Evidently, the Australian government is keen to assure Aboriginal people living on outstations and homelands that they will receive access to power, water and sewerage and road maintenance, as well as garbage collection, writes Jon Altman, an anthropology research professor at ANU.
NT Intervention
Govt should do its own IM when looking for budget cuts
It is budget week, so how will the new Holy Cow surplus drive the political agenda?
If you’re happy and you know it, stay in school
Several criticisms of government policy in Australia towards its indigenous peoples have used opposition to paternalism to support their alternative proposals, writes Dr Nicholas Biddle, a Fellow at the Australian National University.
Stronger Futures juggernaut hits some potholes
A juggernaut is a force that is regarded as mercilessly destructive and unstoppable. For many this is an apt metaphor for the Stronger Futures in the Northern Territory bills, writes professor Jon Altman, of ANU’s Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research.
Cox: how to continue bad indigenous policy-making
The lack of media scrutiny will allow the federal government to continue and expand a series of paternalistic, ineffective programs that will reduce the well-being of many disadvantaged Australians.
A (big, blue) sign of the times for NT Intervention
On Tuesday night the Darwin City Council considered a letter from Dave Chalmers, state manager of the federal Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs’ NT state office, with the seemingly innocuous subject of “highway and community signs”.
Cox: Labor losing votes by neglecting social policy initiatives
How far should feminists be supporting Julia Gillard as PM because she is a woman and the first one in this job?
Lajamanu — police communications back to the Stone Age
Concerns about the Northern Territory Police’s call centre operations have been around for a while.
Cox: how about asking Tent Embassy why they’re so angry?
Why do so few of the media reporters actually ask the Aboriginal demonstrators why they are so angry with being told to change tactics?
Aboriginal crime and punishment: incarceration rates rise under neoliberalism
The number of indigenous prisoners has increased for the 11th year in a row, despite the prisoner population falling for the first time in a decade. Inga Ting reports a history of failed government policy.
The cunning of consultation: school attendance and welfare reform
Kids, even in remote indigenous Australia, do not live by school attendance alone, they also need food. And families with no income will inevitably become an economic burden for others in their community, writes Jon Altman.
Crabb: Liberals like a nanny state as long as they’re the nanny
Conservatives in Australia have their long johns in a knot over planned pokie regulations, arguing that Australia is turning into a nanny state. So why were they pro the Howard-led Intervention in the NT against indigenous Australians? asks Annabel Crabb.
The intervention is dead, long live the intervention
The most recent data on progress suggests that the intervention is failing, at least if its aim is to close gaps of socioeconomic disadvantage between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians in the NT, writes ANU professor Jon Altman.
NT govt gets real on remote service delivery … maybe
The most challenging part of Olga Havnen’s new job will be to renew the faith and trust in governments as service providers of choice among the NT’s Aboriginal communities.
The media release the minister should’ve written on the NT Intervention
Here is a draft alternative media release for Jenny Macklin — what she should have said as a response to the current consultation rather than harping on about truancy and grog.
Crikey Says: Crikey says: must have a short memory
An interesting example of how short the public’s memory is from Essential Media today:
Intervention sign wars in the Tanami Desert
Bob Gosford writes on the amusing political war going on in Yuendumu, where locals deface (perhaps improve?) the signs spruiking the government’s NT Intervention and erect their own signs.
Crikey Says: Crikey says: helps to have a long memory
Put it down to another case of the Perpetual Present to which some members of the Press Gallery are so prone…
Cox: new intervention proposals … same old, same old
A new consultation process on more intervention proposals does not please the many critics of the current version’s costly failures.
Questions Gillard should ask in Alice Springs, but probably won’t
It is four years this month since the Mal Brough emergency intervention in the NT and today the PM goes to Alice Springs to see the “progress” supposedly being made.
Pat Anderson: intervention neither well-intentioned nor well-evidenced
Pat Anderson co-authored the Little Children are Sacred report for the NT government. The subsequent NT intervention ignored everything the report recommended, says Anderson.
NT Intervention: the divide between opinion and evidence
The over-publicised tweet by Larissa Behrendt needs to be seen as part of a wider issue.
NT intervention … why it just didn’t work
The intervention has failed because of what was done and the way it was done, and it did not consult or engage with local people or, in many cases, address their problems.
Whatever happened to evidence-based policy making?
The federal government is adding another serious question to its social and financial policy competence by informing the public that it is proceeding with the promised evaluation of the New Income Management Program.
NT government and police — losing the plot on traffic crime in the bush?
I was interested to see if there has been an increase in the number of traffic matters before the court, particularly since the massive increase in police numbers in remote communities following the NT Intervention in late 2007.
