The NT intervention: the media debate · The media articles in this section provide a range of opinions about the Northern Territory intervention. Comments from Aboriginal leaders

INDIGENOUS PEOPLES’ RIGHTS IN AUSTRALIA TODAY WHERE DO YOU STAND?

The NT intervention:the media debate

Let them eat rights

A mounting case of intervention failure

Macklin, Libs defend intervention

Ideals are irrelevant

Spin over substance in intervention report

Little children are sacred report –

being used as a Trojan horse?

Intervention’s troubling side-effects

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peopleare respectfully advised that this resourcecontains images of Aboriginal and TorresStrait Islander people who may be deceased.

© Michael Leunig

RESOURCE PACKAGE CONTENTS

The accompanying website, www.amnesty.org.au/wheredoyoustand, includes the following PDFs and worksheets:

01 Introduction for teachers

02 Indigenous rights: Starting points for discussion

Worksheets: 2.1 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples’ rights and you2.2 Where do you stand? Discussing the issues through cartoons2.3 Investigating media coverage of Indigenous issues2.4 Indigenous rights in the media2.5 Telling the story of Indigenous rights in Australia2.6 Patterns in Indigenous and non-Indigenous relation2.7 Exploring the timeline of Indigenous and non-Indigenous history

03 The intervention and human rights

Worksheets: 3.1 The Amperlatwaty walk-off3.2 The intervention and human rights

04 Land and Indigenous Peoples’ rights

Worksheets:4.1 Debates about land in Australian history4.2 Land and Indigenous rights

05 The Northern Territory Intervention: the media debate

This section includes Worksheet 5.1 Analysing and responding to different points of view and 16 worksheets each relating tospecific articles

06 Cartoons

07 Taking action

CONTENTS

The Northern Territory intervention:introduction 6

The Northern Territory intervention:perspectives from its supporters 12

Suspending some rights so that others can be protected? 20

The Northern Territory intervention:perspectives from its opponents 26

Further debates about rights 36

Amnesty International Australia | ABN 64 002 806 233 | Locked Bag 23, Broadway NSW 2007 | 1300 300 920 | [email protected] www.amnesty.org.au

We feel, here, that the intervention …compound(s) the feeling of being second-class citizens … The goodwill of whatCharles Perkins started in the FreedomRides is disappearing …

We’re not interested in anybody dictatingto us how we’re going to live on this land,on Utopia ... We’ll not be dictated to from edicts coming down like bullets from Canberra …

Once again the government has assumed… that assumption has to stop, and a realdialogue has to begin, and it has to beginvery soon … White Australia has notbothered to meet us halfway. We’ve metyou more than halfway. It is time youcame and had a relationship of meaningand significance with us.

Rosalie Kunoth-Monks, community leader from Arlparra in the Utopia Homelands, Northern Territory1

June 21, 2007 [the day the interventionwas announced] may well be seen as a defining date in Australian history. That day changed government/indigenousrelationships profoundly … Theintervention … was used as the politicaltrigger for an unprecedented use of themilitary and police to occupy indigenouscommunities. Their role was to support a regime of coercive paternalism …

While large sections of Australian societycan indulge in contemporary grief aboutpast injustices inflicted on indigenouspeoples, there is a pervasive silence about the policies of national, state andterritory governments.

Yawuru leader and Chairman of the LingiariFoundation, Patrick Dodson2

SECTION 05: THE MEDIA DEBATE

3

INDIGENOUS PEOPLES’ RIGHTS IN AUSTRALIA TODAY: WHERE DO YOU STAND?

4 Download the full resource and take action at www.amnesty.org.au/wheredoyoustand

WORKSHEET 5.1

Debates about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples’ rights:analysing and responding to different points of view

The media articles in this section provide a range of opinions about the Northern Territory intervention. Comments from Aboriginalleaders suggest that a great deal is at stake in the debate.The articles document the different voices in the debate about theintervention and what it means for Aboriginal people and all Australians.

The following grid may assist you in analysing different points of view about Indigenous rights. You can use some or all of the questions to assess what an author is saying.

QUESTIONS ABOUT THE AUTHOR’S VIEWS

According to the author, what is the problemor challenge? What are the real causes?

Who is responsible?

What are Indigenous people saying about theissue? Remember to include different viewsheld by different Aboriginal or Torres StraitIslander people.

What are non-Indigenous people saying aboutthe issue?

Who should be listened to?

Should non-Indigenous people, who haveinherited the ‘gains’ of past injustices, makeamends to Indigenous people – for example,through compensation, or by transferingresources and power to them?

Is historical background important or are thechallenges presented as if they ‘come fromnowhere’?

Where does the author stand on assimilation?Is ‘mainstream’ Australian culture treated as the model that all people should fit into?

Where does the author stand on Indigenousself-determination? i.e. Decisions on issuesaffecting the lives of Indigenous people beingmade by Indigenous people.

What solutions and ways forward are proposed,and who should decide this?

Where do you stand?

Useful resources giving an overview of the intervention


5

‘GIVING VOICE’

Message Stick, ABC, 8 November 2009

A program on the intervention covering a range of opinionand including a transcript.

www.abc.net.au/tv/messagestick/stories/s2735498.htm

‘INTERVENTION PLAN MEETS HOSTILITY FROMINDIGENOUS LEADERS’

Transcript of 7.30 Report program on 6 August 2007 withearly reaction to the intervention from Indigenous leadersand responses from the Indigenous Affairs Minister at thetime, Mal Brough.

www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2007/s1998092.htm

‘ABORIGINAL WELFARE’

The Age, 16 July 2007

Provides a general introduction to the intervention.

http://education.theage.com.au/cmspage.php?intid=135&intversion=210

‘ARE THEY SAFER?’

Insight, SBS, 18 March 2008

Canvasses a wide range of opinion, including Aboriginalpeople from communities directly affected; Aboriginalhealth professionals; the Minister for Indigenous Affairs; the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social JusticeCommissioner and the Chair of the Emergency Taskforce.View online and read the transcript.

www.news.sbs.com.au/insight/episode/index/id/39

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT’S NORTHERN TERRITORYEMERGENCY RESPONSE WEBPAGE

Read the government’s position on the intervention:

www.fahcsia.gov.au/sa/indigenous/progserv/ntresponse/Pages/default.aspx.

Note: links to all articles in this section are atwww.amnesty.org.au/wheredoyoustand

© Inkcinct Cartoons


An entire culture is at stake

This article3 was written by Patrick Dodson, known as the ‘father of reconciliation’. Patrick Dodson is a YawuruMan and is Chairman of the Lingiari Foundation. He is Director of the Indigenous Policy, Dialogue and ResearchUnit at the University of NSW. He has previously been the Founding Chair of the Council for AboriginalReconciliation, a Commissioner for the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody and a Catholic priest.

The article condemns the intervention, speaking of “a regime of coercive paternalism” and an authoritarianand paternalistic approach that “will inevitably fail”.

The author contrasts the “contemporary grief about past injustices inflicted on indigenous peoples” with“a pervasive silence” about current policies, and calls for a way forward based on “recognition of traditionalland ownership as a basis for indigenous people to exist and thrive as distinct peoples”, Indigenousparticipation, Indigenous decision making, and partnership with Indigenous communities.

June 21, 2007, may well be seen as adefining date in Australian history. Thatday changed government/ indigenousrelationships profoundly when PrimeMinister John Howard announced thathis Government planned to seize con-trol of 64 Aboriginal communities inthe Northern Territory and place themunder martial law.

The intervention, and the accompany-ing headline-grabbing phrase “rivers ofgrog”, was used as the political triggerfor an unprecedented use of the militaryand police to occupy indigenous com-munities. Their role was to support aregime of coercive paternalism inwhich grog and pornography were to bebanned, medical examinations imposedon children, and welfare paymentsmanaged and linked with school atten-dance.

There continues to be a wide perceptionin the indigenous community, and con-sidered opinion across the nation, thatthe “national emergency” interventionstrategy is motivated by political factorsin an election year. It lacks integrity.

At the same time, there is potential totransform the Howard Government’sintervention into a historical opportu-nity. There is the possibility of sustain-able community development based ona partnership between Aboriginal com-munities and both the Northern Terri-tory and the Federal Government.

There is no argument that the urgentimmediate priority is to protect chil-dren. The welfare of our children andour families remains the key to our livesand future. But this priority is under-mined by the Government’s heavy-

handed authoritarian intervention andits ideological and deceptive land re-form agenda.

The agenda is to dismantle the founda-tions of the Northern Territory Aborig-inal Land Rights Act. It seeks to exciseresidential community settlements fromthe Aboriginal land estate under specialCommonwealth Government five-yearleases, and the abolition of an authori-sation entry protocol called the permitsystem.

The Government has not made a case inlinking the removal of land from Abo-riginal ownership and getting rid of thepermit system with protecting childrenfrom those who abuse them. What isbecoming increasingly clear is that theHoward Government has used the emo-tive issue of child abuse to justify thisintervention in the only Australian ju-risdiction in which it can implement itsradical indigenous policy agenda.

Reforming indigenous land title is cen-tral to the Howard Government’s na-tional indigenous policy program: anagenda that has been swept along by analliance of established conservativesforces that have long opposed Aborig-inal self-determination and land rightswith more recent and strident ideolog-ical thinking associated with free mar-ket economics and notions of individualresponsibility.

In recent years, high-profile think tanks,the Centre for Independent Studies andthe Bennelong Society, supported by anetwork of conservative journalists,have fundamentally changed Australianindigenous policy discourse.

They have argued that only privateownership of land can generate wealthand provide the basis of community co-hesion and functionality. They have as-serted that communal land ownershipand governance structures that reflectindigenous traditional decision-makingimprisons indigenous people in welfareghettos and locks them out of the ben-efits of modernity.

The fundamental changes proposed forthe land rights act that mandates Com-monwealth Government control of theNorthern Territory communities wouldbe a devastating setback for Aboriginalrights.

The Northern Territory ALRA is theiconic declaration of the Australian na-tion’s intent to restore to Aboriginalpeople the dignity of their traditionallands.

Under the Land Rights Act, all Aborig-inal reserves gazetted during the pro-tection and control era were transferredto Aboriginal ownership and the North-ern Land Council and Central LandCouncil were established as statutorybodies to help traditional owners pre-pare claims and represent their interests.

The act liberated Aboriginal people inthe Northern Territory from their sub-ordinate and colonial status and becamean inspiration for much Aboriginal landlegislation that has been passed in everyAustralian jurisdiction with the excep-tion of Western Australia.

More than half the Northern Territoryland mass is Aboriginal land containingmore than 700 indigenous communi-ties, the vast majority of which are

The Northern Territory intervention: introduction


7

small homeland communities.

There should be no doubt about what isat stake here. The Government’s agendais to transform indigenous larger settle-ments into mainstream towns and ex-tinguish by attrition the capacity of in-digenous people to maintain smallhomeland communities.

These settlements have become thelifeblood of cultural regeneration as in-digenous people, by their own determi-nation, relocated in extended familygroups to traditional country after thecollapse of the feudal pastoral industryregime and closure of church missionsin the 1960s and 1970s.

A few years ago, assimilation was com-prehensively rejected by mainstreamAustralian society as racist. That itshould be back in vogue as this Gov-ernment’s indigenous public policy di-rection reflects the paucity of intellec-tual and philosophical discussion aboutthe position of indigenous people inAustralian nation building. While largesections of Australian society can in-dulge in contemporary grief about pastinjustices inflicted on indigenous peo-ples, there is a pervasive silence aboutthe policies of national, state and terri-tory governments.

Public discourse on the social and eco-nomic crisis that engulfs many Aborig-inal remote communities is dominatedby notions of worth within a Westernunderstanding of an ordered society.Central to the indigenous welfare re-form debate is an assumption that theprovision of welfare without reciproc-ity entrenches passivity and with thatcomes powerlessness, depression, al-cohol and drug abuse, self-harm, vio-lence and child abuse.

The conservative response to this hu-man tragedy is to advocate removingthe barriers that separate indigenouscommunities from mainstream society.The institutional features embedded inremote communities that protect in-digenous people’s identity and ways oflife are the very barriers that conserva-tives insist should be removed.

Communal land ownership, indigenouscommunity governance and indigenouscontrol over people entering their set-tlements are all at stake.

John Howard will exploit indigenousvoices in this debate to validate an ide-ological agenda to absorb indigenouspeople into the dominant society.

There is doubtless integrity to key as-pects of the welfare reform agenda. Re-constructing Aboriginal society wheremutual respect and obligations basedon traditional values and customary lawis supported across the spectrum of in-digenous leadership. But welfare re-form must be a subset of an indigenouspolitical agenda that demands therecognition of traditional land owner-ship as a basis for indigenous people toexist and thrive as distinct peoples.

Australians should try to imagine theconsequences of the cultural genocidethat the Howard Government’s North-ern Territory intervention foreshadows.Withdrawal of funding and welfarepressures on homeland communitieswill cause a drift of population to largercommunities. Social problems will sim-ply be transferred. The inevitable break-down of law and order will result, fol-lowed by an increase in arrests andincarceration.

The authoritarian and paternalistic na-ture of the Howard Government’s in-tervention will inevitably fail. There isno strategy for collaboration and part-nership with Aboriginal people. This isan Iraq-style of intervention with noexit strategy or plans for long-term eco-nomic and social development.

In response to indigenous demands forconsultation, Howard has repeated themantra that the time for talking is overand that the old ways have not worked.

These are simply weasel words from aPrime Minister who dog-whistledPauline Hanson’s agenda and capturedher party’s constituency. The essence ofHoward’s strategy is speed. His goal isassimilation.

While traditional owners have madesubstantial gains in securing title totheir lands under the Land Rights Act,the people living on the lands have beensubject to the vagaries of piecemealhousing and infrastructure programs.

The unintended consequence of theGovernment’s intervention has been afocus on the issue of long-term under-investment. Media scrutiny is high-lighting appalling overcrowding whereon average 20 people share a house.This reinforces a central theme of theNorthern Territory inquiry that tacklingthis issue is fundamental to managingchild abuse.

The Centre for Aboriginal EconomicPolicy Research in Canberra estimates

that $1.4 billion of housing investmentin Aboriginal communities will be re-quired just to fix the backlog of housingneeds in communities over the nextfour years. Plans to link child welfarepayment with school attendance high-light the appalling lack of education fa-cilities and teacher numbers.

An alternative and inclusive planshould be developed. Such a planwould guarantee the fundamentalrecognition of Aboriginal land owner-ship as a basis of partnership. The planwould address issues of land and wel-fare reform matched by long-term pub-lic investment in housing, educationand health facilities.

The plan could incorporate original as-pects of the Government’s strategy suchas the ban on alcohol and pornography,and linking child welfare payments toschool attendance. However, it wouldalso offer a corresponding investmentin treatment and rehabilitation serviceswith an assessment of a long-term in-vestment program in education andtraining.

Excising settlements from the Aborig-inal land estate is unnecessary and di-visive as is the appointment of admin-istrators to manage Commonwealthprograms. A more effective proposalwould be to transfer community settle-ments to the Northern Territory Gov-ernment under a 99-year lease arrange-ment. This transfer would enable thedelivery of a wide range of citizenshipservices to indigenous communitieswhile providing a development ap-proach for housing investment. It wouldalso seek to offer a long-term visionfor a partnership with indigenous com-munities where they would be given anincreased role and responsibility overtheir lives and futures.

In such a possibility, and in such a vi-sion, sexual abuse, violence and dys-function within communities could bepositively and seriously addressed.

This is a possibility and vision that of-fers hope. The present Government in-terventions offer little. Policies aimed atimproving the long-term quality of lifefor Aboriginal people must involveAboriginal participation and decisionmaking.

Patrick Dodson is chairman of the Lingiari Foundation.

Article reproduced courtesy of The Age.



Further research1. Dodson argues that the launch of the intervention may well be

seen as a “defining date in Australian history”, one that “changedgovernment/Indigenous relationships profoundly”. Make a list ofkey events in Australian history that have defined the relationshipbetween Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. For each event,describe what happened in this relationship. How does theintervention continue or depart from the patterns of the past?

2. Why does Dodson believe the intervention will “inevitably fail”?What is his “vision that offers hope”? Referring to the self-determination section of this resource, explain how Indigenousparticipation and involvement in decision-making has an impact.

3. The Dodson article, written shortly after the beginning of theintervention, refers to “martial law”. Why would this term have beenused? To answer this question, research the role of the military in the early stages of the intervention by searching the internetfor the intervention and Operation Outreach and Norforce.

4. Dodson argues that “high-profile think tanks, the Centre forIndependent Studies and the Bennelong Society, supported by a network of conservative journalists, have fundamentallychanged Australian Indigenous policy discourse.”

Read materials published by these organisations:

• Bennelong Societywww.bennelong.com.au/articles/articles.php

• Centre for Independent Studieswww.cis.org.au/research/social-policy/indigenous-affairs

How do the views expressed in their publications contrast withthose expressed by Dodson and other commentators who share his?

Use the grid with the heading: ‘Debate about the rights ofAboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people: analysing andresponding to different points of view’ (see p4) to assess thearguments, and use the same grid for Dodson’s article.

5. Read more about Dodson’s critique of current directions in hisspeech ‘Reconciliation – 200 years on is dialogue enough?’4

(i) Why does Dodson see policies adopted under the interventionas part of the “historical trajectory of extinguishing thecultural legacy of thousands of generations of humanoccupation of these lands”? Discuss your responses.

(ii) In the article above, Dodson suggests a 99-year lease betweenAboriginal landowners and government. In the speech, however,he criticises a lease agreement between the government andIndigenous landowners in East Arnhem Land, stating that it“reveals the dysfunctional relationship between IndigenousAustralia and the Federal Government and the tragic publicpolicy mess that embroils that relationship”. Explain theconcerns he has about this form of lease.

(iii) Dodson asks, “Will Australians living in this epoch be seenas providing the informed or tacit consent for governmentsto embark on a disguised process of cultural genocide orwill this generation be celebrated for its wisdom andimagination that fundamentally transformed Australia fromits racist colonial past and entrench Indigenous culture as a fundamental plank in our nationhood?” Explain why he sees the issues in these terms. How do you see theissues? How should people respond?

6. The article describes government plans to “transform Indigenouslarger settlements into mainstream towns and extinguish byattrition the capacity of Indigenous people to maintain smallhomeland communities”. What does Dodson argue is at stake?Research the history of the homelands movement and thecurrent debate about the future of homelands. and the currentdebate about their future.

Activities1. Discuss the statement: “While large

sections of Australian society can indulgein contemporary grief about past injusticesinflicted on indigenous peoples, there is a pervasive silence about the policies ofnational, state and territory governments.”What is Dodson saying?

2. Supporters of the intervention have arguedthat the needs of women and childrenshould come first and that thegovernment’s actions are a justifiableresponse. What is Dodson’s view?

3. According to Dodson, how has thegovernment obtained community supportfor the intervention?

4. Dodson describes a human tragedyaffecting Indigenous people, a conservativeresponse to this tragedy and an alternativeway forward.

(i) What is the tragedy that Dodsonrefers to?

(ii) Dodson describes different viewsabout “communal land ownership,indigenous community governanceand indigenous control over peopleentering their settlements”. Describethe different views about theseaspects of life in Indigenouscommunities in your own words.

(iii) What are the options for the futurewhich Dodson outlines? Discuss yourviews.

5. What does Dodson see as the underlyingcauses of breakdowns in law and order and increases in arrests and incarcerationin Indigenous communities?

6. Explain what is meant by ‘assimilation’. In what way does Dodson argue that it is “back in vogue”? What does this meanfor Aboriginal Peoples in Australia?

7. The article focuses on different views ofland ownership. Dodson describes theNorthern Territory Aboriginal Land RightsAct as “the iconic declaration of theAustralian nation’s intent to restore toAboriginal people the dignity of theirtraditional lands” and says that the act“liberated Aboriginal people … from theirsubordinate and colonial status”.

(i) Explain this view.

(ii) List the different views about landrights in the community and discussthe place that land rights should havein Australia today.


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© Ron Tandberg

© Fairfaxphotos/Bruce Petty



Little children are sacred report – being used as a Trojan horse?

This media release5 was issued by Chairman Rev Dr Djiniyini Gondarra OAM and Chief Executive OfficerRichard Trudgen of the Aboriginal Resource and Development Service on 13 August 2007.

The Howard Government are to be con-gratulated for taking on the “200-year-old-problem” of alcohol and sexualabuse in Aboriginal communities. Theirintentions are honourable, but from therhetoric it seems that the governmentand others have forgotten the historythat today’s Australia was founded on.And sadly one must ask is the “LittleChildren are Sacred Report” and theviolence now seen in some Aboriginalcommunities being used as a “trojanhorse” to take away private protectionand property rights. Rights that Abo-riginal people have had to fight for overmany decades. If so then we can onlyhang our head in shame that any vio-lence against children could be used topolitical advantage against Aboriginalcommunities in this way.

Since the beginning of colonisation ithas been the European culture and lawthat has brought violence, lawlessnessand an immoral abuse of power to Abo-riginal communities and people. ManyAboriginal elders in Arnhem Land to-day are asking if anything has changed.

Prime Minister John Howard, theMember for Bennelong, should knowthat the first Aboriginal person capturedviolently at gun point died within a dayof capture. The second Aboriginal mancaptured at gun point and “assimilated”by Captain Philip was called Benne-long after which his seat is now named.History tells us though that sadly Ben-nelong died on the streets of the smallcolony of Sydney a chronic drunk notwanted by his own people or by thosewho tried to forcible ‘assimilate’ him.Yes, violence and alcohol in Aboriginalcommunities is a 200-year-old Euro-pean problem that must be addressed

and solved before it completes its vio-lent destruction of the Aboriginal peo-ple of this country.

Again, we have to applaud the Howardand Brough initiative to kerb the“rivers” of white fella grog and dealwith issues of violence against anyonein Aboriginal communities. Violenceof any form against anyone in Aborig-inal communities is simply not on. Sowe have to question why is it that theYolngu people of north-east ArnhemLand, as well as other Aboriginal peo-ple across the Northern Territory, are soafraid and worried about what is hap-pening at the moment?

Aboriginal leaders all agree that prob-lems in relation to grog and abuseagainst children and women must stop.The Rev Dr Djiniyini Gondarra said,“We all agree with the government onthese two issues but what has taking en-try permits off our main roads and com-munities have to do with stopping grogand drugs and protecting our children?Where did this violence against chil-dren we love come from, not from ourMadayin law? It has been brought toour communities by white fella cultureand law. And then it is also white fellalaw that usually protects the violatorsbecause they know the white fella lawand language and we don’t. It has beenthe outsiders in the past - contractorsand the like - that sold alcohol anddrugs to our children and our peoplewere too frightened to report them tothe police. Now if there is no permitsystem where can we go?”

Why has the government created a sit-uation of trying to create law and orderwhile at the same time they are spread-

ing a situation of greater lawlessness?

Taking the entry permits off main roads

leading to Aboriginal communities and

the roads in communities themselves

can only lead to greater lawlessness.

Every drug dealer, pusher and pae-

dophile in the Northern Territory and

beyond must be thanking Ministers

Howard and Brough for thinking of do-

ing them such a favour.

Today it seems that white fella law ac-

tually continues to create lawlessness.

Djiniyini continues, “How bad is Euro-

pean law when it does not protect pri-

vate property rights? According to our

Madayin law nobody can just take

someone else’s private property like the

federal government is doing in the

Northern Territory.”

“And why does the government always

attack our traditional law? It is our tra-

ditional law that has kept our children

and women safe for thousands of years.

If only the government would stop and

understand the real situation we might

be really able to solve some of these

problems instead of creating more. We

thought this Minister was different and

really wanted to help us create better

communities by sitting down and lis-

tening to us. Now we are ashamed and

confused as to who or what we can trust

anymore.”

Rev Dr. Djiniyini Gondarra OAM,

Chairman

Richard Trudgen, Chief Executive

Officer, ARDS


11

Activities1. What was the Trojan horse? Why do the authors of this media release think

that this image is relevant to the intervention?

2. What do the authors see as the real objectives of the intervention?

3. Why is the permit system important to Rev Dr Djiniyini Gondarra? What does it protect? Read ‘Police support Indigenous permit status quo’ at www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/07/07/1972552.htm. Why does theNT Police Association express support for the permit system?

4. The authors write “it seems that the government and others have forgottenthe history that today’s Australia was founded on”. What are some keylessons from history that they think are important for governments torecognise? How might governments relate differently to Aboriginal Peoples if they recognised and thought about this history?

5. What are your reactions to the picture of Australian history that comesthrough in this media release?

6. What picture does the article portray of the clash between Aboriginal lawand European law?

GOVERNMENT PERSPECTIVES ON THE INTERVENTION

The following materials are useful for understanding how the intervention was originally presented to the public.

National emergency response to protect Aboriginal children in the NT

The initial media release announcing the intervention.

www.formerministers.fahcsia.gov.au/malbrough/mediareleases/2007/Pages/emergency_21june07.aspx

Interview with Mal Brough

ABC Northern Territory Stateline interview Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Broughbroadcast on 6/07/2007.

www.abc.net.au/stateline/nt/content/2006/s1972379.htm

See links at www.amnesty.org.au/wheredoyoustand

Indigenous Affairs minister at thetime of the launch of the interventionMal Brough (right) speaks to the thenopposition Indigenous affairsspokesperson Jenny Macklin duringthe presentation of the NorthernTerritory Emergency Responselegislation in Canberra, 7 August2007. © AAP Image/Alan Porritt


Abuse crisis ‘like Hurricane Katrina’

This article6 was written by David Crawshaw from AAP and published on 25 June 2007. It includes some of the original reasons provided by the government for the intervention.

The abuse crisis gripping Aboriginal communities is akin tothe disaster inflicted on the US by Hurricane Katrina, PrimeMinister John Howard said tonight.

In a speech to the Sydney Institute, the prime minister out-lined the reasons for his government’s dramatic decision lastweek to intervene to stamp out child abuse and lawlessnessin indigenous communities in the Northern Territory.

The measures include bans on alcohol and pornography, thequarantining of welfare payments, abolishing the Aboriginalpermit system and mobilising extra police and troops to keeporder in remote communities.

“Many Australians, myself included, looked aghast at the fail-ure of the American federal system of government to cope ad-equately with Hurricane Katrina and the human misery andlawlessness that engulfed New Orleans in 2005,” Mr Howardsaid in the speech in Sydney.

“We should have been more humble. We have our Katrina,here and now.

“That it has unfolded more slowly and absent the hand of Godshould make us humbler still.

“It’s largely been hidden from the public - in part by a per-mit system in the NT that kept communities out of view andout of mind.”

The crisis in Aboriginal communities was not just a failureof government, he said, but a failure of parents to take re-sponsibility.

The extreme social breakdown in some communities war-ranted a highly prescriptive approach centred on restoring lawand order.

“Freedoms and rights, especially for women and children, arelittle more than cruel fictions without the rule of law andsome semblance of social order enforced by legitimate au-thority,” Mr Howard said.

The federal government-sponsored police and military in-volvement represented the “recovery phase” for Aboriginaltownships, which would be followed by a rebuilding of com-munities through commonwealth control of township leases.

To tackle the crisis the federal government has established

a panel of experts, including magistrate Sue Gordon, the

head of the Australian Federal Police’s Solomon Islands

operation Shane Castles, former Woolworths boss Roger

Corbett and former Australian Medical Association president

Bill Glasson.

Mr Howard said tonight the task force would meet for the

first time in Brisbane this Saturday, two days after the prime

minister discusses the plan with NT Chief Minister Clare

Martin.

He acknowledged the rescue plan was not perfect, but it was

a start.

“We are under no illusion that it will take time to show results

and that it will have painful consequences for some people.

We will make mistakes along the way,” he said.

“The simple truth, however, is that you cannot make lasting

change in areas like health, education and housing while

ever women and children are petrified of violence and sex-

ual molestation.”

For too long state governments had neglected their respon-

sibilities of enforcing law and order, Mr Howard said, adding

that the commonwealth did not have the constitutional power

to extend its intervention to Queensland, NSW and Western

Australia.

He denied the plan was racist, saying that abuse existed in

mainstream society but not to the same extent and not in such

appalling or inescapable circumstances.

Mr Howard confirmed cabinet would soon consider a pro-

posal to extend the quarantining of welfare payments to the

wider community where people were abusing their children

or failing to fulfil parental obligations.

AAP

The Northern Territory intervention: perspectives of its supporters


13

Activities1. What reasons did former Prime Minister John Howard give for launching the intervention? List the points that he used to

support the action that was taken.

2. Why did he compare the situation to Hurricane Katrina?

3. The Prime Minister argued that “the extreme social breakdown in some communities warranted a highly prescriptiveapproach centred on restoring law and order”. Many Aboriginal people have welcomed the extra policing servicesprovided by the intervention but argued against the intervention overall. Why might this be so?

4. How did the Prime Minister justify abolishing the permit system? Use the internet to research Indigenous responses to this aspect of the intervention.

5. Read this analysis of the article written by Paul t’Hart:

The government engaged in an intensive ‘meaning-making’ exercise, drawing on powerful (if sometimesinappropriate) historical analogies such as Hurricane Katrina to drive home the seriousness of the situation …

True to the spirit of emergencies as ‘framing contests’, the government’s critics used equally strongcounter-analogies (the Nazis, the Bringing them home report, the Trojan horse, and, but in a differentsense, Katrina) in their efforts to discredit its position.

[The government] did manage to capitalise on the Little children are sacred report to instill a sense ofurgency … It also managed to suspend politics as usual, eg. by pushing an unprecedented package oflegislation and measures through parliament in record time. And it did get a massive federal operation onthe ground in a matter of weeks ...

But the government’s framing effort did not go uncontested. This began with its insistence, backed by theLittle children are sacred report, that child sexual abuse in certain Indigenous communities was rampantand constituted a real, present, urgent and above all utterly unacceptable violation of key social values.Although this way of framing the emergency was widely accepted as such, various critics argued that thisproblem had been named in various investigations long preceding the Little children are sacred report.They sought to reframe the crisis as a product of prior government negligence, questioned thegovernment’s timing and therefore its motives. Why declare this an emergency now, eg, just months beforean election? Was the government trying to create a ‘wedge issue’ for federal Labor?7

What does the author mean by (i) ‘meaning-making’ exercise and (ii) ‘framing contests’?

Create a table:

• To its supporters, the intervention means …

• To its opponents, the intervention means …

As you fill out the table, try to ‘get inside the head’ of supporters and opponents of the policy. What conclusions do youcome to about what the intervention means?

© Somerville Cartoons



Intervention changing women’s lives

This article8 by Sydney Morning Herald Indigenous affairs reporter Joel Gibson reports comments by Sue Gordon,who was the first chairperson of the Federal Government’s Northern Territory Emergency Response Taskforce.An Indigenous woman from Western Australia, she was previously Chairperson of the National IndigenousCouncil under the Howard Government and a Magistrate of the Children’s Court of Western Australia.The article was published on 11 June 2008.

Four days after the Governmentlaunched its promised 12-month reviewof the Northern Territory intervention,the program’s chairwoman has declaredthe radical measures a popular success,especially with women in the Terri-tory’s indigenous communities.

“While I appreciate that a lot of peoplewere opposed to the NT emergency re-sponse, either as a package or in part, Iwould urge you to read what womenand some men in the communities aresaying about how it has changed theirlives,” Dr Sue Gordon, whose tenureends on June 30, told the Sydney Insti-tute last night.

She said that controversial human rightsbreaches inherent in some emergencymeasures paled in comparison to thedamage done to indigenous childrenover decades of neglect by govern-ments.

“I know personally from my own ex-perience of working full-time on the

ground over these past 12 months insome of the most remote communitiesin Australia, and seeing the completeneglect of basic services, and hearingthe stories. I am glad that this once-in-a-lifetime major funding program hasgone into the NT to benefit Aboriginalpeople in the prescribed communitiesand town camps.”

But there remained a long way to go be-fore the gap between indigenous andother Australians would be closed.

“I am aware, for example, of commu-nities such as Docker River where theNgaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunyt-jatjara Women’s Council in AliceSprings have been lobbying since 1990for police to be stationed there perma-nently and they are still lobbying for itto happen.”

The emergency response taskforce’svisits, where they were “told things thatyou would not expect to see and hear inAustralia today”, had improved the

Government’s understanding of the na-tion’s most remote outposts, Dr Gordonsaid.

There are now 51 additional police inNT indigenous communities, 57 storeshave been licensed, 8797 child healthchecks undertaken and 273 positionsconverted to “real” NT and federal gov-ernment jobs. The so-called humbug-ging of welfare payments for alcoholand other vices has decreased and aseven-person mobile child protectionteam began work in April, Dr Gordonsaid.

She chastised the 2008 Sydney PeacePrize recipient Patrick Dodson, amongothers, for spreading the “misinforma-tion” that Canberra had deployed thearmy into Aboriginal communities.

Indigenous soldiers and reservists in-volved in the early stages of the inter-vention were well received and distrib-uted information to those who wantedto find out how to enlist.

Activities1. Many Indigenous people have opposed the intervention,

but there are clearly different views amongst Indigenouspeople about the government’s actions – just as you wouldexpect amongst non-Indigenous people. What reasonsdoes Sue Gordon give to support the intervention?What evidence does she give to support her arguments?

2. Why did the use of the army in Indigenous communitiesin the early stages of the intervention cause debate?Does Sue Gordon’s response reassure you?

3. Sue Gordon asks people who are opposed to theintervention to “read what women and some men inthe communities are saying about how it has changedtheir lives”.

Use the Internet to research what other Indigenoussupporters of the intervention such as Bess Price aresaying about government policies and the challenges

that their communities face. For example, a range ofIndigenous opinion is represented in the SBS Insightprogram ‘Are they safer? You can view it online and read the transcript at:www.news.sbs.com.au/insight/episode/index/id/39

4. Refer to Amnesty International’s concerns about theintervention in the resource “The intervention andhuman rights” – see www.amnesty.org.au/wheredoyoustand

Make a list of

• human rights concerns about the intervention

• positive changes that supporters of the interventionhave used to justify the government’s actions.

Evaluate whether the positive changes you have listedcan be introduced without breaching human rights.


15

Cartoon by Nicholson from The

Aus

tralianwww.nicholsoncartoons.com.au



Tough love works best

This is an opinion piece9 from The Australian by David Moore, who was a senior advisor to the HowardGovernment and played a role in developing the income management strategy under the intervention. It was published on 26 November 2009.

Extending income management beyond Northern Territoryindigenous communities to the rest of Australia should get bipartisan support. Why? Because it works and is supportedby many of the biggest victims of welfare dysfunction:women and children. Regrettably, slipping out the new pol-icy during the emissions trading scheme debate suggests thegovernment is embarrassed by its initiative and fearful of thewelfare lobby.

When then Liberal minister Mal Brough proposed welfarequarantining in early 2006, Kim Beazley and Wayne Swanrushed to condemn it. But Jenny Macklin was an early con-vert to the value of welfare income management. I recallbriefing her on the Northern Territory intervention in 2007,while she was in opposition. I laboured the explanation ofwelfare quarantining, expecting opposition. To my surprise,Macklin cut me short, indicating that she was supportive ofthese measures. Since then, to her great credit, she has beena vocal advocate of income management despite the pressuresof the welfare rights lobby. She also understands that tech-nology means income management measures are no longerclumsy food stamps programs.

Restricting cashflow where there is a high risk of substanceabuse is justified. Children at risk deserve to get the benefitsof taxpayer-funded welfare rather than drug dealers and grogrunners. The measures further entrench the notion that wel-fare brings obligations. Ensuring your kids attend school is

a vital requirement, as education is a key to breaking the wel-fare cycle.

I fear it may be premature to relax the tougher aspects of theTerritory intervention. Reducing cash in targeted communi-ties was an important part of drying up the “rivers of grog”.

Labor is being driven by the ideological desire to remove theRacial Discrimination Act exemption but this puts at risk theeffectiveness of the measures.

The welfare lobby, which is as addicted to the welfare in-dustry as many of the recipients are to income support, willcontinue to squawk and I hope the government doesn’t blink.But will Australia get the full value of these measures undera government ambivalent about welfare reform? While introducing income management, it is weakening participa-tion requirements for jobseekers and undermining work forthe dole. Income management in conjunction with toughand fair workforce participation measures provides supportfor children at risk while busting through the welfare towork barriers.

This tough love is the price we need to pay for an otherwisegenerous welfare safety net.

And yes, we should all appreciate that living on welfare is noteasy. Neither is living on low-income employment. But we’dall be better off personally and as a nation if fewer peoplewere in the welfare net and more in the workplace.

Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peopleparticipate in a rally and march fromold Parliament House to newParliament House in Canberra,February 2008. © AFP/Anoek De Groot


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Activities1. What is income management and why is it controversial?

2. What are the key reasons that the author gives forsupporting income management?

3. How would you react if the government declared thatsome war veterans manage their money badly and spendit on drugs, so they will take control of 50 per cent ofevery war veteran’s income unless they can prove thatthis is not needed. Discuss the same scenario in relationto other groups such as young people receivingCentrelink payments, single mothers and age pensioners.

4. Analyse the language used in the article. What effectdoes the writer hope to obtain by using expressions such

as “grog runners”, “rivers of grog” and “addicted to thewelfare industry”?

5. What link does the author suggest between restrictingcashflow and improving the lives of children?

6. What is implied by the term “tough love”? Does it haveovertones of a parent limiting excesses by a child? Is thisan appropriate relationship between government andcitizens in a democracy?

7. To what extent does the article imply that welfarerecipients as a group need governments to intervene in order to ensure that they look after their children?

Further researchDoes income management work? How much support is therefor this policy?

The author claims that income management “works and is supported by many of the biggest victims of welfaredysfunction: women and children”. Assess the evidenceabout whether income management works and the questionof who supports it.

Resources

• Comments on income management from members ofcommunities affected by the intervention, documentedin ‘Will They Be Heard?’, a report on consultationsbetween government and Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory.www.concernedaustralians.com.au/media/Will-they-be-heard-report.pdf

• Articles in this resource such as ‘Spin over substance in Intervention report’ and ‘A Mounting Case ofIntervention Failure’

• Article by Indigenous supporter of the intervention, BessPrice ‘Listen to our voices and address our real concerns’www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/listen-to-our-voices-and-address-our-real-concerns/story-e6frg6zo-1225809439091

• Media releases from the minister for Indigenous Affairswww.fahcsia.gov.au/sa/indigenous/progserv/ntresponse/media_centre/Pages/default.aspx

• ‘Indigenous welfare quarantine failing: study’ by Lindy Kerin.www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/05/17/2901057.htm

• ‘Macklin leads way with conditional welfare’ by Noel Pearson.www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/macklin-leads-way-with-conditional-welfare/story-e6frg6zo-1225882964045

• ‘Deserving or not? The tricky language of the NTintervention’ by Sarah Burnside. www.smh.com.au/opinion/deserving-or-not-the-tricky-language-of-the-nt-intervention-20100914-15adx.html

Questions to consider

• What evidence is there for positive and negative impactsof income management policies?

• How do advocates and opponents of incomemanagement use evidence to support their case?

• What different opinions are expressed by Indigenouspeople?



Rudd’s NT welfare revolution

This article10 was written by Jeremy Sammut, a research fellow in the social foundations program at theCentre for Independent Studies and it appeared in The Australian on 11 June 2009.

It applauds aspects of the intervention and the setting aside of a “rights-based approach to social policy”in favour of addressing “the social disintegration in Indigenous communities by controlling irresponsiblespending of welfare payments”.

The Rudd government’s decision to re-tain and recast key aspects of the Howardgovernment’s intervention into theNorthern Territory is to be applauded.

The changes the government have pro-posed will address the main objectionsto the original intervention, while con-firming that a major political and policyshift is underway and is fundamentallyreshaping the way governments tacklesocial disadvantage.

The most controversial aspects of theintervention involved the suspension ofthe racial discrimination act, and thefact that welfare quarantining was com-pulsory, even for responsible peoplewho could manage their money andproperly care for children.

The racial discrimination act is to be re-instated. But in a neat circumvention ofthe rights-based opposition to the in-tervention, the intervention legislation,in order to conform to the RDA, will berewritten as a ‘special measure’ (likeAbstudy) to protect and improve therights of indigenous people.

However, the real significance of thegovernment’s policy is the way it setsaside the Labor Party’s standard rights-based approach to social policy, andwill continue to address the social dis-integration in indigenous communitiesby controlling socially irresponsiblespending of welfare payments.

The federal government’s discussionpaper on the future of the interventionsets out two options. The first, and re-markable no change option, is that allwelfare payments will continue to becompulsorily quarantined in prescribedindigenous communities. The alternativeoption is that responsible recipients willbe able to apply to Centrelink to opt-outof the income management system.

The government has resisted calls foran entirely voluntary system and ap-pears to have learnt the lessons of theexperiment with welfare quarantiningin Cape York.

The great strength of income manage-ment is the assistance the system pro-vides to people trapped in dysfunctionalcommunities, whose confidence andcapabilities have been sapped by long-term welfare dependence. The ‘dutifulbut defeated,’ particularly women, aregiven the opportunity to regain controlover their lives and families.

In both the Territory and in Cape York,income management has resulted inmore money being spent on nutritiousfood, clothing and rent. Less moneyhas been ‘humbugged’ and spent ongrog, drugs, and gambling. By givingpeople a hand up (income managementis ‘muscular’ social work) people areempowered to budget and save.

This is one of the reasons many indige-nous women in the Territory support theintervention, and is why many womenare unlikely to want to opt out of incomemanagement. In a promising sign ofnormalcy, as the government’s discussionpaper notes that income managementhas led to more males making financialcontributions to family shopping.

The fatal weakness of a voluntary sys-tem would be that the most dysfunc-tional people, the bad behaviour ofwhom causes much of the chaos in in-digenous and other communities, wouldbe unlikely to volunteer to be incomemanaged. The NT Intervention solu-tion for this problem was universalquarantining. The Cape York solution isto create a Family ResponsibilitiesCommission with the authority to com-pulsory quarantine the welfare of dis-ruptive members of the community.

Under the Rudd government’s proposedpolicy, permission to opt-out will be abureaucratic process and based on anassessment of people’s skills, responsi-bilities, and vulnerabilities. The effec-tiveness of the new arrangements in de-termining who should and should not bepermitted to exit the system will dependon the criteria used to assess applica-tions. The discussion paper signals thatdecisions will be based on input fromkey community groups, including, one

hopes, police, education, and health.

It could work like this. Local policemight have to confirm that neither theapplicant nor an immediate familymember is habitually intoxicated orknown to police due to frequent do-mestic violence and other violent inci-dents. In relevant cases, the local schoolmight confirm that children regularlyattend and are properly fed and caredfor. The local doctor or nurse mighthave to provide a character referenceaddressing the key criteria.

What makes the Rudd government’sdecision to continue welfare quarantin-ing so politically significant is that ithas decided, in effect, that the right tounencumbered welfare should be anearned entitlement and conditional onbehaviour.

Instead of blaming poverty and dys-function on low payments and social in-justice, the causal links between wel-fare, social disadvantage, and socialdegradation are being acknowledgedand addressed. By deciding to concen-trate on protecting indigenous commu-nities from anti-social behaviour, andby choosing to focus on promotingfamily responsibilities and communitystandards, the government has con-ceded the liberal and conservative cri-tiques of the modern welfare state andthe destructive impact of welfare de-pendence on personal responsibility andsocial norms.

The next step will be to examine the rollout of welfare quarantining into non-in-digenous welfare dependent communi-ties where welfare is also not beingspent in the interests of children andfamilies.

The Left may think it has reclaimedcontrol over the ‘commanding heights’of the economy. But closer to theground Leftist orthodoxy is in retreat.Against all the instincts of the contem-porary Labor Party, the charge is beinglead by the Rudd government which, toits great credit, is putting the interests ofthe vulnerable before the rights of theirresponsible.


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Activities1. Why does the author support income management? How does he

see it as empowering?

2. Many have argued that income management should be in placeonly where it is required by individual circumstances. What doesSammut argue?

3. Create a list of key points in this article and key points in articleswhich oppose this view. What do you think?

This photo taken 19 May 2007 showsan Aboriginal family posing in front of their house at a Town Camp inAlice Springs. © AFP/Anoek de Groot


He came, he saw and missed the point

This editorial11 appeared in The Australian on 29 August 2009 and criticises UN Special Rapporteur James Anaya’s comments about the intervention.

After 11 days touring Aboriginal com-munities, the UN special rapporteur onindigenous rights, James Anaya, a USprofessor of human rights law, has de-livered a critique of the Northern Terri-tory intervention that is theoretical butnot practical. Professor Anaya declaredthat income management and bans onalcohol were discriminatory andbreached Australia’s international treatyobligations, despite the proof that suchmeasures improve the lives of indige-nous people. The paucity of ProfessorAnaya’s assessment says more aboutthe limitations of the UN’s post-WorldWar II human rights framework than itdoes about indigenous policy in Aus-tralia. His views might make for inter-esting academic debate, but they shouldnot distract the Rudd government frompressing ahead with its metrics-basedapproach to practical reconciliation.

En route home to the US, perhaps Pro-fessor Anaya should study lawyer NoelPearson’s groundbreaking work froma decade ago, Our Right to Take Re-sponsibility, which urged Aborigines toprevail against racism, not by seeingthemselves as victims whose rights hadbeen eroded, but by overcoming the so-cial and economic problems caused bywelfare dependency. Mr Pearson ush-ered in a new era in policy, arguing thatthe right to drink alcohol came a long

way behind the rights of children to befed, nurtured and educated, and therights of women to live without fear ofassault and with enough money for thehousehold budget.

While the intervention is far from per-fect, especially in its appalling failure toprovide housing, its failures are essen-tially failures of red tape and bureau-cracy. These are the same failures thathave shortchanged remote communi-ties for decades.

While the Rudd government is prepar-ing to reinstate the Racial Discrimina-tion Act, which was suspended at theoutset of the intervention, such a move,as we have argued before, is compatiblewith the essential elements of the inter-vention. The act allows “special meas-ures” for “securing adequate advance-ment of certain racial or ethnic groupsor individuals”.

Alcohol restrictions and income quar-antining, which are also being trialled indisadvantaged white communities, doimpinge on rights. At the same time,they enhance more important rights,such as the rights of children to be fedwell on fresh food and sleep at nightwithout fear of violence or abuse. As re-tired District Court judge MichaelForde - a man who is familiar with thenorth Queensland communities - at-

tests, controls on alcohol are the singlemost important reason why crime hasdecreased markedly and the lives ofwomen and children have improved.There is a long way to go, but the re-forms are also improving school atten-dance.

Abandoning such efforts just as theyare beginning to take effect would bemorally unconscionable after fourdecades of the failure of the rights ap-proach. If one measure of a civilised so-ciety is how well it treats its most vul-nerable citizens, Australia would failthe test if it gave up on the plight of90,000 remote indigenous Australians.Nor will this newspaper give up on itscoverage of the issue, despite SocialJustice Commissioner Tom Calma sug-gesting we do so in favour of focusingon urban Aborigines, whose lives aremuch closer to those of non-indigenousAustralians. Mr Calma’s suggestion re-flects a bureaucratic outlook. In estab-lishing a new indigenous representa-tive body, he and the Rudd governmentmust ensure its focus is on employ-ment, education and health rather thanbeing the “blackfellas’ wailing wall”that Noel Pearson anticipates. JamesAnaya wants to see indigenous disad-vantage redressed, but his approach willnot assist a complex and protractedprocess.

JAMES ANAYA INTERVIEW

Listen to a radio interview with the UN Special Rapporteur James Anaya recorded by the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association.

The interview reviews:

• the situation of Indigenous Peoples around the world

• how James Anaya works to advocate for Indigenous rights through United Nations

• whether some rights can outweigh others.

It can be found at www.caama.com.au/caama-radio-exclusive

Suspending some rights so that others can be protected?

AAP Image/AP Photo/Eraldo Peres


21

© www.cartoonstock.com



Should governments ignore some rights for the sake of protecting others?

Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin has justified government policies by arguing that she is prioritising the rights of the most vulnerable. Questioned about James Anaya’s report, she responded:

JENNY MACKLIN: For me, when it comes to human rights, the mostimportant human right that I feel as a Minister I have to confront, is the needto protect the rights of the most vulnerable, particularly children and for themto have a safe and happy life and a safe and happy family to grow up in.

REPORTER: What’s it like being the Minister hearing such a damning report?

JENNY MACKLIN: Well that’s why I think it’s important to always be very clearwhat it is that you want to achieve and what I want to achieve is to work to doeverything I can to protect the most vulnerable. I’ve got a responsibility toprovide a better life for these women, these elderly women. I’ve got aresponsibility to do better by the vulnerable children who are subjected toabuse because of alcohol. These are the jobs that I have and I intend to get onwith it.12

In a government media release on 29 November 2009, Jenny Macklin argued that thegovernment’s policies would advance Indigenous rights. Using the language of the RacialDiscrimination Act, she claimed that these policies were ‘special measures’ which would treatIndigenous people differently in order to improve their status:

Alcohol and pornography restrictions, five-year leases, community storelicensing and law enforcement powers have been redesigned to more clearlybe special measures that help Indigenous people in the NT achieve equalhuman rights…

These measures are delivering substantial benefits to Indigenous communitiesand will remain core elements of the NTER13

Human rights do notdispossess people.Human rights do notmarginalise people.Human rights do notcause problems.Human rights do notcause poverty. Humanrights do not cause lifeexpectancy gaps. It isthe denial of rights thatis the largest contributorto these things.

Professor Mick Dodson,Indigenous leader and formerAustralian of the Year.14

© Ron Tandberg


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Suspending rights: international human rights law

International human rights law allows States to temporarily suspend or “derogate from” certainrights during periods of “public emergency”. Article 4 (1) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights states:

In time of public emergency which threatens the life of the nation and theexistence of which is officially proclaimed, the States Parties to the presentCovenant may take measures derogating from their obligations under thepresent Covenant to the extent strictly required by the exigencies of thesituation, provided that such measures are not inconsistent with their otherobligations under international law and do not involve discrimination solely onthe ground of race, colour, sex, language, religion or social origin.15

Article 4 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights states that:

…the State may subject such rights only to such limitations as are determinedby law only in so far as this may be compatible with the nature of these rights andsolely for the purpose of promoting the general welfare in a democratic society.16

However, some rights can never be restricted nor derogated.

These include the right to be free from torture and other ill-treatment, slavery, arbitrarydeprivation of life, imprisonment for debt, being penalised for something that was legal at the time it was done and infringement of freedom of thought, conscience, and religion (see Article 4 (2) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights).

SUSPENDING HUMAN RIGHTS: AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL’S POSITION

Amnesty International believes that the situation of Indigenous people in Australia today highlights the need to strengthenrather than diminish respect for their rights. The needs of women and children, which have been used to justify theintervention, can be addressed without diminishing human rights.

Human rights belong together as a ‘package’. Human rights need to be respected and celebrated as the conditions in whichall people can flourish, rather than be treated as obstacles in the way of government action. Governments can only diminishhuman rights in extremely rare circumstances and if they do, they must follow the conditions specified by internationalhuman rights law.

It was never legitimate for the government to suspend the Racial Discrimination Act to implement the intervention.International standards require that any actions that suspend the right to be free of racial discrimination must:

• involve the consent of those affected

• be temporary

• be limited in scope

• be for the benefit of the people affected, not to their detriment.17

International human rights law recognises that while some rights must always be respected, other rights may be limited.However, this is legitimate only in certain circumstances. As the Human Rights Law Resource Centre observes, “Any limitationthat is imposed on a human right must be reasonable and demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.”

‘This requires any limitation on a right to be:’

• for a legitimate and pressing purpose

• reasonable, necessary and proportionate

• demonstrably justified.18

In the case of the Northern Territory Intervention, the Federal Government has not met these conditions.

The onus is on governments to show that actions limiting human rights are necessary. The intervention includes policiessuch as income management, abolition of the permit system and compulsory acquisition of Indigenous land which have notbeen carefully designed to achieve the government’s stated objectives and have not been demonstrated to be required by thesituation of Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory.



UN rapporteur raps NT intervention

In February 2010, Professor James Anaya, UN Special Rapporteur on the rights and freedoms ofIndigenous people, released his findings on the Northern Territory intervention after a series of visits to Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory.

He was interviewed on the ABC program ‘The World Today’19.

JAMES ANAYA: Indigenous people that I talk with throughout Australia, includingIndigenous people outside of the Northern Territory … repeatedly express their concernabout the NTER (Northern Territory Emergency Response), the stigmatising affect on it,the way they felt in many ways demeaned them, undermined basic dignity.

There were some that I talked to that were supportive in general terms about the NTER,were not specifically supportive of the particular provisions that have been signalled asbeing problematic, but were in general supportive of the NTER. But overwhelminglypeople were very negative about the NTER. It really was striking I must say.

ALEXANDRA KIRK: To what extent do you believe the existing Northern Territoryintervention breaches Australia’s international obligations?

JAMES ANAYA: Well, I point out in my report that several respects, particularlyconcerning income management, the quarantining of benefits, bans on alcohol,pornography, which stigmatise and are targeted at Indigenous communities; thecompulsory leases and other specific measures that limit Aboriginal people and certain rights and freedoms having to do with individual autonomy, self-determination;these aspects that specifically target Aboriginal communities and that limit their rights in this way.

ALEXANDRA KIRK: So pretty well the whole of the Northern Territory intervention?

JAMES ANAYA: Well, not the whole of it because certain aspects actually providesignificant funding that, for programs that assist them, that benefits them withoutlimiting certain rights. But these aspects in particular are limiting and are discriminatoryin the way that I’ve identified them…

ALEXANDRA KIRK: As UN specialist rapporteur on human rights and fundamentalfreedoms of indigenous people, how do you regard the Northern Territory emergencyintervention compared to what other countries are doing around the rest of the world? Is it unique or is it very similar to what other countries are doing?

JAMES ANAYA: It’s quite unique. We see measures put in place to assist indigenouscommunities in a number of countries, but I’m hard pressed to think of one where it’sthe kind of measures put in place like this that are extreme, that impair basic freedoms,that stigmatise or at least perceived by Indigenous people to be stigmatising upon themand that are carried out without their, without any consultation or consent with them. And I’m talking about the original NTER, I’m not talking about the reforms that are nowbeing made.

So in that respect, it’s quite unique and I must say striking.


25

Activities1. What picture does the editorial in The Australian convey of

• the sources of problems in Indigenous communities

• the solutions to these problems.

How does the editorial’s view of the situation contrast with the views expressed by James Anaya?

2. The editorial states that government policies “do impinge on rights” but “at the same time, they enhance more important rights”.

Compare this view with Amnesty International’s position.

What do you think?

3. Discuss how governments might use or misuse arguments that rights can be suspended or ignored.What protections need to be in place so that governments do not go too far or use their popularityto justify actions that breach people’s rights?

4. Discuss some scenarios in which it may be legitimate to suspend rights, and what governmentsshould do in these situations to ensure that respect for rights can quickly be restored.

5. Use the interview with James Anaya and the internet to summarise his main arguments. Outline the difference that his ideas would make to the practical world if they were implemented.

6. Using your responses to the question above, evaluate the view expressed in the editorial abouthuman rights and the practical world. What place do human rights have in the real world of howgovernments relate to Indigenous people?

7. When the Federal Government launched the intervention, it announced a ‘national emergency’ and suspended the Racial Discrimination Act. Has the government met the conditions set down by international law for the intervention to be legitimate?

8. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights states that all peoples have the right of self-determination (Article 1). What does self-determination mean for Indigenous people? How has the intervention affected this right? Use the internet to search for Indigenous people’sviews on self-determination and the intervention in the Northern Territory.

9. Where do you stand? Write 1–2 paragraphs stating your view.

Further researchPrepare a report on:

• how the intervention measures up to human rights standards

• different views on the intervention and human rights

• what a different approach to the needs of Indigenous communities based on human rights (such as self-determination and the consent of Indigenous people) would look like.

To do this, you can read:

• other media articles in this resource

• a section of this resource – ‘The intervention and human rights’ – which outlines AmnestyInternational’s position in further detail

• a list of some of the rights in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples included in the “Starting Points” section of this resource

• material on the internet, particularly the voices of Indigenous people

• for a legal perspective, refer to relevant sections of the submission of the Human Rights LawResource Centre cited in the text above. See www.hrlrc.org.au/files/Reinstatement-of-the-RDA-and-Welfare-Reform-HRLRC-Submission.pdf


Intervention’s troubling side effects

This article20 was written by Larissa Behrendt, Professor of Law and Indigenous Studies at Sydney’sUniversity of Technology. It appeared in The Age on 25 October 2008 after a panel appointed by the government produced a report that criticised the intervention.

In keeping the intervention in place andmaintaining the compulsory quarantin-ing for 12 months, Minister for Indige-nous Affairs Jenny Macklin is effec-tively sidelining a key recommendationof the Northern Territory EmergencyResponse Review Panel. While Mack-lin pointed to the touching story ofwomen begging her to keep the inter-vention in place, the review panel basedtheir findings on equally moving storiesof hardship of the impact of compul-sory quarantining from the 31 commu-nities they visited and the many sub-missions they received.

The Australian Indigenous Doctors As-sociation recorded claims that the in-tervention was “putting people intopoverty and starvation. There seems tobe more humbugging for food andmoney than before the intervention”.Their submission was that while therewas some support for welfare quaran-tining, overwhelmingly this was notthe case.

Between these two positions is the re-ality that there remains a crucial needfor action to address the vulnerability ofsome Aboriginal women in violent cir-cumstances. But there are also unin-tended side-effects that are equally ap-palling when compulsory quarantiningis applied in a blanket way, capturingeverybody, rather than on a case-by-case basis targeting parents whose chil-dren are not in school or are neglected.

There have been several problems indealing with the complex policy issuesraised by the intervention. First, theemotive rhetoric saw any sophisticatedpolicy debate overtaken by a “if you arenot with us you are against us” mental-ity. This was often extended to becomea mantra: “If you are not with us, you

are for the pedophiles.” That was hardlyconducive to the discussion the com-plex issues deserved.

Second, when the intervention wasrolled out, there was no baseline datacollected and no mechanisms for col-lecting it in the future, so there is littlematerial available to measure its im-pact or achievements. The review panelwas enormously constrained by this lackof hard data. In its absence, assertionssuch as “there is more fresh food beingconsumed” are hard to substantiate.

In the vacuum created by the absentdata, it is inevitable that a war of anec-dotes will break out.

Third, concerns raised by those whowere caught by quarantining and do notlike it were dismissed as though theywere peddling an ideological position.They are not. The suspension of theRacial Discrimination Act was not justoffensive as a principle, it denied thepractical remedy to people whose situ-ation was discriminatory — the right tocomplain to the Australian HumanRights Commission.

Protections under NT anti-discrimina-tion legislation and the right to merits-based review by the Social SecurityAppeals Tribunal were also taken away.Collectively, these denials deprivedpeople of the usual mechanisms avail-able to any other Australian to askwhether their treatment was fair. With-out this, there are no checks and bal-ances on the impact of welfare quaran-tining. Macklin has promised toreintroduce the appeals to the tribunalin early 2009 and this will be a wel-come step.

A false dichotomy was set up in theearly days of emotional rhetoric that

“the rights of the children” shouldtrump any other rights. It was neverclear who was going to decide what thebest interest of the children was and itwas a fallacy to assert that you eitherprotect the rights of the child or protectthe right to be free from racial discrim-ination. It was always a ludicrousproposition and ignored the fact thatwomen and children of the NT needprotection from violence and that theyneed policy approaches that do not dis-criminate against Aboriginal childrenand their families. They deserve thispolicy now, not in 12 months.

Ironically, the minister has also claimedthat she wants to continue to “reset therelationship” with Aboriginal people.It will be hard to achieve if the evi-dence given to the review board is in-dicative of the feeling among Aborigi-nal communities. With comments like“We’ve become frustrated waiting formoney to go onto the food card. Theythink we are not as good as white peo-ple”, it is hard to see how the relation-ship with the Government is going tobe rebuilt.

One other aspect of the review panel’sfindings has been unacknowledged. Itfound “no evidence of increased confi-dence in reporting child maltreatment inAboriginal communities”. Sixty percent of the children who received healthchecks are still waiting for follow-uptreatment and up to 80% remain in needof follow-up dental treatment. The factthat there is no hard evidence that theintervention is working to protectwomen and children, to keep them safe,is another issue altogether.

Article reproduced courtesy

of The Age.

The Northern Territory intervention: perspectives from its opponents


27

Activities1. Non-Indigenous people sometimes imagine that all Indigenous people think

the same way about all issues. How many different kinds of Indigenousopinions are described in this article?

2. Supporters of the intervention often claim that the intervention must stay in place to protect women and children and opponents of the interventiondo not care about their needs. Does this apply to the writer of this article?How might she answer this kind of criticism?

3. The author speaks of a blanket approach applied by the intervention. What alternatives does she suggest?

4. The article refers to a “vacuum created by absent data”. Why is this importantin the debate about the intervention?

5. According to the author, how does emotive rhetoric make it difficult to see the real issues? Can you think of other situations where this happens?Why is it difficult to get past this and deal with the real issues?

Famed Alyawarr mechanic MotorbikePaddy at his home at Camel Camp,Utopia homelands, August 2009. © AI/Rusty Stewart



Intervention ‘has done lasting harm’

This article21 was written by Tara Ravens from Australian Associated Press (AAP) and was published on 29 August 2008. In the article the Australian Indigenous Doctors Association (AIDA) claims that:

• the intervention has caused ‘immediate and lasting harm’ to Indigenous People and provoked mistrustand anger towards western culture

• far from helping Indigenous People, the reforms have compounded feelings of disempowerment and had a negative impact on wellbeing and health.

The AIDA report cited also states that “child health checks often duplicated existing services and should be viewed as a basic right of all Australians to access to healthcare”.

The Howard Government’s Intervention into Northern Ter-ritory communities has caused “immediate and lasting harm”to Aborigines and provoked mistrust and anger towards west-ern culture, doctors say.

Far from helping indigenous people, the emergency reformslaunched in June last year have compounded feelings ofdisempowerment and had a negative impact on wellbeingand health.

The claims have been made by the Australian IndigenousDoctors Association (AIDA) in a submission to the reviewboard, headed by Peter Yu.

It will report back to the Rudd Government later this year onthe progress of the controversial measures to combat child sexabuse, with its recommendations to determine the futurecourse of indigenous policy in Australia.

In an 18-page submission, the AIDA acknowledges “in prin-ciple support” for aspects of the Intervention, such as an in-crease in police, additional teachers and “much-needed gov-ernment attention” on the issue of Aboriginal health.

But, the submission says, research conducted by AIDA sug-gests the Intervention has done far more harm than good.

“Our research shows that the NTER (NT Emergency Re-sponse) has caused immediate and lasting harm,” it says.

“As medical professionals, we are deeply concerned aboutthe impacts.”

It also warned some negative impacts of the reforms may

“not be realised until further down the track”.

The organisation said the child health checks often duplicated

existing services and should be viewed as the basic right of

all Australians to access to health care.

“Community members expressed feelings of loss of respon-

sibility, loss of control, loss of power and a hardening of mis-

trust towards the Australian Government and dominant west-

ern culture in Australia.

“This has resulted in feelings of anger and powerlessness, it

has caused cultural, social and emotional harm.”

Many Aboriginal people also felt the reforms, such as wel-

fare quarantining and grog bans, were discriminating against

them, it said.

“Our interviews very powerfully evoked a sense a regressing

to the old days: many people referred to the feelings of

shame, humiliation and loss of dignity that particularly char-

acterised an earlier `protectionist period’ when the govern-

ment controlled every aspect of indigenous people’s lives.”

AIDA has recommended the Government adopt an approach

using existing good practice in indigenous health along with

a genuine partnership with Aboriginal people.

© AAP

View the full report from AIDA at www.aida.org.au/pdf/submissions/Submission_8.pdf

Quotes from community members affected by the intervention appear throughout the report. They provide a personal perspective on the impact of the intervention.

AIDA states “in-principle support” for aspects of the intervention, such as an increase in police numbers,additional teachers and “much-needed government attention” to the issue of Indigenous health. They alsoraise concerns that “community members expressed feelings of loss of responsibility, loss of control, loss ofpower and a hardening of mistrust towards the Australian Government and dominant western culture inAustralia. This has resulted in feelings of anger and powerlessness, it has caused cultural, social andemotional harm”.


29

ActivitiesReferring to former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’sapology speech to the Stolen Generations,decide if contemporary policies like theintervention are likely to build “a future basedon mutual respect, mutual resolve and mutualresponsibility … A future where all Australians,whatever their origins are truly equal partners,with equal opportunities and with an equalstake in shaping the next chapter in thehistory of this great country, Australia”.

© Inkcinct Cartoons



Spin over substance in Intervention report

In this article22, published in the National Indigenous Times on 12 November 2009, Larissa Behrendt,Professor of Law and Indigenous Studies at Sydney’s University of Technology, challenges the repeatedassertion that “these measures are necessary to protect women and children”. This is an edited version of the full article, which can be viewed at www.nit.com.au/opinion/story.aspx?id=18967.

There is no doubt that this Minister of

Indigenous Affairs is good at spin. She

has deflected all range of policy failures

with the trite phrase, “I just care about

women and children”.

In fact, it is a phrase that has been used

to avoid a hard discussion about what

policies work and don’t work to protect

women and children (and, I often won-

der, when the Minister harps on about

Aboriginal women and children, does

she think Aboriginal men are unimpor-

tant, does she not think they are part of

the solution?).

The Minister has a tendency to spin

what she claims are positive outcomes

from the Northern Territory Intervention.

This was shown most graphically in

the way one of the first claims of the

Minister - that there was evidence more

fresh food was being consumed as part

of the Intervention - was revealed.

It was only through questioning by

Greens Senator Rachel Siewert at a

Senate Estimates hearing that the claim

was revealed to be based on a survey

conducted by the department in which

only ten community stores were called

and asked if they were selling more

fresh food. Six said yes, three said no

and one said that they didn’t know.

There was no quantification of who was

buying the food (was it people on quar-

antined welfare or the flood of non-In-

digenous people coming in as part of

the Intervention?), there was no bench-

mark against which to compare the fig-

ures and no provision made for the fact

that the community stores were benefi-

ciaries of the welfare quarantining pol-

icy, so perhaps were not independently

placed to assess it.

I have thought this was appallingly thinevidence on which a minister couldmake a claim for evidence of anything.

And when I have used this example tomake the point that her comments aboutimprovements as part of the Interven-tion need to be carefully scrutinised, Ihave received a sharp rebuke from theMinister’s office pointing out that, sincethat time, other surveys have been done.

That may well be but it doesn’t changethe fact that the original survey was allthat Macklin relied on when she firstmade the claim…

Protesters assembled in Reid Park for theConvergence onCanberra rally againstthe Northern TerritoryIntervention, Canberra,12 February 2008. © National Library ofAustralia/Juno Gemes


31

Further points made in the article include the following:

In relation to schools

There has been no improvement in school attendance over the pe-riod of the Intervention: school attendance rates have decreased …

The School Nutrition Program has been spread into 68 schools by June2009, an increase from 55 schools in June 2008. This might seem likean achievement for the Department of Education, Employment andWorkplace Relations (DEEWR), but since the money to support theprogram is taken from the quarantined income of parents, it is anachievement of the Aboriginal parents who are financially supporting it…

In relation to welfare quarantining

Success benchmarks are measured by how much money has beenquarantined ($197.7 million), how many BasicsCards have beenhanded out (95.9 percent of income managed customers had thecards [how are the 4.1 percent who don’t have the card accessingtheir quarantined money?]) and how many people are signed up (73 communities and 10 town camp regions). There is no mentionof how it is assessed in terms of improving people’s lives.

These statistics overlook the continual complaints of Aboriginalpeople about how the system leaves them without dignity andtakes away their capacity to adequately budget for things…

The best way to ask about the impact of quarantining on people isto question the people who were affected, not the storeowners whohave a quasi-monopoly on the quarantined money.

In relation to a government report

The statistics missing from the report are the benchmarks abouthousing. This may be fobbed off as part of the responsibility of theNorthern Territory government but the buck stops with the Minis-ter and the $700 million housing program that has not delivered a single house.

It also must be remembered that this report focuses on statistics.It does not include the stories of the people who are living under

the Intervention. These experiences have been captured in placessuch as the Australian Indigenous Doctors Association’s submissionto the Northern Territory Emergency Response Review, the workdone by organisations like the Sunrise Health Service and in the advocacy work of Northern Territory leaders like Barbara Shaw,Bob Randall, Valerie Martin and Richard Downs.

Activities1. Discuss the nature of the fresh food survey

to decide if that would be a good basis forpolicy decisions. Note the Minister’sreminder that other surveys have sincebeen done.

2. Discuss whether quarantining moneywould help people to become better atbudgeting for essential items.

3. What does the article suggest about thekind of evidence that is used to justifygovernment actions?

4. Behrendt writes, “There is no mention ofhow [welfare quarantining] is assessed interms of improving people’s lives”. Whatkind of evidence would be needed to besure of whether there were positive changesor not? Is it appropriate to continue (or begin)such policies without planning for andcollecting this kind of evidence?

5. What does the article show about thedifference between how critics of theintervention assess its success and howgovernment has measured and reported on its success?

Further research“The $700 million housing program that hasnot delivered a single house”. Investigate theissue of government’s responses to thehousing crisis. See additional coverage of thehousing issue from:

• Aboriginal Australia features in TheAustralian: www.theaustralian.com.au/in-depth/aboriginal-australia

• ‘Australian funding for Indigenous housingfails to produce’www.radioaustralia.net.au/asiapac/stories/200907/s2634841.htm

• ‘Experts call for government action toclose the gap’www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2008/s2502036.htm

Work with your teacher to frame researchquestions to use in studying the criticalshortage of housing and its link with healthproblems in Indigenous communities. Work insmall groups to undertake this research.



Intervention turned our backs on reconciliation

Patrick Dodson, known as the ‘father of reconciliation’, wrote:

In the absence of any consultation with affected communities or any

real debate in the Australian Parliament, the government took control

of communities, compulsorily acquired land and imposed adminis-

trative and statutory management over people’s lives that no other

Australians, free from prison, endure …

At the final hurdle the nation turned its back on reconciling its past.

Instead, a new Australian story has been forged. The persistent in-

equity and deprivation of the colonised exist in a historical vacuum.

Community dysfunction is now understood as the fault of the

colonised and their persistent cultural practices, rather than as a result

of violent dispossession, brutal colonisation and authoritarian state

Intervention.23

Activities1. Read the full article at

www.smh.com.au/opinion/contributors/intervention-turned-our-backs-on-reconciliation-20090819-eqhv.html

2. What are Patrick Dodson’s key concerns?

3. Is it possible to support the full range ofintervention policies and also supportIndigenous rights?

4. What kind of attitudes has reconciliationbeen based on? How do these relate towhat the government has been doingunder the intervention?

5. Why does Patrick Dodson say that we are a nation “trapped by our history andparalysed by our failure to imagine anyrelationship with ‘first peoples’ other thanassimilation, whatever its guise”?

6. The author describes a change in attitudesover recent years. What is the change, andwhat does he attribute it to?

7. In the light of the concerns outlined in this article, how do you view the promisesgiven by former Prime Minister KevinRudd in his apology to the StolenGenerations of a, “new page in the historyof our great continent” to be written, andenvisage a future where “the injustices ofthe past must never, never happen again”?

8. Patrick Dodson calls for dialogue. Whatwould need to happen for this dialogue to be effective?

Patrick Dodson is a Yawuru Man and Chairman ofthe Lingiari Foundation. © AAP/Mark Graham


33

Rally blasts Intervention

This article24 was written by Neelima Choahan and appeared in the Koori Mail on 30 June 2010. The textbelow is an extract.

For Jenna Tipuamantumirri, even Mel-bourne wasn’t far enough away to es-cape the Northern Territory Interven-tion. The single mother of three andfull-time student broke down in tearswhile speaking publicly for the firsttime about her experience on incomequarantining management.

The 25-year-old was amongst a dozenor so speakers at the picketing of theDepartment of Families, Housing,Community Services and IndigenousAffairs Melbourne offices on 18 Juneheld to mark the third anniversary, sev-eral days later, of the Intervention.

Ms Tipuamantumirri, who two-and-ahalf years ago moved to Melbournefrom the Tiwi Islands, spoke of hershame at being lumped with giftvoucher as part of her single parentpayment in Victoria.

“I was living in Melbourne for a yearand noticed that half of my payment

had gone from my account, Ms Tipua-mantumirri said.

“I immediately called Centrelink andthey told me “because you are from theNorthern Territory we have to take halfyour payment.”

Ms Tipuamantumirri, who doesn’tsmoke and rarely drinks, said a Centre-link worker told her the quarantiningwas to help her spend the money “theright way.”

It took five months of taking her threeyoung children, including a toddler, onthe bus for weekly visits to the localCentrelink office before the youngmother’s benefits were fully restored.However, Ms Tipuamantumirri has re-ceived a new Centrelink notificationthreatening to review her case earlynext year.

Organised by the Melbourne Anti-In-tervention Forum, the FaHCSIA picketlasted for nearly two hours and saw

about 80 people march, chant anti-gov-ernment slogans and burn a mockup ofthe BasicsCard.

Activist Robbie Thorpe also spoke andtold picketers the BasicsCard remindedhim of “dog tags” that the Aboriginalpeople were forced to endure until the1950s.

“What’s going on in the Northern Ter-ritory is part of what went on in 1770 –the premeditation of the genocide ofthe first people of this country, “ MrThorpe said.

“The Intervention is a crime against hu-manity.”

The demonstration came three days be-fore the Senate passed the welfare re-forms legislation enabling the FederalGovernment to extend income quaran-tining nationwide and, in part, reinstatethe Racial Discrimination Act in theNT. The new legislation was supportedby all but the Australian Greens…

Children play at sunseton the Tiwi Islands. © Heide Smith



A mounting case of Intervention failure

This National Indigenous Times feature25 states that there is a mounting case for the “failure of theintervention”, claiming that alcohol bans and child health checks have achieved little, improvements inhousing have not been forthcoming and welfare quarantining has caused more problems than it has solved.

Read the article at www.nit.com.au:80/news/story.aspx?id=17478

Activities1. Analyse the arguments presented in the article, evaluate the validity of the research sources cited

and summarise why the authors assert “failure” in relation to key issues.

2. Work in small groups to assess the detail provided about changes to the intervention since the electionof the Rudd Government and prepare and present a news feature in the style of the 7.30 Report.

The presentation should:

• describe the original aims of the intervention

• outline how the intervention has changed life in Indigenous communities

• explain key features of intervention initiatives

• quote opinion from Indigenous and non-Indigenous sources about the significance of theintervention

• include an interview with someone representing the government

• include an interview with an Indigenous rights campaigner

• include closing comments about the significance of the intervention.

© Fiona Katauskas


35

‘… Let us walk once again as free human beingson this earth (our mother) …’

This is a statement on the intervention by Richard Downs, leader of the Ampilatwatja (pronounced Um-blud-ah-watch) community, who walked off their land to escape the intervention, 23 August 2009.26

Activities1. Spend a few minutes completing the following

statements:

• for Indigenous Peoples, land means …

• for other people, land means …

2. Share your answers. What seem to be the biggest issues?

Share your reactions to the statement by Richard Downs.

How does an Indigenous view of land come through inthis statement? Read the full statement online. Whatdoes his perspective add to your understanding of:

• the intervention

• Indigenous values and worldviews.

3. What examples are there in Australian history ofprogress in recognising Indigenous rights to land?

4. In what ways are Indigenous rights to land affected by the intervention?

5. Discuss the following statements:

• Although there has been progress, Australia has along way to go in recognising Indigenous peoples’rights to land.

• The intervention continues and extends a processof undermining Indigenous property rights thatbegan with colonisation.

• Opposition to land rights is motivated by a rangeof factors. One of them is a fear in the back ofnon-Indigenous people’s minds that IndigenousPeoples will take away from them what theirancestors took away from Indigenous Peoples.

• While most Australians don’t understand thespiritual importance of land to IndigenousPeoples, they don’t understand its economicimportance to Indigenous Peoples either.Indigenous Peoples need an economic base tobuild their future, and land is essential to this.

• Australians have not resolved the issue of land: it will continue to haunt non-Indigenous Australiansuntil there is real justice.

6. What might ‘real justice’ involve?

• compensation

• recognition of Indigenous Peoples in the preambleto the Constitution

• greater legal protection for Indigenous rights inthe Constitution

• recognition of Indigenous Peoples at local andregional level

• a treaty.

I bring with me many voices of concern, from my leaderswho are custodians of our traditions and customs, passeddown over generations, for many thousands of years; lead-ers who are the caretakers of our lands through our dream-ing, mother earth, and spirits – still with us to this day,watching over all of us …

Since colonisation we have endured much hardship, cru-elty, theft, genocide, and destruction of our culture, tradi-tions, customs and laws.

We are people who are very easy to forgive and move on;this we have done for over 200 years, with no resentmentand hatred, but always willing to extend our hands andwelcome our fellow human beings to embrace them as onewith our spiritual lands.

Yet the governments and the agencies have always con-tinued their false pretence of charity, giving a little, whilestill retaining the power and taking away everything theycould with the other hand.

Indigenous people have always put people of differentraces and cultures first; above selfishness, above any per-sonal wishes …

Today, and since the introduction of the “Intervention” in2007, Indigenous people across the Northern Territory arefacing a renewed and sustained level of destruction and de-nial of our basic human rights under the Federal Govern-ment’s Northern Territory Emergency Response, intro-duced under the guise of protecting children.

The policies that were developed, passed through parlia-ment quickly, implemented with martial law28, and whichwere supported by the Labor party while in opposition, arehaving serious and detrimental effects on Aboriginal peo-ple across the NT …

Release the chains of control; give us our freedom; let uswalk once again as free human beings on this earth (ourmother), with our ancestors, spirits, songs, and ceremonies.

Let us share our richness of cultures with others. We are allone blood and connected through our spiritual dreams ofpathways, Earth, Water, Trees, Sky, and Wind, which carryour thoughts and spirits across all continents.

Let us once again embrace our younger generation into ourfolds to show and give them guidance, as these are our nextgeneration of leaders who are lost between two worlds(cultures) but are at the cross roads between light anddarkness.

We have an opportunity and one chance in our lifetime toget it right. Let your hearts guide you, not your governmentpolicies which are at the core of the destruction of Abo-riginal people.

View the full statement at http://interventionwalkoff.word-press.com/statements


Town camps acquisition seen as ‘step backwards’ for land rights

This transcript27 from the 7.30 Report provides an overview of the debate about basic government servicesbeing offered in exchange for leases on Aboriginal land.

The Federal Government’s offering of $100 million to upgrade Aboriginal town camps in Alice Springscame with a catch; the Tangentyere Council had to give up their land. Not ready to cave in to thegovernment’s demands, the acquisition is now being challenged in court.

The segment features Jenny Macklin, Indigenous Affairs Minister, William Tilmouth, Tangentyere Council,Professor Larissa Behrendt, University of Technology Sydney and Barbara Shaw, town camp resident.

The program aired on 30 July 2009 and can be viewed at www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2009/s2641518.htm.

KERRY O’BRIEN, PRESENTER: The Federal Government has finally achieved abreakthrough in the long standoff with Tangentyere council, the organisation that runsAboriginal town camps in Alice Springs.

And the brawl has been over the future of the camps.

The Government’s offered $100 million to upgrade the camps, but only on the conditionthe council gives the Commonwealth a 40-year lease over the tracts of land that thecamps are on.

After the council rejected her offer two months ago, Indigenous Affairs Minister JennyMacklin threatened compulsory acquisition of the leases under the umbrella of legislationsupporting the Northern Territory intervention.

But Tangentyere Council buckled this week and Jenny Macklin says the way’s now clear to begin work to transform the appalling living conditions in the camps.

But the Federal Government may yet be thwarted by legal challenges filed in the Federal Court today.

Murray McLaughlin reports.

MURRAY MCLAUGHLIN: It’s been high brinksmanship for more than two years now as successive governments have sought to remedy the squalor of town camps in Alice Springs – a need that’s long stirred the nation’s conscience.

JENNY MACKLIN, INDIGENOUS AFFAIRS MINISTER: What we have in these towncamps is something that looks like it might be a war zone or a refugee camp. Severe over-crowding, terrible levels of violence, shocking conditions of the houses and we knew that we really had to act.

MURRAY MCLAUGHLIN: But it’s the way the Government’s acted that aroused protesttoday outside the ALP’s annual conference in Sydney.

PROTESTER: It’s a disgrace Jenny Macklin.

MURRAY MCLAUGHLIN: The Government moved on Alice Springs town camps under the cloak of the intervention into Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory. It’s threatened to compulsorily acquire the town camps unless their residents agree to lease the land to the Commonwealth.

And the Government’s refused to release funds to improve the camps till the lease deal is struck.

Aboriginal people have always occupied permanent camps in Alice Springs. They used to be beyond the fringes of town. But as Alice Springs has grown, many of the campshave been virtually surrounded by industry and housing.

Through the 1960s and 70s, and in the face of hostility from the town’s white population,residents struggled to secure permanent leasehold title over 19 camps. Their permanentpopulation is around 1600 but the pressure of large numbers of visitors from remotecommunities needing to access services in Alice Springs has been a constant burden,more than doubling the regular population.

Further debates about rights


37

WILLIAM TILMOUTH, TANGENTYERE COUNCIL: The population is actually around 3500.We’ve never been funded to that capacity yet we’ve always been inundated by themovement of people.

MURRAY MCLAUGHLIN: Tangentyere Council comprises representatives of each of thetown camps. The council’s responsible for servicing the camps and blames decades ofneglect by governments for the rundown conditions.

WILLIAM TILMOUTH: It’s a condition that’s been created from long-term lack of funding,appropriate funding, long-term bureaucratic bungle after bureaucratic bungle. We’vealways had to do things on the cheap. We’ve always tried to do it on the cheap.

MURRAY MCLAUGHLIN: The Federal Government’s put up $100 million to improve theAlice Springs town camps. But its prerequisite was that Tangentyere Council had toassign the leases in perpetuity over to the Commonwealth for the next 40 years.

JENNY MACKLIN: It’s critical that the Australian Government and the Northern TerritoryGovernment take responsibility as a result of holding the tenure for the futuremaintenance of these homes. That hasn’t been clear in the past because there was nosecure tenure. So these are the critical reasons for tenure and we normally require it inany public housing environment.

MURRAY MCLAUGHLIN: Larissa Behrendt, herself an indigenous woman, is part of alegal team that’s challenging the Federal Government’s imposition of 40–year leases overthe town camps.

PROFESSOR LARISSA BEHRENDT, LAW, UTS: It’s very disappointing that we’re nowseeing a policy approach that basically sees governments refusing to fix problems in placeslike the town camps unless land is surrendered and not being at all willing to negotiate onthat particular principle before they’ll put resources into housing or other infrastructure needs.

MURRAY MCLAUGHLIN: Tangentyere Council agreed on Tuesday to lease the town camp’slands, but it was with a heavy heart. For the past two months, Tangentyere has weighedup the Federal Government’s proposal under the threat that their leases would be seized.

WILLIAM TILMOUTH: We’ve had the gun at our head ... compulsory acquisition is thelast resort. At the end of the day it’s something that we’ve been threatened with, and it’sa pretty high thing to consider. I think at the end of the day we need to work with whatwe have got and make some agreement.

JENNY MACKLIN: We have the authority to compulsory acquire under the NorthernTerritory Emergency Response Act. That was quite clear. But as I say, I’m very pleasedthat we haven’t had to go down that path, that we’ve been able to secure an agreement.

MURRAY MCLAUGHLIN: But agencies like the NT Council of Social Service say thatTerritory housing does not have a good record of managing Aboriginal tenants.

JONATHAN PILBROW, NT COUNCIL OF SOCIAL SERVICE: Dealing with a largebureaucracy can be very confronting for some people. There’s lots of paperwork involved,at times meetings, and, yeah, it can be a difficult process for people to negotiate.

MURRAY MCLAUGHLIN: Tangentyere Council members expected to sign tomorrow thelease agreements with the Commonwealth. But an urgent action brought on the FederalCourt in Melbourne this afternoon has delayed that timetable. It’s been brought on behalfof this town camp resident Barbara Shaw and others.

BARBARA SHAW, TOWN CAMP RESIDENT: We don’t know the future plans for us astown campers and our leases, our special purpose leases that is we have got inperpetuity, a lot of people don’t know, and a lot of people would want Tangentyere to stayas their landlord or the housing associations. There’s been a lot of talk especially onTerritory Housing, like Aboriginal people really don’t have faith in Territory Housing.

BEN SCHOKMAN, HUMAN RIGHTS LAW RESOURCE CENTRE: We have been concernedall along that Barbara Shaw and other town camp residents are voices – haven’t been heardin this debate, in negotiations between the Federal Government and Tangentyere Council.So we have been taking this action in order to preserve those rights of interests – rights andinterests of the town camp residents and to ensure that their place is heard at thenegotiating table.

MURRAY MCLAUGHLIN: The Federal Court case was adjourned late this afternoon till a full hearing Tuesday. At least until then the Commonwealth won’t be able to sign off on any lease agreement with Tangentyere Council and its members.

The Commonwealth’s legal team made clear in court this afternoon that the upgradeprogram is ready to be rolled out across the Alice Springs town camps immediately afterlegal issues are involved. Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin said this evening she was disappointed about the delay.

© Australian Broadcasting Corporation



Activities1. Why is there opposition to the

government’s proposal to compulsorilyacquire the leases on lands held by theTangentyere Council?

2. Draw up a two-column table showing:

• the views of the Minister forIndigenous Affairs

• key points made by opponents of thegovernment’s plans.

3. How does William Tilmouth explain thebackground to conditions in the town camps?

4. Larissa Behrendt speaks of “governmentsrefusing to fix problems in places like thetown camps unless land is surrendered”.Why might the government’s requirementto give up control of land be an issue thatAboriginal people feel strongly about?

5. Refer to the sheet ‘The relationshipbetween Indigenous and non-Indigenouspeople in Australia: patterns in Australianhistory’ on page 28 of Section 02: Startingpoints for discussion of this resource.What patterns do you think currentgovernment policies reflect?

6. Discuss whether you think thegovernment’s approach is necessary orwhether there are other ways to achievethe same goals.

An Aboriginal childplays at Hopy’s TownCamp in Alice Springson 20 May 2007. © AFP/Anoek De Groot

This 7.30 Report program examines the dispute between thegovernment and representatives of the Alice Springs town camps.The government has offered to meet urgent housing needs, but onthe condition that Aboriginal people lease their land to the Government.It has claimed that if it is going to build houses and provide otherservices, Aboriginal communities must give up rights to their landthrough leasing it to the government for periods between five and 90 years.

It claims this is necessary so that it can have secure control of theland in order to undertake construction projects. However thegovernment has not been prepared to negotiate agreements withAboriginal landowners which get the houses built without transferringcontrol of the land to governments.

Aboriginal lawyer and academic Larissa Behrendt has said:

No other person or group in Australia has tosurrender their property rights to gain basicgovernment services, including policing. The policyis discriminatory. It is racist … It is theresponsibility of the Commonwealth and NTgovernments to ensure that the Alice Springs towncamps are policed and proper housing, education,health and social services are provided to campresidents. They should be able to meet theseresponsibilities without requiring the compulsorylease back of Aboriginal land. After all, theymanage to provide those things for all otherAustralians without requiring the surrender of anyproperty rights.28


39

Rudd government must act on Aboriginal rights

This article29 was written by Margaret Wenham and appeared in The Courier Mail on 19 April 2009.

Australian Aboriginal people tuned intothe news while driving on March 27were surely put at risk of crashing asIndigenous Affairs Minister JennyMacklin announced the Rudd Govern-ment’s support for the United Nations’Declaration on the Rights of Indige-nous Peoples.

“The declaration recognises the legiti-mate entitlement of indigenous peopleto all human rights based on principlesof equality, partnership, good faith andmutual benefit,” she said.

There was plenty more similarly richrhetoric about the declaration, whichhas been more than 20 years in themaking; is not legally binding underinternational law; and which was pre-viously, in 2007, rejected outright bythe Howard government.

The distraction value, of course, lies inthe fact that Macklin’s words come at atime when the Australian and Queens-land governments’ best solutions to thepoverty, disadvantage, disaffectionfrom Australian society and consequentdysfunction many indigenous peopleare experiencing, involves unilaterallystripping significant numbers of them ofprecisely the rights she was espousing.

The Howard government’s July 2007Northern Territory “emergency re-sponse” intervention is a case in point.

The Northern Territory intervention –which was not developed in partner-ship with the Aboriginal people andcommunities which would be subject toit – entails, among a raft of other re-strictions, the quarantining of 50 percent of the welfare payments of all peo-ple living in designated indigenouscommunities, including those who areabstemious, good citizens and parents,and the Commonwealth reclaimingcontrol over Aboriginal-titled lands.

The moves are racially targeted and dis-criminatory and therefore in breach of

the Commonwealth Racial Discrimina-tion Act of 1975, but to get around this,the Howard government blithely sus-pended it to effect the intervention.

The Rudd Labor Government’s indige-nous rights’ protection credentials areno better.

It has maintained the intervention evenin the face of a critical review last year,continuing strident criticism from anumber of high-profile Aboriginal aca-demics and community leaders andNorthern Territory indigenous commu-nity dwellers, and a complaint by agroup of the latter to the United NationsCommittee for the Elimination ofRacial Discrimination.

Macklin, talking about Australia’s com-mitment to protecting and fostering in-digenous rights, appeared oblivious toanother irony as she paid tribute to anumber of notable Aboriginal people“whose leadership and efforts”, shesaid, “were central to the developmentof the declaration”.

These included Les Malezer, chair ofthe International Indigenous Peoples’Caucus and a recipient of the AustralianHuman Rights Medal; Professor Low-itja O’Donoghue, former Australian ofthe Year and former chair of the Abo-riginal and Torres Strait Islander Com-mission; Tom Calma, the Aboriginaland Torres Strait Islander Social JusticeCommissioner; and current Australianof the Year, Professor Mick Dodson.

The irony is because all these people re-main critical of the Northern Territoryintervention, with the respected Dodsonpointing out, when commenting onAustralia’s recognition of the declaration,that the Northern Territory interventionbreached many of its 46 articles.

Another case illustrating Australia’sshameful track record on indigenousrights is Queensland’s intervention –which piggy-backs Northern Territory

suspension of the Racial Discrimina-

tion Act to operate.

It takes the form of the trialling in four

Cape York communities of a Families

Responsibilities Commission which

also has the power to order the with-

holding of individuals’ welfare pay-

ments, among other capacities.

Two rights-offending aspects of the

commission’s operations are that the

hearings are closed and there’s no pro-

vision to appeal against an order, except

on a point of law.

The Queensland intervention, like its

Territory counterpart, punishes indige-

nous people for behaving “socially ir-

responsibly” when the disadvantage

and dysfunction has been caused by

their long-term denial of fundamental

rights white Australians take for granted

– freedom from racial prejudice, access

to quality public health care, public ed-

ucation, public housing and policing,

ample and non-discriminatory employ-

ment opportunities and wage equality.

The Rudd Government said last Octo-

ber it would introduce legislation to lift

the suspension of the Racial Discrimi-

nation Act in the Northern Territory,

which, presumably, will have a flow-on

effect to Queensland.

Its recognition of the declaration should

provide impetus for this to occur.

But Australia’s recognition of this UN

declaration should also provide the cat-

alyst for such unilateral, punitive, re-

gressive and humiliating interventions

to be abandoned, in favour of those

cognisant of and sensitive to the histor-

ical and on-going denial of Aboriginal

people’s rights which caused and con-

tinues to feed the disadvantage and

which are developed in true partner-

ship with indigenous people.



Activities1. In the author’s view, what is contradictory about what the government

says and what it does?

2. The author is clearly opposed to the intervention. What reasons does she give? In her view, what makes the intervention:

• unilateral

• punitive

• regressive

• humiliating.

3. A number of groups opposed to the intervention are putting pressure on the government to change its policies. What steps are they taking?

4. The author describes the Family Responsibilities Commission inQueensland. What does it have in common with the intervention in the NT?

5. Discuss the statements:

Although the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples has no legalforce in Australia, now that the Australian Government supports it, it canexert real moral force in Australian life.

When Australian law does not ensure that human rights are respected,Indigenous Peoples need to use the international human rights system to put pressure on Australian governments.

© National Museum of Australia/Geoff Pryor


41

Ideals are irrelevant

This editorial30 from The Australian throws up a significant challenge to those who support Australia’sintention to sign the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and provide in-principlerecognition of the rights of Indigenous communities in Australia.

It polarises advocates for Indigenous rights, such as former Australian of the Year Mick Dodson and those whoare concerned for the protection of children and implies that you can’t have one without losing the other.

Read the article at www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25247871-16382,00.html

Activities1. Discuss the contrast made by the editorial between people who:

a. “Believe that statements of rights and the preservation of culture are essential aspects of addressing Indigenous suffering …”

and

b. “Everybody interested in individuals, like the children of Halls Creek born brain-damaged due to their mothers’ alcohol addiction.”

2. How does the following statement seek to persuade us to accept the editorial’s point of view:

“It is time to stop focusing on the collective issues the UN declaration asserts and address therights of individual Aborigines, especially children whose lives are being ruined before they start by mothers who drink to excess.”

3. Can concern for the rights of children and the needs of people affected by addiction to alcohol go together with support for the declaration?

4. Prepare a poster or Powerpoint presentation outlining how community rights and individual rightsmay be in tension.

5. Compose key points for a speech in the House of Representatives explaining how communityrights and individual rights could have a place in a future plan of action.

A banner at a rally inMelbourne calling foran end to the NorthernTerritory intervention,Saturday 21 June2008. © AAPimage/Simon Mossman



A white fight against rights

This speech31 by Larissa Behrendt counters the argument in the ‘Ideals are irrelevant’ editorial.

Behrendt challenges the contention that “proponents of human rights advocacy are out-of-touch, over-privileged elites”. She reflects on the practical outcomes achieved historically by Indigenous Peoples working from a focus on human rights.

Read the article at http://stoptheintervention.org/facts/speeches/prof-larissa-behrendt-1-6-09

Activities1. Discuss Larissa Behrendt’s statements:

a. “The people who lobby for the erosion of others’rights never have their own under threat”

b. “This oversimplification of the divide highlightsthe way in which anti-rights proponents linkhuman rights advocacy with the ‘out-of-touch,over-privileged elites’”.

2. Examine the two documents above side by side. What conclusions do you draw?

A banner at a rally inMelbourne calling foran end to the NorthernTerritory intervention,Saturday 21 June 2008.© AAP image/Simon Mossman


43

Endnotes

1 Nicholson, A. Behrendt, B. Vivian, A. Watson, N. and Harris, M. June – August 2009. ‘Will they beheard? A response to the NTER Consultations. Retrieved fromwww.concernedaustralians.com.au/media/Will-they-be-heard-report.pdf pp 169–70, 180

2 Dodson, P. 14 July 2007. ‘An entire culture is at stake’, The Age. Retrieved fromwww.theage.com.au/news/opinion/an-entire-culture-is-at-stake/2007/07/13/1183833765256.html

3 Dodson, P. 14 July 2007.

4 Dodson, P. 2007. ‘Reconciliation – 200 years on is dialogue enough?’ Lecture delivered at the Centrefor Dialogue of La Trobe University. Retrieved fromwww.abc.net.au/rn/awaye/stories/2007/2063337.htm#

5 Gondarra, D. and Trudgen, R. 13 August2007. ‘“Little Children are Sacred Report’ – Being used as a Trojan Horse? Media release, Aboriginal Resources and Development Services. Retrieved fromwww.ards.com.au/media/Media22.htm

6 Crawshaw, D. 25 June 2007. ‘Abuse crisis “like Hurricane Katrina”‘, Sydney Morning Herald.Retrieved from www.smh.com.au/news/national/abuse-crisis-like-hurricanekatrina/2007/06/25/1182623814491.html

7 t’Hart, P. 2007. ‘Crisis exploitation: reflections on the “National Emergency” in Australia’s NorthernTerritory Dialogue’, Vol. 26 (3) pp 51–58. Retrieved fromhttp://politicsir.cass.anu.edu.au/staff/hart/misc/200711nt_interv_dialogue.pdf

8 Gibson, J. 11 June 2008. ‘Intervention changing women’s lives’, Sydney Morning Herald, retrievedfrom www.smh.com.au/news/national/intervention-changing-womenslives/2008/06/10/1212863646317.html

9 Moore, D. November 26 2009. ‘Tough Love Works Best’, The Australian. Retrieved fromwww.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/tough-love-works-best/story-e6frg6zo-1225803899559

10 Sammut, J. 11 June 2009. Rudd’s NT welfare revolution, published online as ‘Quarantining LeftistOrthodoxy’, The Australian. Retrieved from www.cis.org.au/media-information/opinion-pieces/article/115-quarantining-leftist-orthodoxy

11 The Australian Editorial 29 August 2009. ‘He came, he saw and missed the point’, The Australian.Retrieved from www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/he-came-he-saw-and-missed-the-point/storye6frg71x-1225767219846

12 Hawley, S. August 28 2009. ‘UN’s claims of “racist” NT intervention are widely condemned PM’, ABC Radio, Sydney. Retrieved from www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2009/s2670233.htm

13 Macklin, J., MP and Snowdon, W., MP 25 November 2009. ‘Strengthening the Northern TerritoryEmergency Response’, media release. Retrieved fromwww.jennymacklin.fahcsia.gov.au/mediareleases/2009/Pages/strengthening_nter_25nov2009.aspx

14 United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs 2009. State of the World’s IndigenousPeoples. United Nations, New York. Retrieved fromwww.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/SOWIP_web.pdf, p 199

15 United Nations, 1966. ‘International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights’. Retrieved fromwww2.ohchr.org/english/law/ccpr.htm

16 United Nations, 1966.

17 Nandagopal, P. and Schokman, B. 2009. ‘Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (WelfareReform and Reinstatement of Racial Discrimination Act) Bill 2009’, HRLRC submission. Retrieved fromwww.hrlrc.org.au/files/Reinstatement-of-the-RDA-and-Welfare-Reform-HRLRC-Submission.pdf, p 45–48

18 Nandagopal, P. and Schokman, B. 2009, p23.

19 Kirk, A. February 24 2010. ‘UN rapporteur raps NT intervention’, The World Today, ABC Radio,Sydney. Retrieved from www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2010/s2828921.htm



20 Behrendt, L. 25 October 2008. ‘Intervention’s troubling side-effects’, The Age. Retrieved fromwww.theage.com.au/news/opinion/interventions-troublingsideeffects/2008/10/24/1224351540006.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1

21 Ravens, T. August 29 2008. ‘Intervention “has done lasting harm”, Adelaide Now. Retrieved fromwww.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,,24261740-911,00.html

22 Behrendt, L. 12 November 2009. ‘Spin over substance in Intervention report’, National IndigenousTimes. Retrieved from www.nit.com.au/opinion/story.aspx?id=18967

23 Dodson, P. 20 August 2009. ‘Intervention turned our backs on reconciliation’, Sydney Morning Herald.Retrieved from www.smh.com.au/opinion/contributors/intervention-turned-our-backs-on-reconciliation-20090819-eqhv.html

24 Choahan, N. 30 June 2010. ‘Rally blasts Intervention’, Koori Mail, p 9

25 National Indigenous Times feature article, 2 April 2009. ‘A mounting case of intervention failure’,National Indigenous Times. Retrieved from www.nit.com.au/News/story.aspx?id=17478

26 Downs, R. 23 August 2009. A statement. Retrieved fromhttp://interventionwalkoff.wordpress.com/statements

27 McLaughlin, M 30 July 2009. ‘Town camps acquisition seen as “step backwards” for land rights’, 7.30 Report, ABC Television, Sydney. Transcript and video retrieved fromwww.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2009/s2641518.htm

28 Behrendt, L. 28 May. ‘A sorry start to a sombre week’, National Indigenous Times. Retrieved fromwww.nit.com.au/opinion/story.aspx?id=17838

29 Wenham, M. April 19 2009. ‘Rudd Government must act on Aboriginal rights’, Courier Mail. Retrieved from www.couriermail.com.au/news/opinion/match-declaration-with-deeds/story-e6frerdf-1225700279362

30 The Australian editorial 27 March 2009) ‘Ideals are Irrelevant’, The Australian, retrieved fromwww.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25247871-16382,00.html

31 Behrendt, L. 11 June 2009.’ A White Fight Against Rights’, National Indigenous Times, Retrieved fromwww.nit.com.au/Opinion/story.aspx?id=17950

The NT intervention: the media debate · The media articles in this section provide a range of opinions about the Northern Territory intervention. Comments from Aboriginal leaders

Documents