Howard’s NT plans will “demoralise Aborigines”

Below is the text of an article by Jennifer Martiniello which will be
forwarded to major newspapers in Australia. Please pass on to your
networks. Jennifer Martiniello is a writer and academic of Arrernte,
Chinese and Anglo descent. She is a former Deputy Chair of the
Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander Arts Board of the Australia
Council for the Arts, and a current member of the Advisory Board of
the Australian Centre for Indigenous History at the ANU.

Howard's new Tampa children overboard are our Aboriginal children.

The Little Children are Sacred report does not advocate physically and
psychologically invasive examinations of Aboriginal children, which
could only be carried out anally and vaginally. It does not recommend
scrapping the permit system to enter Aboriginal lands, nor does it
recommend taking over Aboriginal 'towns' by enforced leases. These
latter two points in the Howard scheme hide the true reason for the
Federal Government's use of the latest report for blatant political
opportunism.

It has been an openly stated agenda that Howard wants to move
Aboriginal people off their lands, and has made recent attempts to buy
off Aboriginal people by offering them millions for agreeing to lease
their lands to the Federal Government, e.g. Tiwi Islands and
Tangentyere in Alice Springs. There was also the statement by the
Federal Government that it could not continue (?!) to provide
essential services to remote communities, which raised an uproar of
responses in the press. The focus on the sexual abuse of children is
guaranteed to evoke the most emotive responses, and therefore command
attention, just like the manipulation of the Tampa situation. But
while the attention of the media and the public is being emotionally
coerced, what is being sneaked in under the covers?

Two issues specifically - mining companies have applied for more
exploration permits in the Northern Territory, the Jabiluka uranium
mining operations at Kakadu have already hit the media because of the
mining company's applications to the Government to significantly
expand its operations, including establishing new mines at Coronation
Government has already mooted that nuclear waste should be dumped in
the Northern Territory, on Aboriginal lands. Aboriginal traditional
owners are absolutely opposed to this. We have a long history of
deaths and illness from radiation, from the atomic tests at Woomera in
the 1950s to the current high incidences of carcinomas in the
community at Kakadu near the Jabiluka site. The main obstacle to the
Federal Government's desired expansion of mining operations in the
Northern Territory and nuclear waste dumping is, of course, the
Aboriginal people who have occupancy of, and rights under the common
law to, their traditional lands.

Following the stages of the Howard Government's usual modus operandi
(defund, blame, eliminate), defunding of critical programs for remote
Aboriginal community projects began in July 2004, with coerced changes
to funding contracts, and monies for critically needed youth and
health programs in remote areas being the first dollars to go. Take
Mutitjulu for example, which was notoriously profiled by the ABC's
Nightline program. I say notorious because one of Senator Mal Brough's
personal staffers was the so-called ex-youth worker interviewed on
that program, and the content of that interview was laden with myths
and mistruths. The staffer in question failed to appear when summoned
before a Senate inquiry to explain and the Senator's office is yet to
issue a statement. When the community lodged a formal protest to
Government, it was raided and their computers seized. But the program
did show the effects of the Howard Government defunding of essential
programs on that community, in particular the youth centre and health
centre. The people at Mutitjulu also just happen to be the traditional
owners of Uluru, one of this country's most lucrative tourist
attractions. The Howard Government would not like us to ask who
benefits by the people of Mutitjulu being forced off their community.
Under the amendments to Native Title made by the Howard Government,
once Aboriginal people have left their traditional lands, forcibly or
otherwise, their rights under the common law that every other
Australian enjoys over their land are significantly impaired.

Progressive defunding of Aboriginal art centres has also begun, with a
range of community art centres not having their funding renewed by
DCITA in July 2005 and 2006 in the Northern Territory, from
communities in Arnhemland to mid and southern Territory communities.
The art production facilitated by those Aboriginal art centres are the
only means through which members of those communities can actually
earn a living, as opposed to being on welfare. But then, dependent
people are easier to control by means of that dependency. The Howard
Government's failed Shared Responsibility Agreements (SRAs) have also
been the catalyst for further blame shifting and progressive
defunding, take Wadeye for example.

Our Aboriginal communities are being squeezed further into dysfunction
and disenfranchisement by carefully targeted political engineering,
the systemic and ruthless roll-out of a planned agenda. It is no
accident that Howard's scheme to address what he calls the urgency of
the Little Children are Sacred report's 97 recommendations was trotted
out so very quickly, and addresses so very few of those
recommendations. It is sheer political opportunism to advance an
already in motion agenda, and to score points in an election year.
After all, The Little Children are Sacred report is not the first of
such reports, nor are its findings and recommendations new. The
Federal Government has had the 1989, 1991, 1993, 1997 and 2002 reports
gathering dust and deliberate inaction on its shelves. Perhaps Mr
Howard has been saving them up for a rainy election year? And of
course Mr Howard's scheme targets only Aboriginal communities, despite
the fact that the findings specifically state that non- Aboriginal
men, that is, white men, are a significant proportion of the
offenders, who are black-marketeering in petrol and alcohol to gain
access to Aboriginal children. What measures is the Howard Government
going to take about non-Aboriginal sex offenders, pornographers,
substance traffickers and the like? Nothing according to the measures
announced, but then, they're not Aboriginal and they don't live on the
Aboriginal communities where their victims live.

So who are the real victims here, the silenced victims of John
Howard's scheme? Aboriginal children, of course, who will be subject
to physically and psychologically invasive medical examinations,
irrespective of their home and family circumstances, and who will deal
with the mental and emotional fall-out from that? Aboriginal men, too,
who become the silenced scapegoats, painted by default by John Howard
as all being drunken, child-raping monsters. Perhaps the fact that
almost every picture shown of Aboriginal men in the media these days
shows them drunk, with a slab, cask or bottle under their arms leads
Mr Howard to expect that one to pass unchallenged, irrespective of the
fact that statistics show that only 15% of Aboriginal people drink
alcohol, socially or otherwise, compared to around 87% of
non-Aboriginal Australians. The greater majority of Aboriginal men are
good, decent people. Perhaps the media would like to rethink its
portrayals of Aboriginal men? How about some photos of the other
alcoholics, you know, the white ones. There's more of them.And what of
our communities? The Howard Government also hasn't mentioned that the
majority of Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory are
already dry communities, decided and enforced by those communities.
But then that would spoil the picture Mr Howard wants to paint of our
Aboriginal communities. Other large communities, such as Daly River,
have controlled the situation by only having alcohol available from
the community's club and enforce a strict four can limit. Also
forgotten in the current politically opportunistic furore is the fact
that Aboriginal communities around Tennant Creek and Katherine have
been lobbying Governments and town councils for decades to restrict
the sale of alcohol on Thursdays, when Aboriginal community people
come to town for supplies. So far their pleas have been rejected.
Nothing in Mr Howard's plan to facilitate that, either. Or about the
control of alcohol when those people, once forced off the communities
into the towns, bring their problems with them, child abuse or
alcoholism and all the rest. Of course that would make access to
Aboriginal children a lot easier for white offenders, they won't have
to go so far to find a victim.

One last word on focus of attention. In the famous Redfern Address,
the then Prime Minister, Paul Keating asked perhaps the most important
question for all Australians to consider. He said 'We failed to ask
the most basic of questions. We failed to ask - What if this were done
to us?' What if this were done to us - to Mr and Mrs Average
Australian, to our schools, youth centres, health centres, access to
medical care, communities, homes, children, grandchildren? After all,
current national health reports from a wide range of health
organisations name sexual abuse of non-Indigenous Australian children
as a crisis area in need of urgent attention. And the numbers of
victims are higher. National reports into mainstream domestic
violence, alcohol and substance abuse also call for urgent action,
again the issues are at crisis level, and the numbers of victims and
abusers are far higher than in the Little Children are Sacred report.
None of the recommendations in all of those hundreds of national
health reports recommend compulsory sexual health tests for every
Australian child under sixteen. Not one of them recommends that a
viable solution is closing down youth and health programs, in fact
they all advocate that more are needed. None recommend that the
victims' or the offenders' communities and homes should be surrendered
to the Federal Government and put under compulsory lease agreements,
and none advocate processes which would lead to either the victims or
the abusers losing their rights under common law to their property as
measure to control or remedy the occurrence of abuse. Would the Howard
Government even dare to contemplate such as that? I think not. It
would be un-Australian, and the Government it would expect immediate
legal repercussions on the grounds of impairment of human rights,
extinguishment of rights under common law, discrimination, and a raft
of other constitutional issues. Besides, Mr and Mrs Average Australian
don't, for the most part, live on top of uranium and mineral deposits
or future nuclear waste dumps.

But seriously, the most critical question for all Australians to ask
themselves in the lead up to this year's Federal Election is just that
- What if it were done to us? With full acknowledgment of what has
already been done to workers, trade unions, student unions, public
primary, secondary and tertiary education, elderly care, palliative
care, medicare, crisis health care, nurses, teachers, multicultural
affairs, migrant groups, women, child care, small businesses and
artsworkers, among the many, through the exercise of policies of
social engineering and fear, your answer at the polling booth may just
determine whether it will be done to you, or continue to be done to
you. As reported in the Sydney Morning Herald 25th June, the Howard
Government last week used the military to seize control of 60
Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory, which are now under
military occupation. This is not Israel and Palestine. The Northern
Territory is not Gaza or the West Bank. This is Australia - but is it
the Australia you thought you lived in? Walk in our shoes, Aboriginal
Australia's, and ask yourselves, what would it be like to have this
done to us? And then, walk with us.

Jennifer Martiniello