Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation (ANTaR)
Introduction
Australians for Native Title Reconciliation (ANTaR) welcomes the Review of the Northern Territory Emergency Response.
ANTaR supports the composition of the Review Board and Expert Advisory Group as well as the terms of reference for the review.
We believe the Review will be invaluable in assessing progress of the NT Intervention and recommending changes needed to ensure its success. ANTaR hopes that the Review will also provide evidence of what works that may be applicable to other areas of Australia.
ANTaR’s response to the Northern Territory Emergency Intervention is as follows:
The Northern Territory Emergency Intervention should be maintained but amended
ANTaR considers that Australian Governments have a responsibility to intervene to protect children in danger from violence and abuse. This is particularly the case in relation to Aboriginal children, who have been found by numerous reports to have a greater risk of being abused than non-Aboriginal children. We welcome the significant additional resources ($587 million) that have been directed towards Northern Territory Aboriginal communities as a result of the Intervention.
However, ANTaR is also concerned that unless changes are made to the Federal Government's approach, its attempt to stop child abuse in Northern Territory Aboriginal communities will fail.
Racism will not protect Aboriginal children
ANTaR disagrees with the former Federal Government that breaching the Racial Discrimination Act is necessary to protect children. In particular, we are concerned that this has led to mistrust, division and increased intolerance towards Aboriginal people that are barriers to protecting Aboriginal children from abuse.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, Tom Calma has conducted a preliminary analysis of the NT Intervention in his 2007 Social Justice Report. While Commissioner Calma supports the intention of the Intervention, he is concerned that the methods adopted by the former Government have led to mistrust, division and increased intolerance towards Aboriginal people that are barriers to protecting Aboriginal children from abuse.
ANTaR believes that the NT Intervention needs to be maintained. However, we share Commissioner Calma’s concerns that in order for its intentions to be realised, the Intervention must be modified so that it is consistent with the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 and Australia’s international human rights obligations.
As Commissioner Calma points out:
Human rights obligations are not merely technical matters that sit distant from the day to day realities of life for Indigenous children and their families. The ability of children, their families and their communities to enjoy their human rights has a profound impact on the environment in which they live, grow and develop.
It fundamentally impacts on their hopes and aspirations, in empowering or disempowering them, and in supporting or restricting different life paths and ultimately the choices that people make about their futures.1
The Australia’s children: safe and well discussion paper recently released by the Minister for Indigenous Affairs identifies the need to “work with Indigenous communities to assist them to break through the sense of powerlessness and hopelessness in the face of widespread abuse.” It will be difficult to achieve this government priority while the NT Intervention continues to breach the Racial Discrimination Act and basic standards of human rights.
Accordingly, ANTaR asks that the Australian Government adopt the 10 Point Plan to modify the NT Intervention proposed by Commissioner Calma as part of its national framework for protecting Australia’s children.2
Tackling the sources and causes of alcohol abuse
The Little Children are Sacred report pointed to the links between alcohol misuse and child abuse. Drying up the “rivers of grog” described by the Little Children are Sacred Report will be essential to overcoming the abuse of Northern Territory Aboriginal children. However, ANTaR does not consider that banning alcohol in affected communities for 6 months will achieve this.
Nearly all Territory Aboriginal communities have been 'dry' for some years. However, this has not prevented the availability of alcohol from towns surrounding the communities or the illicit trade in 'grog running.' Unless these sources are also tackled, a ban is unlikely to be effective.
Any ban would also need to be accompanied by rehabilitation services for people coming off alcohol and other substances. Professor Ian Anderson suggests that enforcing alcohol restrictions without the introduction of broader strategies to deal with addictions can merely lead to problem drinkers moving into unregulated areas: “As a result, a single measure such as enforced alcohol restriction may, in fact, result in increased harm from violence and abuse in these communities.”3
ANTaR considers that additional measures proposed by Greens Senator Rachel Siewert would improve the chances of reducing alcohol abuse in the Northern Territory. These include supply reduction through increased prices of cheap takeaway alcohol, reduced takeaway trading hours and reducing the number of outlets where takeaway alcohol is available.
As Senator Siewert points out:
The one thing that has been shown to have a direct and significant impact is reducing the supply of alcohol. Supply reduction strategies have an immediate impact on heavy drinkers and provide a circuit-breaker that offers a breathing space while other strategies, like education and employment programs, can begin to work.4
ANTaR considers that alcohol reduction measures such as those proposed by Dr Anderson and Senator Siewert should be part of any framework for protecting Aboriginal children from neglect and abuse.
The welfare reforms in the Northern Territory and proposed for other areas are untested
A central element of the Northern Territory Intervention has been the quarantining of welfare payments from all Aboriginal people from the communities who are long term social security recipients.
Although former Indigenous Affairs Minister, Mal Brough said this was inspired by Queensland’s Cape York Welfare Reform Project, the two approaches differ markedly. While the Northern Territory program is a blanket one, the Cape York program only targets those communities that have agreed to participate and those parents who have neglected children. The Cape York program depends on the involvement of respected Aboriginal community representatives to determine whether welfare payments should be quarantined. This Aboriginal leadership is missing from the NT approach.
The Cape York Project is also in its infancy and a trial in four communities has only recently commenced. No evidence is yet available to determine its level of success or whether its introduction will lead to unintended consequences. ANTaR does not believe changes to welfare payments should be extended to other areas before a proper evaluation of the Cape York Project has taken place.
If welfare quarantining is to be maintained, ANTaR considers this should be targeted on the basis of behaviour rather than race. The current arrangements in the NT provide no incentive for people to behave in a financially responsible manner. Every Aboriginal welfare recipient has their welfare quarantined irrespective of how they manage their finances or bring up their children.
The Emergency Response does not appear to draw on expert evidence of what is needed to overcome child abuse.
Professor Judy Atkinson of Southern Cross University is the author of Trauma Trails, Recreating Song Lines: The Transgenerational Effects of Trauma in Indigenous Australia (Spinifex 2002). Widely regarded as Australia’s leading expert on child abuse in Indigenous communities, Professor Atkinson favours a “child centred approach” to overcoming abuse in the Northern Territory, a situation she regards as both a “national emergency and a national shame.”
Professor Atkinson’s work was cited in the House of Representatives second reading debate following the introduction of the Northern Territory legislation by National Party Member for Page, the Hon Ian Causley:
Professor Judy Atkinson goes into communities and gets the confidence of the community. She picks out people she believes to be leaders in the community and works with those leaders in the community to change the results. She tries to get through to them that things have to change within the community—that they cannot have these assaults and rapes and that there must be an education. She works with the people in the community to get that result, and she has runs on the board as far as those results are concerned. At present she runs a course at the university and is getting graduates from the university. Those graduates will go out and work in the community. It is a process that has to be helped, because obviously there are not enough graduates at present.
At the core of this is the fact that you must start there: in the communities, at the grassroots. You cannot impose these things on the community; you have to get them to understand the right thing to do within the community and get the community to accept that.5
Mr Causley was right to praise the life saving work of Professor Atkinson. However, her methods – gaining the confidence of the community and working with its leaders – are sharply at odds with the emergency response introduced by his government. There is no evidence to suggest the former Government sought the advice of experts like Professor Atkinson in developing its approach.
Professor Atkinson has written about how she would tackle the crisis of child abuse in Northern Territory Aboriginal communities. ANTaR commends her article to the Review.6
Neither did the former Government draw on the expertise of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, Tom Calma, who, together with his predecessors has published extensively on ending violence in Indigenous communities.7
The former Federal Government did not seek the advice of the Secretariat for National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care (SNAICC). SNAICC considered that elements of the Federal Government response “lack expert guidance in the area of child protection, are too short term in focus, and fail to provide a way for stakeholders to contribute their expertise so the measures can have a lasting effect on the safety and welfare of children.”8
In July 2006, the Federal Government announced the formation of an Australian Crime Commission National Indigenous Violence and Child Abuse Intelligence Task Force (NIITF).
Among the objectives of the NIITF are:
- enhancing national understanding about the nature and extent of violence and child abuse in Indigenous communities; and
- conducting research on intelligence and information coordination and identification of good practice in the prevention, detection and responses to violence and child abuse in Indigenous communities.
The NIITF seeks to “inform future law enforcement, and wider government, decisions on addressing violence and child abuse in Indigenous communities.”
The NIITF considers that the “fundamental drivers of Indigenous violence and child abuse are social and economic.” It describes its approach as “‘non punitive’ and respectful of Indigenous people and cultures. National and regional level consultative arrangements will be established, where possible utilising existing structures. In these processes, particular efforts will be made to engage with and involve Indigenous elders, leaders and women’s groups.”9
It appears that the former Government did not seek the involvement of the NIITF in the development and implementation of the Federal Government’s emergency response and the legislation underpinning it.
ANTaR therefore welcomes the emphasis of the Review on what works to ensure the safety and well being of Aboriginal children.
About ANTaR
ANTaR is an Australia-wide, community-based organisation committed to the rights of Australian Indigenous people. It comprises member organisations in the States and Territories. Our mission is to generate in Australia both a moral and legal recognition of, and respect for, the distinctive status of Indigenous Australians as First Peoples and for the protection of the rights of Indigenous Australians, including their relationships to land, the right to self-determination, and the maintenance and growth of their unique cultures.
More than 300,000 people have signed ANTaR’s Sea of Hands in support of native title and reconciliation.
ANTaR has worked extensively to support Aboriginal people who are overcoming violence and child abuse. This has included:
- Assisting Redfern Aboriginal leaders, Dixie Gordon and Rob Welsh to establish and promote the award winning Blackout Violence program;
- Organizing a forum in Parliament House, Canberra bringing Aboriginal leaders who have successfully tackled abuse and violence together with politicians and public servants to discuss strategies to overcome these problems;
- Campaigning to urge the NSW Government to properly fund its response to the abuse of Aboriginal children in that state; and
- Publishing a Success Stories in Indigenous Health booklet that profiles a number of successful programs that are tackling child abuse and its effects.
Gary Highland
National Director
Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation
PO Box 1176
ROZELLE NSW 2039
1. Tom Calma, Social Justice Report 2007, Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, 2008, p.291.
2. Calma, Social Justice Report 2007, p.294.
3. (http://www.apo.org.au/webboard/comment_results.chtml?filename_num=161613)
4. Senator Rachel Siewert, speech, Alcohol Restrictions in NT, http://www.rachelsiewert.org.au/500_parliament_sub.php?deptItemID=127
5. (http://parlinfoweb.aph.gov.au/piweb/view_document.aspx?ID=2733517&TABLE=HANSARDR)
6. http://www.antar.org.au/content/view/490/1/
7. See for example: http://www.humanrights.gov.au/social_justice/familyviolence/family_violence2006.html
8. http://www.snaicc.asn.au/news/SNAICCViewNTMeasures.html