home | news l

NT intervention a millstone

By Chris Graham, editor

6 September 2007 - That the cracks have begun to emerge in the Howard government's 'NT emergency intervention' should surprise no-one.

What is a little unusual is that the plan has remained relatively intact even for a few weeks.

Now, of course, there's not much pretence left that this was intended as anything other than a base political stunt by a group of men and women desperate to hang onto power.

But time - and the tide - is against the Howard government.

It was, and remains, inevitable that as the election draws nearer more and more misdeeds of this administration will leak out.

For a start, bureaucrats who get a sense that a government is on the way out are far more inclined to take a risk.

That's despite the fact that this government - more than any before it - has used a compliant police service to criminalise brave public servants who act in the public interest to ensure real information enters the public domain.

Add to that the fact that Indigenous affairs is an area which traditionally leaks like a sieve anyway, and you have a recipe for disaster, cooked up by the hapless John Howard and Mal Brough.

The 'white wonder twins' set out to create legislation that was so extreme and so ridiculous, it couldn't possibly be supported by the ALP. What they didn't bank on was a Kevin Rudd so desperate for power that he would support any legislation, regardless how unworkable it was.

Thus, Howard and Brough are now stuck with legislation that is unenforceable, unintelligible and unsustainable.

Either before or after this election, there will have to be significant amendments.

Attempts to avoid the racial discrimination act in the new legislation will not only damage Australia's standing internationally, they will be legally challenged and soundly defeated.

In addition to this, amendments to the 99-year lease scam are imperative, otherwise the scheme will never attract anything but scant support from a few government-friendly whitefellas.

In particular, the Howard government will have to amend the 99-year lease legislation which vests the land in the hands of a 'government' entity.

It will also have to give control back to Aboriginal people about who obtains sub-leases on their land.

The legislation aimed at destroying the permit system will also inevitably be re-instated. Brough sought to destroy the permit system as a 'thank you' to extreme elements of the mainstream media who have supported his campaign of assimilation.

It was clearly a puerile and stupid legislative change and will have to be unpicked.

The upshot is that Howard and Brough sought to create an electoral wedge, but they've been left with a millstone hanging around their necks.

As more and more 'details' of the NT intervention leak out, fewer and fewer people within the Coalition will be thanking Howard and Brough for their ill-conceived strategy.

You can't really blame Howard for 'having a punt'. After all, race politics is to John Howard as heroin is to a junkie.

Howard - perhaps the nation's meanest little man with the smallest mind and the tiniest heart - may be the ultimate, ugly face of white Australia. But this nation elected him four bloody times.

Kevin Rudd will doubtless pander to the masses as much as Howard, and perhaps turn out to be even worse. But until this nation rids itself of the stench of small-man Howard, it can never begin to start atoning for its outrageous sins against Indigenous Australia.

Source: The National Indigenous Times

Further information: NT intervention issues page - includes news index and external links