Comments on: Intervention tension festers in the Territory

By: Catullus

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

Graham Ring should resist his inclination to make snide comments that betray his personal political agenda. From well before the Rudd's election Ring displayed bitterly negative & cynical attitudes towards Rudd's approach to government.

Far from "generating further problems for the embattled minister Macklin", the debate following the Yu report's release provides clear evidence that Macklin is calmly calling the shots & handling very difficult issues with consummate ease.

The amateurish & ill-concealed attempt by Yu's Review Board to ambush the NT Emergency Response project (& with it, the Rudd Government) in a welter of antagonistic & emotional rhetoric, & poorly researched assertion, has played into Macklin's hands.

Macklin is continuing to display her skills as an accomplished politician, able to keep a rein on the agenda & keep the focus on the real issues - issues which are much more centred on the concrete aspects of rights to safety, security, wellbeing, education, jobs, health, housing and decent living standards for children than on a shallow approach to equal rights, & legal technicalities.

The inadequate response by many remote community men to the challenges presented by modernity in general - contemporary economic realities, child welfare requirements & equal rights for women in particular - are clear.

These inadequacies demonstrably underly both the need for intervention & much of the pain associated with the NTER implementation. There is little inclination amongst the bulk of these men to adjust their behaviour accordingly.

Ring would do better to concern himslef with lifting his appreciation of these factors and attempting to understand the analysis that such appreciation brings to the political surface. At present Ring, like Yu, seems to prefer staying stuck in a sentimental time warp, his vision obscured by adherence to dogmas which have been proven to be dead ends in terms of Aboriginal survival, liberation & development.

By: JamesK

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

Excellent comment by Catullus. Bravo!

By: Claudia Rowe

Claudia Rowe — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

Watching First Australians last night on SBS, I was appalled by the story of Victoria’s Aborigines trying to adapt to life with the new colony. What was just as horrifying was the story’s parallels with today’s intervention in the Northern Territory. William Barak’s attempts to achieve peaceful self-determination were thwarted by the then Victorian Government. When Howard and Brough announced the emergency last year, they dismissed self-determination as a failure. Yet in my experience of living in remote communities, the things that fail are government policies, formulated from afar without consultation. The things that work are the community initiatives, developed with scant resources in partnerships with whitefellas who understand community priorities, culture and language. Visit these sites: http://www.mttheo.org and http://www.warlu.com to see examples. When William Barak walked from Coranderrk to Melbourne to talk to bureaucrats, he was ultimately ignored. Similarly, when a delegation of Central Australian elders made a journey to Canberra last year to make urgent representations to Mal Brough about the intervention, he ignored them and they returned home, defeated and ashamed that they had let their people down. It’s hard not to compare the early Victorian history with what’s happening today in the Northern Territory. It seems we haven’t learnt much.

By: Fluffy08

Fluffy08 — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

“What politician would accept the Ministry for Aboriginal Affairs given the history of good people that have seen it destroy their political careers, from the first to the last?”

What a silly comment Arty.

Les Johnson, Fred Chaney, Peter Baume, John Wilson, Clyde Holding, Gerry Hand, John Herron, Philip Ruddock, Amanda Vanstone - none of these had their political careers destroyed by being Indigenous Affairs Minister. In fact most of them went on to greater things.

By: arty

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

The poisoned chalice of Australian politicians !

What politician would accept the Ministry for Aboriginal Affairs given the history of good people that have seen it destroy their political careers, from the first to the last?

By: NT Roz

NT Roz — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

I can assure Mr Yu that there is not alot of “sophisticated understanding” of the NTER going on in remote Aboriginal communities. People are confused and misinformed, having to conform to new and changing sets of organisational rules and guidelines, and they can’t make head nor tail of what is going on. This is the same Mr Yu that had a stand up row with a liguist who was advocating for information being provided in people’s own languages, to improve people’s understandings of the measures being imposed on them and their lives. The linguist was later punished by being suspended from his employment with the NT government. The implementation of the NTER measures is also extremely suspect, with local bureaucracies building their own empires at the expense of the people in the remote communities. By the time the admin fees, set up costs, office equipment, vehicles and staff have been paid for there is not alot left over to do anything useful on the ground.