Mission & Justice

Jamie Walker; 10/5/08

Having  worked on 50 Aboriginal land rights cases, anthropologist Peter Sutton says that time is up for the nation’s troubled indigenous communities. Professor Sutton, picking up on this week’s Mullighan report in South Australia, the latest to uncover rampant child sex crime in an Aboriginal homeland, said governments should withdraw funding rather than perpetuate the cycle of abuse. There was no future in “state-funded ghettos”, he told The Weekend Australian. Asked if they should be closed down, Professor Sutton said: “No, I am talking about withdrawing funds rather than actively closing them. The fact is they are artificial communities. If they were full of white fellas, no one would dream of propping them up just because the people say they want to stay there.

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Natasha Robinson; 10/4/08
Police have not found any evidence to indicate a child sex trade is occurring in the remote Northern Territory mining town of Nhulunbuy. Northern Territory acting Assistant Police Commissioner Colleen Gwynne said yesterday reports that underage girls were being paid in alcohol, cash, marijuana and taxi fares for having sex with white men in Nhulunbuy could not be substantiated by a child abuse taskforce. The police statement comes after Arnhem Land leader Galarrwuy Yunupingu publicly stated last week that a rampant sex trade was occurring in Nhulunbuy, 650km east of Darwin, involving at least 10 girls aged between 13 and 15.]

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