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Tracking the intervention


A family stand outside their home in Wetenger, Northern Territory. Photo: Vanessa Hunter/Newspix.

General David Chalmers, head of the Federal Government’s intervention taskforce, with Valerie Martin Napaljarri in the store at Yuendumu 270km north west of Alice Springs. Photo: Richard Cisar-Wright/Newspix.

It has been almost a year since the former Howard Government announced its emergency intervention in Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory. Director Development Effectiveness Chris Roche reflects on the first 12 months.

Alice Springs is a pretty strange town. During a recent visit it was hard not to draw parallels with a trip I did to Namibia when it had only recently emerged from its apartheid past.

One of the weirdest things to get your head around is that this is now meant to be a “dry town”. Yet, its main street is full of bars and restaurants where tourists — and mostly white locals — sip fine wines and beers in air-conditioned comfort. The fact is that alcohol is only banned in public places, which include the town camps that are home to more than 1,000 Aboriginal residents.

I was visiting Alice Springs and Darwin at the request of several local Aboriginal organisations that were seeking support for their work related to the ‘”emergency intervention” which the Howard Government had announced on 21 June 2007.

These measures, which were passed into law in August 2007, were established in response to the Little Children are Sacred report, and included:

A $587 million budget was approved for all these measures for the 2007–2008 ‘”stabilisation” year, and a further $740 million has been allocated for longer-term measures to provide extra policing, housing, child health checks, jobs and follow-up activities. The intervention also provides for 700 new public service positions in the Northern Territory.

The Rudd Government has promised to undertake a 12-month review of the intervention. It has already introduced legislation to revoke the changes to the permit system, and has placed the phasing out of CDEP on hold, with a view to reforming, rather than abolishing, it.

Oxfam Australia is supporting a number of Aboriginal organisations in the Northern Territory to monitor the effects of the intervention and to hopefully feed into the 12-month review.

Our interaction with these groups reveals that while many Aboriginal people and organisations in the Northern Territory welcome the promise of more resources to help with policing, alcohol control and improved housing, there is also considerable disquiet and anger.

This resentment relates to some of the measures — which are seen as unrelated to the report or simply discriminatory — and to the way the intervention was planned, designed and implemented.

For example, in December 2007 the Central Land Council reported: “Aboriginal people remain overwhelmingly opposed to the process followed in the roll-out of the intervention. This largely stems from the lack of consultation around the intervention, and the lack of accurate information provided to people around the intervention measures.

“These process concerns have influenced greatly people’s response to the intervention measures. The [council] is of the opinion that if the roll-out of the intervention had been handled more appropriately, a dialogue with Aboriginal people about how aspects of the intervention would work in their communities would have been possible. Accordingly, some of the concerns, anger and fear expressed by people ... may have been greatly reduced.”

There is also growing evidence that some measures, in particular, income management and the ending of CDEP, are having unintended consequences. For example, the Combined Aboriginal Organisations of the Northern Territory report that quarantined income cannot be used to repay some loans and fines and this is leading to people defaulting and being put on blacklists.

The Mayor of Alice Springs suggests that “small business is hurting because Centrelink is issuing cards that can only be used at major retail outlets”.

Several agencies in Alice Springs report that these store cards are becoming the new currency and are being used for gambling and traded for cash. In Darwin, Larrakia Nation, and in Alice Springs, Tangentyere Council, have seen significant increases in people moving from traditional lands to under-resourced town camps. This is leading to increased pressure on service providers, and a spike in reported crime.

Researchers working for the Central Land Council also noted that the end of CDEP in some communities has diminished community control as well as leaving more people dependent on complex welfare payments without access to work.

Oxfam Australia and other agencies are calling for the Rudd Government in its 12-month review to not repeat the mistakes of the past and to ensure it is working with Aboriginal communities affected by the intervention and really listening to their voices; it must also examine the process as well as the outcomes.

Ideally the review will provide the opportunity and process for Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory to hold the government to account for the positive commitments it has made, as well as to provide feedback on those aspects of the intervention that are simply not working and need to be stopped or radically transformed.