Mission & Justice

Tom Allard; 18/11/08

A Christian missionary is largely responsible for the nightmare facing five Australians who have been detained for three months and face prison sentences after illegally landing their light plane in the politically sensitive Indonesian province of Papua. Thomas Allen, of the Mission Aviation Fellowship, advised pilot William Scott-Bloxam they could pick up visas after he landed at Merauke in the south of Papua near the border with Papua New Guinea. Mr Allen based his advice on the fact that there was an immigration post in Merauke and a visa on arrival is available in other parts of Indonesia such as Bali. MAF is a missionary organisation that runs flight services between remote churches and Christian communities in PNG, northern Australia and Papua but has no presence in Papua.

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Sarah Elks & Stuart Rintoul; 18/11/08; (2 Items)

Employers and unions have defended the quality of staff in indigenous communities after they were branded as “white trash” who would not be employed elsewhere, or too busy trying to save Aboriginal people to do their jobs. Indigenous educator Chris Sarra sparked a heated debate when he questioned why Aborigines were being blamed for community dysfunction, yet the standard of government services and staff seemed beyond reproach. Dr Sarra said the remote communities had become the place to “tuck our white trash away”, although he later retreated from his choice of words.

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Paul Toohey; 18/11/08; (3 Items)

When Queensland doctor Pat Rebgetz rang the Northern Territory Health Department 3 1/2 years ago, offering to take up a residency at Wadeye, he had no concept of the levels of violence, bullying and intimidation he would encounter. He did not expect to find women too terrified to speak to him. Nor could he have predicted that he would be used in a political game, which has prevented him seeing some of the sickest patients. He says NT Health does not really want doctors in Aboriginal communities at all. With his tenure to end next month, Rebgetz, 57, is speaking out, despite departmental warnings to stay away from journalists. “This place functions like a bikie gang without the bikes,” the doctor says, having witnessed steady clan violence over his three years in Wadeye, or Port Keats, and being part of a health system that he says ensures remote Aborigines do not receive expert medical attention.

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Lauren Wilson; 18/11/08; (3 Items)

Truck drivers looking to trade drugs for sex with indigenous girls have been put on notice, with rewards of $5000 offered to people who provide NSW police with information about the sexual exploitation of Aboriginal children. Police have teamed up with the NSW Aboriginal Land Council to launch a statewide initiative to encourage people to report the sexual abuse of Aboriginal children. Reward money will be offered for information that leads to prosecutions.

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Glenda Kwek; 17/11/08

Maria Mehr has just spent her first day as the only 21-year-old in year 10 at Condell Park High School. But her age is not the only reason she stands out. While her classmates are spending their teenage years going to the movies and the beach, Mehr spent hers selling cigarettes on the polluted, dangerous streets of Tehran - forced to help support her desperate Afghan refugee family. Mehr knows she stands out in her class of 15-year-olds and is nervous about her English, but says her first day at high school was one of the happiest of her life. Mehr’s journey to Australia from Afghanistan has been long and tumultuous.

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Geesche Jacobsen; 17/11/08

As if having her jaw broken and her nose, fingers and foot fractured in days of beatings was not enough, the young woman was also repeatedly raped. Then the legal system started its efforts to get justice for her. She had to tell the story of her seven-day ordeal in great detail in court - three times. Only at a fourth trial had the law been changed to allow her video-recorded evidence to be played to the jury who finally convicted the man who attacked her. Initially the legal system moved quickly: the first trial started in November 2005, less than 10 months after her attack. Then she had to give evidence again in May 2006 and November of the same year.

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Jan Gothard & Charlie Fox; 17/11/08

Last week The Australian noted Immigration Minister Chris Evans’s comment that Down syndrome was not grounds for failing the health requirement of the Migration Act. He’s quite correct, in that there is no mention of Down syndrome, nor indeed of disability, in the act. Like race before it, disability has become the new unmentionable in Australian migration policy. In 1901, the new Commonwealth of Australia passed the Immigration Restriction Act, one of the main planks of the infamous White Australia policy. As is well known, the original and subsequent immigration acts served to keep out of Australia certain “undesirables”, understood to be people of colour, by requiring them to undergo an unpassable dictation test. Race was never mentioned in the act because to do so was deemed offensive. The dictation clause was quietly dropped from the Migration Act of 1958 and from the 1960s race-based restrictions to migration were gradually relaxed. The passage of the Racial Discrimination Act under the Whitlam government in 1975 made discrimination on the basis of race illegal.

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Joel Gibson; 17/11/08; (4 Items)

Lindon Coombes has a goal: a guarantee to his graduating students that every one of them will go straight into a job or to tertiary education. “If we’re not doing that, we’re not doing our job very well,” Coombes, head of Tranby Aboriginal Co-operative College, says. He became chief executive of the Glebe college - Australia’s oldest indigenous education provider - this year after a decade working in Aboriginal Affairs for the NSW Government and for the federal Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission.

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Stuart Rintoul & John Lyons; 17/11/08

Indigenous leader Warren Mundine has attacked ideologically driven white “gatekeepers” in Aboriginal communities, saying one of the biggest problems they have is “people who want to protect Aboriginal people”. “There are some people who seem to go to these communities who, quite frankly, wouldn’t get a job outside,” Mr Mundine said. “There are other ones who go there who are totally ideologically driven and become gatekeepers. In fact one of the biggest problems we have is people who want to protect Aboriginal people. “It drives me to no end of madness.

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Peter Alford; 17/11/08; (2 Items)

Conservation Minister Peter Garrett has called on Japan to join a $4 million Australia-funded whaling research program. “I would urge all nations of the IWC to join with us in this exciting new venture and Australia would warmly welcome the participation of Japan,” Mr Garrett said in a statement. The new Southern Ocean whaling partnerships are part of a $6.15 million whale conservation program to be announced today by Mr Garrett.

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