Comments on: NT intervention leak: a year on, it’s a shambles

By: Alan Hatfield

Alan Hatfield — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

Maybe I was overstating the case a little by saying “ALL of the recommendations”, But the substance and clear intent of the report was certainly ignored and I remember the report’s author’s at that time on national media lamenting the fact that this was happening.

By: Mirek

Mirek — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

The whole sorry and bizarre tale of the last 12 months reads and feels like a script of a B-grade movie, or an extended and elaborated Chaser-type stunt. The only problem is, that having wasted millions of taxpayer money, the Indigenous people are no better off, and in some cases, worse off. And, of course, the government neglect of the Aboriginal people went on remorselessly for decades, some maintain, for 200 years. So why this `National Emergency`, and the police/military `intervention`, which we now know, was concocted in 48 hours of frantic action? It could not have been a Howard election stunt alone, since Kevin07 almost immediately endorsed it, it also could`nt have been a heart-felt response to the `Little children are Precious` report, since the action was swiftly denounced by the report`s authors as bearing little or no relation to it`s recommendations. On news reports, the `intervention` is portrayed as being a response to, or that the report was a `catalyst` for the intervention. Moet people uncommitted to the two major parties, very quickly smelled a rat, especially the people targeted: the Aboriginies. They feel that all that Government activity is just a smoke screen for a land grab, so that the now-valuable minerals and ores can be got at by the big mining concerns. So this whole stunt, equally supported by Liberals and Labor alike, is not a stupid and pointless waste of public money, it is, in fact, an investment in Australia`s future, in other words, we can`t let the indigenous people stand in the way of progress, can we?

By: Clive Newton

Clive Newton — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

Like many i was appalled when the NT “invasion” was announced: hadn’t Howard put the boot into aboriginal people enough? What has disappointed me in the year since is the general journalistic acceptance of the Brough line that suspending the Racial Discrimination Act was a necessity. To the extent that a recent ABC news item on the Pearson plan for welfare quarantining in “communities” in North Qld rattled on and on without even explaining how such racially discriminatory action was going to happen- it was just taken for granted as a “good thing”. Do people really not care about the Racial Discrimination Act?Doesn’t it seem reasonable to suggest that no good can come from the Federal government actually suspending the act so it can institute racial discrimination? By all means quarantine welfare payments but let’s have no more of the Brough racism of applying this only to aborigines. Let’s apply it to whiteys as well, including the private school Austudy payments, small business family income support payments, veterans pensions etc etc.
Yours etc
Clive Newton