October 9, 2008
On 6 June 2008 the Australian Government appointed a Review Board to conduct an independent and transparent review of the first 12 months of the Northern Territory Emergency Response (NTER) to assess its progress in both improving the safety and wellbeing of children and laying the basis for a sustainable and better future for residents of remote communities in the Northern Territory.
The background to the federal intervention was June 21 2007 when the then prime minister John Howard and indigenous affairs minister Mal Brough, announced the Northern Territory Emergency Response citing the Little Children are Sacred report into the sexual abuse of Aboriginal children. The protection of children from abuse was the catalyst for the Intervention and it received in principle bipartisan support from Kevin Rudd, the then Leader of the Opposition.
The intervention was contentious for a number of reasons. The Howard government proposed to suspend the Racial Discrimination Act for the duration of the intervention because the welfare quarantining measures applied only to indigenous Australians.
Health checks that would have been carried out in the normal course of events by local clinics were administered instead by fly-in fly-out medicos. Though some children received follow-up treatment they then returned to the Third World conditions in their communities that had caused them to contract ear, nose and throat illnesses in the first place. It was also argued that the intervention diminished its own effectiveness through its failure to constructively engage in dialogue and consultation with the Aboriginal people it was intended to help.
The questions the Review Board was seeking to answer included:
What is working?
What isn’t working?
How is each NTER measure performing and how should each be taken forward?
What progress has there been in improving the safety and well–being of Indigenous children?
Will the suite of measures deliver the intended results?
Have there been any unintended consequences?
Will NTER lay the basis for a sustainable and better future for residents of remote communities and town camps in the NT?
What alternative measures should be considered?
Are there other ways of working that would better address the circumstances facing remote communities and town camps?
Public submissions were called for and a report (http://www.nterreview.gov.au/report.htm) has been issued. The Report says that Review Board has heard widespread, if qualified, community support for many NTER measures.
1. Aboriginal people welcome police stations in communities previously dependent on periodic patrols. They want to work cooperatively with police to build greater security and stability in their homes.
2. There is support for measures designed to reduce alcohol-related violence, to increase the quality and availability of housing, to improve the health and wellbeing of communities, to advance early learning and education leading to productive and satisfying employment—these matters are uncontentious.
3. The benefits of income management are being increasingly experienced. Its compulsory, blanket imposition continues to be resisted, but the measure is capable of being reformed and improved. People who do not wish to participate should be free to leave the scheme. It should be available on a voluntary basis and should be supported by services to improve financial literacy.
On the downside the Report says that there is a strong sense of injustice that Aboriginal people and their culture have been seen as exclusively responsible for problems within their communities. These problems have arisen from decades of cumulative neglect by governments in failing to provide the most basic standards of health, housing, education and ancillary services enjoyed by the wider Australian community.
Secondly support for the positive potential of NTER measures has been dampened and delayed by the manner in which they were imposed. The Intervention diminished its own effectiveness through its failure to engage constructively with the Aboriginal people it was intended to help. The Report says that the most essential element in moving forward is for government to re-engage with the Aboriginal people of the Northern Territory.
The Report recommends that NTER should continue and that there is a need for a bipartisan commitment to a sustained national effort, and a sustained commitment of the funds necessary, to provide Aboriginal children and families in these communities with a level of safety and wellbeing
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