The Australian Indegenous issue

This has been a growing problem for decades...what then has suddenly caused Howard to jump into 'National emergency' without consulting the indigenous community leaders first?

Could his arrogant distractionary techniques be anymore insulting?

Hey

look over there

it's the Tampa emergency
no wait it's eleven years of neglect and inattention resulting in a national emergency

Naturally the situation needs attention, planning with community leaders in order to better manage the welfare funds so a strong foundation of education and healthcare can be formed.



Sending in the troops without even talking to these leaders is not going to solve anything, it's merely going to aggravate the tension.

Previously the Government has said that if people want to live on remote communities it will not provide services

That is pathetic

We are the only Western democracy with a significant indigenous minority that has no elected presentation of any kind. We are the only such country where trachoma remains a significant debilitating problem.
And we are the only developed country to receive such harsh criticism from the UN about our self contained third world


from crikey:

1977: Final report on alcohol problems of Aboriginals, an Australian parliamentary report, is released.

1979: Aboriginal Health, a report by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs (HRSCAA), is released. It notes that the "standard of health of Aborigines was still far lower than the majority of Australians" and that "little progress had been made in raising it". And its chairman Philip Ruddock notes: "When innumerable reports on the poor state of Aboriginal health are released there are expressions of shock or surprise and outraged cries for immediate action. However ... the appalling state of Aboriginal health is soon forgotten until another report is released."



1980: The Program Effectiveness Report, an internal Commonwealth Government report (never publicly released) considers indigenous involvement in Aboriginal health policy development, the introduction of specific indigenous health initiatives and the existing arrangements for funding and administration of indigenous health.

1981: The Commonwealth Government initiates a $50 million five-year Aboriginal Public Health Improvement Program focusing on unsatisfactory environmental conditions associated with inadequate water, sewerage and power systems.

Royal Commission Report of Inquiry into the death of Bruce Thomas Leslie, the Aboriginal man who was wrongly diagnosed as being drunk by ambulance officers and was taken to Tamworth police station. An X-ray later showed he in fact had a fractured skull. Leslie died of a brain haemorrhage.

1982: Strategies to help overcome the problems of Aboriginal town camps, an HRSCAA report, is released.

A report looking at the disproportionate number of Aboriginal people charged with minor offences is released by the SA Office of Crime Statistics releases. Findings include the fact that more than 58% of all defendants appearing on drunkenness, vagrancy, offensive behaviour and liquor-related charges in courts outside the Adelaide metropolitan area are Aborigines, even though this racial group constitutes less than 2% of the rural population.

1988: Australia has violated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, according to a United Nations official sent to Australia to investigate the conditions of Aborigines.

1989: A National Aboriginal Health Strategy, the landmark final report of the National Aboriginal Health Strategy Working Party (NAHSWP), is presented to the Joint Ministerial Forum. It determines primary health care is one of the key strategies for addressing Aboriginal health disadvantage and identifies the need to develop more collaborative health service planning processes. It also devotes a chapter to the impact of substance abuse.

1991: The final report of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (RCADC), which investigated 99 deaths of Aborigines in custody over a nine-year period, is released. It finds that the disproportionate rate at which Aboriginal people are arrested was the major and most immediate cause of these deaths, and also reveals a history of racism and state control of indigenous communities. It makes 339 recommendations.

The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) launches the National Inquiry into Racist Violence, which concludes that racist violence against Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders is endemic, nationwide and very severe.

1992: The Commonwealth Government announces a $150 million five-year funding package, principally for the establishment of Aboriginal-controlled drug and alcohol services.

1993: Health facilities available for Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders should be completely revamped, according to a report tabled in Parliament. The report, by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Policy Unit and the Health Department, finds that Aboriginal mortality is 3-4 times than the rest of the community, that mortality rates from pneumonia are ten times higher than of the population as a whole and that mortality rates from diabetes are nine times that of the population as a whole.

1994 : A National Aboriginal Health Strategy: An Evaluation finds that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders face the health hazards of a hostile and inadequate physical environment (contaminated water, poor sanitation, and unsafe housing, transport and work conditions) and argues that "setting up committees will resolve nothing" – what is needed is a bold and clear national initiative that will "step over the shambles" of previous efforts.

The Report to the National Committee to Defend Black Rights: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Custodial Deaths Between May 1989 and January 1994 is released, finding that the the national rate of Aboriginal custodial deaths has not decreased and that many of those who have died have done so because key areas of reform highlighted by the RCIADIC have not taken place.

1995: The Alcohol Report: Race Discrimination, Human Rights and the Distribution of Alcohol exposes alcohol misuse and its impact on Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory and highlights the lack of consultation between the NT Liquor Commission and indigenous communities, recommending amendments to the Liquor Act (197 to allow Aboriginal communities more control over the provision of alcohol to their communities.

1996: The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health and Welfare Information Unit (ATSIHWIU) undertakes a review to develop a National Plan for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Information.

1997: The Health and Welfare of Australia's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples – a joint publication of the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare – reveals that "almost four in ten indigenous households were estimated to have either insufficient income to meet basic needs (even before taking housing into account), or not enough income to afford adequate housing."

1998: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Program, a National Audit Office performance audit of the Department of Health and Aged Care, reports that the life expectancy at birth of Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders is 15-20 years lower than all Australians, that for all causes of death combined there were 3.5-4 times more deaths than expected among Indigenous people, and that indigenous people are 2-3 times more likely to be hospitalised.

1999: National Aboriginal Health Strategy – delivery of housing and infrastructure to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, a National Audit Office performance audit of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, reports that a lack of basic facilities, such as access to adequate housing, water and waste removal, is contributing to the high morbidity rate of indigenous Australians and that ATSIC was not administering the housing program in a timely, costly or efficient manner.

2000: Health is life, the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Family and Community Affairs final report on indigenous health issues, finds a "lack of clear delineation of responsibility for indigenous health," and that the parties, particularly the states, indulge "wherever possible" in shifting the onus for payment to another sector and that "the lack of any real efforts to integrate community involvement into the planning and delivery of health and related services" has been been one of the biggest barriers to progress.

The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, in a report on Australia's treatment of its indigenous population, notes that "mandatory sentencing schemes appear to target offences that are committed disproportionately by indigenous Australians" in Western Australia and the Northern Territory and remains concerned by "the extent of the continuing discrimination faced by indigenous Australians in the enjoyment of their economic, social and cultural rights". Foreign Minister Alexander Downer's responds: "We won't cop it any longer. We are a democratically elected government in one of the most liberal and democratic countries you will find on Earth. And if a United Nations committee wants to play domestic politics here in Australia, then it will end up with a bloody nose."

2001: The draft National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Strategy is released by the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Council, recommending greater resources be deployed on the issues of Aboriginal substance misuse, community violence and suicide. It notes that many of these issues were raised in the National Aboriginal Health Strategy (1989) but "there was insufficient commitment to action following the 1989 strategy".

2002: The NHMRC Road Map: a strategic framework for improving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health through research is released, recommending that research needs to be targeted towards the major causes and risks of poor health for Indigenous Australians – specifically chronic diseases, injury (including assault and suicide), mental health, drug and alcohol abuse, communicable diseases and maternal and child health.

2003: The 4th edition of the biennial report The health and welfare of Australia's Indigenous Peoples 2003, is published by the ABS and the AIHW.

2004: A Canadian study reports that the quality of life of Australian Aborigines is the second-worst in the world, while the general Australian population ranks fourth-best in the world.

2005: The Australian Government appears again before the UN Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, which expresses serious concern about the abolition of ATSIC, the lack of genuine progress in native title, the continuing over-representation of indigenous peoples in prisons and the extreme inequities between indigenous peoples and others in the areas of employment, housing, health, education and income.

The biennial report from the ABS and AIHW shows that "overall, estimated expenditure on health services provided to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples during 2001-02 was $3,901 per person –18% higher than the estimated expenditure on services delivered to non-indigenous Australians – which was due to high rates of care for Aboriginal people "involving dialysis and hospitalisations for other potentially preventable chronic conditions".

2006: Release of Ending family violence and abuse in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities – Key issues, An overview paper of research and findings by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, 2001 – 2006

Release of Breaking the Silence: Creating the Future. Addressing child s-xual assault in Aboriginal communities in NSW. Report put together by the Aboriginal Child S-xual Assault Taskforce, a group set up by the NSW government following recommendations made in 2001.

2007: Little Children are Sacred, co-authored by Pat Anderson and Rex Wild QC, is handed down. The Board of Inquiry headed up by the pair was created by the Northern Territory Government in August 2006 in order to investigate allegations of s-xual abuse of Aboriginal children. The report identifies the keys to solving the problem: education and reducing alcohol consumption.

there are numerous factors that need to be considered when approaching this, numerous things the government is ignoring.

since 1788 the gender relationships within Western culture have been quick to infiltrate the thinking of some Aboriginal men. It is true to say that many of anthropologists were men and they did not look at the culture of Aboriginal women when they recorded Aboriginal stories and sacred places. Instead, they assumed that the patriarchy of their society would be present in the societies that they studied. They often described women as being debased in their own community.

Stereotypes began to emerge from colonial times of Aboriginal women as drudges, slaves and sexually promiscuous within their own community. In fact, the experience of Aboriginal women on the frontier was one in which they were in great danger of sexual exploitation by white men on the frontier and used as a source of free labour to sustain the pastoral and pearling industries and to keep the homesteads. Stereotypes of Aboriginal women as bad mothers would follow in the eras when the removal of Aboriginal children from their families was a key government policy.

The result of this clash of Aboriginal and dominant culture was that the place of Aboriginal women within their community was forgotten and in the broader community they found themselves on the lowest rung, disadvantaged both by their race and their gender.

These negative stereotypes were not just part of the popular culture but would often find their way into the important and influential institutions of the community. For example, some white male judges have been, on occasion, quick to accept claims that Aboriginal women were not valued within their own community and have lowered the standards applied when determining whether consent has been given by Aboriginal women in sexual assault cases.
In one case the defendants were accused of sexual assault. The defense obtained evidence from non-Aboriginal males to show that rape was not a very serious crime in Aboriginal society and that, by approaching the men and asking for a cigarette, an Aboriginal woman may have been seen as inviting a sexual relationship. The dissenting evidence of a female anthropologist was presented to the court to show that an assault on a woman’s sexual character was treated seriously and that, traditionally, women punished men severely for it. Despite this evidence, the judge found that there was evidence before him that he accepted that rape was not considered as seriously in Aboriginal communities as it is in the white community … and indeed the chastity of women is not as importantly regarded as in white communities.
In another case Police Aides and a police warden, while drunk on duty, sexually assaulted a woman they held in custody. Sergeant Berry, giving evidence on their behalf said there was no crime of rape known to the offenders’ community. The judge concluded that “forcing women to have sexual intercourse is not socially acceptable, but it is not regarded with the seriousness that it is by the white people.”


These cultural stereotypes need to change as much as anything else


Throwing money at them is the most pointless thing we can do, and probably one of the most arrogantly ethnocentric things we could do IMO...

Since 1996, numbers of Indigenous Australians at universities have dropped dramatically.
Special fee programs to ensure Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students would receive a living allowance to complete a course of study were abolished in the first years of the Howard government. The mechanism for enabling Aboriginal people to vote for representatives of their community and so have a direct voice to government (through ATSIC) was removed.
A National Indigenous Council, all members vetted and chosen by the government and hence fully dependent upon government support, is the government's answer to Indigenous consultation.

Yet even this Council was not consulted prior to Howard's announcement of his 'plan' to intervene in the Northern Territory. Sue Gordon, head of the Council, is to be involved. Yet how, and how it will sit with her role as Children's Court Magistrate in Western Australia, is not clear. The Australian Medical Association (AMA) was not consulted, although medical practitioners are central to the 'plan'. State governments and Police Commissioners were not consulted, despite Howard's saying that state police will be employed to support federal police in community intervention.

In 1998 the Australian Indigenous Doctors Association (AIDA) was incorporated. A national body, it represents Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander doctors and medical students, and holds a significant place in the medical and health education sector, working with members of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health and education workforce and other stakeholders. In May 2007, looking toward the fortieth anniversary of the 1967 Referendum on Indigenous Australian rights and recognition, it issued a plea for cooperation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous medical practitioners in working to ensure the good health and wellbeing of Aboriginal children. The Howard government did not consult it.

Since 1988, the United Nations has been working on a Draft Declaration on Indigenous Rights for eventual adoption and proclamation by the UN General Assembly. The Draft Declaration affirms, amongst other rights, that of participating fully in all levels of decision-making and implementation in matters affecting their rights, lives and destinies. It says that Indigenous people have a right to participate fully in devising legislative or administrative measures that may affect them. It enunciates a requirement on states to obtain the consent of Indigenous people before adopting and implementing such measures. None of this was done before Howard's announcement.

The Howard government has indicated its lack of will to endorse or support the UN Declaration on Indigenous Rights.
The Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, has followed Howard in this policy failure. John Howard cannot, on the one hand, profess care about the plight of Indigenous Australian children if, on the other, he sets his government against United Nations' efforts to enhance their status and living conditions. He cannot assume a pose of compassion, when he lobbies other heads of government to oppose the promotion of Indigenous autonomy for themselves and their children. He cannot assert concern about Indigenous Australians, their families, their children and their communities, while ignoring their right to consultation and having the message delivered directly from him to them.

Ongoing consultation that lasts forever without productive outcomes is unwanted and time wasting. Indigenous people don't want it, in any event. Their time is as equally precious as anyone's. Yet it is evident to those apprehending the meaning and effect of intimidation, that John Howard is a master at his own game. Ending child sexual abuse in Indigenous communities will not happen without the cooperation and involvement of Indigenous elders and families where this crime does not occur. It will not happen without the cooperation and involvement of parents who have sought to protect their children against sexual exploitation, denial of bodily integrity, and invasion of childhood. Cutting them out, as if all families are dysfunctional, all parents (both mothers and fathers) involved or complicit, and with no right to consultation and participation in what is proposed for their children, is a recipe for failure.

Sending in the troops might sound decisive and leader-like when houses are destroyed and townships flooded. But when children's wellbeing is at risk, this will serve only to pile harm upon harm.

Women around Australia have complained about the need for trained police officers to deal with sexual offences. Women around Australia have fought for training of medical practitioners to ensure their sensitivity to the consequences of sexual abuse and the needs of women raped, exploited and abused. When minority age and race are added into the mix, the need for training and sensitivity is multiplied.

If the government were to embark on a non-consultative program of forced flu injections imposed on all children living in Waroongah, Toorak or Dalkieth, protests and law suits would be flowing. Yet Howard would never impose measures he sees as 'right' for Indigenous Australians upon the 'white' community. Even in circumstances of national emergency - say bird flu were to have reached Australia's shores - Howard's whole approach would be different. He would appeal to 'white' parents as his constituency, explaining to them the need and the reasoning behind any action plan. With this current sexual abuse emergency, however, he has not delivered the message to the Indigenous children's parents. He's delivered it to us - his 'white' constituency, telling us that this is an emergency and that police and medical practitioners are going in.


word will have got around in the Northern Territory, but no thanks to the Prime Minister. It is the word of mouth communication, Indigenous person to Indigenous person, and Indigenous community to Indigenous community, which will have delivered the news. In his every approach to this circumstance of heartbreak and denial of childhood, Howard distances himself from the group to whom his immediate responsibility lies. His message was not to 'them'. It was to us. Why?


Howard would never impose measures he sees as 'right' for Indigenous Australians upon the 'white' community, and to suggest sexual molestation is confined only to indigenous communities goes far beyond ignorance


Police on the ground is a good start, one that could've happened along time ago, but removing childeren from their culture/people can be incredibly psychologically damaging

This sudden need to charge in (then what by the way?) only demonstrates contempt for the Australian public on Howards behalf, for both community leaders whom he has ignored, and for the general public whose apathetic support he has taken for granted


Throwing money at them doesn't work because their culture was never built on money

Howard has not consulted any of the few organisational bodies he hasn't destroyed in previous years before forming this plan.
The community leaders need to be involved in the entire process for any level of integration to occur

handing them money and saying clean yourself up is a massive insult and a pathetically transperent election ploy

There needs to be extensive planning with the community leaders and a long term strategy for increasing the health and education levels amongst a people who live in the third world that exists in our own backyard

rom crikey:

Mutitjulu community leaders Dorothea and Bob Randall write:


We welcome any real support for indigenous health and welfare and even two police will assist, but the Howard Government declared an emergency at our community over two years ago -- when they appointed an administrator to our health clinic -- and since then we have been without a doctor, we have fewer health workers, our council has been sacked, and all our youth and health programmes have been cut.

We have no CEO and limited social and health services. The Government has known about our overcrowding problem for at least 10 years and they’ve done nothing about it.

How do they propose keeping alcohol out of our community when we are 20 minutes away from a five-star hotel?
Will they ban blacks from Yulara?
We have been begging for an alcohol counsellor and a rehabilitation worker so that we can help alcoholics and substance abusers but those pleas have been ignored. What will happen to alcoholics when this ban is introduced?
How will the Government keep the grog runners out of our community without a permit system?

We have tried to put forward projects to make our community economically sustainable -- like a simple coffee cart at the sunrise locations -- but the Government refuses to even consider them.


There is money set aside from the Jimmy Little foundation for a kidney dialysis machine at Mutitjulu, but National Parks won’t let us have it. That would create jobs and improve indigenous health but they just keep stonewalling us. If there is an emergency, why won’t Mal Brough fast-track our kidney dialysis machine?

Some commentators have made much of the cluster of s-xually transmitted diseases identified at our health clinic. People need to understand that the Mutitjulu health clinic (now effectively closed) is a regional clinic and patients come from as far away as WA and SA; so, to identify a cluster here is meaningless without seeing the confidential patient data.

The fact that we hold this community together with no money, no help, no doctor and no government support is a miracle. Any community, black or white would struggle if they were denied the most basic resources. Police and the military are fine for logistics and coordination, but health care, youth services, education and basic housing are more essential. Any program must involve the people on the ground or it won’t work. For example, who will interpret for the military?

Our women and children are scared about being forcibly examined; surely there is a need to build trust. Even the doctors say they are reluctant to examine a young child without a parent’s permission. Of course, any child that is vulnerable or at risk should be immediately protected, but a wholesale intrusion into our women's and children’s privacy is a violation of our human and sacred rights.

Where is the money for all the essential services? We need long-term financial and political commitment to provide the infrastructure and planning for our community. There is an urgent need for tens of millions of dollars to do what needs to be done. Will Mr Brough give us a commitment beyond the police and military?

The Commonwealth needs to work with us to put health and social services, housing and education in place rather than treating Mutitjulu as a political football.

But we need to set the record straight:

There is no evidence of any fraud or mismanagement at Mutitjulu – we have had an administration for 12 months that found nothing.
Mal Brough and his predecessor have been in control of our community for at least 12 months and we have gone backwards in services.
We have successfully eradicated petrol sniffing from our community in conjunction with government authorities and oil companies.
We have thrown suspected p-dophiles out of our community using the permit system which the Government now seeks take away from us.
We will work constructively with any government, state, territory or federal, that wants to help Aboriginal people.




This is a link to the final report released by the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody in 1991 regarding, among other things, the level of police presence in these communities:

link

It noted that "historically, police have acted as the most consistent point of Aboriginal contact with the colonising power. Police were responsible for implementing successive colonial, then state and Territory Government policies of protection and control.
Police surveillance of Aboriginal communities has in turn shaped their own perceptions of Aboriginal people as 'recalcitrant' or 'degenerate'."
The report linked Aboriginal incarceration with an absence of self-determination. "The heart of self-determination is Aboriginal people, groups and community-controlled organizations being encouraged, supported and empowered to design programs, deliver services and control resources themselves."

And yet here we are, some 16 years later claiming more police is the solution?
Doubtful...

Politically Howard’s plan is brilliant: anointing the old racist stereotypes about Aborigines ("half-devil and half-child") with an oily self-righteousness.
What’s more, his announcement took the Palm Island manslaughter case entirely out of the news. Less than a week ago, a Queensland jury acquitted policeman Chris Hurley of manslaughter, even though he admitted splitting Cameron Mulrunji Doomadgee’s liver in two.
And why was Doomadgee in custody in the first place?
He was drunk and he was singing a rude song and for those heinous crimes Hurley arrested him.
Police in, booze out, as Tony Abbott would say.
The day after Hurley walked free, John Howard declared that Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory need … more police.
Get ready, then, for more Palm Island-style riots upon the abolishment of "constitutional niceties"

The Prime Minister described the issue as a "national emergency".
He also said that "constitutional niceties" should not obstruct his planned course of action for dealing with the matter. It’s not clear which "constitutional niceties" the Prime Minister has in mind or if, in fact, there is a constitutional impediment to any of the raft of actions he has promised.
And it's not clear what criteria he uses to define a "national emergency".
But it is clear he is playing with the concept of linking a "national emergency" to executive government action that contravenes the constitution....

why does Commonwealth assistance funding cease to many communities in the states on 30 June?

THE nightmare of violence, abuse and neglect engulfing remote indigenous settlements is Australia's own hurricane Katrina — an emergency that demands urgent action, not more consultation, Prime Minister John Howard has declared.




As stated by community leaders police and military intervention was fine for logistics and coordination but healthcare, youth services, education and basic housing were more essential.

"Where is the money for all the essential services?" they asked.

"We need long term financial and political commitment to provide the infrastructure and planning for our community.

"There is an urgent need for tens of millions of dollars to do what needs to be done.

"Will (Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal) Mr Brough give us a commitment beyond the police and military?

"The commonwealth needs to work with us to put health and social services, housing and education in place rather than treating Mutitjulu as a political football."