Intervention Rollback Action Group
This section of the Intervention Rollback Action Group (Alice Springs) submission to the NTER review board addresses the impact of the NTER on Aboriginal people in Tennant Creek.
For specific information regarding the contents of this submission contact: Paddy Gibson
All people quoted have given permission for their interviews to be distributed publicly.
The Intervention Rollback Working Group visited Tennant Creek July 29-31. We conducted extensive interviews with many people in the town about their experiences of the Northern Territory Emergency Response.
Overwhelmingly, people both from Tennant Creek and surrounding communities who use Tennant Creek as a service centre, are feeling frustrated and disempowered by the NTER. Restrictive reforms have led to an increase in poverty and made daily life harder to negotiate.
There has been a deterioration in living conditions and problems being faced within families and communities before the NTER have been compounded.
This submission will put forward select quotations from six of the interviews conducted, to demonstrate a number of negative effects that the NTER is having on the lives of Aboriginal people. None of the people interviewed discussed positive impacts of the NTER.
Quoted Interviews:
Dianne Stokes, interviewed at Mulga camp
Brian Dennison, interviewed outside Tennant Creek Centrelink.
Lenny Frank, interviewed in Peko Park.
Geoffrey Shannon, interviewed outside the Council of Elders and Respected
Persons.
Rodney Barnes, interviewed at the Arts Centre.
Margaret Limmerick, interviewed at her residence.
1. People from remote areas are being forced to stay in town
"People coming from outside, they don't really want to come into town. Maybe they don't like to bring their husbands, because they drink, or they don't really want their kids coming in to get involved in drinking and fighting and especially some women they got used to living out in the bush. And yet they come into town, that income management brought them into town to go and see Centrelink. That was their decision instead of going to Alice Springs they wanted to come here. And like shops, I don't know because they usually have shops in the community but I don't know if they're using them any more.
They just come into Tennant, that's when people stay here. We get a lot of people come here and they want to get back home. It's hard for them to get back out bush. Some of them live 2-500 kms out. I'm talking about Barkley region too you know in the North East.
There's no services to help them get back home. There's no transport for them to get back home. They have to wait until they see their family, and get some money to fill their fuel up to get back home.
More people living in town camps now, three families living in one house. Some of us we sleep outside. I come here as a visitor I stay outside, three old people sleep in this cage area here they got no where to stay because that income management brought them into town and they can't leave. I got car - everytime I say to take they come I say "I'll take you back" they say "I got to wait and sort this out first, for money side. I got to go and get paper to get food you know? Its very bad really. Overcrowding is getting worse”
What sort of problems does this create?
We have big brawls in the main street, two or three weeks ago that went on for ages again, biggest fight. The first fight I ever seen that was really big. They just run into the main street with sticks and just hurt one another. Just the people from outside - not the people from here.
Before they would have sorted that out in the community. But because the different family groups came out from different communities it started off two little kids here, then it went big. All the community mob had biggest brawl here. Every night we saw them walk with nulla-nulla, boomerang everything. Everyone here in this town got really scared. White people started talking, "what are Aboriginal people going to do about this?" I reckon "hey that's real quick, its that intervention that brought all the people in town. All the trouble in town".
I reckon intervention should stop. If it stops you will have people can be back in their home. Just come for day trip or the weekend and go"
Dianne Stokes
"We have problems with family coming from other remote communities. They bring their children in when they're hungry to get food in town, to have to spend some of our money to help them til the next day to do their shopping. That made it harder for our family members as well because they come in from bush and they hungry and they haven't got anything to eat that night when they get here. It is from that income management. I see it that way".
Brian Dennison
"There’s more people in town here because they can't spend the money in communities or in roadhouses. Because they got to come into the main shop here in Foodbarn. There's more trouble in town too. Last couple of weeks back, there was 4 weeks straight trouble, full trouble because too many tribes melding with each other, they don't get along with each other you know?"
Lenny Frank
"With that intervention, one bad thing about that is when people come into town. Especially after the show, the show in Tennant Creek. They were stranded in town for a while because there is no money. Their money being income managed was in their community store in the remote communitiy, and in town they can't access it. So people were stranded here without food, fuel. It makes it so hard. Not enough food, so they going to live off other families in town, make conditions worse for them, overcrowd their houses, eat their food with little food to go around. That's what makes the intervention bad".
Geoffrey Shannon
2. The income quarantine is making it hard to spend money on the diverse range of family needs
"When the intervention started off I thought it was really good. Now I end up just walking out (from Centrelink) without anything in my hand, no money, just paper to go shopping every time in the Foodbarn.
I still I got money back there, $3000 they holding. One time I ask them to give me some to go down to Alice Springs, they said, "you can't take it out", but I don't drink? They said I can only spend that money at Little Rippers (variety store) or Foodbarn. But I got my rent too, my power, my phone. I couldn't use it on any of these things".
Margaret Limerick
"I'm really disappointed with this Intervention because what they doing is, they are taking away our rights. They're controlling our money. We haven't got a chance to go and talk or get food where we get our food before. Even when we go to Alice Springs for a doctor's appointment or any other meeting. We usually go to United, but now we can't hardly go there, because this intervention stopped everything, we just do one big shopping at the food barn.
And this intervention makes it hard to travel because what about the fuel? From here to Alice Springs is 500kms and you need to fuel up at Ti Tree to get there. But now we have to fuel up here, with the spare jerry. We can't hardly get there right time for appointment.
Its really causing a lot of problems. We finding it harder to get our motor vehicle registered. I've got a disabled wife you know? I need to get that car from the garage, to go and visit and bring shopping, or to travel for appointments."
Brian Dennison
"People complain everyday. I work as a driver here for traditional old people. They complain about the welfare system, income management. They upset. They reckon they're getting ripped off. They're losing a lot of money. It limits them."
Rodney Barnes
3. The income quarantine is restricting people's ability to practice traditional culture
"A lot of us travel round in the outback. You can go where you like, from place to place, outstation to outstation, visit relies, one community to the next one. Now with IM you got no cash, its stopped dead. That's intimidation, you can't travel around for visit relies, culture business, for reasons like funerals or ceremonies, you can't, you can't even visit your home land you know."
Geoffrey Shannon
"People don't have any money to spend on fuel, or take their kids out hunting out bush. They got to spend it in the shop all the time, like with their papers, so they don't have money for fuel and all that. You got no money for fuel price to go out and do your ceremonies. A lot of people really pissed off with all these things."
Lenny Frank
4. The intervention is considered racist and a return to the inhumane policies of past eras
"I think this is segregation. Only Aboriginal people lining up when I take my family there, to that Uniting Church second hand shop where they go to get their papers to see how much they got in their account and go straight to the food barn. We see no white people go there, just black fellas".
"It's like the old ration days. I see a lot of old people, back in the cattle station where I was born in Camden downs. I see the old people they have to go and sign their paper and stamp their hand to get their ration. To say that that person is this person. Even the cheques used to get stamped on. Its taking us back in those days, in the 60s where I knew in my days, its the same today. I feel really sad for my daughter, she knows how to look after her money, she bought for the kids and that. She was looking after herself, everyone was looking after each other. That income management takes us right back to where we were before".
Dianne Stokes
"I began to understand. I was brought up that way too myself. I was looking at that this now, and I thought, my Grandchildren going back to those days in the past, backwards to where I started from. You know the ration days. Out on the Barkley, just go and get some flour and that's it."
Margaret Limmerick
"It is racist policy. It's managing and governing our lives and money. I see that as discrimination."
Brian Dennison
"They bringing back the same situation 40-50 years ago. Making us back to tea and sugar. People have got to step forward. We stepping backwards more like it. That's what I look at it. That's how everybody else look at it. We going back to the same situation we was before."
Lenny Frank
"They trying to mainstream everybody. Make black people live like whitefella. Under their system. What they call integration. It’s the old integration system back again, To take away cultural identity, language. When you do that they have more control over people, take their land away. There's a lot of minerals in the ground, gas, oil, manganese, government wants to take away, to get the riches out of the ground and build up the Aust economy, but they don't really care for Aboriginal people.
They just want to pull us down, hurt us, build themselves up. A lot of misery been caused by this and its not just for today, its for the next generation and the next after that that's going to feel this from these things happening now. We even getting a nuclear dump built in our district. Its terrible."
Geoffrey Shannon
"Back in the 60s government had laws on peoples movements. This is what they're doing again, it restricts your life."
"Its like rations. I went through that myself as a kid. I used to go to the store to collect the ration from the government or station, get the flour and sugar, stamp my finger."
Rodney Barnes
5. The sudden announcement and lack of consultation through the NTER has been disempowering
"We heard about it on the radio. People talking on the news. Then these government people came out here to run meetings about what they are going to be doing with the intervention. People were frightened, scared and alarmed. Intimidated that people were going to do this to them. They said - its going backwards, going back to the days of welfare, the ration days, putting black people down, not doing good thing for them."
Geoffrey Shannon
"I heard that they were getting military to come to the NT to go through all the kids, because too many things were happening with the kids, like rape. We weren't happy about that, because we were thinking that we have girls too, we didn't want anyone entering into the girls body, especially when we weren't there, even though if they do, that's still no consent for them to enter into our kids, just to check them out.
That made us really worried, with them talking about military people, that they might go there and shoot them, it was taking our mind back to the olden days when our old people were telling us a story about how they would take the kids away from them and no one used to talk, they just used to go and grab them and take them away as long as they had the power to do that."
Dianne Stokes