Antinuclear

Murdoch press backs calls for a second Aboriginal intervention

John Howard used their plight to enact a long prepared plan to close “economically unviable” communities, open up Aboriginal land for exploitation and private profit, and develop a cheap labour force…

a new media campaign, particularly in the Murdoch-owned Australian and NT News, to pave the way for another round of punitive measures against Aborigines…….federal opposition leader Tony Abbott made a much publicised visit to Alice Springs late last month to announce his plan for a “second intervention”

The Aboriginal “intervention” in Australia: four years on, World Socialist Website, By Susan Allan30 May 2011 As the fourth anniversary of the Northern Territory (NT) intervention approaches, calls are being made for a new round of regressive measures against Aboriginal people, including a “second intervention”……
..The expressions of humanitarian concern were, however, a smokescreen for a socially retrograde agenda.

Blaming Aboriginal people for their terrible conditions, then prime minister John Howard used their plight to enact a long prepared plan to close “economically unviable” communities, open up Aboriginal land for exploitation and private profit, and develop a cheap labour force by undermining welfare benefits. Aborigines, the most oppressed section of the working class, were used as a test case for punitive measures against welfare recipients nationally.

The Northern Territory intervention involved a number of unprecedented steps. The government, fully supported by the Labor opposition, rushed a series of draconian measures through the federal parliament that required the suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act and the Land Rights Act 1976…….

When the Labor Party took office in November 2007, the intervention was expanded. By the end of 2008, welfare quarantining had been forced on 15,000 Aborigines in 73 communities. By June 2010, the Labor government had extended it to all welfare recipients across the Territory. The new legislation allowed for welfare quarantining to be imposed nationally, including cutbacks to welfare payments if children did not attend school.

Meanwhile, the federal and NT Labor governments were preparing a further assault on Aboriginal people with the unveiling of the Working Future policy in May 2009. Under the guise of overcoming “indigenous disadvantage”, the plan involved the establishment of 20 economic hubs or growth towns. Virtually all the growth towns were situated on Aboriginal land. Traditional land owners were required to sign long term leases allowing open access to business as a precondition for government infrastructure aid.

At the same time, government funding for hundreds of remote homeland settlements was either frozen or axed. As a result, settlement residents would be forced over time to move to the growth centres to obtain health and education services.Aborigines, professionals and academics warned that forcing people into growth towns would only cause further dislocation and compound the social crisis.

In the two years since the plan was announced, the growth centres have been provided with very little funding and virtually no economic development has taken place. …..
a new media campaign, particularly in the Murdoch-owned Australian and NT News, to pave the way for another round of punitive measures against Aborigines.

In the lead up to the 2007 intervention, then Indigenous Affairs minister Mal Brough made unsubstantiated claims, later proven to be false, that paedophile rings were running rampant in Aboriginal communities. The theme now is that crime and anti-social behaviour are out-of-control in Alice Springs, the main town in Central Australia, where a significant Aboriginal population lives in squalid camps on the outskirts…….

Nicholas Rothwell wrote a lengthy article for the Weekend Australian entitled “Destroyed in Alice”. A specialist in breathless colour pieces, Rothwell painted a picture of a town engulfed by alcohol- and drug-fuelled violence due to “bad, reactive politics, a lack of new ideas, a need for drastic measures and a refusal even to debate the reforms that might have a chance.”

Rothwell did not spell out what “drastic measures” should be implemented but as a supporter of the first intervention it is safe to assume that he backs more of the same. …….federal opposition leader Tony Abbott made a much publicised visit to Alice Springs late last month to announce his plan for a “second intervention”….
The Aboriginal “intervention” in Australia: four years on

May 31, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | aboriginal issues, Northern Territory