Introduction
We thank the Review Board for the opportunity to provide oral submissions on 12 August 2008 and note the Review Board’s request for evidence and statistics. Despite our best efforts to provide such statistics, NAAJA’s data collection is set up to meet the requirements of the Attorney General’s Department (our funding body) and not to providing detailed statistical analysis of patterns of criminal behaviour which reliably distinguish between types of criminal proceedings. We are well aware of the importance of such statistics (which have been noticeably lacking from the debate thus far, despite police and prosecution services being much better placed and better resourced to provide them) and we have successfully applied for funding to employ a researcher for a 12 month project to work with NAAJA and CAALAS on this issue. We are currently recruiting for this position, which is another example of the difficulties faced by services in playing “catch up” to the “emergency” and the poor policy planning and outcomes that have eventuated.
While we regret we are unable to provide statistical information, we are able to make comments on the trends that we have experienced. We are confident of the value and accuracy of such trends as evidence to the Review Board because they are based on the experiences of our criminal lawyers who appear daily in the Magistrates courts in Darwin, Katherine and on the bush circuit throughout the Top End, as well as the Northern Territory Supreme Court.
In NAAJA’s experience, the Northern Territory Emergency Response (the “intervention”) has been a devastating combination of sweeping legislative change and poorly co-ordinated policy in the Northern Territory. As we stated previously1:
“… the disempowerment, confusion, feelings of being overwhelmed and disillusionment of Aboriginal people as reported in the Little Children are Sacred Report, has been sharply exacerbated by the passing and implementation of the intervention legislation. It is difficult to convey the confusion and difficulties which have been experienced by Aboriginal people arising out of the intervention legislation. Many fundamental aspects of Aboriginal people’s lives changed in an extremely short period of time, including their employment arrangements, welfare payments, the status of the Aboriginal land on which they live, how they are policed and what is prohibited. Furthermore, Aboriginal people in the prescribed areas have had to comprehend that they now live under different legislation and have different rules apply to them, than those that apply even to Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory who do not live in prescribed areas. In some cases, this geographic difference can be measured in metres.”
1. NAAJA Submission to the Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs on the Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs and Other Legislation Amendment (Emergency Response Consolidation) Bill 2008 on 30 April 2008; see http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/committee/clac_ctte/NT_emerg_response_08/submissions/sub13.pdf