Northern Territory Aboriginal candidate Barbara Shaw aims to end The Intervention
Born and raised in an Alice Springs town camp, Barbara Shaw, an Aboriginal activist and mother of two, is challenging Snowdon on the Australian Greens ticket.
Speaking about the intervention, Shaw, 37, told Al Jazeera, “All I have seen is racism and disempowerment of our people. It’s the old assimilation policy back again, to control how we live.”
Shaw opposes the intervention, which continues under the government rubric of Stronger Futures, and agrees it remains a major source of disaffection for voters. “The Greens are calling for a five-year review of Stronger Futures. It was supposed to create jobs in the bush, but it hasn’t. We stand for sustainable communities and families and eventually to bring an end to Stronger Futures, to skill up people in the bush so they can run their own communities.”……
Aborigines sour on Australia’s Labor Party Angry over federal intervention in the Northern Territory, indigenous voters could sway upcoming polls. Aljazeera, Glenn Morrison 22 Aug 2013 “……largely missing from this picture is a tragedy that has been unfolding at the heart of the nation for more than a century – the plight of Australia’s indigenous people, the Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders. Often a convenient platform for domestic political grandstanding, indigenous Australia receives scant attention in frontline election coverage
The electoral district of Lingiari, which comprises most of Australia’s largely undeveloped Northern Territory, is emerging as a litmus test for the political leanings of Aborigines and whites alike. Once considered a safe seat for the centre-left Australian Labor Party, incumbent Warren Snowdon’s future is now in doubt, according to political analyst Professor Rolf Gerritsen of the Northern Institute at Charles Darwin University.
“Aboriginal voters are fed up with being told what to do by governments,” Gerritsen told Al Jazeera. “The federal intervention of 2007 sums up the breadth of the issues. At the last Territory election, voting for the Country Liberal Party was the only way for Aboriginal people to say to the state: ‘stop bothering us’.”
Lingiari covers an area roughly twice the size of France and comprises 99 percent of the Territory’s land area. It includes the towns of Katherine, Tennant Creek, the regional urban hub of Alice Springs in Central Australia, and an array of pastoral leases, remote Aboriginal communities and smaller settlements called outstations. Lingiari also includes Christmas Island and the Cocos Islands to the north……..
Born and raised in an Alice Springs town camp, Barbara Shaw, an Aboriginal activist and mother of two, is challenging Snowdon on the Australian Greens ticket.
Speaking about the intervention, Shaw, 37, told Al Jazeera, “All I have seen is racism and disempowerment of our people. It’s the old assimilation policy back again, to control how we live.”
Yet the electoral district of Lingiari, which comprises most of Australia’s largely undeveloped Northern Territory, is emerging as a litmus test for the political leanings of Aborigines and whites alike. Once considered a safe seat for the centre-left Australian Labor Party, incumbent Warren Snowdon’s future is now in doubt, according to political analyst Professor Rolf Gerritsen of the Northern Institute at Charles Darwin University.
“Aboriginal voters are fed up with being told what to do by governments,” Gerritsen told Al Jazeera. “The federal intervention of 2007 sums up the breadth of the issues. At the last Territory election, voting for the Country Liberal Party was the only way for Aboriginal people to say to the state: ‘stop bothering us’.”
Lingiari covers an area roughly twice the size of France and comprises 99 percent of the Territory’s land area. It includes the towns of Katherine, Tennant Creek, the regional urban hub of Alice Springs in Central Australia, and an array of pastoral leases, remote Aboriginal communities and smaller settlements called outstations. Lingiari also includes Christmas Island and the Cocos Islands to the north……..
Born and raised in an Alice Springs town camp, Barbara Shaw, an Aboriginal activist and mother of two, is challenging Snowdon on the Australian Greens ticket.
Speaking about the intervention, Shaw, 37, told Al Jazeera, “All I have seen is racism and disempowerment of our people. It’s the old assimilation policy back again, to control how we live.”
Shaw opposes the intervention, which continues under the government rubric of Stronger Futures, and agrees it remains a major source of disaffection for voters. “The Greens are calling for a five-year review of Stronger Futures. It was supposed to create jobs in the bush, but it hasn’t. We stand for sustainable communities and families and eventually to bring an end to Stronger Futures, to skill up people in the bush so they can run their own communities.”……
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