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Friday 22 June 2007, Media Release

MEDIA STATEMENT FROM NSWALC

The New South Wales Aboriginal Land Council welcomes Prime Minister John
Howard’s sudden realisation that child sexual abuse is a national emergency after 11
years in power, and a decade of so-called practical reconciliation.

However, Council has profound concerns about his draconian policy responses and
wonders why he has for so long ignored a stream of reports from within his own
government about the crisis of violence and physical abuse in Aboriginal communities
throughout its 11 years in office.

Perhaps it is because he has visited so few Aboriginal communities in his term as Prime
Minister.

Let us not forget the “national summit” on violence in Indigenous communities he held
in July 2003 and his pledge to take action because, in his words, communities were
being destroyed. The summit came and went; the violence and abuse continued.

We are now told by the Prime Minister it is a national emergency.
Aboriginal people have been telling this to Mr Howard and State and Territory
Governments for decades. They have pledged to work with all Governments on this
issue as a priority.

They have been ignored.

The New South Wales Aboriginal Land Council welcomes any action by any
government to remove the scourge of family violence and child abuse in our
communities.

However, every official report which has been released in the past three decades
identifying this as a crisis and calling for urgent action has recommended that the
sustainable solutions required to successfully tackle these problems will only come with
the proper resourcing of community controlled violence programs.
These cannot be prescribed from Canberra.

This is a central message of the Little Children Are Sacred report, as it has been in all
previous reports.

There appears to have been no consultation on Mr Howard’s extraordinary
intervention with the affected communities in the Northern Territory.

Programs must be developed to strengthen families and communities to empower
them to confront and deal with these problems while looking at long term
strategies and the commitment of resources to address the underlying causes of
child abuse, including the gross overcrowding and lack of houses, the horrific lack
of education and educational facilities and chronic unemployment.

That cannot be done in isolation from the very people who daily suffer the trauma of these problems.

The New South Wales Aboriginal Land Council has no specific statutory
obligation in relation to family violence but we do have an active involvement, on
behalf of the land rights network in NSW, to advise our people on relevant policy
responses from the Commonwealth and State Governments to these matters.

We have sought to actively engage Local Aboriginal Land Councils and their
communities, in responding to the NSW Government’s Breaking the Silence report
into child abuse in this state.

We will be discussing a range of concerns we have with the State Government’s
response with state authorities in the near future. We will also be discussing the
proposed response from the NSW Government to the proposed intervention in the
NT by the Howard Government.

We will ensure they understand the need to work with our communities to
produce sustainable solutions, which stamp out the scourge of violence and abuse
in our communities.

Bev Manton
Chairperson
NSWALC

Contact: Paul Molloy 0419 690 926