Central Australia: Mutitjulu community blasts Howard's Military Occupation
Indigenous Leaders of the Mutitjulu community today questioned the need for a military occupation of their small community. The Federal Government, Prime Minister and State Governments have ignored advice of the problem of child abuse in Indigenous communities over a number of years. Here is the statement from Indigenous Leaders of the Mutitjulu community followed by details from Ms Muriel Bamblett on the history of official neglect.
Related: 2NimFM Interview with Vincent Forrester, Mutijulu Elder (Audio)
Aboriginal "Children Overboard" | Howard's Collective punishment on Indigenous Australia
We welcome any real support for indigenous health and welfare and even two police will assist, but the Howard Government declared an emergency at our community over two years ago - when they appointed an administrator to our health clinic - and since then we have been without a doctor, we have less health workers, our council has been sacked all our youth and health programmes have been cut.
We have no CEO and limited social and health services. The government has known about our overcrowding problem for at least 10 years and they’ve done nothing about it.
How do they propose keeping alcohol out of our community when we are 20 minutes away from 5 star hotel? Will they ban blacks from Yulara? We have been begging for an alcohol counsellor and a rehabilitation worker so that we can help alcoholics and substance abusers but those pleas have been ignored. What will happen to alcoholics when this ban is introduced? How will the government keep the grog runners out of our community without a permit system?
We have tried to put forward projects to make our community economically sustainable - like a simple coffee cart at the sunrise locations - but the government refuses to even consider them.
There is money set aside from the Jimmy Little foundation for a kidney dialysis machine at Mutitjulu, but National Parks won’t let us have it. That would create jobs and improve indigenous health but they just keep stonewalling us. If there is an emergency, why won’t Mal Brough fast track our kidney dialysis machine?
Some commentators have made much of the cluster of sexually transmitted diseases identified at our health clinic. People need to understand that Mutitjulu Health Clinic (now effectively closed) is a regional clinic and patients come from as far away as WA and SA; so to identify a cluster here is meaningless without seeing the confidential patient data.
The fact that we hold this community together with no money, no help, no doctor and no government support is a miracle. Any community, black or white would struggle if they were denied the most basic resources. Police and the Military are fine for logistics and coordination but healthcare, youth services, education and basic housing are more
essential. Any programme must involve the people on the ground or it won’t work. For example who will interpret for the military?Our women and children are scared about being forcibly examined; surely there is a need to build trust. Even the doctors say they are reluctant to examine a young child without a parent’s permission. Of course any child that is vulnerable or at risk should be immediately protected but a wholesale intrusion into our women and children’s privacy is a violation of our human and sacred rights.
Where is the money for all the essential services? We need long term financial and political commitment to provide the infrastructure and planning for our community. There is an urgent need for 10’s of millions of dollars to do what needs to be done. Will Mr Brough give us a commitment beyond the police and military?
The Commonwealth needs to work with us to put health and social services, housing and education in place rather than treating Mutitjulu as a political football.
But we need to set the record straight:
- There is no evidence of any fraud or mismanagement at Mutitjulu – we have had an administration for 12 months that found nothing
- Mal Brough and his predecessor have been in control of our community for at least 12 months and we have gone backwards in services
- We have successfully eradicated petrol sniffing from our community in conjunction with government authorities and oil companies
- We have thrown suspected paedophiles out of our community using the permit system which our government now seeks take away from us.
- We will work constructively with any government, State, Territory or Federal that wants to help aboriginal people.
Source: Email from Pamela Curr
Campaign Coordinator
Asylum Seeker Resource Centre ASRC
Government and PM Ignored Advice on Abuse in Indigenous Communities
Ms Muriel Bamblett, chief executive of the Victorian Aboriginal Child Care Agency, accused the Prime Minister of years of neglect in providing indigenous social services including services to combat child abuse in indigenous communities. "I spoke to the Prime Minister about child abuse in the territory four years ago. He told me then that states and territories were doing fine," she said. "While we commend the Federal Government for recognising, belatedly, that this is a national emergency, the measures they say they will put in place are not the comprehensive child protection plan required to turn around abuse in remote communities."
Muriel Bamblett is the Chairperson of SNAICC (Secretariat of National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care Inc) was responding to the Federal Government's intervention in Northern Territory to deal with child abuse in Aboriginal communities. She called for proper consultation with Indigenous organisations and communities in order to truly tackle the causes of child abuse. "Indigenous agencies and communities have been crying out for a service response for decades,"
In 2003 SNAICC produced a report called 'State of Denial: the Neglect and Abuse of Indigenous Children' which called for a comprehensive framework and service response for child protection and family services in the Northern Territory. Ms Bamblett said "Both the territory and the Federal governments failed to respond."
According to a report in the Age newspaper (22/6/07), Ms Bramblett said "We came up with lots of recommendations on what should be happening in the Northern Territory and these were based on community consultations. We spoke with a lot of the people that were continually struggling with this issue - indigenous leaders, people on the ground, people in communities, mums and dads and people that wanted to eradicate and look at the real issues that were happening to families in the Northern Territory. Unfortunately those recommendations were not picked up by either the Commonwealth or state governments..."
"This policy is ill considered and `media-release' deep. Instead of implementing the recommendations of the Inquiry into the Protection of Aboriginal Children from Sexual Abuse in co-operation with
the Indigenous community and the NT Government, the Federal Government has run rough-shod over the work of the inquiry." Ms Bramblett said in a press statement.
She attacked the Prime Minister's statement as having no measures to set up services for children who are abused or for the communities. "What is to happen to them if they are found to be abused? There are no culturally competent therapeutic or kinship care services in the Territory." she said.
The Federal Government intervention was called a punitive approach that will only have a short term impact which does not address the underlying issues by Ms Bramblett. "If we had been consulted we would have given the Federal Government our professional advice that behaviour only changes when people are empowered and given positive encouragement. Rather than empower us to sort this out, this policy of taking away land and community control will take away responsibility and merely create further dependency."
"We know that this is an emergency and Indigenous leaders have been saying this for years – but we will only solve the problems of child abuse if Aboriginal communities and professional services are empowered, engaged and drive this process." Ms Bramblett said.
Further Information:
Opinion article by Ms Muriel Bamblett Please listen to us, PM The Age, June 27, 2007
Sources:
- We warned PM, say indigenous leaders The Age 22/06/07
- Media Statement by Ms Muriel Bamblett, Chairperson of SNAICC dated 22/06/2007
Horses for Courses - deconstructing the Pearson perspective
Noel Pearson's tv appearance (Lateline, 26/6) was a mixed bag.
His outing of the racist discrimination of tactics regarding welfare controls was welcome. But the rhetoric directed at so-called 'nay-sayers' deserves some attention.
Mr Pearson's suggestion that
" Those people are willing the protection and succour of Aboriginal children to fail in the same way and as vehemently as they are willing the failure in Iraq."
Is inaccurate, but apt, given the tone of his tirade, which is highly reminiscent of the bush ultimatum (you're with us, or you're with the terrorists … )
When Pearson proposes :
" I think those who have objections to the imminent intervention have to ask themselves whether they are willing the exercise to fail."
Who's willing to fail?
I wonder : surely he doesn't mean the representatives of over 60 community groups who wrote an open letter to Minister Brough, pledging :
'to work collaboratively with Governments and the communities affected to ensure that children are protected'
Not the words of those willing failure – but their letter does warn against failure.
'In their present form the proposals miss the mark and are unlikely to be effective..
...
Successfully tackling these problems requires sustainable solutions, which must be worked out with the communities, not prescribed from Canberra. '
Are these people nay-sayers?
No, they're simply reiterating a dominant theme of the 'Little Children are Sacred' report, one which prefixes the recommendations, is repeated within them, and is spelt out by the research in the body of the report.
'We have sought to demonstrate our view that partnership with Aboriginal people is essential to success.'
Rather than coming from those who Mr Pearson refers to as 'people whose children sleep safely at night', these warnings are derived from the interviews conducted by the authors with those on the frontline of communities that have watched in despair the failure of numerous projects launched in their benefit.
One Yolngu elder told the inquiry ;
'Yolngu need to be the ones making the decisions as to their future but at the present it is more often than not non-Yolngu people meeting and making decisions on behalf of us.'
The report's interviews regarding family violence programs concluded ;
'They were clear that these programs should be culturally appropriate and involve the active participation of the local community if they are to succeed.'
This on-the-ground research is further supported by external references to both the failures of the past [National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families] and models for successes as experienced overseas [Hill, A. (2000), A First Nations Experience in First Nations Child Welfare Services]
Are these nay-sayers? Willing failure? Most certainly not.
In fact, this recurring theme is so prominent in the very report which apparently whipped John Hunt (the coward) into action, that, in response to their refusal to adopt the principles of consultation, inclusion, participation and empowerment, we may well encourage the liberal government to ask themselves whether they are willing the exercise to fail:
Land Grab?
When Mr Pearson assured us that : "It's not about a land grab" he had nothing like the same wealth of research and references to back his assertion.
Without question, the liberal government is deliberately and cynically exploiting the understandable public revulsion at the appalling state of crisis in many aboriginal communities to implement some pet projects that significantly erode the Land Rights Act. After failing miserably to convince communities to adopt the 99 year lease proposal, it appears that the federal government will abuse the welcome focus on addressing child abuse in remote communities in order to force a similar (5 year lease) plan on every aboriginal community in the NT. No rationale has been offered for this opportunistic inclusion into the raft of (otherwise short-term) actions proposed by the federal government.
But it is perhaps the tactic of abolishing the permit system that is most disturbing.
For decades now, the use of a permit system has allowed aboriginal communities to manage visits by foreigners. It's an accepted part of the Territory lifestyle, but a thorn in the side for those who would otherwise profit from unfettered access to aboriginal communities (those such as mining companies, drug pushers and the like …). We have yet to hear from the federal minister any justification for this proposal, however some indigenous leaders have pointed an obvious failure of logic. The 'Sacred' report describes in detail that some of the abuse of children in remote communities has been perpetrated by non-aboriginal visitors. Abolishing the permit system would blow this factor wide open. Furthermore, restricting legal access to alcohol while opening the door to opportunists will ensure that the existing problems with alcohol abuse will be compounded by the pressures of black-market prices.
Why would employ such a counter-productive tactic? Dr Gavin Mudd, writing today in Crikey!, offers this suggestion :
'Since gaining control of the Senate, the Howard Government has finally had the parliamentary power to gut the ALRA, which they are doing, but have needed a massive diversion before they introduce the most controversial reforms: radically altering the mining royalty regimes, and potentially remove the veto provision for exploration and mining.'
A land grab?
Go on, say 'neigh'.