Couple of issues make it unclear; one, election season, two, the state of emergency declaration.

The first issue is that the Liberal Party and Nationals have both a racist and monoculturalist constituency to speak directly too. The second is that a declaration of emergency is purely political, which means outcome are divorced from policy. But it is yet to be seen if the legislation and executive action match the declaration of emergency (it may just be absolutist electoral language).

The final issue is that a national response will solve nothing and consensus seems to be that a bad deal is better than no deal; so Howard will get his way.

Cam,
There's another element. The way conservatives construct poverty as both a result and a reflection of its performer's actions and personal characteristics.
Thus the ABC's Four Corners program broadcast an episode on levels of poverty in Australian called Going Backwards' It included these now well-known remarks from the then Federal Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, Tony Abbott:

But we can't abolish poverty because poverty in part is a function of individual behaviour. We can't stop people drinking. We can't stop people gambling. We can't stop people having substance problems. We can't stop people from making mistakes that cause them to be less well-off than they might otherwise be.

Abbott here partially attributes the responsibility of poverty to the 'poor'.

Conservatives often link poverty with vice:---some people are responsible for their own poverty by drinking, gambling and substance problems.Situating poverty as a result of behaviour positions poverty within this kind of moral framework implies that poverty is a ‘choice'.

Poverty becomes a reflection of individual morality rather than the structural inequalities in society.

Gary, Yet Howard's media announcement ignored the recommendations in the report to structure it as a cultural problem, not a criminal one. ie the cultural issue, alcohol and porn, rather than criminal individual behaviour. So the statement(framing?) of the issue becomes conservative rather than liberal.

I think that is partly at odds with Abbott's take on it.

Cam,
It looks that way. Yet I want to hang onto the conservative frame ---which is about cultural assimiltaion that is coupled to a dislike of what they see as separatism and indigenous execpetionalism

I agree that the conservatives use the neo-liberal discourse that welfare encourages dependency, and that ‘welfare dependency' is responsible for unemployment and impoverishment. On this account welfare is seen to produce rather than alleviate poverty. Abbott says that:

whether (social security) recipients go to work is determined mainly by what goes on inside the welfare system and not by economic or social conditions.

So dependence on welfare is seen as a kind of addiction, and instead of bestowing a sense of entitlement to recipients, paternalist welfare programs emphasise a shift towards a social contract that includes certain duties and obligations.

This touches on how Noel Pearson understands things in indigenous communities.

This neo-liberal discourse of personal responsibility re poverty assumes that both individuals are responsible for their poverty and that particular types of poverty are fashioned as immoral. Thus drinking, gambling and substance problems are poor choices for those who cannot afford to indulge in them.

What we have with Abbott is an ‘us and them' framework which places the ‘haves' in opposition to the ‘have-nots'. The moral majority can control and fund these behaviours of gambling and substance abuse because they have self-discipline and individual responsibility.