The Guardian 25 July, 2007
Protests mount
over government "intervention" in NT
Darren Coyne
The Federal Government is under increasing pressure to justify its proposed removal of the permit system on Aboriginal land in the Northern Territory. The government also has been forced to back down or modify contentious elements of its NT "intervention" such as compulsory medical checks and linking welfare to compliance.
Nevertheless, the rollout of troops, police and medical teams has continued unabated, with almost 11,000 Aboriginal children in the process of undergoing "non-compulsory" medical checks.
And although the Federal Government’s initial response to the NT Government’s Little Children are Sacred report, which detailed widespread child sexual abuse in Territory communities, was generally welcomed at first as "necessary", that support appears to be waning.
Protestors marched in centres across Australia on Saturday (July 14), vowing not to give up hard-won land rights, and critics have become increasingly vocal in recent weeks.
In Sydney, about 250 demonstrators marched from Redfern to the city’s town hall to protest against the intervention.
Pat Turner, a member of the Combined Aboriginal Organisations (CAO) and chief executive of the new National Indigenous Television (NITV) service, told the gathering that a six-month emergency intervention to tackle child abuse would be acceptable. But it had to be done in partnership with Aboriginal people and be followed up with a fully-funded long-term strategy.
Ms Turner said Aboriginal people in the NT had endured a long, hard struggle to win land rights in 1975 and were not about to give them up.
"We will not say yes to removing the permit system and we will never agree to the removal of inalienable freehold title," she said.
Similar sentiments were expressed at a meeting between community leaders and members of a government survey team at Yuendumu in central Australia late last week.
It is understood the community was emphatic that the permit system needed to remain in place and that it was symbolic of the right to decide who came on to their land.
It was pointed out that there was no problem for government services and law enforcement staff to come on to Aboriginal land and therefore totally unnecessary to do away with it.
"We consider Captain Cook to be your ancestor. You’ve taken all the coastal areas. Now you want the inland areas. You want to mine here," a community leader at Yuendumu told members of a visiting survey team.
"You’ve stripped us naked; now all that is left is to cut us open to see what makes us tick," another said.
Prime Minister John Howard and Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough have repeatedly denied the intervention has anything to do with a land grab.
But the government has struggled to convince the wider public of the necessity of the plan’s more punitive measures.
The Federal Health Department last week was forced to issue a statement confirming that health checks would be voluntary. The statement followed criticisms that compulsory health checks, first announced by the government, were not only racist but also illegal.
Adding to the confusion, Minister Mal Brough last week raised eyebrows when he spoke about the possibility of introducing "wet canteens" into already dry communities.
Community involvement
Meanwhile, the CAO coalition of NT Aboriginal groups has put forward an alternative plan to deal with child abuse in the Territory.
The group, made up of community representatives from Alice Springs, Darwin, Katherine and Tennant Creek, recommended 50 measures it said would bring about lasting change.
Among those, the group urged the government to reconsider gutting the permit system and to back away from its plan to take five-year leases over communities on Aboriginal land.
The group stressed the need for more consultation and partnership with communities. The government has not responded.
Labor appears to have slightly scaled back its bipartisan support of the intervention, with Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd now saying he wants further details.
Mr Rudd said he remained committed to the plan but would like to see "in black and white" what the government was proposing in terms of changes to the permit system.
The NT Government — battered early on by claims of neglect by Mr Howard and Mr Brough — announced it was banning grog in town camps around Alice Springs, but Mr Brough described the response as "inadequate". The NT Government has also flagged the possibility of taking legal action against the Federal Government over plans for the permit system.
The Law Council of Australia, Australia’s Catholic bishops, medicos and Indigenous academics and leaders have also joined in the growing chorus of criticism.
Aboriginal activist and one-time Chairman of the former Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation Pat Dodson said he did not trust the Federal Government "one bit".
"What I’m concerned about is there is no real strategy to engage the Territory Government in a proper manner and its agencies, or the Aboriginal organisations who are going to be there for the longer term and who need to be participating now and informing the direction of the ways in which you intervene in these communities," Mr Dodson said.
Meanwhile, more than 40 Catholic bishops released a statement condemning the Commonwealth’s plan to withhold welfare payments from Aboriginal parents, describing it as discriminatory.
On Saturday, the government announced that any changes to welfare payments would apply to all Australians. Labor made an almost identical announcement earlier in the day.
Permits
The Law Council of Australia, in a letter to the Prime Minister, urged the government to implement the recommendations of the NT Government’s Wild/Anderson Inquiry.
"The Council opposes changes to the permit system, compulsory acquisition of Aboriginal land, limitations on courts’ discretion in sentencing and bail matters, and compulsory medical checks for Aboriginal children. However, it will support any significant improvement in law enforcement, health, education and housing services for Aboriginal communities," Law Council President Tim Bugg said.
"No justification or evidence has been provided to support any link between the permit system and child abuse or drug trafficking." Mr Bugg said. "All in all there seems to be a significant risk that the special measures proposed could well breach the Racial Discrimination Act."
Mr Brough remains unrepentant, however, saying the acquisition of land was necessary to give the government the authority to carry out what needed to be done in troubled communities.
Mr Howard also dismissed as "ludicrous" claims his intervention in the NT communities amounted to a land grab.
"We are leasing the land for five years then it goes back," Mr Howard said. "If there is any disturbance of title involved in that there’ll be compensation paid."
The Central Land Council was forced to issue a statement reminding non-Indigenous people that the permit system would remain in place until the Federal Parliament passed any amendments to the Aboriginal Lands Rights Act (NT) 1976.
When that will happen, however, remains a mystery, with a spokesman for Mr Brough unable to tell the Koori Mail when Parliament would be recalled to make such amendments.
The intervention has also drawn a mixed response from the actual communities, with at least two remote communities initially resisting visits by members of government survey teams comprising bureaucrats and police supported by army officers.
Survey teams had to delay visits to Amoonguna, just south of Alice Springs, after locals complained the visit had been scheduled without consultation. And at nearby Hermannsburg, community leaders were unhappy with a visit proposed for the day of two funerals.
In the remote community of Maningrida, on the north coast of Arnhem Land, traditional owner Reggie Wuridjal said people accepted some of the measures to tackle child abuse, but opposed the scrapping of permits and any land acquisitions.
"... we accept the child abuse (plan) that the Federal Government are putting forward, we accept, you know. So it’s good," Mr Wuridjal said.
"I don’t see any, you know, relationship with the leasing of the land or child abuse. They should be concentrating on the child abuse, not this. Not this, not just the land issues."
The NT Police Association added its concerns, saying the permit system helped police officers to keep drugs and alcohol out of dry communities.
"The Federal Government, in my view, has not yet made it clear what the connection is between the Aboriginal land permit system and the sexual abuse of women and children in these communities," Association President Vince Kelly said last Thursday.
"The police officer at Maningrida expressed a view that they are battling a drug problem out there, particularly with marijuana and that type of thing.
"Clearly they have some control at the moment of who comes into the community of Maningrida. To simply remove the permit system would mean there would be no requirement for any monitoring of what goes on, so it’d be open slather, so to speak."
Protests
Across the nation, activists have begun protesting the intervention, with Prime Minister John Howard’s visit to northern Tasmania last week disrupted by chants of "Howard you coward, leave our children alone", and "Shame, shame, Howard is to blame".
Other protests were expected in capital cities around Australia, and in New Zealand and Canada at the weekend.
Organiser Hilary Tyler, from Alice Action, said while people welcomed genuine steps to protect children they wanted an explanation as to why the solution involved tinkering with land rights.
"The Howard Government is orchestrating a land grab — a re-invasion — under the guise of child protection," she said.
"Aboriginal land is to be defended and protected."
Nuclear dumps
The issue of nuclear waste has also found its way into the debate.
Anti-nuclear campaigner, Dr Helen Caldicott of SA claimed the government’s takeover of Aboriginal land was a ploy to allow the dumping of nuclear waste in the outback.
"Nowhere in medical or psychiatric literature is land dispossession recognised as a valid treatment for child sexual abuse," Dr Caldicott said.
"The measures the government is taking in the Northern Territory are linked to uranium and nuclear waste."
Pastoral lease Muckaty Station, north of Tennant Creek, and other areas in the NT have been identified as preferable sites for a nuclear repository, storing carcinogenic waste from the Lucas Heights reactor in Sydney and potentially 25 other reactors that the Federal Government plans to build along the east coast. Adding further concern is the possibility of Australia storing foreign nuclear waste, due to our developing role in America’s Global Nuclear Energy Partnership.
Secret deals
Amid the confusion, the Federal Government and the Northern Land Council last week were forced to deny reports of a "secret" $600 million deal to take control of NT Aboriginal land.
A report of a "deal" emerged on the website of online news service Crikey on July 5 as the government’s intervention in the NT gathered pace.
A spokesman for Indigenous Minister Mal Brough described the report as nonsense, as did the NLC.
"The NLC is not engaged in ‘secret negotiations’ to compulsorily acquire Aboriginal land, and has always opposed compulsory acquisition of Aboriginal land, or removal of the permit system," NLC chief executive Norman Fry said.
The Koori Mail contacted Crikey seeking evidence to substantiate the report. No reply was received but the report did prompt the NLC to issue a statement, however, condemning Canberra’s decision to seize control of 73 Aboriginal communities and its proposal to scrap the permit system.
Mr Fry said getting rid of the permit system would result in rampant tourism, turning sacred lands into one of the world’s most sought-after backpacker destinations.
"Compulsory acquisition of private property without consultation is discriminatory and cannot be justified," he said.
"This short-sighted approach polarises complex issues and will inevitably lead to High Court legal action, international complaint, and universal opposition from traditional owners and communities."
In fact, overseas critics already have taken pot shots at Mr Howard with UK-based Australian feminist writer Germaine Greer describing the intervention as a land-grab, and Maori MP Hone Harawira calling Mr Howard a "racist bastard".
Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson — who spoke out early in support of the intervention — also copped a bucketing from the new Chairwoman of the NSW Aboriginal Land Council, Bev Manton, who accused him of being "drunk with power".
Using her first major address as NSWALC leader, Ms Manton also described the Prime Minister’s NT emergency plan as "discriminatory, punitive, top down and ill-conceived".
The States
Meanwhile, figures released last week suggested that Indigenous child abuse statistics were actually worse in Victoria than the NT.
The Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress of the Uniting Church (UAICC) accused the government of using the issue of child abuse for political advantage.
UAICC National Administrator Reverend Shayne Blackman said statistics published by the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission on Indigenous child abuse showed Victoria had the worse track record of abuse.
Rev Blackman said Victoria had logged 63 cases per 1000 people while the NT lagged behind most states with just 13.7 cases per 1000.
"This is suggestive of a government that ignores its own data on Aboriginal child abuse and would rather enact harsh policy on the residents of the Northern Territory’s visibly high number of Indigenous communities over Victoria’s established towns in the interests of mainstream voter popularity and not on real priority," Rev Blackman said.
The NSW Government was forced to defend its response to a 2006 report on Aboriginal child sex abuse, entitled Breaking the Silence. The Opposition claimed nothing had been done to implement the 88 recommendations of the report, and that the NSW budget had slashed more than $20 million from Aboriginal affairs.
NSW Acting Premier John Watkins said the government was working to fulfil its re-election promises to improve the plight of the state’s Aboriginal people, and the number of community case workers in western NSW would rise from 237 to over 300 by the end of the financial year.
SA Premier Mike Rann said he was condemned nationally for taking a political big stick to the troubled Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands in the state’s far north.
The APY Lands, Australia’s oldest self-governing tribal lands, were returned to a form of white governance when Mr Rann’s government intervened in May 2004 in a radical bid to stop alarming rates of petrol sniffing.
The intervention included a controversial "no school, no pool" policy — banning children from going to public pools if they did not attend school. The Federal Government has adopted a similar policy in relation to its Shared Responsibility Agreements.
"Because of doing the hard yards, because of action rather than talk ... we saw in the first year a 20 per cent drop in petrol sniffing and now a 60 per cent drop in petrol sniffing numbers," Mr Rann said.
"The key difference to what we are doing and what Mr Howard is suggesting is that we intervened, we did the tough response and then we worked with the communities.
"If you don’t work with the communities, nothing will be changed, the kids will not be served — it might serve six months of politics but it won’t serve six years, 60 years of improvement."
The Rann Government has recently passed legislation widening an ongoing State inquiry into child sex abuse to include the APY Lands while, in WA, 12 men have been charged with child sex offences against three girls in the Halls Creek area between 2005 and 2007.
WA Premier Alan Carpenter said the charges were the concrete results of an inquiry by Perth Magistrate Sue Gordon into child sex and drug abuse in WA Aboriginal communities. Ms Gordon is Chair of the government’s NT Emergency Taskforce and its advisory body the National Indigenous Council.
WA’s long-term, community-based approach to battling child abuse was much more effective than the Commonwealth’s "rapid response team" approach in the NT, Mr Carpenter said.
"We have got seven multi-function police stations established in remote Aboriginal communities and it may well be that ... eventually people who live in those communities, especially the girls and women, will develop the confidence in the authorities to disclose if things are happening," Mr Carpenter said.
Mr Carpenter last week rejected an offer of troops from Mr Brough, saying WA needed police, not troops.
Story courtesy of the Koori Mail newspaper, July 18, 2007.
Abridged for reasons of space.