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Now for the hard yakka

By Russell Skelton

9 February 2008 - The Howard government implemented the emergency intervention in Aboriginal communities - Labor has to make it work. Russell Skelton sees some encouraging signs.

In the central desert community of Areyonga, Theresa Nipper wonders when the benefits of the emergency intervention are going to flow through to her people.

"My heart is crying out for the young kids. Who is going to train them and educate them so they can get jobs?"

Ms Nipper, the chairwoman of the community council, says many Areyonga kids have never been to school, have little comprehension of work and smoke too much marijuana (it is easier to conceal than alcohol, which is banned) for their own good.

Located at the bottom of a picturesque canyon flanked by red escarpments in the MacDonnell Ranges, Areyonga is a tiny community of about 250 Pitjantjatjara people. Welfare payments were quarantined as part of the Howard government's intervention and a business manager has been appointed, but there is no permanent police presence.

"Income management has worked, people are buying food for their children and they are spending less on grog. But the ganja is making the kids lazy," Nipper says. As for the permit system for outsiders to enter the area, she wants it restored. "We don't want a lot of people coming in here gawking at us," she says.

Nipper, like a number of community leaders in the central desert region of the Northern Territory contacted by the Herald this week, supports the intervention and its objective to eradicate violence, sex and substance abuse and to put kids back into school. But she says she is yet to see significant benefits for children.

At nearby Hermannsburg, council chairman Gus Williams also backs the intervention. "People were frightened when the assessment teams first came, they thought they were going to have their children taken away, but the results have been generally good. We don't want any more changes."

The biggest social issue facing the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, and his Indigenous Affairs Minister, Jenny Macklin, is how best to shape the Howard government's contentious, draconian and ambitious intervention in the Territory that is costing the nation hundreds of millions of dollars - not that anybody seems to be counting. The emerging emphasis is on jobs, education and closing the life expectancy gap rather than punitive measures.

For the Government, there is much to come to terms with, including the acrimonious divisions within indigenous Australia over the more troubling aspects of the intervention. Next week, thousands of indigenous Australians and their supporters will converge on Canberra to celebrate a landmark apology. They are also demanding that the Rudd Government rolls back emergency intervention legislation that Labor voted for.

Adroit and influential figures such as Professor Marcia Langton, who is chairwoman of indigenous studies at Melbourne University, and Noel Pearson, who heads the Cape York Institute, see the Commonwealth commitment to indigenous communities as a breakthrough worth preserving and getting right. They believe the unprecedented opportunity to combat endemic violence, alcohol and substance abuse, plus a vast range of chronic health conditions including heart disease and diabetes, should not be lost.

Macklin, a shrewd ALP veteran and former deputy party leader, remains committed to the intervention in its present form until mid-year - the point at which it was going to be reviewed by the Howard government. Unlike Mal Brough, who headed the intervention as the indigenous affairs minister in the previous government and traded on his blunt-talking, top-down approach, Macklin has listened to the critics and navigated a cautious course through the unpredictable waters of indigenous politics. She committed the Government to reforms that do not erode the core of the intervention but go some way to placating a largely pro-Labor indigenous establishment.

Under pressure from a chorus of indigenous groups, she agreed to reinstate the permit system, which will impose restrictions on social and business discourse in communities already isolated by geography. Power to restrict entry into communities (journalists and government employees and contractors are to be exempt) will be returned to dominant elders and clans who control councils. History confirms they do not always act in the community interest.

Announced before the election, the policy was popular. Labor's vote in scores of remote settlements like Wadeye, Finke and Hermannsburg, was between 80 and 90 per cent. This week Macklin, in an interview with the Herald, defended the decision, saying that child abuse had taken place in communities on Cape York where there were no permits.

"The problem is, and I really agree with Noel Pearson here, that we have had a breakdown in social norms," she said. "That is the problem we need to address rather than saying that once you remove the permit system, abuse will disappear."

Macklin's decision to reinstate community employment schemes (CDEP, or "work for the dole") with strict new guidelines to ensure that people are, in the minister's words, "work ready", was widely endorsed by communities. A fundamental flaw with the old system that provided work for 8000 people - and was thrown out by Brough - was a lack of accountability that led to rorting and abuse.

Despite these highly symbolic concessions, Macklin is caught in the eye of a gathering storm over the future direction of indigenous policy. The first big internal challenge she faces will come in the form of a report from Tom Calma, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social justice commissioner and acting race discrimination commissioner. His report, yet to be tabled in Parliament, is believed to put forward a 10-point plan to "unscramble" the intervention. Among other things, it calls on the Government to make existing legislation comply with the race discrimination act and all international treaties.

Under the Howard government, Calma had been studiously ignored, even isolated. After an initial discussion, Brough had refused to meet him. Macklin, on the other hand, has been consulting closely. Calma's report presents the Government with a conundrum, as it reflects traditional ALP thinking and appeals to much of what Rudd has campaigned on, including the need for Australia to comply with international treaty obligations. But the report is likely to provide fodder for the activist left within the ALP and the federal Labor caucus to press for a comprehensive roll-back.

Langton alluded to this looming clash in an essay, "Trapped In The Aboriginal Reality Show", published last month, where she warned of the danger of old-left thinking taking hold. "I believe that those opposed to the intervention are morally and politically wrong. I fear they represent the small, comfortable white clique in the Territory whose cars bear stickers declaring, 'I fish and I drink and I vote', and the 'big men' in Aboriginal communities who harvest votes for their Labor mates," she wrote.

Macklin said Calma's report, which she is aware of but yet to read, would only be considered as part of the 12-month review. She pointed out that the ALP in Opposition had unsuccessfully moved amendments to ensure that the Race Discrimination Act applied. Such a change could complicate such measures as the quarantining of welfare payments that affects some 5000 people in 24 communities and requirements for parents to send children to school.

For the mostly urban-based activists opposed to the intervention and preoccupied with the erosion of land and human rights, there may be little to celebrate. Much has changed since the Government was elected. The new Northern Territory ALP Government of Paul Henderson (He replaced the hapless Clare Martin) has pledged to work with the Federal Government to make sure the intervention works. So, too, has the Central Land Council, which has opposed the appointment of business managers, quarantining and abolition of the CDEP. The council's chairman, David Ross, said he'd had fruitful discussions with Macklin and was keen not to "throw the baby out with the bathwater".

This week Marion Scrymgour, the Deputy Chief Minister of the Territory and the nation's most senior Aboriginal parliamentarian - who had virulently criticised the emergency - told The Age that she was working closely with the Federal Government.

"Kevin Rudd and Jenny Macklin have brought a new, dramatically different and refreshing approach compared to what we saw with Mal Brough and John Howard's," she said. "I am confident we can achieve results through a new co-operative partnership with the Commonwealth." She supports the quarantining of welfare payments widely criticised by activist groups.

Macklin's most profound task will be achieving lasting change in a dynamic, bleak and constantly changing social landscape. She has a difficult, complex task that has defeated most of her predecessors. Fred Chaney, director of Reconciliation Australia and a former Aboriginal affairs minister in the Fraser government, said: "Brough and Howard had the easy part, Rudd and Macklin actually have to make it work, and that will be tough.

"But I am yet to see any signs of backsliding. Sue Gordon [chairwoman of the intervention taskforce] is happy with what she has heard."

Macklin concedes there is much unfinished business and that the intervention has failed to progress beyond the stabilisation phase. Despite all the hype of the previous government, an acute shortage of police has meant that the first objective (declared so emphatically by Brough) to make communities safe remains a distant goal. Places like Docker River, Titjikala and Finke are still without a permanent police presence.

The roll-out of other emergency measures, including the quarantining of welfare, has been logistically difficult and hit serious administrative problems where people are constantly on the move. Some 200 Centrelink employees are devoted to the task. Macklin said she will persist with the existing measures until the midyear assessment is completed. This financial year, she expects to put an additional 40 AFP and interstate police on the ground.

The effectiveness of quarantining of welfare payments - regarded by many, including Pearson, as unfair because it punishes families who do the right thing - will continue because many see the benefits of having more money for food and other essentials.

As for spending, the Government has no plans to curb the intervention budget and in fact will increase expenditure on the recruitment of 200 teachers and health programs.

Asked if the commitments to back the intervention would not be affected by the recently announced budget cuts, Macklin said: "Yes."

"If the issue is all about protecting children, then we have to address the nub of the problem, which is the breakdown in social norms, the lack of employment and the abuse of women and children. These are the hard issues where the effort must go."

But Pearson and Chaney believe the intervention is about more than money, policies and commitment. Modifying policies to meet changing circumstances and breaking down the rigidity of centralised decision-making from Canberra are equally important.

Pearson, speaking from his Cape York experiences, believes there must be ongoing policy development. He said that when alcohol management plans were introduced in Queensland they were initially successful but the situation deteriorated with binge drinking and the discovery by grog runners of holes through the system.

He compared the situation to a bunch of lumbering dinosaurs trying to deal with a bunch of resourceful rats. "The rats will win every time," he said.

Bringing children back into the school system may also present problems. There will be claims of success when the numbers are up, but when kids who have never seen a classroom prove disruptive and unruly, a new response will be required.

Pearson, like Chaney, believes that a new, responsive indigenous leadership most be encouraged and nurtured to make decisions in changing circumstances.

"There has to be indigenous ownership of problems and we are not getting enough of that in the Territory." He believes leaving total responsibility for the intervention to politicians will lead to "death by one thousand qualifications".

Chaney argues answers to indigenous disadvantage have never come out of Canberra, where decisions are constantly made under the tyranny of the three-year political cycle. "The present set of policies is about as good as you will get, but who is going to deliver on it, because it is a 20-year program?"

There is perhaps an encouraging sign that Macklin may be headed in just such a new direction. Her senior adviser is Michael Dillon, an experienced observer of indigenous policy and co-author of the book Beyond Humbug.

While Dillon warns that Aboriginal disadvantage may worsen over the short term, he lays down a rational framework for future constructive engagement with Aboriginal people.

Source: Sydney Morning Herald

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

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