The Intervention: The Welfare of our Indigenous People
“There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way and not starting.” ~Buddha
We have extended our stay in Adelaide because we have received an invitation to attend the launch of the book “The Intervention”. The book is a historic anthology by some of Australia’s finest writers, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, documenting their stories and perspectives to the massive military and police Northern Territory Emergency Response (NTER) that the Howard government launched in 2007, which cost the Australian public $587million. The true cost — the despair, anger, anguish and pain of the First Nations people — has mostly gone unnoticed by the majority of Australians. I was no different. 2007 was not a good year for me. I was too busy dealing with events in my own life, to be informed or care about what was happening in another part of Australia…
I have to admit that I have met and spoken with more indigenous people in the last 5 months — since leaving Sydney to live on the road — than I had in my entire 17 years of being in Australia. Sure I read books about Aboriginal Australia. I had visited the Kimberley’s and the Red Centre but I hadn’t looked below the surface of the handprints and the dreamtime stories.
We have lunch before the launch with academics, activists and indigenous people who have witnessed or experienced what happened. Some of them are here because the government is planning what some call the second Intervention in Ceduna, SA. It is a privilege to hear the stories first hand but some of what I write I have also gleaned from the book ‘The Intervention’.
I have not been able to put it down since I started to read…
The NTER was launched in response to the tabling of a report (Little Children are Sacred) that highlighted the abuse of children in the Northern Territory. The many recommendations of the report, which talked about empowering Aboriginal communities to own the solutions, were ignored. Instead there was a top down, paternalistic approach that included elements that were incredibly problematic with no consultation of Elders or the community. The Racial Discrimination Act was suspended to put in place some of these measures!
You may argue that restricting access to alcohol, linking welfare payments to school attendance and banning pornography is a good thing. But the intervention also included compulsory ‘health’ checks of Aboriginal children to check for evidence of abuse, blanket quarantining of welfare payments to all Aboriginal people, the compulsory acquisition of Aboriginal townships, increased policing and the scrapping of the permit system that allowed Aboriginal people some level of control over access to their land. Many of these measures have been packaged for another decade under the guise of policy referred to as ‘Stronger Futures’, introduced by the Rudd ALP government.
To put this into context, imagine the outcry if such an intervention, was imposed on the Catholic Church and its community because of the actions over many years of a number of paedophile priests. Aren’t all of our little children sacred?
The book launch has given a platform for people concerned about the Government’s proposal to introduce a cashless welfare card (BasicsCard) in Ceduna. They talk about the problems they foresee but say that for the first time in Ceduna, it has brought both the white and black communities together as the proposed measures are being targeted to all welfare recipients except aged pensioners, This includes: Carers, Disability, Newstart, All Parenting, Austudy etc. 80% of the payments will be quarantined but you can appeal to a community panel and have this altered to 50%.
Quarantining payments may work for people who volunteer for help in managing their money, but is it fair to impose this on everyone? There is an assumption here that everyone who is on welfare is also a gambler, a drinker or is dealing with some other social problem. The trials in the NT have shown that quarantining welfare creates more problems than it solves. It limits where people can spend their money. They are not able to access festivals, fresh food markets, second hand stores, or outlets where only cash may be accepted. They cannot use local trading systems like Gumtree and garage sales without cash.
There is a critical shortfall of funding spent on Indigenous Primary Health Care. Today, about a quarter of the nation’s prison population is Indigenous and in the NT about 84% of prisoners are Indigenous. Aboriginal youth suicide rates in the NT are higher than anywhere else in Australia. The problems are indeed vast. Yet the ‘solutions’ continue to be naïve and short sighted. One of the most powerful stories in the book was by a soldier who was part of the police and army intervention. He asked his psychologist why he built schools in foreign war zones but built police stations in the Centre.
I know these are difficult issues to confront but we cannot just continue to ignore them? I’ve heard Indigenous people say this is Australia’s Apartheid.
Reading “The Intervention’ I learn that many Indigenous people feel that the real agenda underlying the Intervention was control of their land and enforced abandonment of smaller remote communities and their traditional way of life. The time of the Intervention was at the height of our mining boom. The abandonment of remote communities is not restricted to the NT. It is also happening in Western Australia (150 communities to close) and South Australia (50 communities to close). The Intervention was carried out under bipartisan agreement, so both parties and the following Rudd and Gillard governments carried on these strategies to further weaken any form of self determination in the NT. The Greens were the only party to oppose this legislation.
Today is Human Rights Day. I am slowly beginning to understand that if you are an Indigenous Australian, then all you have is despair and anger for what is happening to you in the land that your ancestors managed so well for more than 40,000 years. What Ceduna needs is not a BasicsCard. They need facilities in which they can start to address some of the problems they face.
We leave the gathering committed to helping this happen and to raise awareness of these issues.
First published by www.polisplan.com.au on 11 December 2015
