The Beginning...

On 21 June 2007, Prime Minister John Howard and his Indigenous affairs minister Mal Brough fronted a packed media conference to announce the largest, and most catastrophic, shake-up in Indigenous affairs in decades. The Northern Territory Emergency Response, later popularly known as the NT intervention, was supposedly launched in response to the Little Children Are Sacred report ( http://www.inquirysaac.nt.gov.au/pdf/bipacsa_final_report.pdf). The report was commissioned by the NT government after ABCs Lateline program aired horrific and graphic details of child sexual abuse made by NT Crown Prosecutor Nanette Rogers.

The program had shocked the nation, and spurred on a climate which encouraged the demonization of Aboriginal men and communities as a whole. On this day, Howard labeled the situation a "national emergency" and announced he was sending the military in to communities to oversee several planks of reforms, among them the seizure of Aboriginal land for five years, the placing of Aboriginal people under a compulsory income management system where half of their welfare payments were quarantined (regardless of their past behavior),   introducing blanket alcohol and pornography bans over communities (despite many communities being dry, or having no porn problem) and giving government the ability to seize Aboriginal controlled assets.

In order to pass many of these measures, the federal government had to suspend the Racial Discrimination Act, which has only been passed three times in history - and in all cases in order for Parliament to legally racially discriminate against Aboriginal people.  

There was no consultation with Aboriginal people in passing or drafting these intervention laws, despite it affecting the majority of Aboriginal families in the Territory. And after an outcry, Aboriginal leaders were given only one day to make their plea at Parliament house.  Many of them believed the intervention was simply an election ploy, intended to wedge an increasingly an increasingly popular Kevin Rudd.  Indeed, despite it being the supposed catalyst, the word "child" was never mentioned once in the raft of intervention laws. (http://www.nit.com.au/News/story.aspx?id=11797)

It was later revealed that on the same day he called the NT intervention, Mr Howard had been handed an internal Liberal memo that recommended he intervene in state Labor governments in order to make them seem incompetent. He later tried to do this in Queensland, over local government reform, Victoria, over the Murray Darling Basin, and Tasmania - into a fledging hospital.

From the very outset, the intervention demonized communities and Aboriginal people were given little consultation in the running of their affairs.

Here are just a few antidotes from prominent Aboriginal leaders:

"People are living in third world conditions here and yet the government made the delivery of basic services and rights conditional on the rolling back of land rights. No other group in Australian society would be treated in this way." - Barbara Shaw

"Aboriginal people whose communities were subject to the intervention were not consulted; their expertise, trust and partnership were unimportant to the federal government. And it was not lost on many that the rhetoric being used from Canberra was the same that earlier governments had used to justify the removal of Aboriginal children from their families. " - Larissa Behrendt (http://www.nit.com.au/Opinion/story.aspx?id=19731)

"From the outset what we have seen as a result of this intervention is not protecting children and making communities safe and creating a better future for Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory but simply discrimination and taking away Aboriginal peoples' rights to make day to day decisions on their lives." - Norman George (http://www.nit.com.au/News/story.aspx?id=18915)

And the NT intervention has proved time and time again that it is abject failure, and is even harming Aboriginal people instead of helping them. For example, earlier this year, the Australian Indigenous Doctors Association claimed that the intervention was causing psychological damaged and that the intended health outcomes would be unlikely to be achieved.  Last year, the Sunrise Health Service reported that there had been a rise in anaemia rates among children after the intervention - a result of the income management scheme which was impacting on healthy eating. (http://www.nit.com.au/News/story.aspx?id=17479) There have also been several Centrelink glitches that have meant Aboriginal people have gone hungry because they are unable to access their BasicsCard.

The most expensive plank of the intervention - the Strategic Indigenous Housing and Infrastructure Program has been beset by failure, and while the government says it is now on track to reach its housing goals - the cost blow-out is enormous and excessive.  There is no evidence to show that the alcohol and pornography bans are actually achieving anything, and to top it all off - there have been no real results to show child sexual abuse is decreasing, ironically the very reason Howard and Brough launched the intervention in the first place.

Australia has also been whipped several times by the United Nations and other international bodies over the intervention - the latest of which was by UN Special Rapporteur for Indigenous rights James Anaya - who claimed it was racist and that it "overtly discriminated" against Aboriginal people. (http://www.nit.com.au/News/story.aspx?id=19472)

Despite claiming it would act on "evidence-based policy" federal Labor has continued many of the discriminatory aspects of the intervention - including the compulsory income management. In order to comply with the Racial Discrimination Act, the Gillard government is extending the scheme nation-wide and classing several other racist measures as "special measures".

Its community consultations last year, which were held in order to introduce the Racial Discrimination Act, were found to be a sham - after it was revealed Indigenous affairs Minister Jenny Macklin had agreed against formally consulting with Aboriginal communities in order to bolster the government's legal case in the event action was taken against them. It continues to throw money at a racist intervention that is not even achieving its own goals, while Aboriginal people in the NT continue living in third world conditions.