Good and the bad one year on
Jo Chandler; 21/6/08
It is a year since a cavalcade of four-wheel-drives and army trucks followed a police car past the oblivious crowds of tourists photographing Uluru and turned down the no-go road into Mutitjulu. This is where John Howard’s emergency intervention into remote Northern Territory Aboriginal communities, to rescue children at risk of abuse and neglect, began. So one year on, what has the intervention has brought to Mutitjulu? “Lots of Toyotas,” an elder, Bob Randall, dryly observes as he drives home past the traffic delivering the day’s quota of bureaucrats. Some changes are starkly apparent. Others take longer to see. And much is as it always was.
See: http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/good-and-the-bad-one-year-on/2008/06/20/1213770924158.html
Stolen Generations pioneer Bruce Trevorrow dies
Jeremy Roberts; 21/6/08
Bruce Trevorrow, the first member of the Stolen Generations to successfully sue for compensation, has died in hospital, aged 51. Mr Trevorrow died peacefully at about 4.30pm yesterday in Sale hospital, southwestern Victoria, surrounded by up to 15 family members, including his wife, Veronica. He was admitted to intensive care four weeks ago, suffering heart and lung problems. He had a heart attack on Thursday night, but never recovered. Family spokeswoman Phoebe Azer said the family was “distraught” but proud. “The family will remember him as a strong man who fought long and hard for justice and won his fight,” she said.
See: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23898064-5013404,00.html
PM should scrap intervention - protesters
21/6/08
Protestors have called on the Rudd government to abandon the federal intervention on the first anniversary of the reforms into Northern Territory Aboriginal communities. The Howard government launched the radical measures to combat child sex abuse a year ago today, including alcohol and porn bans, welfare management and the compulsory acquisition of 73 communities. Labor has rolled back some of the measures since coming to power seven months ago. It has reinstated the Aboriginal work-for-the-dole scheme and moves are afoot to revive the permit system.But NAAJA (North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency) chairman Norman George told a protest in Darwin city today the intervention should be scrapped.
See; http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23899283-26103,00.html
The intervention we had to have
Russell Skelton; 21/6/08
A year ago to the day, John Howard, then prime minister, described the situation of children in remote Aboriginal communities as “Australia’s Hurricane Katrina”. It was a metaphor both apt and alarming: if one defining feature of Katrina was disaster, the other was an utterly failed rescue. After recognising and wading into Australia’s most catastrophic social problem, the former and current federal governments may be about to commemorate one year of an incomplete and patchy rescue mission.
See: http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/the-intervention-we-had-to-have/2008/06/20/1213770924226.html
Doctors’ boss was in the Libs
Adam Cresswell; 21/6/08
Australian Medical Association president Rosanna Capolingua has admitted to being a Liberal Party member several years ago - but she claims it was only for one year and that she was never active in the organisation. … Dr Capolingua, whose relationship with the federal Government has deteriorated over the past few months, this week refused to confirm or deny at the National Press Club that she had sought Liberal Party preselection in Western Australia. But yesterday the Perth GP told medical newspaper Australian Doctor that she had held a Liberal Party membership card four or five years ago. Dr Capolingua insisted she had no intention of seeking Liberal preselection. Under Dr Capolingua’s leadership, the doctors’ group has clashed with the federal Government over several issues, including GP super clinics, the tax on alcopops and, most recently, the Northern Territory intervention. At the AMA’s recent national conference, federal Health Minister Nicola Roxon criticised the association for not backing the Government’s tax on alcopops, despite the AMA having called previously for such a tax. Last Saturday, The Weekend Australian revealed the AMA had signed a controversial contract worth about $150,000 to handle recruitment for the first phase of the indigenous intervention. The AMA responded by accusing the Government of leaking the contract details.
See: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23897930-5013404,00.html
Toomelah lesson
Damien Murphy and Joel Gibson; 21/6/08
It’s 1987, and welcome to Toomelah, a small Aboriginal community on a former mission station on the NSW-Queensland border, and the subject of Australia’s first intervention. Twenty-one years ago, Toomelah had one water tap for 500 people, and it flowed twice a day for just 15 minutes. Some houses had 30 people sleeping in them, and Goondiwindi High School, just across the border, had a blackboard for the whites and a blackboard for the blacks. And when the children came home, they played in the raw sewage of Toomelah’s fetid, fouled streets. Then Marcus Einfeld, president of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, pulled into town to investigate conditions after a race riot in “Goondi”. Suddenly, like manna from Sydney, houses were built, the dirt road sealed, a sewerage system materialised and a new bore, pumping station and tanks dried up the line at the water tap. But a drink of water could not banish the devil.
See: http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/toomelah-lesson/2008/06/20/1213770924233.html
No future for some indigenous towns says intervention taskforce
Patricia Karvelas & Natasha Robinson; 21/6/08
The taskforce running the radical Northern Territory Aboriginal intervention has told the Rudd Government some Aboriginal communities may not be viable and only those that pass a viability test should get access to services such as schools and health clinics. On the first anniversary of the intervention, taskforce heads Sue Gordon and Major General Dave Chalmers have handed Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin a report that makes a number of radical suggestions, including the creation of special tax zones to attract workers such as doctors to remote communities. In a sweeping overview of the past year in the 73 communities targeted by the intervention, the taskforce heads say suspicion is lifting in remote communities where people are increasingly supporting the intervention.
See: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23898074-5013404,00.html
Secrets in the shadows
Natasha Robinson; 21/6/08
On a field of red dust, Aboriginal men are taking marks with lightning speed. This is Papunya, 240km west of Alice Springs along a road so corrugated it vibrates a driver’s flesh with every bump. White people stand out like beacons among the sports carnival crowd; it is a rare insight into what it means to be a racial stranger. Police have come to the four-day sports carnival from communities across the area. Tension hangs thick in the air. Months ago, a 14-year-old boy dropped dead after a footy match in Mount Liebig, about 70km down the road to the west. Senior men have been on the warpath ever since. The boy’s death was nobody’s fault, but this is a world where payback, retribution, spearings and mob violence are ever-present. Since the boy’s death in February, clan clashes have rocked Papunya and Mount Liebig. The perpetrators from powerful families call it payback. Rather, it is traditional law perverted to maintain the power and status of the men who are fighting to maintain an iron grip on their homelands in the face of the biggest intervention in indigenous affairs in recent history.
See: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23896671-5013172,00.html
No question of turning back
Nicolas Rothwell; 21/6/08
In the tumultuous year since John Howard’s indigenous intervention turned the Northern Territory on its head, the federal government’s emergency response has been condemned and praised, questioned and revised, lampooned and obituarised. Yet it remains in force, reshaping remote territory communities, just as the deep-seated social problems it was designed to counter also remain. On the morning of June 21, 2007, when Howard and his take-charge indigenous affairs minister Mal Brough launched their NT coup, they envisaged a five-year minimum action program. They termed the status quo unacceptable, swept away a generation’s worth of policy assumptions, and put more than $1 billion worth of funding on the table. If the sexual abuse of remote community children, detailed in the Northern Territory Government’s Little Children are Sacred report, was the pretext for Canberra’s move that day, the broader aim was a vast overhaul of the welfare culture in the bush.
See: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23896142-28737,00.html
Tags: Aboriginal, Australia, Reconciliation