRAY MCLAUGHLIN: Warren Snowdon's electorate covers the whole Northern
Territory beyond greater Darwin and incorporates all but a few of the Aboriginal
communities under intervention. Here at Yuendumu in the Tanami desert 300
kilometres from Alice Springs, Warren Snowdon is on friendly ground. Addressing a
meeting of elders and traditional owners from the Walrlpiri tribe.
Mindful that Labor support for the emergency legislation offended many of his
Aboriginal constituents, Yapa people, Mr Snowdon is selling the line that Labor now
has a different tack.
REPORTER: What are the main point of difference between Labor and the
Government on this intervention question?
WARREN SNOWDEN: There are significant points of difference. The question of
CDEP, the question of permits, the issue of how people deal with their land, they are
very important differences.
MURRAY MCLAUGHLIN: CDEP is the community development and employment
program which the Federal Government has abolished in the Territory because it
needed CDEP workers to move on to welfare so that their income could be
quarantined as part of the intervention.
ADAM GILES, CLP CANDIDATE, LINGIARI: I think there's a lot of people who are
employable, a lot of people who haven't been in the work force because of things
like CDEP.
MURRAY MCLAUGHLIN: Warren Snowdon's opponent in Lingiari is the country
Liberal Party's Adam Giles. A public servant in charge of the central Australian office
of the Department of Employment and workplace relations, the very agency which
used to administer CDEP. Snowdon has a margin of 7.7%, and Giles concedes the
campaign will be difficult.
ADAM GILES: It's going to be quite difficult because Labor's been campaigned
against the intervention and what this election will be in Lingiari is a referendum
between the Country Liberal Party and Labor, with the Country Liberal Party
supporting the intervention, putting in $1.3 billion and trying to make a real difference
in the Northern Territory.
MURRAY MCLAUGHLIN: Warren Snowdon is campaigning to restore CDEP and
the permit system which restricts access to Aboriginal communities quickly brought
Mal Brough to central Australia.
MAL BROUGH: The Coalition is committed to the long term of delivering the full
suite of services here. That does include CDEP, that does include the permit
system.
ABORIGINAL WOMAN: And with this intervention, yes, I support it.
MURRAY MCLAUGHLIN: The women of Hermannsburg west of Alice Springs gave
unqualified support for Mal Brough for the aims of his intervention.
ABORIGINAL WOMAN: We want the grog tap turned down and drug dealing wiped
out. We want all the kids to attend school and learn how to behave themselves
properly.
MURRAY MCLAUGHLIN: But only the day before this visit, 50 men who had been
on CDEP at Hermannsburg had lost their jobs and been moved on the welfare.
ABORIGINAL MAN: I'd just like to know why the intervention was done without any
feeling, you know.
MURRAY MCLAUGHLIN: But to Mal Brough the principle of quarantining and
managing income trumps any benefits that communities may have derived from
CDEP.
MAL BROUGH: If there's less money for grog, less money for drugs, less money for
gambling and there's more food on the table then you've got a really good starting
point for people to start to see differences.
MURRAY MCLAUGHLIN: In Alice Springs 10 days before the election was called,
Labor had promised to reinstate CDEP.
JENNY MACKLIN, OPPOSITION INDIGENOUS AFFAIRS SPOKESWOMAN:
Getting rid of the CDEP in the Northern Territory remote communities will actually
make communities, parents and children, more vulnerable.
MURRAY MCLAUGHLIN: But back in Alice Springs yesterday, Jenny Macklin
seemed to be hedging her bets.
REPORTER: Kevin Rudd has indicated that he isn't going to roll back any parts of
intervention and that would seem to be at odds with your comments last time you
were here.
JENNY RUDD: Kevin Rudd has made very clear that we intend to implement the
intervention.
KEVIN RUDD: We support the intervention. It's a difficult decision, it's a
controversial decision, I don't back away from it. It's the right thing to do.
MURRAY MCLAUGHLIN: In the urban electorate of Solomon, a few small
indigenous communities like Bagot are about to be put through the intervention
hoops. And the intervention is affecting the whole voting population.
Alcohol purchases above $100 now require identification and a declaration about
where the alcohol will be drunk and the cause of tracking grog runners.
In Solomon held by the Country Liberal Party with a 2.7 per cent margin, the Labor
candidate is detecting resistance.
DAMIEN HALE, LABOR CANDIDATE, SOLOMON: People having to show ID for
the $100 laws, you know, it does and having to fill in the paperwork and regarding
the privacy of where they're going to consume the alcohol, their addresses.
REPORTER: Can I just ask David the alcohol laws the $100 limit has actually hurt
your campaign?
DAVE TOLLNER: I don't believe it has.
MURRAY MCLAUGHLIN: Dave Tollner is probably right. The new laws, it seem, are
being observed in the breach. As Darwin based journalist Lindsay Murdoch found
out when he arrived at his bottle shop counter with a trolley load of wine and no ID.
LINDSAY MURDOCH, "THE AGE" & 'SYDNEY MORNING HERALD": I said I'm
sorry, I'll have to put some of the bottles back to get under the $100 limit. The guy at
the cash register said look, don't worry, I will split it into two transactions, both of
them under $100 and I walked out with $170 worth of wine.
KERRY O'BRIEN: There are laws and laws and the penalty for a licensee who fails
to record those details is a fine of $44,000. Murray McLaughlin with that report.
See: ABick
"Aboriginal Voters Will Abandon The Labor Party In Droves", Indigenous Senate Candidate
The Coorabin | 6 November 2007
Media statement: the office of Sam Watson,
Socialist Alliance Senate Candidate (QLD)
Aboriginal voters will abandon the Labor Party in droves and vote for the minor parties on election day, because of the failure of Kevin Rudd to offer any real alternatives to the dictatorial and racist policies of the Howard government.
"Rudd lives and works in Queensland, which has the largest indigenous population in Australia," Sam Watson - the Socialist Alliance Senate candidate said in Brisbane yesterday. "Yet he has been no-where near us. He is going to need every vote in this state and yet he has treated Aboriginal voters with complete contempt, he's no different to 'Honest John.'"
This year is the 40th anniversary of the 1967 referendum which was a watershed for the struggle for Aboriginal rights and Watson has warned the major parties that Aboriginal voters will use their vote to punish them for neglecting the needs of the indigenous community.
"Our people have really suffered under Howard. Over this past eleven years our living standards have plummeted, our unemployment is close to ninety per cent on some of our communities, we have urgent needs in housing and education and the health standards are fourth world." Sam Watson said. "Our people are dying of conditions that haven't even been seen in the white Australian community for five or six decades and yet this Labor Party mob isn't even interested in sitting down with us and telling us what they're going to do for us."
The Socialist Alliance has presented a policy platform that is designed to deliver real and lasting outcomes to Aboriginal people and their families.
"There are massive opportunities across this state for our people to connect with government and the private sector, to start community run businesses and really empower themselves." Sam Watson said. "You look at places like Palm Island and you wonder why the community council hasn't been resourced to set up low impact, eco friendly tourism ventures that could employ hundreds of Aboriginal people."
The leaders and elders of the Aboriginal communities will be advising their people to turn away from the major parties and talk to the smaller parties.
"Our people need to be respected and we need to know what these big-shot leaders are going to do for us," Sam Watson said. "There are pockets of indigenous voters in most of these marginal seats that the ALP has been working and yet they haven't even had the courtesy to drop in and have a lousy cup of tea with us. So we'll be remembering that on Election day and we'll be looking elsewhere. The major parties are two peas in a very crook pod." ~
|
Rudd Disappoints On Indigenous Issues
The Coorabin | 6 November 2007
Media release: Greens Sen. Rachel Siewert
The Australian Greens today expressed disappointment at the indications that a Rudd Labor government would do little more to help Indigenous Australians.
"This is a bit of a poor effort from the ALP. They had to do very little to do better than the Coalition - and that is precisely all they have done," said Senator Rachel Siewert today.
"While we welcome the fact that Jenny Macklin has announced some extra funding for Aboriginal health, in reality the ALP have only committed 5% of what is actually needed to close the gap to deliver the same standard of healthcare the rest of us take for granted."
"The Greens do not believe that it is right for the ALP to be pinching funds out of the Aboriginal Benefit Account and the Indigenous Land Fund to meet their Indigenous education commitments," said Senator Siewert.
"These are basic services that our governments have a responsibility to provide - it is not appropriate to be using funds put aside for the development and advancement of Aboriginal communities to deliver essential government services," she said.
"Kevin Rudd has said that, if elected, Labor will not roll back the Federal Intervention in the Northern Territory. This is a foolish commitment to make up-front to these unprecedented measures which fundamentally change the rights of Aboriginal Territorians," said Senator Siewert.
"We are already seeing signs that Mr. Howard's one-size-fits-all approach is creating chaos in some communities, and the welfare quarantining system seems to be causing a bureaucratic melt-down."
"The fact that Mr Rudd hasn't found the time to visit any Indigenous communities during his election campaign seems to be a clear indication of his lack of commitment to one of the biggest moral issues of our time," concluded Senator Siewert. ~
|
Beyond Politics
New Matilda | 7 November 2007
Australia has known about the appalling living conditions faced by Northern Territory Indigenous communities for years. It can be traced, at the very least, back to 1978 when Malcolm Fraser visited the Northern Territory and reported on the poor housing, poor hygiene and lack of clean water in the communities.
According to South Australian organisation Child and Youth Health, poverty, isolation, stress from lack of child care and poor housing are all factors that foster child abuse.
In 2007, at the 11th hour of the election after 11 years on the throne, the Howard Government decided it wanted to do something about child sexual abuse in Indigenous communities. And at the minute before midnight, it announced its plan to hold a referendum to recognise Indigenous Australians in the constitution as the first Australians. As policies are made on the run in time for 24 November, Mal Brough has the nerve to claim the Northern Territory Intervention is 'above politics.'
This seems to be the catch cry of a Labor Party also punting for power. In a recent interview on ABC's Lateline, Kevin Rudd, decked in his bipartisan best, said: 'When it comes to the challenge of child abuse, we should be taking the party politics right out of it.'
Despite these claims, the issues of abuse and recognising Indigenous people in the constitution have made it on the Federal election agenda, and were discussed in the Howard-Rudd debate two weeks ago.
Child sexual abuse in Indigenous communities has been an intermittent media staple in recent years. ABC's Lateline, for example, has run numerous stories about sexual abuse, citing cases that go back over five years. One notable interview was with Crown Prosecutor Dr Nanette Rogers, who exposed child sexual abuse in Central Australia.
The issue became a political football when the Howard Government declared the situation in the Northern Territory an emergency on 21 June. Surprisingly, the ALP showed bipartisan support for the proposed Intervention, which included quarantining welfare payments, alcohol and pornography bans and the compulsory acquisition of land for five-year 'leases.'
The ALP didn't, however, agree that the permit system, which allowed landowners to decide who could and couldn't set foot on their land, should be scrapped, nor did it agree with the Coalition abolishing Community Development and Employment Programs (CDEP), a Government-funded program for unemployed Indigenous people in remote areas. CDEP provided activities and skill training to assist with employment. Originally an idea of Indigenous elders, it has proven successful in the Northern Territory. The Coalition argues that CDEP shouldn't exist and that Indigenous people should be encouraged to get 'real jobs.' The ALP say they will reinstate CDEP should they be elected this November.
While the ALP may have been expected to oppose any new policies of the Coalition, they have been rather quiet on the issue. Perhaps they fear being wedged before the election as they were, debatably, with Howard's Tampa debacle.
Shadow Minister for Indigenous Affairs and Reconciliation Jenny Macklin says, 'Labor's position is clear - we are committed to the Intervention and to achieving results for Indigenous children in partnership with Indigenous people.'
One party that has not caved in to polling and Federal Government pressures is the Greens. Western Australian Senator Rachel Siewert says: 'I was extremely disappointed with the ALP's approach. They didn't do any careful analysis or look at the negatives. It was only about an hour after the announcement was made that they came out and said "me too." They just wanted to make themselves a small target. I don't think that was an appropriate response and I was not supportive of that.'
The Federal Government says the Intervention was its response to The Little Children are Sacred report. Ironically, the Government has not followed one of the recommendations made by the inquiry co-chairs Rex Wild and Pat Anderson. Given that the report is based on child sexual abuse, it's difficult to understand why the Government is focusing on land permits and leases.
In a recent community forum in Redfern, Pat Turner, who has worked in the public service for 21 years for both major political Parties, said, 'They have used the Trojan horse of child abuse to do much more than they say they want to do.'
The legislation to allow the Intervention, which included five bills, was rushed through Parliament, essentially leaving Senators with a one-day hearing to understand the complex package. The Bills were tabled and the legislation was passed through Parliament within a week, as Minister for Indigenous Affairs Mal Brough had wanted due to the 'emergency' status of the situation.
'It wasn't an emergency,' says Senator Siewert. 'Those communities have been in a crisis for a long time and the Government could have actually been putting in the resources in it before the legislation ran through. There were lots of things they could have been doing.'
Turner agrees that the decision to intervene was more about the upcoming election than Indigenous people. She said, 'I've never seen the Federal Government act on an Aboriginal report so quickly and I have never witness such bad public policy in all my life.'
Although former president of the ALP Warren Mundine has been criticised for siding with the Liberals on the Intervention, he says, 'There's no doubt [the Intervention] is political. For anything a politician does there's always a political spin to it. The issue for me is that finally we have something happening. We're hoping that through this process they'll identify the problems in the communities and do something about it.'
Tired of the lack of consultation with Indigenous people about Indigenous issues, the Combined Aboriginal Organisations of the Northern Territory has been one of the strongest critics of the Intervention. It has made a 62-page recommendation adopting all the recommendations made in The Little Children are Sacred report. Olga Havnen, member of the CAO, has condemned the Government for creating 700 jobs for bureaucrats rather than Indigenous people, for spending $88 million on administration to quarantine 20,000 people's incomes, for compulsorily acquiring land, scrapping the permit system and for abolishing CDEP. 'It's reminiscent of Nazi Germany,' she said.
She and Turner also criticise the suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act to carry out the Intervention. Mundine agrees. 'Working in Native Title, I'm not so happy about it. I believe if you are doing the right thing and you are moving forward then those acts will validate your approach. Trying to twist around those rules I think doesn't validate it and opens things up to abuse.'
Siewert of the Greens does not support the suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act and it seems that even the ALP wouldn't keep the act suspended if elected. Macklin says, 'Labor moved amendments to the Northern Territory Intervention legislation that would have removed the blanket exemption of the Racial Discrimination Act.'
The Liberals may be able to convince some that Indigenous issues belong in a world 'above politics,' as Brough said, but now they face the challenge of convincing the High Court that their actions are inside the law.
An Aboriginal group in Arnhem Land, Maningrida, is challenging the Federal Government's compulsory acquisition of land. The constitution says the Government can only do this on 'just terms,' which is perhaps a very subjective and problematic term. The group wants to see their land returned to their control and the permit system reinstated.
According to the Land Acquisition Act, the landowners whose land has been acquired are 'entitled to be paid compensation... by the authority of the State which acquired the land.'
However, in the case of any anomaly, the Northern Territory Emergency Response Act could allow the Government to compulsorily acquire land and not pay any compensation to landowners. In August, Brough said that rent, improvements and infrastructure could be counted as compensation instead of money.
Indigenous issues are the political football which makes the goal of self-determination even more desirable. Mundine says, 'Our history for the last 30 years is that we've become totally reliant on the Government. As a group of people we look too much to Governments to resolve our problems. We need to break away from that. That's starting to happen with Aboriginals engaging with the wider community.'
See: New Matilda
Remote teachers an NT responsibility: Brough
ABC News | 6 November 2007
The Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister has described Labor's funding pledge for Indigenous communities as small time spending trinkets.
Labor's Indigenous Affairs spokeswoman Jenny Macklin says Labor would set up boarding colleges, a business development centre in Alice Springs and provide $60 million to fund an extra 200 teachers in Indigenous communities.
But Mal Brough says funding for teacher positions is a Territory Government responsibility.
"The one thing that Clare Martin gave a complete undertaking, a commitment to the Prime Minister and I, was that she would meet her obligations for classrooms, textbooks, desks and, of course, teachers. And I think that we as Australian taxpayers really should hold her to account to deliver the most fundamental of things," Brough said.
Labor's plan has been called a big step in the right direction by former Northern Land Council Chairman Galarrwuy Yunupingu.
See: ABC News
Remote doctor says intervention money being wasted
ABC News | 6 November 2007
A doctor at a health care clinic in the remote Northern Territory community of Maningrida thinks money going towards the Federal Government's Indigenous intervention could be better spent.
In Maningrida, the taskforce's demountable clinic is operating in the backyard of the community's permanent medical centre.
Doctor Geoff Stewart says the $83 million already spent on health checks would be enough money to correct the underfunding of all existing health services in the Territory.
"It's more than what would be estimated to be required to bring all health services across the Northern Territory up to a level of funding where we'd all be expected to provide a comprehensive range of primary health care services."
The taskforce's doctor in Maningrida Chris Henderson says it's important to seize the window available to help Indigenous children.
"I can understand the Northern Territory doctors feeling somewhat defensive about people like me coming in and taking over their patch. But politics works in different ways to medicine. And right now we have a political window where the kids are being concentrated upon."
Meanwhile, the chairwoman of the taskforce Sue Gordon says it's up to the Territory Government, not her body, to fund child safety programs.
"Sometimes it's easy to think 'Well, this is the special one', but there are so many Aboriginal organisations within the Aboriginal communities in the Territory who are doing a fantastic job across the board, but you have to look at them as a total picture."
See: ABC News
CDEP abolition hurting rangers: Central Land Council
ABC News | 6 November 2007
The Central Land Council says a group of award-winning rangers has been humiliated by the abolition of Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP).
The Tjuwanpa rangers from Hermannsburg, west of Alice Springs, recently won a Northern Territory Landcare award.
The council's director, David Ross, says morale in the group of 25 rangers has plummeted since CDEP was abolished and they were forced into work-for-the-dole programs.
"It becomes very humiliating and very embarrassing," he said.
"They were working and getting an income, now they've got to go through this longwinded process and have their money quarantined like they are little babies and they are not able to do things for themselves."
See: ABC News
Macklin pledges $10m for enterprise development
ABC News | 6 November 2007
The Federal Opposition has promised to set up a $10 million remote enterprise centre in Alice Springs if it wins the election.
Labor's Indigenous Affairs spokeswoman Jenny Macklin was in Central Australia this morning, releasing a policy paper on Aboriginal economic development.
She says the remote enterprise centre will provide mentoring to small and medium-sized businesses in remote Australia.
"We know there are many many opportunities yet untapped and that's why Labor's focus is very much looking for opportunities," she said.
"We're making sure that we encourage enterprise development working with the private sector and Indigenous people to create enterprise and employment."
See: ABC News
NT women support 'black Tampa' speech
The Australian | 1 November 2007
A group of Top End Aboriginal women have backed an attack by Northern Territory MP Marion Scrymgour on the Federal Government's intervention into indigenous communities.
Ms Scrymgour, the NT Minister for Community Services, delivered a scathing broadside against the Federal Government over what she described as "the black kids Tampa" and "vicious new McCarthyism".
The Tiwi Islander questioned the motivation and operation of the intervention, aimed at ending child abuse in Northern Territory indigenous communities.
Her speech in Sydney on Tuesday night prompted federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough to call for her resignation, while Labor leader Kevin Rudd said she "was wrong".
But Top End Women for Wik group, formed to monitor the federal action in the territory, today voiced their support for Ms Scrymgour.
"I absolutely disagree with Mr Brough, and I support Marion Scrymgour all the way," said Eileen Cummings, Wik member and former policy adviser to the NT chief minister on women and indigenous affairs.
"She knows what is happening in the communities she represents."
Anne-Marie Lee, vice president of Barunga Community southeast of Katherine, said it was important to have people like Marion Scrymgour in parliament.
"This is why people voted for Marion, because she is strong and speaks out," she said.
"We need more information from the Government. Everyone here is confused, and worried, especially about the abolition of the CDEP program, and the revoking of the permit system."
Irene Fisher, CEO of Sunrise Health in the territory, said it was time someone took a stand.
"My first response when I heard about this was to send an email to Marion saying 'thank God someone has the courage to stand up to these bully boys'," she said.
"This intervention is characterised by poor planning, poor communication and a disturbing lack of transparency.
"This lack of transparency is an issue for all Australians."
See: The Australian
Social Security Quarantining Fears Valid
Media Release: Rachel Siewert, The Greens | 1 November 2007
The Australian Greens today welcomed the report 'The Obligation is Mutual' from the Catholic Social Services group.
"Catholic Social Services are quite right in their fears over this legislation," said Greens spokesperson on Community Services Senator Rachel Siewert. "The recent changes to the social welfare system in the NT have huge ramifications for the broader community."
"Initially, we were told such measures were necessary to deal with alcohol and child abuse in Aboriginal communities, but the scary fact is; the framework is already in place for similar conditions to be placed, at the whim of the Government, upon any Australian parent receiving social security.
Social security amendments made at the time of the NT Intervention Bill provide for 100% quarantining of payments in response to school attendance and child welfare concerns right across the country.
"Given recent concerns by the Commonwealth Ombudsman about Centrelink's inappropriate administration of the Welfare to Work program, the idea of these same people having the power to enforce punitive welfare quarantine programs across Australia is of definite concern," she concluded.
See: Media Release: Rachel Siewert, The Greens
Aborigines 'to desert Labor' over intervention support
ABC News | 4 November 2007
An Aboriginal rights group says many Indigenous people in the Northern Territory will not vote for Labor in the federal election because of the party's support for the Commonwealth intervention.
On a visit to Darwin yesterday, Opposition leader Kevin Rudd maintained his support for the Federal Government's intervention into Aboriginal affairs.
Eileen Cummings, from the group "Women for Wik" says Indigenous voters who traditionally supported Labor may vote for the minor parties instead.
"They're not going to be looking at either the Labor or the Liberal party for their votes. So who else can we go for? Maybe independent, the Greens?," she said.
"The only people who have supported us in this whole thing and voted against it were the Greens and the Democrats."
See: ABC News
Labor won't roll back NT intervention: Rudd
ABC News | 3 November 2007
Labor voted in favour of legislation for the NT intervention in August (File photo). (ABC file photo)
Related Story: Rudd grilled on Indigenous education Federal Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd says he will not roll back the Commonwealth intervention in Northern Territory Aboriginal affairs if elected.
Labor voted in favour of national emergency legislation that passed through Federal Parliament in August.
But Labor's Indigenous affairs spokeswoman, Jenny Macklin, and candidates for Northern Territory seats have indicated that the entry permit system and the CDEP Indigenous employment scheme will be reintroduced.
Visiting Darwin today, Mr Rudd said a Labor Government would continue to support the intervention.
"We don't intend to roll it back at all," he said.
"Therefore when I say that we will be implementing and backing the intervention, it is as I have described before, and that is without qualification.
"Secondly we indicated our position clearly in the Parliament through the speeches we made at the time.
"And thirdly, that incorporates at the 12-month point an appropriate review of elements of it."
Mr Rudd says it is unlikely he will have time to visit a remote Indigenous community in the NT before the election.
He has not visited one since he became Opposition Leader last December.
But visiting Darwin today, the Labor leader says time is running short to travel to a community in the three remaining weeks of the campaign.
"I'm not sure there's going to be time before the election," he said.
"I've spent a fair bit of time in times past in the Cape but not here, in terms of more isolated communities."
See: ABC News
Rudd grilled on Indigenous education
ABC News | 3 November 2007
Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd has been questioned about Labor's commitment to Indigenous education by teachers from remote communities.
Teachers from Oenpelli, on the edge of Kakadu National Park, and Minyerri, in Arnhem Land, approached Mr Rudd and his wife Therese Rein during a campaign visit to Darwin's largest shopping centre.
They complained of inadequate staff numbers, a lack of classrooms, dilapitated furniture and a shortage of housing for teachers sent to remote communities.
In front of the media scrum Mr Rudd told them it was Labor's plan to close the gap in life expectancy for Indigenous people.
He was then overheard as he tapped the Labor member for Lingiari Warren Snowdon on the shoulder, telling him, "We should get out there".
See: ABC News
Burney supports Labor policies, not welfare quarantine
NI Times | 1 November 2007
SYDNEY, October 31, 2007: NSW first and only Aboriginal minister has backed the federal ALP's position on the Northern Territory intervention but continues to condemn the "racially biased" policy of welfare quarantining.
NSW Fair Trading Minister Linda Burney yesterday challenged media reports she was at odds with federal Labor's bipartisan support of policies to stop child abuse in the Northern Territory.
Under the federal government's intervention, launched earlier this year, Aboriginal people in remote NT indigenous communities could have 50 per cent of their welfare payments quarantined.
Ms Burney, who is also national vice-president of the Australian Labor Party, on Monday denounced the blanket approach saying it unfairly included Aboriginal parents who used their payments responsibly.
She reiterated that view yesterday, but renewed her support for Labor's variation to the government's intervention plan.
"For the federal government to introduce that they actually had to suspend the Racial Discrimination Act in Australia," Ms Burney said.
"With the quarantining of welfare payments based on your race, I'd have to say: `Well, I question that'."
But the minister said she supported the federal government's overall intent to stamp out sexual and alcohol abuse in Indigenous communities.
"I support the Labor Party platform on Aboriginal affairs 100 per cent - don't get me wrong," the minister said.
"I'm just saying that we need to think about whether or not quarantining welfare payments for people who have not done anything wrong is the Australian way."
Ms Burney said she had not received any phone call from members of the Labor Party criticising Monday's speech in Sydney. - AAP
See: NI Times
Advocate calls for NT intervention to help residents
ABC News | 2 November 2007
A national advocate for Indigenous children says the Federal Government has treated emergency intervention in the Northern Territory as a police response.
The chairwoman of the Secretariat of National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care, Muriel Bamblett, is a key speaker at a child abuse conference on Queensland's Gold Coast.
She says intervention is required in remote communities, but residents need help as well.
"We have children that are perpetrators," she said.
"We need to be able to have treatment programs and if children are being abused, where are you going to remove them to and where are you going to place them?
"We already have a shortage of assistance and placements in the Northern Territory.
"We need to be able to plan that."
See: ABC News
Petrol sniffing outbreak in Alice
ABC News | 2 November 2007
Youth workers say there's been an outbreak of petrol sniffing at the Hoppy's town camp in Alice Springs, and there is potential for the problem to get worse.
Blair McFarland from the Central Australian Youth Link Up Service says the camp's committee has issued trespass orders for the chronic sniffers to stop them encouraging other people in the camp to take up the habit.
"We're working with them to make sure the young people have an option to go somewhere so they just don't get kicked out of that town camp and end up sniffing down the river," he said.
"We're working with Tangentyere's committee for Hoppy's to make sure those kids, when they get kicked out of there, go somewhere they can be looked after and get off the petrol."
A move by the Federal Government earlier this year to replace unleaded petrol with non-sniffable Opal fuel in Central Australia has almost eradicated the practice of sniffing.
Mr McFarland says there has been a 95 per cent reduction in petrol sniffing in the region. But he says the sale of premium unleaded petrol in Alice Springs means pockets of petrol sniffers remain in the town, and that there is potential for the practice to flair up again.
"That five per cent that still are sniffing...have got the potential, particularly in Alice Springs, to start it up again because of the ready availability of premium."
See: ABC News
The Lancet launches another scathing attack on Howard
News.com.au | 2 November 2007
A prestigious international medical journal has attacked the Federal Government's record on indigenous health and reconciliation in a scathing report which suggests the Coalition will lose the election.
The Lancet published the four-page article which catalogues poor Aboriginal life expectancy and social statistics and a raft of Government "failings" on the issue.
The UK journal also reported that the Labor Party was "expected to win the upcoming federal election" and quoted an Australian academic as saying Prime Minister John Howard would aid reconciliation by leaving office.
This is the third article heavily critical of the Australian Government to be carried in the widely-read publication this year.
The special report, authored by journalist Margaret Harris Cheng, quotes Ian Anderson, professor of indigenous health at the University of Melbourne, who refers to the Government's refusal to sign the UN treaty on indigenous rights.
The article also criticises the Commonwealth's refusal to apologise to indigenous people for the "damage wrought on them by European colonists".
"This ... has symbolically obstructed reconciliation at all levels of society," it states.
"Both these issues are in the Labor Party platform, which says a Labor government will sign the indigenous peoples treaty and formally apologise to indigenous people.
"If they win office on November 24, the strength of those promises will be tested."
Prof Anderson says he believes the promises would be kept, concluding: "The best thing that John Howard could do for reconciliation is to leave office".
The journal also criticises the Government's response to Little Children are Sacred, a report detailing widespread child abuse in Northern Territory, and Labor's support of this stance.
Indigenous leaders interviewed in the paper call for more Aborigines to be trained as health workers in a bid to improve well-being and life expectancy, which is 17 years shorter than other Australians.
A Lancet editorial published in September was similarly disparaging, stating that the Government's poor indigenous health record had "fatally compromised" Mr Howard's legitimacy to govern.
In April, the journal criticised the Government's stance on climate change and called on readers to vote against the Government at the election.
The Lancet has a significant readership throughout the world and regularly takes a stand on key medical issues.
It has also published controversial estimates of the death toll during the war in Iraq.
See: News.com.au
Scullion refused to debate nuclear dump, says organisers
NI Times | 2 November 2007
A federal minister has refused to take part in a debate about a nuclear waste dump in the Northern Territory, the green group organising the forum says.
Community Services Minister Nigel Scullion was invited by the Environment Centre of the NT (ECNT) to attend a senate candidate forum with NT Labor Senator Trish Crossin to answer questions about the proposal, and why he reneged on a promise to fight it.
But Natalie Wasley from the Arid Lands Environment Centre yesterday accused Senator Scullion of being evasive, saying he had refused last week to participate in the debate on the dump and uranium mining.
"It seems he has employed a tactic of duck and cover," she said.
"His refusal to participate in public discourse on this important issue is extremely disappointing, and indicative of his evasive attitude to community concerns."
The federal government chose the NT, where it can override territory laws, after it abandoned an outback South Australian site in the face of political opposition.
A bill enabling the facility to go ahead passed the Senate in 2005 when Senator Scullion, along with other coalition colleagues, secured late amendments and voted for the dump.
The Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Legislation Amendment Bill 2006 was passed the following year.
The NT Senator had earlier promised his constituents he would not back a territory dump.
ECNT coordinator Charles Roche said the senator should explain why his change of heart.
"People are very keen to hear Scullion explain why he reneged on his promise to cross the floor and stop the legislation forcing the dump on the Territory," he said.
"The ECNT offered to run the forum at a date convenient to the senator, but Scullion indicated he would not be willing to participate at all."
Federal Labor has committed to overturning the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Act if elected, said Senator Crossin.
"The election period is a time for us to be accountable to the people who put us into office," she said.
"One of the most contentious issues over the last three years has been the process for a nuclear waste facility and it is time for Nigel to step up to the mark and explain why they should vote for him again given that he turned on them."
Senator Crossin said Labor supported a facility that was built in a community "with consultation and agreement and where the science backs it up".
Muckaty Station, about 120km north of Tennant Creek, has been nominated by the Northern Land Council for consideration by the federal government for the national facility.
The proposed 1.5sq km site is expected to be considered along with three commonwealth defence sites, including Harts Range and Mount Everard near Alice Springs and Fishers Ridge near Katherine.
Comment was being sought from Senator Scullion. - AAP
See: NI Times
High Court hears NT intervention challenge
The Australian | 1 November 2007
Parties involved in a legal challenge against key elements of the Federal Government's Northern Territory intervention appeared at the High Court today.
Lawyers have filed a statement of claim on behalf of the Bawinanga Aboriginal Corporation (BAC) and Reggie Wurrdjal, a traditional owner in Maningrida.
Maningrida is one of 73 remote NT communities the commonwealth took over under five-year leases as part of the government's radical plan to stamp out child abuse.
Lawyers for the applicant and the Government appeared at the High Court, in Melbourne today, for the first directions hearing.
Justice Kenneth Hayne granted lawyers for BAC and Mr Wurrdjal time to file an amended statement of claim and adjourned the matter for a further directions hearing on December 3.
He told the parties that if they could resolve issues concerning agreed facts in the case, the High Court may be able to hear the matter in March.
Lawyers for BAC and Mr Wurrdjal argue the Commonwealth's acquisition is illegal because the takeover will not deliver compensation to landowners on "just terms", as required by the Australian constitution.
The case also challenges the constitutional validity of scrapping the permit system and the commonwealth's power to acquire the assets of Aboriginal corporations.
See: The Australian
Brough heckled at Darwin Aboriginal community
NI Times | 2 November 2007
Darwin, October 29, 2007: Angry words and abuse greeted federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough when he visited an Aboriginal community in Darwin to announce plans to make it into a normal suburb.
Under a sweltering Top End sun, Mr Brough said the Bagot community had been neglected by the Northern Territory government and deliberately ostracised, despite its location in the heart of the city.
"It's an appalling circumstance when a government of any persuasion puts a fence up between one part of the community and the other and lets what goes on behind it hide behind it," he told reporters.
"There is no street lighting, substandard and overcrowded housing and residents are left to cope with social problems created by blow-ins."
Under the plan, the federal government would upgrade Bagot to the standard of a normal suburb.
Land would be developed for private and public housing and residents have the choice of owning their own homes or public housing.
The government will also reduce people's "disposable income" to limit the money available for gambling, drugs and alcohol.
Mr Brough said it was time that residents were "treated the same way" as those living in other Darwin suburbs.
He said Bagot residents had agreed to begin negotiations with the commonwealth following several months of talks.
But not all locals appeared to be a fan of the minister or his plans.
A group of furious people hurled abuse at Mr Brough, who pressed on with his address despite the intense heckling: "You try living like a black fella, you're not welcome here, how dare you tell us how to live".
Mr Brough said the measures to "remove the pain from the centre of Darwin" would come into effect in December, when the federal government also seizes control of the Alice Springs town camps.
He said the measures were yet to be costed.
Mr Brough also announced $6 million from the Aboriginal Benefit Account to fund a crocodile farming business and a business development zone at the remote community of Ramingining in East Arnhem Land.
"This is about creating real jobs and real wealth from the Northern Territory's natural assets," he said.
"It is part of a new way of thinking that can allow remote Aboriginal communities to make a real contribution to the Northern Territory economy."
On Saturday Mr Brough visited Hermannsburg, about 100km west of Alice Springs.
Community members there released a statement on Friday saying they did not care for "political bickering or personal accusations".
The comments followed a week in which Labor and Liberal ministers traded barbs about the motivation behind the intervention into territory Aboriginal communities, with rifts emerging within the Territory government, and between it and federal Labor.
"Whether or not somebody is really sincere, or trying to get political advantage, or make up for past errors, or rush things too fast, is secondary," said spokeswoman Helen Kantawara.
"We are desperate to see real changes ... We don't care whether it's (Prime Minister) John Howard or (Labor leader) Kevin Rudd, Mal Brough or (opposition Indigenous affairs spokeswoman) Jenny Macklin, as long as these problems are sorted out properly." - AAP
See: NI Times
Courts lacking support for youth, Indigenous
ABC News | 1 November 2007
The future of a Northern Territory support program for young offenders facing court is in doubt because funding has only been guaranteed until December.
The program, run by Mission Australia, employs youth workers to pick young people up for court, sit in on police interviews with them and act as their responsible adult while proceedings are under way.
The program is funded by the federal Attorney-General's Department until December. A spokeswoman says no funding decisions will be made until the election is over.
The Legal Aid Commission's Helena Blundell, who represents young offenders, says the juvenile court system could grind to a halt without the program.
"The attendance rate will be hugely affected. I estimate at least 50 per cent of my young clients are physically brought to court by the Mission Australia workers," she said.
"The law says there has to be an adult present in court with a young person in order for a young person to deal with them, so at a stretch it's possible for the court to say well, I can't deal with this matter.
"It's a very small service that provides enormous support. They really fill a niche that no-one else does."
She also says the service helps connect young people with other services like housing and training.
Territory Justice Minister Syd Stirling says he's keen to help secure funding for the program.
"I'd be happy to join Mission Australia in seeking that ongoing funding from the Commonwealth. Failing that, we are always open to discussion on such matters."
Mr Stirling says he is also aware of the need for more Aboriginal translators to work in the Territory's courts.
In the Justice Department's annual report, the Director of Public Prosecutions, Richard Coates, says the criminal justice system could grind to a halt without more translators.
Mr Coates says it is an unfortunate reality that translators are needed more now than when he moved to the Territory 30 years ago.
The director says there is little point sending more police into remote communities if witnesses cannot give evidence in court because there are no translators.
Mr Stirling says he is aware a lot of translators are nearing retirement and that new translators need to be recruited if the court system is to function properly.
"We do need quite quickly a revamp, a strengthening of the training on offer and probably some further inducements for people to become translators," Mr Stirling said.
"They do play a critical role, and there are gaps appearing in the system."
See: ABC News
Intervention may force Indigenous jail rates to new highs
ABC News | 1 November 2007
Aboriginal people now make up almost 90 per cent of the Territory's prison population.
A new report from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows the percentage of the prison population that are Indigenous has risen almost six per cent since last year.
Indigenous people also accounted for 94 per cent of protective custody cases in the Territory, the report found.
The North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency's Priscilla Collins says high figures are appalling but not surprising, and are the result of decades of neglect in Indigenous health, housing and education.
She says the rise shows that Territory and Federal Government's haven't addressed key recommendations in the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. She warns things may get worse because of the Commonwealth intervention, with new laws providing a further trap for Aboriginal people.
"All these people have to do is fall one step behind and then they're in breach of something and then they'll get a fine and then if the fine is not paid then there'll be jail."
She says committees to reduce the number of Indigenous people in jail, a key recommendation of the Royal Commission, have been defunded and should be honoured.
"So we're lobbying both the Commonwealth and the Northern Territory Government to get them back up and running."
But she says it's not too late for the Federal and Territory Governments to make a difference.
"There's ways instead of putting people in prison you know. There's diversionary programs you can be doing, there's rehabilitation programs now," she said.
"If those programs were in place, the majority of these people wouldn't be reentering jail."
The Territory's Justice Minister Syd Stirling says he's working to lower Aboriginal prison rates, but says as long as people commit crimes, they will need to serve time.
The ABS report also shows that crime in the Territory is up. More than 48 thousand crimes were reported last year, a jump of almost six thousand from 2005.
Traffic and motor vehicle offences made up about 25 percent of all Territory crime, with theft making up around 20 percent.
Apprehension rates were almost 12 thousand last year, with the highest rate in the Barkly region.
The Barkly also reported the highest instances of protective custody with a rate of six thousand cases per 10 thousand people.
See: ABC News
NT politican, community leader attack Bagot plans
ABC News | 1 November 2007
A Northern Territory politician says the recent move by the Federal Government to abolish Aboriginal communities like Bagot in Darwin is nothing more than an election stunt.
The Federal Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Mal Brough, announced on the weekend the Bagot community, five kilometres from the centre of Darwin, would be turned into a normal suburb if the coalition is re-elected.
The Territory Member for Millner, Matthew Bonson, says he tried to raise issues with Mr Brough after meeting with the Bagot community in July.
"There was some quite clear messages coming out from that and I wrote to the Prime Minister, Brough and (local member) Dave Tollner and guess what, no answer. All of a sudden we have an election cycle and we have Mal Brough interested in the Bagot community," Bonson said.
"I think you have to be a little bit cynical."
Minister Brough also announced that quarantining of welfare payments, which are being rolled out under the Commonwealth's intervention, would be in place in Darwin's Indigenous communities by the end of the year. The welfare reforms include reserving half of payments for food and other essentials payments.
Lyle Cooper, a senior committee member from the Bagot community, says people are devastated at the news.
"That effectively means most of our kids will miss out on Christmas this year," he said.
See: ABC News
Indigenous MP Linda Burney Attacks Kevin Rudd, Sort Of
AAP | 1 November 2007
NSW Labor's first and only Aboriginal minister has backed the federal ALP's position on the Northern Territory intervention but continues to condemn the "racially biased" policy of welfare quarantining.
NSW Fair Trading Minister Linda Burney today challenged media reports she was at odds with federal Labor's bipartisan support of policies to stop child abuse in the Northern Territory.
Under the Federal Government's intervention, launched earlier this year, Aboriginal people in remote NT indigenous communities could have 50 per cent of their welfare payments quarantined.
Ms Burney, who is also national vice-president of the Australian Labor Party, yesterday denounced the blanket approach saying it unfairly included Aboriginal parents who used their payments responsibly.
She reiterated that view today, but renewed her support for Labor's variation to the Government's intervention plan.
"For the Federal Government to introduce that they actually had to suspend the Racial Discrimination Act in Australia," Ms Burney told AAP.
"With the quarantining of welfare payments based on your race, I'd have to say: 'Well, I question that'."
But the minister said she supported the Federal Government's overall intent to stamp out sexual and alcohol abuse in indigenous communities.
"I support the Labor Party platform on Aboriginal affairs 100 per cent - don't get me wrong," the minister said.
"I'm just saying that we need to think about whether or not quarantining welfare payments for people who have not done anything wrong is the Australian way."
Ms Burney said she had not received any phone call from members of the Labor Party criticising yesterday's speech in Sydney.
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Aborigines Make Up '90% Of NT Prisons'
AAP | 1 November 2007
Almost 90 per cent of the prison population in the Northern Territory during 2005/06 was Aboriginal, up seven per cent on the previous year, according to an Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) report released.
Aboriginals make up 27.8 per cent of the territory's population, according to the 2006 Census.
During the 2005/06 period, the report said only 252 of the 2,496 people behind bars were non-indigenous and 202 juveniles in prison were Aboriginal compared to 36 non-Aboriginal.
The report, titled Regional Statistics, Northern Territory, 2007, also showed 94.1 per cent of protective custodies during 2005/6 were for Aboriginal offenders.
The highest rate of protective custodies offending occurred in the Barkly region, followed by the Lower Top End and Darwin City.
A person is taken into protective custody when an officer believes they are intoxicated with alcohol or a drug while in a public place or trespassing on private property.
People placed in protective custody are taken to a "sobering up shelter" or a watch house until they are no longer intoxicated.
The ABS report also showed the death rate for the territory had gradually fallen since 2001 from 12 deaths per 10,000 to 10.7 deaths per 10,000 in 2005.
Aboriginal people remain over-represented with 46.1 per cent of the 985 reported deaths in 2005 being indigenous people, despite 2006 Census data showing only 27.8 per cent of persons in the territory are Aboriginal.
The report also shows Aboriginal births are higher with 40.6 per cent of the 2,659 babies born in 2006 being indigenous. When it came to education, the ratio of Aboriginal to non-Aboriginal students varied, the report said.
Generally, as the school level increased indigenous student participation decreased, so that by years 11 and 12, when more than 70 per cent of non-indigenous students attended school, only 30 per cent of Aboriginal students attended.
Only 8.8 per cent of student representation in higher education was indigenous.
The ABS report also said the Northern Territory had the nation's highest new business failure rate.
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Brough promises to convert town camp into Darwin suburb
ABC News | 1 November 2007
Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough has pledged to convert an Aboriginal town camp within Darwin's city limits into a suburb.
The Aboriginal community of Bagot, lies five kilometres from the heart of Darwin's CBD and is sectioned off as a dedicated town camp.
On his visit to the community today, Mr Brough described the camp as sub-standard, saying the Northern Territory Government had let the problem fester by building a beautiful fence around it so no one could see the problem.
He criticised the NT Government for letting the Bagot Aboriginal community become run down and overcrowded.
Mr Brough said he would work with residents and the Larrakia Development Corporation to turn the camp into a suburb of Darwin and allow residents to purchase their own homes.
But Mr Brough could not estimate the cost of his proposed changes to the community.
However, he says he is confident the camp could be quickly converted into a suburb if the Howard government is returned to power.
"The Bagot community will be part of, as will all town camps in Alice Springs, be part of that welfare reform from December," he said.
"It will reduce the amount of disposable income that can be spent on those that do the wrong thing, by spending it on gambling, on drugs and on alcohol."
The Minister has also made a $6 million election promise to fund a crocodile farming business at Ramingining in east Arnhem Land, 400 kilometres east of Darwin.
See: ABC News
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