Crikey

I want to assure the Australian people that the Government will use its majority in the new Senate very carefully, very wisely, and not provocatively.

That was John Howard after his stunning 2004 election win, when his government also won control of the federal Senate.

And here’s Howard last week, waxing lyrical about Queensland Premier Peter Beattie’s plans to force through local government amalgamations:

It’s a total travesty of democracy to refuse to consult people about what you are going to do that is going to affect them. There’s always an enormous practical benefit in giving people an opportunity to express their views because it reaffirms their faith in democracy.

Later today, parliament is expected to pass three bills which will give the government the power it needs for its “emergency intervention” (after 11 years of rule) into the lives of Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory. It is indeed a sad day for Australia, but it’s by no means the first such atrocity wrought on black Australia by John Howard and Joe Public.

It is, believe it or not, the second time in a year that the Howard government has rammed through amendments to the Aboriginal Land Rights Act (Northern Territory) after no consultation with Aboriginal people, and a one-day Senate inquiry which reported its findings back to government before a week had passed.

The first time was in August 2006, when Minister for Indigenous Affairs Mal Brough conceded “the process of the Senate committee could have been done better.”

But a year down the track, more changes were apparently needed after Brough discovered that “someone needed to save the children”. Here’s what Brough and Howard have in store, after the legislation passes:

• Every Aboriginal person in NT communities will have 50% of their welfare payments quarantined by the government. It doesn’t matter if a person has spent their welfare sensibly in the past — by virtue of their Aboriginality and their location, they have been deemed unfit to handle their own money.
• All Aboriginal land in and around Aboriginal townships will be compulsorily acquired by the Howard government. Brough is wont to remind people that the land grab constitutes less than one percent of the total Aboriginal land mass. Yes, but it also happens to constitute ALL of the Aboriginal town centres. Sydney constitutes less than one percent of the Australian land mass  — imagine the outcry if Howard compulsorily acquired it!
• By the end of the week, John Howard will decide who comes onto Aboriginal country and the circumstances under which they come. That’s right, the land permit system which gave Aboriginal people to determine who entered their freehold land will be partly scrapped, making NT blackfellas the only landholders in the country who can’t prevent Demtel salespeople and journalists from entering their property. Brough has yet to explain how child abuse will be tackled through the abolition of a system that regulated the movement of whitefellas, but then he’s hardly been grilled by the media about it — they don’t like the permit system either. Brough is clinging to the claim that the thing dirt poor Aboriginal communities need above all else is more journalists. God help us all.
• Every organisation which provides services to an Aboriginal community will be forced to allow ‘government observers’ to attend their private meetings. This is one of the more bizarre pieces of legislation, particularly when you consider it was Chairman Mal (Brough) who claimed that communism was killing Australian Aboriginal communities.

These legislative changes have been condemned by virtually every Aboriginal leader in the country, save for those on (or recently departed from) the government payroll.

It matters not a zot to Aboriginal people who actually wins government later this year. Neither Labor or Liberal can be trusted to do anything other than demonise Aboriginal people because it plays out well in mainstream, redneck Australia.

What matters is who wins control of the Senate. And on that front, blackfellas all over the nation had better pray that Howard gets decimated, that Rudd has a last minute stumble and that the Greens poll well and the Democrats — particularly Andrew Bartlett — make a comeback.