It took courage back in 2007 for then Prime Minister John Howard and Indigenous Minister Mal Brough to announce what was known as the intervention in Aboriginal communities across the Northern Territory. It was a rapid response to the Little Children are Sacred report, which revealed the terrifying reality of child abuse, health and social degradation within remote indigenous communities.
The intervention was necessarily swift, as large numbers of police and army personnel moved in to communities in crisis.
Alcohol restrictions were put in place, medical examinations were carried out on indigenous children and school attendance was enforced, while 50 per cent of individuals’ financial welfare payments were quarantined for food and life essentials. While controversial at the time, the intervention had dramatic results, improving the health and welfare of children and reduced alcohol abuse in many indigenous communities.
For all its success, the intervention has shifted some problems. Much of the violence, extreme alcohol abuse and social dysfunction that the intervention addressed has moved to some of the Northern Territory’s large towns, such as Alice Springs, Katherine and Tennant Creek.
The condition of many indigenous people in Alice Springs is going from bad to worse. Hundreds are sleeping rough in the Todd River, alcohol and drug abuse is rampant, violence and sexual abuse are endemic, and most of the town camps are examples of third world squalor. Parts of remote Australia have taken on some of the characteristics of a failed state.
In the larger towns they have largely unrestricted access to alcohol, no accommodation and few support services. Hundreds, if not thousands of Aboriginal adults are idle; with similar numbers of school age children almost completely uncontrolled and unsupervised. This wouldn’t be acceptable for a single day in an ordinary Australian city or town and should not be tolerated among Aboriginal people on “cultural” grounds.
What is happening in some of our nation’s most famous townships is a national failure. This is not the fault of any particular government or any particular level of government. As a nation we must do better.
What’s needed is a new intervention, one more guided than before by the best indigenous leadership, as well as by an appreciation that levels of dysfunction that would be disastrous in Australian society at large are scarcely less so for Aboriginal people. For this to succeed it must be bipartisan, created and supported by all sides of politics.
The government’s announcement last week of extra lighting, better family support services and more work-for-the-dole places in Alice Springs owes something to these concerns. It’s a step in the right direction but I doubt these measures alone will make much difference. I wish to urge the government to undertake far more substantial action and offer my help in overcoming any opposition that might be encountered to common sense measures.
I’ve proposed to the Prime Minister that we undertake a joint trip to Alice Springs to consult with community leaders and to work out the details of a new intervention.
It will also have to involve more responsibility on the part of Aboriginal communities, families and individuals and a clear cut acceptance of people’s obligation to go to work and to attend school.
The elements of a new intervention could include:
- A much larger police presence in Alice Springs.
- An influx of experienced teachers and a vigorous insistence on compulsory school attendance for all school aged children, with members of the night patrol employed to assist in getting children to school and fines for the parents of delinquents.
- An insistence on compulsory work programmes for people on unemployment benefits, with enforcement of no work, no pay rules.
- A new alcohol management plan because controlling demand will eventually be as important as controlling supply as well as frequent police patrols of town camps.
- Reconsideration of welfare quarantine rules to ensure that families on benefits are spending enough on the necessities of life.
- Conversion of the town camps to regular housing.
- Importantly, the appointment of a senior Commonwealth officer (who would be guided by a council of traditional owners) with whole-of-government responsibility for all indigenous programmes in Alice Springs and other towns, plus the authority to direct other government services, such as police, on indigenous matters.
- One of the problems with the intervention was its “top down” nature. It was announced without prior consultation with Aboriginal people many of whom applauded its goals and supported its measures but regretted its imposition without reference to them. A good way to avoid this would be for the Prime Minister and myself, to invite the leading indigenous people of Alice Springs, Katharine and Tennant Creek to a summit at which changes such as those I have put forward could be discussed and decided.
Better and more thorough policing, enforced controls on alcohol, mandatory participation in school and work, plus suitable welfare quarantine provisions can quite quickly make a difference. That, in any event, has been the lesson of the intervention and it’s surely time to apply that lesson to other dysfunctional places.
In my judgment, this would be a worthy task on which the two parties could cooperate and a suitable sign to the Australian community that there remain important civic values that span the party divide.
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