Antinuclear

Northern Territory intervention aimed to get Aboriginals off their land

the real motivation for the intervention, which seems to be more about land than children…. the federal government intervention – entirely without consultation with the Indigenous people and ignoring the substantive recommendations of the report to which it was purportedly responding…..Wholesale compulsory acquisition of land for unstated purposes is another measure that would not be tolerated by the Australian community as a whole….to destroy Aboriginal culture and Aboriginal attachment to their traditional lands

Human Rights and the Northern Territory Intervention, Online opinion, By Alastair Nicholson – , 20 December 2010, Australia is the only western nation without a bill of rights and, indeed, is one of only a few countries in the world to lack such a bill.

… every attempt to introduce a bill of rights in Australia has been a failure at federal level, largely through lack of leadership and political will.

Today, there is no more graphic example of the need for human rights protection in Australia than the events surrounding the Northern Territory Emergency Response (“the intervention”).

The Howard Government announced the intervention in June 2007, ostensibly to protect Aboriginal children from sexual and other abuse……. actions indicate the real motivation for the intervention, which seems to be more about land than children…. the federal government intervention – entirely without consultation with the Indigenous people and ignoring the substantive recommendations of the report to which it was purportedly responding.

Some of the many objectionable aspects of the legislation involved:

• the suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975;
• the adoption of income protection;
• the removal of social security benefits where a child is considered to be in need of protection, where the parents reside in specified areas of the Northern Territory, or where a child has an unsatisfactory attendance at school;
• preventing a court from taking into account Indigenous customary law or practices in sentencing offenders;
• the acquisition of aboriginal lands by means of compulsory leases of up to five years duration;
• restrictions on the use of alcohol and pornography on Aboriginal lands, coupled with heavy penalties for breach and offensive signage at the entrances to those lands; and
• the abandonment of the Community Development Employment Projects Program.

It takes only a moment to appreciate the injustice of most of these measures so far as the Indigenous community in the Northern Territory is concerned.

The suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act involved a direct attack on the meagre rights and freedoms of Indigenous people and should never have been countenanced. However, it was the essential plank that enabled the intervention to proceed. Almost all of the measures associated with the intervention involved direct racial discrimination and breaches of the human rights of the Aboriginal citizens involved.

It is noteworthy that in the presence of a bill of rights most of the objectionable aspects of the legislation, and much of the legislation underpinning that social policy, would have been liable to be struck down. A bill of rights would thus have acted as a real protection against the unwarranted seizure of power that has been involved.

However by cloaking itself in the guise of child protection, the government could brand those who opposed it as being in favour of child abuse. Because it controlled both houses of parliament it could also override the protection afforded by the Racial Discrimination Act, something that it could never have done if those rights had been enshrined in the constitution.

The power to restrict payment of social security benefits because a person lives in particular areas of the Northern Territory was clearly aimed at forcing Indigenous people to live in selected town areas that the government determined, rather than where the people themselves determined.

Sadly the present government has continued with this strategy. Such measures are intolerable in a democratic society and would never be tolerated in the broader Australian community.

Similarly, benefits may be withdrawn in the event of unsatisfactory school attendance. Again this would be unacceptable in the wider community. Further, it involves a complete lack of appreciation of Indigenous culture, which does not necessarily involve a child living with the birth parents.

Wholesale compulsory acquisition of land for unstated purposes is another measure that would not be tolerated by the Australian community as a whole.

The situation was exacerbated by the then government’s (and the present government’s) inability or failure to give any sufficient explanation as to why all of these measures were necessary to protect the children.

I think that as time passes it becomes clear that the intervention was an exercise in social engineering to destroy Aboriginal culture and Aboriginal attachment to their traditional lands and to force Aboriginal people into suburban agglomerations to adopt a white lifestyle.

December 21, 2010 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | aboriginal issues, Northern Territory