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IMPORTANT ISSUE! A different
Perspective – Interview Monday 9th July @ 9.30am Interview and follow
up commentary Tuesday 10th July from 9.30am With Peter Thomas http://www.safecom.org.au/howards-new-tampa.htm |
Howard's New
Tampa - Aboriginal Children Overboard
by Jennifer
Martiniello Jennifer
Martiniello is a writer and academic of Arrernte, Chinese and Anglo descent.
She is a former Deputy Chair of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander
Arts Board of the Australia Council for the Arts, and a current member of the
Advisory Board of the Australian Centre for Indigenous History at the ANU. This article
by her was released to the media on Monday 25 June 2007 Howard's new Tampa children overboard are our Aboriginal
children. The Little
Children are Sacred report does not advocate physically and
psychologically invasive examinations of Aboriginal children, which could
only be carried out anally and vaginally. It does not recommend scrapping the
permit system to enter Aboriginal lands, nor does it recommend taking over
Aboriginal 'towns' by enforced leases. These latter two points in the Howard
scheme hide the true reason for the Federal Government's use of the latest
report for blatant political opportunism. It has been an openly stated agenda that Howard wants to
move Aboriginal people off their lands, and has made recent attempts to buy
off Aboriginal people by offering them millions for agreeing to lease their
lands to the Federal Government, e.g. Tiwi Islands and Tangentyere in Alice
Springs. There was also the statement by the Federal Government that it could
not continue (?!) to provide essential services to remote communities, which
raised an uproar of responses in the press. The focus on the sexual abuse of
children is guaranteed to evoke the most emotive responses, and therefore
command attention, just like the manipulation of the Tampa situation. But
while the attention of the media and the public is being emotionally coerced,
what is being sneaked in under the covers? Two issues specifically - mining companies have applied for
more exploration permits in the Northern Territory, the Jabiluka uranium
mining operations at Kakadu have already hit the media because of the mining
company's applications to the Government to significantly expand its
operations, including establishing new mines at Coronation Hill, and another
critical issue - nuclear waste. The Howard Government has already mooted that
nuclear waste should be dumped in the Northern Territory, on Aboriginal
lands. Aboriginal traditional owners are absolutely opposed to this. We have
a long history of deaths and illness from radiation, from the atomic tests at
Woomera in the 1950s to the current high incidences of carcinomas in the
community at Kakadu near the Jabiluka site. The main obstacle to the Federal
Government's desired expansion of mining operations in the Northern Territory
and nuclear waste dumping is, of course, the Aboriginal people who have
occupancy of, and rights under the common law to, their traditional lands. Following the stages of the Howard Government's usual
modus operandi (defund, blame, eliminate), defunding of critical programs for
remote Aboriginal community projects began in July 2004, with coerced changes
to funding contracts, and monies for critically needed youth and health
programs in remote areas being the first dollars to go. Take Mutitjulu for
example, which was notoriously profiled by the ABC's Nightline program. I say
notorious because one of Senator Mal Brough's personal staffers was the
so-called ex-youth worker interviewed on that program, and the content of
that interview was laden with myths and mistruths. The staffer in question
failed to appear when summoned before a Senate inquiry to explain and the
Senator's office is yet to issue a statement. When the community lodged a
formal protest to Government, it was raided and their computers seized. But
the program did show the effects of the Howard Government defunding of
essential programs on that community, in particular the youth centre and
health centre. The people at Mutitjulu also just happen to be the traditional
owners of Uluru, one of this country's most lucrative tourist attractions.
The Howard Government would not like us to ask who benefits by the people of
Mutitjulu being forced off their community. Under the amendments to Native
Title made by the Howard Government, once Aboriginal people have left their
traditional lands, forcibly or otherwise, their rights under the common law
that every other Australian enjoys over their land are significantly
impaired. Progressive defunding of Aboriginal art centres has also
begun, with a range of community art centres not having their funding renewed
by DCITA in July 2005 and 2006 in the Northern Territory, from communities in
Arnhemland to mid and southern Territory communities. The art production
facilitated by those Aboriginal art centres are the only means through which
members of those communities can actually earn a living, as opposed to being
on welfare. But then, dependent people are easier to control by means of that
dependency. The Howard Government's failed Shared Responsibility Agreements
(SRAs) have also been the catalyst for further blame shifting and progressive
defunding, take Wadeye for example. Our Aboriginal communities are being squeezed further into
dysfunction and disenfranchisement by carefully targeted political
engineering, the systemic and ruthless roll-out of a planned agenda. It is no
accident that Howard's scheme to address what he calls the urgency of the Little
Children are Sacred's 97 recommendations was trotted out so very
quickly, and addresses so very few of those recommendations. It is sheer
political opportunism to advance an already in motion agenda, and to score
points in an election year. After all, The Little
Children are Sacred is not the first of such reports, nor are its
findings and recommendations new. The Federal Government has had the 1989,
1991, 1993, 1997 and 2002 reports gathering dust and deliberate inaction on
its shelves. Perhaps Mr Howard has been saving them up for a rainy election
year? And of course Mr Howard's scheme targets only Aboriginal communities,
despite the fact that the findings specifically state that non- Aboriginal
men, that is, white men, are a significant proportion of the offenders, who
are black-marketeering in petrol and alcohol to gain access to Aboriginal
children. What measures is the Howard Government going to take about
non-Aboriginal sex offenders, pornographers, substance traffickers and the
like? Nothing according to the measures announced, but then, they're not
Aboriginal and they don't live on the Aboriginal communities where their
victims live. So who are the real victims here, the silenced victims of
John Howard's scheme? Aboriginal children, of course, who will be subject to
physically and psychologically invasive medical examinations, irrespective of
their home and family circumstances, and who will deal with the mental and
emotional fall-out from that? Aboriginal men, too, who become the silenced
scapegoats, painted by default by John Howard as all being drunken,
child-raping monsters. Perhaps the fact that almost every picture shown of
Aboriginal men in the media these days shows them drunk, with a slab, cask or
bottle under their arms leads Mr Howard to expect that one to pass
unchallenged, irrespective of the fact that statistics show that only 15% of Aboriginal
people drink alcohol, socially or otherwise, compared to around 87% of
non-Aboriginal Australians. The greater majority of Aboriginal men are good,
decent people. Perhaps the media would like to rethink its portrayals of
Aboriginal men? How about some photos of the other alcoholics, you know, the
white ones. There's more of them. And what of our communities? The Howard Government also
hasn't mentioned that the majority of Aboriginal communities in the Northern
Territory are already dry communities, decided and enforced by those
communities. But then that would spoil the picture Mr Howard wants to paint
of our Aboriginal communities. Other large communities, such as Daly River,
have controlled the situation by only having alcohol available from the
community's club and enforce a strict four can limit. Also forgotten in the
current politically opportunistic furore is the fact that Aboriginal
communities around Tennant Creek and Katherine have been lobbying Governments
and town councils for decades to restrict the sale of alcohol on Thursdays,
when Aboriginal community people come to town for supplies. So far their
pleas have been rejected. Nothing in Mr Howard's plan to facilitate that,
either. Or about the control of alcohol when those people, once forced off
the communities into the towns, bring their problems with them, child abuse
or alcoholism and all the rest. Of course that would make access to
Aboriginal children a lot easier for white offenders, they won't have to go
so far to find a victim. One last word on focus of attention. In the famous Redfern
Address, the then Prime Minister, Paul Keating asked perhaps the most
important question for all Australians to consider. He said 'We failed to ask
the most basic of questions. We failed to ask - What if this were done to
us?' What if this were done to us - to Mr and Mrs Average Australian, to our
schools, youth centres, health centres, access to medical care, communities,
homes, children, grandchildren? After all, current national health reports from
a wide range of health organisations name sexual abuse of non-Indigenous
Australian children as a crisis area in need of urgent attention. And the
numbers of victims are higher. National reports into mainstream domestic
violence, alcohol and substance abuse also call for urgent action, again the
issues are at crisis level, and the numbers of victims and abusers are far
higher than in The Little
Children are Sacred report. None of the recommendations in all of
those hundreds of national health reports recommend compulsory sexual health
tests for every Australian child under sixteen. Not one of them recommends
that a viable solution is closing down youth and health programs, in fact
they all advocate that more are needed. None recommend that the victims' or
the offenders' communities and homes should be surrendered to the Federal
Government and put under compulsory lease agreements, and none advocate
processes which would lead to either the victims or the abusers losing their
rights under common law to their property as measure to control or remedy the
occurrence of abuse. Would the Howard Government even dare to contemplate
such as that? I think not. It would be un-Australian, and the Government it
would expect immediate legal repercussions on the grounds of impairment of
human rights, extinguishment of rights under common law, discrimination, and
a raft of other constitutional issues. Besides, Mr and Mrs Average Australian
don't, for the most part, live on top of uranium and mineral deposits or
future nuclear waste dumps. But seriously, the most critical question for all
Australians to ask themselves in the lead up to this year's Federal Election
is just that - What if it were done to us? With full acknowledgment of what
has already been done to workers, trade unions, student unions, public
primary, secondary and tertiary education, elderly care, palliative care,
medicare, crisis health care, nurses, teachers, multicultural affairs,
migrant groups, women, child care, small businesses and artsworkers, among
the many, through the exercise of policies of social engineering and fear,
your answer at the polling booth may just determine whether it will be done
to you, or continue to be done to you. As reported in the Sydney Morning
Herald 25th June, the Howard Government last week used the military to seize
control of 60 Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory, which are now
under military occupation. This is not Israel and Palestine. The Northern
Territory is not Gaza or the West Bank. This is Australia - but is it the
Australia you thought you lived in? Walk in our shoes, Aboriginal
Australia's, and ask yourselves, what would it be like to have this done to
us? And then, walk with us. Jenni Kemarre
Martiniello |