Is the Intervention Protecting Aboriginal children in NT?

In the middle of 2007, the Howard government announced that there would be a 'Federal Intervention' to address the sexual abuse of Aboriginal children in the Northern Territory.

While ANTaR Victoria welcomes the focus on the health and welfare of Aboriginal communities, the 'Federal Intervention' is hampered by the belief that Aboriginal children can be protected by further stripping power and sovereignty from their communities.

It remains to be seen whether a review of the Intervention initiated by the Rudd government can salvage it from its fundamental shortcomings.

The Intervention

When it was first announced, the Intervention was billed as an 'Emergency Response' to the Little Children are Sacred Report. On the one hand, the Intervention did attempt to address some of the issues raised by the report's authors Rex Wild QC and Pat Anderson.

However the Howard Government ignored Wild and Anderson's insistence on the need to listen to and empower Aboriginal communities so that they can better protect their children from sexual abuse.

Not only did the Howard Government frame the Intervention without consulting the communities that would be affected by it, it took power away from these communities as a purported means of addressing child sexual abuse.

Destruction of the Permit System

This occurred in a number of ways. The Howard Government seized control of Aboriginal land by imposing mandatory five year leases on certain 'prescribed communities' within the Northern Territory.

The Intervention also severely undermined the permit system which had previously empowered indigenous communities to control access to their land. Outsiders no longer have to seek out a permit from the Indigenous community if they wished to travel to 'public areas' within the community concerned.

Critics of the Intervention say that there is no causal connection between the permit system and instances of child sexual abuse.

"I could find no evidence of the proposed measures being connected in any way to child sex abuse" said Prof John Altman from the ANU in a report prepared for Oxfam.

"There may even be some risk of exacerbating the situation if the permit system is relaxed," Prof Altman warned.

Closure of CDEP

A number of remote communities were concerned when the Howard Government announced that the Community Development Employment Project (CDEP) program would be abolished as part of the Intervention. The CDEP program had provided assisted some communities by paying an income to Aboriginal people who worked under the auspices of Aboriginal community organisations.

This enabled these organisations to deliver services to these communities that would not otherwise have been available. At the time of the announcement, a number of remote Aboriginal communities expressed fears that their autonomy was threatened as a consequence of this program while a plethora of organisations warned that key programs were under threat if this vital funding was lost.

Income Management

While the Intervention undermined Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory, it also attacked the liberty of individual Aboriginal people within the Territory's indigenous communities.

The Intervention introduced an 'Income Management' which robbed Indigenous people of control over their finances. Under this system a portion of welfare payments to Indigenous people in the Territory is set aside and managed by Centrelink.

This Income Management system directly discriminates against Indigenous people. It is not only applied to households where there is evidence of dysfunction. Rather, this draconian measure singles out all Indigenous people within immensely broad 'prescribed areas' of the Northern Territory. At the same time, the system has not been applied to anyone in the non-indigenous community.

In a survey conducted by the Darwin Aboriginal Rights Coalition (DARC), a 'vast majority' of respondents reported 'significant difficulties' in managing their finances as a consequence of this onerous system. The majority also indicated that they had experienced racism as a direct result of this policy.

DARC spokeswoman Dr Alyssa Vass told the ABC that the system had caused chaos for families and communities.

'The punitive discriminatory approach taken by the intervention has made life more difficult for families, has been disempowering to the extreme and perpetuated destructive negative stereotypes.'

Mandatory Health Checks

The mandatory health checks for Aboriginal children - which were conducted in part to check for sexual abuse - were a particularly contentious part of the Intervention.

ANTaR Victoria believes that a national focus on Indigenous health is long overdue. However, research conducted by Dr Alex Brown and Dr Ngiare Brown the Centre for Indigenous Vascular and Diabetes Research in Alice Springs has shown that any potential benefit was undermined by the chaotic way that the Howard Government imposed the health checks on Aboriginal communities.

"This has fuelled confusion and paranoia, and created enormous concern about the squandering of desperately needed resources, which are being used largely to install bureaucracy rather than provide services", said Dr Alex Brown and Dr Ngiare Brown.

Suspension of Racial Discrimination Act

Other elements of the Intervention, such as the restrictions on pornography and alcohol within the 'prescribed areas' may have looked like a useful step in addressing the sexual abuse of children. However, these and other measures of the Intervention would have been illegal if the Intervention legislation had not suspended the Racial Discrimination Act within Aboriginal communities of the Northern Territory.

ANTaR Victoria considers that this clearly indicates the racist and discriminatory nature of the Intervention. We remain deeply concerned that many Aborginal Territorians are denied access to Australia's cornerstone human rights legislation.

Taking power away from Aboriginal people

Any measure, no matter how well-intentioned, cannot succeed if it is premised upon taking power away from Aboriginal people and removing their rights.

Rather, researchers at the World Health Organisation's Commission on Social Determinants of Health have shown that people who have control over their lives enjoy better standards of health and welfare.

Prof Fran Baum insists that this is true for people of all backgrounds. "A consistent message from the evidence is that when you rob people of control over their lives, it is uniformly bad for their health, whether they be British civil servants or Indian women living in slums."

These elements of the Intervention - the health checks, the Income Management system, and so on - are failing to deliver better outcomes for Indigenous people precisely because they take control away from Indigenous people.

The Rudd Government's Review

The Rudd Government has made some positive changes to the Intervention. To the relief of many Aboriginal communities, the CDEP program has been restored. Meanwhile, Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin has introduced legislation to restore the permit system.

Even more promising is the review of the Intervention announced by the Minister early in 2008. The review board will be headed up by Peter Yu, a leader from the Yawuru people around Broome.

The board will examine the effectiveness of the Intervention both in protecting and providing for the wellbeing of children. It will also assess whether the Intervention is providing 'a sustainable and better future' for Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory.

Finally, the board will recommend further measures to ensure that better health and welfare outcomes are provided to the Aboriginal people of the Northern Territory.

ANTaR Victoria approves of the Indigenous leadership for the review.

So far, the various measures of the Intervention have undermined the crucial autonomy and self determination of the Northern Territory's Aboriginal communities while removing basic rights from their members. It is essential that the review board consult widely with the communities affected by the Intervention.

The review board must ensure that the Racial Discrimination Act is reinstated for the Indigenous people of the Northern Territory. In 2007, Tom Calma, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, released a ten point plan that outlined how the Intervention could be transformed and made consistent with the Racial Discrimination Act.

By blaming Indigenous people for the problem of child sexual abuse, the Intervention shifted the focus away from the role of colonisation in producing dysfunctional communities. It sidelined the debate about the impact of the theft of land, institutionalisation and White racism on Aboriginal communities.

Beyond the Intervention

Peter Yu and the other board members must therefore look beyond the Howard Government's narrow and punitive Intervention and examine how Indigenous communities can be empowered to take responsibility for the care of their children.

No sincere attempt to deal with violence and abuse in Aboriginal Communities can rest upon the denial of basic rights to Aboriginal people as occurred in the Howard Government's Intervention. Strong, functional and autonomous communities are the best institutions to protect indigenous children from abuse.

What you can do

Urge the Australian Government to restore the Racial Discrimination Act. You can help by signing and distributing a petition that will be presented in Parliament in August by Senator Rachel Siewart in August. Sign it Now!

Further Information

• Little Children are Sacred Report
• ANTaR's Seven Steps for Justice
• Social Justice Commissioner Tom Calma's 10 Point Plan
• Combined Aboriginal Organisations (CAO) response to Northern Territory Intervention
• Secretariat of National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care (SNAICC)
• Intervention Reform Coalition of Darwin
• Why the current intervention in the Northern Territory will not protect Aboriginal and Islander children