4. The Emergency Response

The Commission received funding in late 2007 to undertake additional activities arising as a result of the intervention. Some of the key additional activities are outlined below.

Outreach Activities

In the last 12 months, our service has conducted an outreach project from our offices in Darwin and Alice Springs, which includes information sessions, education workshops, legal advice and minor assistance to people in prescribed communities.

Approximately 50 visits to prescribed communities have been held to hold discussions with community members on legal education needs and work with community members in deciding how best to meet those needs. Where possible these activities are planned and delivered in conjunction with other legal and related services such as the Aboriginal legal services and women’s’ legal services, Consumer Affairs and the Australian Securities and Investment Commission.

We are developing additional resources to support the increased outreach activities including:

A poster for the Katherine region outlining the legal services available and the type of assistance they can provide
Child Protection Matters, a fact sheet explaining the processes and procedures relating to child protection and the NT Department of Families and Children and how Top End legal services can assist. A similar fact sheet is being developed for Central Australian Services.

Child Protection Matters fact sheet

Again, this need has been identified by community members and organisations through the lack of resources in that field.

In addition to this, a solicitor from the Commission has attended these workshops and communities to provide extended advice and minor assistance on an individual basis where requested. Examples of individual assistance sought include:

Consumer law, such as defective motor vehicles
Credit Law, such as unserviceable loans
Criminal law, including rights and responsibilities when dealing with police
Administrative law, including advice on exemptions from income management

Through these outreach activities, community members have sometimes raised issues which would not ordinarily be classified as legal issues, but as a new service to these regions and in the absence of other agencies to assist, the community has requested that the Commission raise these issues in a broader policy context. Some ways that this has been done include:

Direct contact with service providers, for example:
- collaboration with other legal and related service providers to plan activities; feedback on identified concerns/gaps and plan how to address these
- discussions with Telstra about community concerns about access to payphones which are ‘card only’;
- complaints to Centrelink about community concerns about access to their service through a payphone due to the lack of a 1800 number
- discussion with regional housing authorities raising community concerns about ‘poll renting’ and housing repairs and maintenance issues
- feedback to Centrelink in relation to operational issues and concerns arising from income management
- feedback to financial counselling services on identified need in particular regions
- collaboration in planning events, such as the Men’s Health Summit at Ross River Homestead in July
Direct contact with government agencies, for example:
- feedback to FAHCSIA at different levels, about practical difficulties community members experience with the implementation of the intervention including
  - The NTER Taskforce leaders, Major General Chalmers and Dr Gordon
  - Indigenous Coordination Centres
  - Operations Centre staff, including Brian Stacey
- briefing the Commonwealth Attorney Generals Department in relation to our activities and operational and communication concerns arising from those.
- feedback to the Commonwealth Ombudsman in relation to general concerns and complaints to their office on behalf of individuals.
- feedback to police in relation to ‘transitional’ policing practices and the practical difficulties which community members have in complying with laws that have not previously been policed
- Discussions with the NT Road Safety Council

Our concerns

We are concerned that the NT emergency response has been designed and implemented without reference to Aboriginal people in the region and in a manner which excludes them from ongoing participation in the response. This approach is contrary to the Report² which it is said to be responding to.

When the intervention was first announced, the Commission considered the potential for an increase in our workload. Based on the early announcements, we anticipated an increase in two key areas:

FACS matters, through advice and representation in Child in Need of Care matters; and
Criminal defence work, through an increase in criminal prosecutions in pornography, alcohol and complex sexual assault matters.

In fact, the legal issues people from prescribed communities have raised include:

Tenants’ rights, including overcrowding, high rental costs through poll renting and poor housing maintenance and infrastructure;
CDEP, which we note has now been partially reinstated;
Income management, primarily around the administration of store cards and the lack of transport to and from Centrelink and stores;
The intervention discriminates against Aboriginal people without good grounds;
Policing, including lack of information in relation to changes to alcohol laws; and
Consumer issues and debt, including predatory loaning and sales practices, inability to pay fines and defective product sales.

We briefly outline our other concerns in relation to the emergency response below:

Takes a ‘one size fits all’ approach across communities when evidence demonstrates that approach is ineffective.
Has been introduced with undue haste without sufficient time for planning and training of staff such as Centrelink, leading to unnecessary confusion and hardship.
In the Katherine Region, Income Management was introduced during the Christmas period. Residents of prescribed communities were walking up to 10 kms on foot to Centrelink and waiting at Centrelink for hours. In some cases Centrelink ran out of storecards and issued food vouchers which the main shopping centre would not accept.
Does not include sufficient additional resources required for agencies whose mandate is child protection³.
Draws an arbitrary and artificial distinction between people living in prescribed communities and others.

In relation to Income Management, people living within 20 metres of a prescribed community will not have their welfare payments quarantined, no matter how irresponsible their expenditure is while people living within the community will irrespective of how well they organise their finances and care for their children.
Creates a double standard which reinforces the view that only those people living in those communities are paedophiles/drunks – this is perpetuated through the exemption enabling materials/alcohol to travel through prescribed communities.

Alan Hoopy from Central Australia says that the ‘prescribed communities sign’ outside his community tells people inside and outside the community that people living there are pornography freaks and drunks. This breaks down the pride that people have built up over the years.
Does not draw on existing mechanisms used by Indigenous people to manage their own income, such as Centrepay.
Fails to recognise or assist with existing financial commitments people may have such as car loans and outstanding fines which may exceed their disposable income.

In the Katherine Region we have assisted a number of people to obtain a waiver of their loan commitments to a major financial institution on the basis that the 2006 lending criteria is no longer applicable and the loan would not have been granted if the remote lending criteria was applied⁴.
Does not draw on or refer to any evidence in relation to the number of people living in prescribed communities who do not spend Centrelink money on ‘priority needs’ compared to the wider community.
Ignores the reality that a significant number of child sexual assailants are non Indigenous people living in non-prescribed areas.
Conveys the impression that people living in prescribed communities are more likely to be drunks and sexual assault perpetrators. This has a broad impact on the collective esteem of the community.

Alan Hoopy in Central Australia says that the creation of prescribed communities has ‘demonised Aboriginal people across the Board’.
Some key mechanisms to effective consultation in communities have broken down since the commencement of the Emergency Response. Significantly, the introduction of Government Business Managers and the amalgamation of Local Government Councils has had the combined effect of undermining the local authority and management structures in some prescribed communities.

Questions from the Review Board

We now turn to respond to the specific questions raised by the Board in the review process

1. What is working?

The intervention brought a welcomed focus to the extreme disadvantage existing in Indigenous communities across the NT. It highlighted the need to allocate substantial resources to address this issue in the short, medium and long term.

It also recognised the importance of legal services to assist people in regional and remote communities in the NT. The allocation of funding to legal services has assisted us to increase our presence in regions where there was previously little or no access to legal assistance. It has also assisted us to collaborate and work in partnership to plan and deliver the increase in legal services.

2. What isn’t working?

Indigenous people in communities have always endeavoured to develop their own solutions to the issues they face to the best of their ability. The intervention failed to recognise the importance of the existing achievements of Indigenous people and of their ongoing involvement in any future measures⁵.

For further comments against each measure, see question 3.

3. How is each NTER measure performing and how should each be taken forward?

Welfare Reform

Income management should be triggered by either the request of the individual or some evidence that a welfare recipient is not adequately using those funds to meet priority needs of their dependants. It should not be based on arbitrary determinants such as race and geography.

Administrative decisions about Income management should be reviewable as are other Centrelink payments.

Welfare reform measures need to take into account other financial burdens experienced by Indigenous people, particularly those living in remote communities such as:

The cost and availability of transport to services to meet essential needs such as such as medical, educational and legal
The cost of basic living expenses such as food and clothing
The equitable access to basic rights, such as child support payments and family tax benefit

Police

The additional police presence through the intervention has introduced major changes to the regulation of some communities and law enforcement.

One issue which has been raised in Central Australia by community members is the additional policing in the region and the extra pressure this has placed on the transport issue and therefore access to services. Additional policing has commenced without a transition period in which people can be informed of the new policing activities and assisted to meet requirements which were previously not enforced by police.

For example, residents in the Central Australian region complained that they are having their vehicles defected for minor issues such as broken indicator lights and also being fined for offences that were previously not heavily policed or enforced such as lack of child booster seats. Little regard seems to be given to the lack of available and affordable booster seats in communities.

Concern was expressed that people are now travelling along ‘back roads’ in substandard vehicles to avoid further fines/defects as they simply must travel for essentials such as food and fuel. This then places those people travelling in extreme danger because if the vehicles break down they will be at an unknown location so it will be far more difficult to locate them and assist them. In remote locations, this places them at extreme risk.

We have raised this issue with Police and the Road Safety Council and have offered to work with these agencies to resolve this.

Night Patrols

Night Patrol Services (‘NPS’) were developed as a community driven initiative and have the potential to empower community members to resolve disputes. This builds self esteem and capacity, leading to other positive outcomes among the community.

We support the increased funding to night patrols and the documented expectation that Night Patrols ‘undertake community consultation to ensure NPS meet the needs and priorities of individual communities’⁶. This process takes time and there is concern that the placement of NPS within the emerging Shire structures has hindered this process. We have heard complaints both from Shires and community members in different regions of the NT that there has been undue pressure to rush this process and this may have compromised the community planning aspect of the program. This is a vital aspect of the NPS and should not be neglected.

It is crucial that the management strategies of the NPS are flexible enough to retain the ability of the patrol to support the wide and varied range of activities and responses appropriate to particular communities. The NPS must retain a level of community ownership and control if they are to be effective in diffusing potentially violent situations and resolving disputes in communities.

The Commission considers that the legal services could play an important role in supporting NPS by providing culturally appropriate training and education for patrol staff about relevant legal issues.

Legal Services

Several legal services in the NT, including the Commission, received additional funding in late 2007 to meet the anticipated increase in legal matters, in particular criminal matters, arising from the intervention. As explained above, the legal needs we have identified through the additional services were different to those anticipated. For example, some of the key legal issues people have sought assistance with are civil issues which existed before or are collateral to the intervention:

Tenants’ rights, including overcrowding, high rental costs through poll renting and poor housing maintenance and infrastructure;
Policing, including lack of information in relation to changes to alcohol laws (including NT laws)
Work Health;
Crimes compensation;
Domestic violence and domestic violence orders; and
Consumer issues and debt, including predatory loaning and sales practices, inability to pay fines and defective product sales.

Each of the legal services in the NT plays a vital role in the access to services and justice which people may or may not enjoy. The additional resources provided through the intervention have led to greater collaboration and cooperation among these services. While this has been positive, far greater consideration needs to be given to addressing the unmet legal needs of people living in regional areas and remote communities in the Northern Territory.

Alcohol

There is no question that the level of alcohol consumption in the NT has been a major social concern since non-indigenous occupation of the NT. This concern has and does extend to non-indigenous alcohol consumption levels⁷.

Alcohol restrictions applied in an arbitrary and discriminatory manner in small geographic regions (some of which were previously ‘dry’) have not had a significant impact. There was widespread confusion when these measures were introduced about what the new laws meant, including where the boundaries of the restricted areas were. There was scant information provided to residents of prescribed communities. Legal services made numerous efforts to raise this issue with authorities, including police and the operations centre.

The blanket alcohol restrictions imposed on prescribed areas fail to acknowledge or consider the existing community driven measures to restrict alcohol that were already in place in many communities and town camps. The Commission has been advised of several instances where communities report an increase in alcohol consumption and alcohol related problems since the intervention. Many communities have expressed frustration that the existing measures were completely disregarded in the intervention process.

Policing of these restrictions has also been arbitrary. Many communities which are prescribed have continued to call for improved policing since the restrictions were put in place. Other communities complain of over policing, such as semi-permanent road blocks in Central Australia.

Alcohol restrictions introduced by the NT were implemented at the same time as the intervention measures and have had better outcomes. The consultation leading up to the restrictions was public and inclusive. The information provided to the public when the restrictions were implemented was clear and easily able to be understood (eg use of maps and graphics). As a result, in towns like Katherine there is a visible reduction in public drunkenness, although concerns that the measures are pushing drunks to more isolated and vulnerable locations remain.

There is a need for greater restrictions on the supply of alcohol across the NT, including the non-indigenous population for whom alcohol consumption also causes serious social problems.

Pornography

There is easy access to pornographic materials in the NT. There is even a sex shop next door to the NT Operations Centre! Again, an arbitrary restriction on pornography is meaningless when you can walk right next to a prescribed area and purchase it, as is the case with the Kulaluk community.

There is a need for greater restrictions on the supply of and access to pornographic materials across the NT, including the non-indigenous population.

4. What progress has there been in improving the safety and well–being of Indigenous children?

The Commission has not recorded any increase in Child In Need of Care applications since the commencement of the intervention. The Commission has received mixed reports from community members about the well-being of children since the intervention.

We were advised that in one community less children are attending school now than prior to the intervention. The closure of CDEP was considered to be a cause of this. Without CDEP community members were not required to get up in the morning, and were spending more time up at night. The result was that children were also up later at night and were not getting up for school in the morning. This community reported that prior to the intervention approximately 30 children were regularly attending school, and that this is now down to approximately 5.

5. Will the suite of measures deliver the intended results?

The Commission believes that long term, sustainable improvement in the lives of people living in Indigenous communities can only be affected by working in partnership with people living in those communities.

The Commission has encountered widespread disappointment, frustration and anger from community members who feel that the intervention process has been yet another attempt by government to disempower Indigenous people and control their lives. One community leader described the intervention as making his people feel like “cattle” while the government people are the “stockmen riding the horses”.

The arbitrary and discriminatory nature of the measures has undermined any good that may result from their implementation.

6. Have there been any unintended consequences?

The Commission has heard of many unintended consequences resulting from the intervention. In some cases, the intervention measures have exacerbated or compounded existing stresses on the lives of people living in communities. In other cases the intervention measures have led to new confusion, hardship and difficulty for people living in prescribed communities.

Unintended consequences of the intervention include the following:

Increased financial stress for people unable to service pre-existing loans and fines due to income management. Some clients reported that they were simply unable to continue to service existing loans and were at risk of incurring further fees and penalties for defaulting on payments.
The Commission has received conflicting reports from within Centrelink about whether or not the quarantined funds can be used to service existing loans. Certainly, in many communities there appears to have been little consideration of existing loans when initial income management interviews were held. Despite assurances from Centrelink staff that financial counselling and assistance would be provided to communities with the roll out of income management, legal services staff have seen little evidence of this to date.
Increased difficulty in accessing food and other basic supplies due to lack of flexibility and reduced transport and portability options. The restrictive nature of income management and the store card system has meant that some communities have reduced access to good quality fresh produce.
In the Barkley region there are serious issues with the quality of food available to communities. Bush orders from regional centres several hundred kilometres away arrive in the community in inedible condition due to improper storage and lack of refrigerated transport. This food is purchased from a written list which means that people with limited literacy have difficulty in understanding what they are purchasing. In such circumstances problems with substitution of food items and orders arriving with missing items occur.
Increased difficulty in accessing essential services due to transport costs and income management requirements. Access to affordable, safe transport is a major issue in many remote communities and some town camps. In some places people are required to pay $270 each way to get a taxi to their nearest supermarket and Centrelink office. Income management and the increased reporting requirements associated with the welfare reform have exacerbated these transport issues in many communities.
Increased risk of prosecution for minor traffic infringements (and associated increase in financial stress) due to increased police presence in some places. The lack of accessible public transport and the expense and inaccessibility of other forms of transport such as taxis has meant that people are, at times risking driving “back roads” in unroadworthy cars to reach supermarkets and other essential services. As pointed out elsewhere in this submission this practice constitutes a real threat to life.
Loss of rubbish collection, garden maintenance and other services for communities with the closure of CDEP and inadequacy of the replacement “work for the dole” system have led to a return of passive welfare. Many communities have reported that since CDEP has closed there is no incentive for people previously working under that scheme to continue participating in community activities.
Decreased school attendance and participation in some communities. As previously stated, many communities have reported no increase in school attendance, and some have reported a decrease in attendance since the implementation of the intervention measures.

7. Will NTER lay the basis for a sustainable and better future for residents of remote communities and town camps in the NT?

The Commission supports increased funding to programs designed to improve housing, infrastructure and the health and safety of people living in remote communities. The NTER has brought attention to the issues facing remote communities and provides a genuine opportunity to make real improvements in the lives of people living in those communities. That opportunity is at real risk of being squandered if the current Australian and Northern Territory Governments continue to generate policy impacting on the lives of people living in remote communities without proper community consultation.

8. What alternative measures should be considered?

The Commission recommends that the following measures be considered :

Reinstate the Racial Discrimination Act and the Anti-Discrimination Act (NT). The suspension of this legislation is a clear acknowledgment of the discriminatory nature of the intervention.
Remove income management as a blanket policy that affects all welfare recipients living in a prescribed area. Income management should only be implemented upon individuals who request it or where there is clear evidence that an individual welfare recipient is failing to provide adequately for their dependants.
Genuinely consult with community members and commit to finding long term solutions to issues facing each community in partnership with members of each community.

9. Are there other ways of working that would better address the circumstances facing remote communities and town camps?

The Commission cannot reiterate strongly enough the need for proper, considered and genuine consultation and partnerships with people living in remote communities and town camps. There needs to be recognition given to the fact that different communities face different issues and that a “one size fits all” solution is ineffective and disempowering. The solutions need to be generated by and with the support of community members. Existing decision making processes should, where appropriate, be respected and utilised.

Conclusion

We repeat our concerns⁸ that important recommendations of the Little Children are Sacred Report are being lost in the NT emergency response. These concerns continue to grow as the response continues.

We consider the current review to be an excellent opportunity for the Australian Government to address many of the concerns that community members and service providers have raised in relation to the practical implications of the NTER measures. We have and will continue to raise these concerns through formal channels.

Addressing Indigenous disadvantage in a way that will provide long term, sustainable change requires a dramatic and significant change to funding and to the way that government and non-government agencies operate. Genuine consultation with communities and consideration of community driven initiatives are crucial steps that need to be taken by all levels of Government if the issues that exist in Indigenous communities are to be effectively tackled.

We appreciate the opportunity to participate in this process and look forward to the results of the review.

Yours sincerely

Suzan Cox QC
Director

2. Ibid, p 22

3. See, for example recommendations 13 and 19 of the Little Children Report

4. See Appendix A for more information

5. See, for example, the Combined Aboriginal Organisations of the NT A proposed Emergency Response and Development Plan to protect Aboriginal children in the Northern Territory – A preliminary response to the Australian Government’s proposals, CAO Darwin 2007, p 3 , online at http://www.snaicc.asn.au/news/documents//CAOreportjuly8.pdf

6. 2008-2009 Night Patrol Services Operational Framework. P 15

7. W. Wilson, ‘A Disorderly Frontier: An Analysis of Dunkenness, Disorder and Drug Offences in the Northern Territory, 1870-1926’ , http://www.aic.gov.au/conferences/hcpp/wilson.pdf

8. http://www.aph.gov.au/Senate/committee/legcon_ctte/nt_emergency/submissions/sub109.pdf http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/committee/clac_ctte/NT_emerg_response_08/submissions/sub03.pdf

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