Mission & Justice

Lindsay Murdoch; 27/9/08

Thousand of indigenous people from remote communities targeted in the federal indigenous intervention have moved to Katherine, Alice Springs, Tennant Creek and Darwin to escape strict alcohol bans and strengthened policing. The Northern Territory Government has told a panel reviewing the intervention for the Rudd Government that the drift to urban areas has caused significant increases in crime and anti-social behaviour in town camps and towns — and residents of Katherine say they have had enough. “Drunks staggering everywhere, smashed bottles, graffiti, broken shop windows … we are losing the war,” says Anne Shepherd, Mayor of the town 300 kilometres south of Darwin.

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Natasha Robinson; 26/9/08

The federal Government is under pressure to modify the central plank of the emergency intervention into remote Aboriginal communities, with the chair of its review board leaning towards the abolition of compulsory income management. The Australian understands the hand-picked emergency response review board chair, Peter Yu, who is finalising a report to the Government on the invention’s future, is in favour of amodified and voluntary form of income management for 73 remote Northern Territory communities. And just days ahead of the deadline for Mr Yu’s final report, the NT Government has released its submission to the review board, which also calls for the relaxing of blanket income management but recommends a wide range of triggers for quarantining to occur.

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25/9/08

As both chairperson of the Indigenous Land Corporation and an indigenous woman, I am disappointed Peter Dowding (”Indigenous Land Corp `just like white owners’ ” 23/9) has made unsubstantiated, untrue and insulting comments about the traditional owners of Waliburru and about the ILC’s activities in the pastoral industry.
The ILC has purchased 221 properties since 1995 totalling more than five million hectares, of which the ILC only leases two as pastoral businesses to provide indigenous training and employment. It also leases another two cattle properties in the Northern Territory under the NT Land Rights Act, one of those being Waliburru Station, the subject of a feature story in The Australian (”Cattlemen muster pride”, 22/9). The ILC does not require any indigenous landholder to lease its land to the ILC before it will provide land management assistance. In fact, in Dowding’s home state of Western Australia, in the past three years the ILC has approved $4 million to 18 pastoral properties for development work and the purchase of livestock. It also approved $2.5 million for the provision of technical expertise and training for 20 properties through joint West Australian Government and ILC programs. All of these properties are indigenous-owned and operated.
In relation to Mount Welcome, contrary to Dowding’s allegations, the ILC has never requested it be leased to the corporation and the ILC has no intention of seeking a lease.
Unlike Dowding, I have visited Waliburru on a number of occasions and have seen the pride and joy in the people who are now operating a successful pastoral operation equal to any in Australia. Let him go to Waliburru and try to tell the traditional owners that they are wrong. A few of the ringers might not too politely tell him to get off his high horse. Shirley McPherson; Chairperson, Indigenous Land Corporation

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24/9/08

The Australian Greens have taken up the fight for financial compensation for the stolen generations but the federal government remains totally opposed to the idea. The Greens introduced into parliament a bill to set up a reparations tribunal to determine compensation, still sought by many members of the stolen generations. The federal government delivered a long-awaited national apology to the stolen generations in February, but has ruled out financially compensating victims. A spokeswoman for Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin said the government was building on the apology with practical measures to close the life expectancy gap between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people.

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Patricia Karvelas; 24/9/08

Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin has promised Labor will established a fully functioning national indigenous representative body by the next election. Until now, Labor has not been clear on when the body will be established or how it will work. Ms Macklin told The Australian she was not convinced yet about whether it should be directly elected, appointed or a mix of both. She said the Government would make sure that women and young people were well represented on the new body.

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Amanda Meade; 22/9/08

As Aboriginal filmmakers, Rachel Perkins and Darren Dale thought they had a grip on the history of indigenous Australia. But after six years of research, travel and interviewing, they both say they are shocked at how little they knew before they began making the epic, groundbreaking series for SBS, The First Australians. Perkins says she wasn’t aware of the early, touching rapport between the Aborigines and the European settlers. “You don’t think about all these wonderful exchanges, like shaving other’s beards and combing each other’s hair,” Perkins says. “Eventually the violence did kick in.”

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Muriel Bamblett; 22/9/08

On the day of the national apology to the stolen generations, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was presented with a glass coolamon by stolen generations member Lorraine Peeters. Within it was a message saying: “We have a new covenant between our peoples — that we will do all we can to make sure our children are carried forward, loved and nurtured and able to live a full life.” The use of a coolamon to carry this message was significant because coolamons were often used to carry newborn children in Aboriginal communities. Now it is the carrier of the future for indigenous and non-indigenous children alike, in response to the apology for the carrying away of indigenous children from their families, communities and country.

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Russell Skelton; 19/9/08

Two inexperienced senators are judge and jury on NT communities. How extraordinary. Two special-interest first-term senators are about to decide whether Aborigines in remote communities of the Northern Territory should have their lives, their right to mix with other people, regulated by a permit system. In the coming days, independent anti-gambling crusader Nick Xenophon and Family First’s Steve Fielding will decide whether the permit system should be retrieved from the rubbish bin of history. In the hung Senate they are the arbiters, the final judges. Neither has any specialised knowledge of indigenous policy, let alone the experience to decide the fate of a piece of regulatory nonsense dating back to the Whitlam era. Xenophon has asked for more time to consider the issue; Fielding says he wants to hear all the arguments before voting.

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Rex Wild; 11/9/08

Thursday, June 21, 2007, was an important day for me. It marked the final episode of a criminal trial in which I had been involved for over four years. I telephoned my wife to tell her the news. She said: “Are you near a television?” I assumed that the news of this particular case’s conclusion in the High Court that day was being announced. “No,” she said, “John Howard is taking over the territory.” The week, and now months, that followed have involved me and the co-chairman of the original inquiry, Pat Anderson, fielding numerous calls from the media. The most commonly asked question, was “what do you think of the Commonwealth Government’s response to your report (Little Children are Sacred)?” To explain our response it is necessary to go to our report, to explain its origins, methodology and findings.

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Myrna Tonkinson; 11/9/08; is an honourary research fellow in anthropology in the School of Social and Cultural Studies at the University of Western Australia who has done research among Aboriginal people in the Western Desert of WA since 1974.

There is a new orthodoxy in Indigenous affairs, and woe betide anyone daring to diverge from it. Nicholas Rothwell is one of the chief enforcers of this orthodoxy. In this month’s Australian Literary Review he pours scorn on the recalcitrants, singling out Jon Altman (whose sins include issuing a ‘rebuke’ to Rothwell about a story he had written) as representative, while heaping praise on Marcia Langton, Noel Pearson and others to whose views he accords his stamp of approval. Masterful as the arguments Rothwell elects to champion are, they do not adequately account for what exists, nor do they provide definitive prescriptions for change. For example, it is highly contentious to proclaim that alcohol is the ’cause, not mere attendant symptom’ of the ‘present-day Indigenous crisis’ and that drinking and drug-taking are ‘best conceptualised as self-perpetuating diseases, rather than symptoms of social ills’.

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