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AUSTRALIA: Indigenous Voices Lacking in Gov’t Intervention

Stephen de Tarczynski

MELBOURNE, Jul 6 2008 (IPS) - While the Australian government insists that important progress was made in the first year of its controversial “emergency response” in the Northern Territory – ostensibly to protect indigenous children from abuse – activists are calling for affected communities to be consulted.

“The Northern Territory Emergency Response (NTER) is an important bipartisan commitment to protect children in Northern Territory Indigenous communities,” said Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin on the one-year anniversary of the launch of the intervention.

Initiated by the previous John Howard-led government – with Labour’s support – on Jun. 21 last year, the intervention is a response to the “Little Children Are Sacred” report released by the NT’s Board of Inquiry into the Protection of Aboriginal Children from Sexual Abuse.

The report concluded that the sexual abuse of Aboriginal children was “serious, widespread and often unreported”.

Macklin argues that important steps have been taken to aid the protection of children in the 73 communities affected by NTER. “Many families in remote communities report feeling safer because of the increased police presence, reduction in alcohol consumption and more night patrols and safe houses,” she said.

More than 11,000 health checks of children have been administered while school nutrition programmes – providing breakfast and lunch in 49 of the communities – “have resulted in a small, encouraging increase in school attendance rates,” said Macklin.


Additionally, in excess of 13,000 people in 52 communities are being “income managed” – a process by which half of a recipient’s welfare payment is set aside to buy essential items in participating stores.

“Women in many of these communities say the new income management arrangements mean they can buy essentials for their children such as food and clothes,” said Macklin.

But while the government’s claims of progress may indicate the success of some aspects of the emergency response, calls to amend or even abandon it are still being heard.

Hundreds of people attended rallies around Australia to protest against NTER on its first anniversary.

Indigenous author, academic and activist Sam Watson told IPS that the intervention should be scrapped. He dismissed Macklin’s claims about NTER’s progress.

“I deal fairly constantly with people across those 73 communities in the Northern Territory and the great majority of people are still quite intimidated and confronted by the intervention,” he said.

While Watson said that communities want “basic changes”, they also want to have a say in which programmes are implemented. “What they would really prefer to be doing is working with the government and the political machine and strategising and delivering programmes that will in turn deliver real outcomes, rather than being clients and victims,” he said.

“They want to be empowered, they want to be working alongside the soldiers, the police officers and the politicians,” argued Watson.

Concerns regarding the lack of community consultation have been present since the intervention’s launch.

Michaela Stubbs from the Alliance for Indigenous Self-Determination is calling “for consultation with communities to find out what their needs are and how they can be addressed in a way that is appropriate for each community.”

She told IPS that top-down measures implemented by the previous government and continued by the Kevin Rudd government are a “blanket treatment” which does not take into account the diversity of the communities subjected to the intervention.

“Whether they’re remote communities or town camps, all of these areas have different needs and different situations,” said Stubbs.

She also argues that men across the communities feel they have been “put in this basket of all being irresponsible [and] unable to manage their own affairs.”

Earlier this month, indigenous men from communities affected directly by the government’s emergency response, as well as from elsewhere, attended a three-day meeting near Alice Springs in central Australia, partly in response to the intervention.

The men say that the intervention paints them all, without distinction, as rapists and child abusers. They discussed ways to become better male role models and made a collective apology to women and children for past violence and abuse.

The Alliance for Indigenous Self-Determination wants the legislation enabling NTER to be repealed. “The legislation is inherently racist and it’s also had a flow-on effect of people in the Northern Territory experiencing increased racism,” said Stubbs.

The adoption of legislation for NTER required that part of the 1975 racial discrimination act be suspended.

In March, Tom Calma, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, released his Social Justice Report 2007. In the report, Calma called on lawmakers to make substantial changes to legislation underpinning the intervention.

“As long as the NT intervention allows for the conduct of racially discriminatory actions it will lack legitimacy among Aboriginal people and communities as well as the broader Australian society,” said Calma upon the launch of the report.

The government says that Calma’s findings and recommendations will be considered as part of an independent review of NTER, due to report by the end of September.

Yet while the Rudd government intends to make changes to the intervention which will repeal some of the previous government’s measures – such as re-introducing the permit system for access to Aboriginal land in the Northern Territory, as well as re-establishing Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) this month in 30 communities as an interim measure while another employment strategy is developed – it is also keen to introduce more controversial aspects of NTER.

In a trial set to be implemented across six communities in January 2009, the government will link welfare payments with school attendance.

Macklin says that there are 2,000 children across the Northern Territory who are not enrolled at school, while a further 2,500 do not attend school on a regular basis.

“If a parent doesn’t indicate after a reasonable period of time where their child is enrolled, they will have their welfare payments suspended until they get that child enrolled at school,” she said.

Stubbs described the trial as “an appalling step to take”.

“It’s never been shown that introducing a punitive measure like this actually has a positive result,” she said.

 
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