Jeff McMullen’s passionate call against a second Aboriginal Intervention
the fight for the homelands is the new frontline.
Federal, Northern Territory and state government policy is now in collusion — and it’s across both sides of the political spectrum.
Assimilation is the essence of this government approach and what they are trying to do is, ever so slowly, prise Aborginal people up from their settlements on the homelands and move them for economic rationalisation and to clear the way for the the various kinds of development that have always taken the wealth out of Aboriginal land…..the contest with the miners, and that appetite, that greed for the wealth on Aboriginal lands, is bringing Aboriginal society once more to the crossroads……
This intervention started with a vicious lie: the one that said all of these communities had pedophile rings.
The Australian Crime Commission has now erased that lie, saying there were, and there are, no pedophile rings…….
Jeff McMullen: Don’t buy the NT intervention lie, Green Left, September 17, 2011, Outside prescribed Aboriginal communities in the NT ‘those shameful signs still exist’. Jeff McMullen, a prominent journalist and Aboriginal rights advocate, gave the address below at the Sydney launch of Walk With Us: Aboriginal Elders Call Out to Australian People to Walk with them in their Quest for Justice at Gleebooks, Sydney, on September 1.
The welcome to country from Aunty Millie [Ingram] and the elders’ statement goes to the heart of the issue: that we walk in an Aboriginal land.
And the fight for Aboriginal lands, and the future of the homelands, is the great moral challenge facing all of us and facing this country.
I came home early from a trip to the Northern Territory. I was in Kalkarindji where in the past few days a very large gathering of Aboriginal people was held to commemorate Vincent Lingiari and the Gurindji Wave Hill walk-off 45 years ago.
And under the stars at night when we talked — all of us who were there to support land rights — we wondered how much really had changed in those 45 years.
You know the song and I’m sure you know the story. But when an Australian prime minister ran that red dirt through his hands, into that proud old man’s hands, and said, “this is your land forever”, I think most of the citizens of this country would have accepted that the land had indeed been handed back to its rightful owners.
We should say part of the Vestey station, the old British pastoral property, was handed back to its rightful owners.
Forty-five years later, the Australian government has its hands on the throat of the Gurindji people.
Kalkarindji is a town. The Aboriginal community of Daguragu, which was where the Gurindji ended up after they walked off and wandered about 20 kilometres, camping at what is now Kalkarindji and then later at Wattie Creek, which became today’s settlement.
That community is fading before our eyes because it’s homeland. It’s a remote community. It’s one of the prescribed communities that is under the boot heel of the Australian government.
And it is also the target of this new assimilation that is trying to drive Aboriginal people out of their homelands towards the 20 “hub towns”, the so-called growth towns……
This idea of the great little Aussie growth town has never been a reality for Aboriginal people. But the fight for the homelands is the new frontline.
Federal, Northern Territory and state government policy is now in collusion — and it’s across both sides of the political spectrum.
Assimilation is the essence of this government approach and what they are trying to do is, ever so slowly, prise Aborginal people up from their settlements on the homelands and move them for economic rationalisation and to clear the way for the the various kinds of development that have always taken the wealth out of Aboriginal land.
In Ngukurr, one of the large growth towns, it’s staggering to see the amount of money that’s being invested there.
The school has eight secondary students but probably has a newer and better facility than the high school my kids go to in Sydney.
Because up the road, China has bought out an Australian mining prospector and Ngukurr, yes, it will be a growth town.
It’ll be a town that handles what it dug out of the ground of Aboriginal land and that wealth will make somebody [rich] — shareholders, superannuation accounts and the wealthy CEOs of a multinational company no doubt…..
Why have we undermined native title? Why do state governments appeal so readily against any native title judgement that is beneficial to Aboriginal people?
Why do some of the states threaten compulsory acquisition of Aboriginal lands the minute the court awards them any minor victory?
This is a fight in the courts for the scraps left over from this native title process.
And the contest with the miners, and that appetite, that greed for the wealth on Aboriginal lands, is bringing Aboriginal society once more to the crossroads……
The Aboriginal community, that very spot where Vincent Lingiari stood — there is a boulder there in Daguragu — that land there where the prime minister handed him back the Gurindji land is now occupied by the government under this five-year mandatory lease…..
The discrimination. [We’ve heard this from] the United Nations, from Dr Navi Pillay, and [from] Rosalie Kunoth-Monks and Dr Djiniyini Gondarra traveling to Geneva to testify before the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.
The UN, with its judgement, has said the intervention remains deeply discriminatory.
The feigned reinstatement of the Racial Discrimination Act — it’s an Orwellian political game to say we’ll put the act back now, but the people who are being targeted by the discrimination remain Aboriginal people.
These communities are shamed and are still being discriminated against.
They do not want the intervention.
So don’t be fooled by the minister’s statements. Don’t be fooled by the occasional person who will be paraded across ABC television late at night.
It is easy to divide and attempt to conquer. But the Gurindji and all of those other communities, their representatives came to this Freedom Day. They made it very clear that they do not buy the lie…..
This intervention started with a vicious lie: the one that said all of these communities had pedophile rings.
The Australian Crime Commission has now erased that lie, saying there were, and there are, no pedophile rings…….
What we contest is the lie that drives “the other agenda”.
What we must individually stand up and oppose — and make it your work to do — is to not let the government now move aggressively, in the year ahead, on these homelands.
Contrary to what you are reading in the papers, these homelands have been given the signal that around the middle of next year, when the five-year period of the emergency phase of the intervention is due to end, there will be no future funding for the homelands.
The Northern Territory government has played a game, saying, well, we’re not cutting them off, we’re just maintaining the funding.
But the funding that keeps these children alive principally comes from the federal government. And that funding is due to end next year.
So I say to you, raise your voice and tell others. This is the frontline fight.
We must say that we will not stand by and allow the rewording — the change of words is not a change in this discrimination and this assimilation.
If [NT chief minister] Paul Henderson says the best I can give you is that I will not use the word “intervention”, again, don’t be fooled. The policy is still intact……
the Northern Territory’s policy has so far not been moved. They are moving towards a slow drip: attrition, social engineering — however you want to describe it — it is intended to move people from the homelands…..
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