There were demonstrations in Sydney, Alice Springs, Darwin, Perth, Brisbane and Melbourne today, in opposition to the continuing Northern Territories Intervention.

The intervention was "justified" as a legitimate response to a report last year on child sexual abuse in Aboriginal communities entitled The Little Children are Sacred. The report stated that child sexual abuse levels had reached crisis levels, but none of the 97 proposals in the report have been put in to place.

In order for the Intervention to take place the government had to suspend the Racial Discrimination Act and the Northern Territory Land Rights Legislation.

The first thing to be done in the intervention (other than to send in soldiers, trucks and guns) was to ban alcohol and pornography from these communities. Then people on benefits were hit hard. Children had to be submitted to invasive health checks or else their parents wouldn't get their money, and then when they did get their money they could only spend it at certain big supermarket stores on certain items. Many communities didn't even have these stores in their communities and so had to travel to other towns to shop for their basic needs.

Another issue is the undermining of Aboriginal land rights with the compulsory acquisition of an unspecified number of prescribed communities. The Northern Territories are mineral rich and the intervention can also be seen as a land grab attempt. The extraction of radioactive materials (not to mention the Australian government's offer to take back and dump radioactive waste after it has been used) goes against Aboriginal culture and communal land ownership which respects the future inhabitants of the land and doesn't recognise land as a commodity.

The Australian government recently said "Sorry" to the Aboriginal people for their actions towards them in the past, but is appears they are not planning on acting any different now or in the future.