What is the real agenda behind the NT scam?
The real face of Howard’s Northern Territory intervention: welfare cuts and community closures
By Susan Allan and Tania Baptist, Socialist Equality Party candidate for the Senate in Victoria
27 October 2007
In June, the Howard government announced a “national emergency” plan to take control of more than 70 Aboriginal communities throughout the Northern Territory (NT). Police and military forces were sent in, purportedly to protect Aboriginal children from sexual abuse. So great was the alleged urgency that the 1975 Racial Discrimination Act was suspended to allow for the racially-targeted intervention.
Four months on, not a single case of child abuse has been identified, and no charges or arrests for child sexual abuse have been made. But other police actions against the Aboriginal population have skyrocketed.
In the first three months of the operation, in seven communities alone, police made 63 arrests and issued 72 summonses, mostly for traffic offences, alcohol smuggling, domestic violence and assaults. By singling out Aboriginal areas for racially-based bans on alcohol and pornography, the government has only ensured that the imprisonment rate among indigenous people, who are already some 30 times over-represented in prisons, will rise. What the intervention has done, however, is highlight the shocking state of indigenous health and the lack of basic medical services. The government reports that 3,000 children have been examined in 34 communities. More than 80 percent have been found to be suffering from chronic ear, throat and nose conditions, directly related to inadequate and overcrowded housing conditions. It is already patently clear that the government has no intention of funding the intensive long-term and specialist care needed to address this situation. So far, around 40 doctors and 77 nurses have volunteered to carry out the medical checks, with 5 doctors and 26 nurses already completing a second deployment. But 30 communities have yet to be visited, meaning resources are so inadequate that not even an initial examination has been carried out on thousands of desperately needy children.
If any proof were needed that the military intervention had nothing to do with concerns about the welfare of Aboriginal children, this is it. By contrast to the lack of medical staff, 800 government officials have been dispatched, together with an additional 350 Centrelink staff, to implement the government’s takeover of community land and facilities, and to enforce welfare cuts and work-for-the-dole schemes. Among the officials are 25 business managers, with another 25 more to be appointed, who will displace the elected councils. As an example of what these people will be doing, the new manager at Yuendumu has drawn up a School Attendance Proposal, which calls for alleged truants to be rounded up each morning, questioned by police and, with the assistance of the elders, sent to clean up rubbish all day until they are “visibly tired”.
CDEP shutdowns and welfare “quarantining”
The government intervention is being utilised to carry through previously-prepared plans to abolish the Community Development Employment Programs (CDEP) scheme, and shut down supposedly “unsustainable” townships.
When it was established in 1977 by the Fraser Liberal government, CDEP was a forerunner of the “work for the dole” programs later imposed on all jobless workers. Through CDEP, Aboriginal people in remote areas, where there are few or no jobs, were compelled to perform cheap labour to provide basic social services. CDEP participants worked part-time for 16 hours a week, earning around $240 per week. In some cases, these wages could be “topped” up for extra hours, but many Aboriginal participants worked longer hours with no additional pay.
CDEP projects included municipal services, waste management, housing construction, home and community care work, aged care, child care, support for artists, land and sea management. In the absence of the usual government-organised and staffed services, CDEP projects became a financial lifeline for many communities, providing at least a modicum of income for participants and their extended families.
On July 23, one month after the intervention was launched, the Howard government announced that CDEP payments would be eliminated, forcing all recipients onto straight-out “work-for-the-dole” schemes. Aboriginal Affairs Minister Mal Brough cynically stated that the effect would be to move people into “real jobs, training and mainstream programs.” He failed to mention that these simply do not exist in most of the relevant localities."
contd here-
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/oct2007/abor-o27.shtml
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