An excellent summary of last weeks hearings of the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee - and what a sad indictment on the "democratic process" that may result in the findings being ignored by Government.
It is no wonder the status quo of intertia remains when bureaucrtas and their political masters refuse to budge from their entrenched position of thinking they know best.
The people who know best were before the Committee and witness after witness remarked on their frustraion with the repetitive way that Government kept coming to them for ideas and comments for no action to be taken as a result of the conversation.
Lets hope the pressure can increase as 13 March approaches and the Senate refuse to pass legislation that will entrenh the NTER Mark 2 for a further 10 years.

..This is a government of the “corporate”: Nothing matters to them BUT them. What more evidence of a total disconnect of this Government, than their treatment of the Aboriginal population, with a Labor continuation and enhancing of the John Howard “Human Experiment” called Intervention.

...It can only be a reminder of the despicability of Hitlers Nazis and their Anti-Jewish Interventionist policies in Germany in the 30’s. Disgusting, the lot of them! Such a “Grubby” lot from top to bottom!

Let's not overplay the "Nazi" card folks.

Let's see this for what it is, a continuation of the paternalism that blights each attempt by government (at every level) to be seen to be "doing something" for the disadvantaged. There are clever people in the bureaucracy, they have pieces of paper to prove it, but they think that that piece of paper means that they, and only they, know what do do "TO" these people, rather than "WITH" these people.

What they are not seeing is that it is the continuation of neo-liberal economics that says that only those high in the food chain know best.

If the NT mob had got their act together the NTER would not have been necessary in the first place. When are you lot going to get your own houses in order and stop blaming successive governments for the parlous conditions in which you currently find yourselves.

Hi Jimoctec,

But isn't paternalism just what so many people seem to want ? To be looked after more and more ? To do less and less for themselves ? Isn't this how many people define 'self-determination', and now 'sovereignty' ? As some sort of reward for being ? Or for owning their own land ?

And as you would learn from Lesson One in Community Development Theory and Practice I, there is a difference between 'want' and 'need' which has to be negotiated sensibly. After all, not every wish can, or should, be turned into reality, particularly by the bodies which have to fund those wishes. What if people - 'Elders' too - ask for the impossible ? Or for what is manifestly not in the direction of what any government would define as 'self-determination' ?

At one place where I lived, the Council asked the new nurse to regularly wash people's feet. She refused, and didn't last long. When my wife was running the pre-school there, some mothers demanded that it be kept running 24/7. She refused also and as an Aboriginal woman herself, was strong enough to tell them to wake up to themselves and look after their own kids. She still copped a lot of flak for a long time afterwards - it was THEIR community, not hers, they said, and they should be able to demand whatever the hell they liked. For a while, she put on soup at breakfast for the kids and some parents demanded that she put on dinner as well. They didn't get it.

'Consultation' has to be tempered with sensible negotiation, not capitulation. I hope that Macklin and the government fight every wish for every inch and demand that people justify any and all of their demands - which other people will have to pay for. There is a fine line between reasonable requests and arrogance. Take that however you like.

Cheers,

Joe

The Inquiry reports back to the Senators, and presumably it informs their final discussions about the merits of this legislation, and decisions about any amendments they think appropriate. Most of the many written submissions to the Inquiry have been freely available on line for weeks, and the transcripts of the Senate Committee hearings have been available on the Committee's website for the House of Representatives MPs and anybody else to read since shortly after the hearings were held. It is piffle to say that the House of Representatives had to wait for the report of that Inquiry before it further considered the matters in the Bills. If the Senate amends the Bills, then they will be referred back to the House of representatives for further consideration.
By the way: outside Hermannsburg and Maningrida, which were visited by the Senate Committee, only a small handful of Aboriginal people who live in the NTER prescribed remote communities bothered to attend the hearings; and of those who did attend, very few (including those who attended at Hermannsburg and Maningrida) opposed the bulk of the new legislation.

Only a few people from other places attended.... Well I can tell you why. Apart from the fact that we are dealing with very large distances, I live on a "Prescribed Area" and have (as a non-Warlpiri long time resident) attended just about every meeting held here by the Intervention and many other "service agencies". Almost invariably when a Warlpiri person asks a question they get the "that's a very interesting question" treatment, but no answer. Every time a Warlpiri person comes up with an idea they get "that's a very good idea!" or get ignored altogether, or have their idea immediately rejected for some excuse or other. People on these communities have given up attending meetings, they consider them a waste of time. I can't blame them.
The Yuendumu people put in a really good submission to the Stronger Futures Inquiry. A large number of Yuendumu residents enthusiastically put their signatures to it and there was a flurry of discussion (about proposed punishment for non-attendance at school, at the same time as bilingual education is being denied).Now again they will be ignored. Next time they probably won't bother preparing a submission.

In the words of a former indigenous leader who became a pastor according to standard practise when the questions start, once said on radio. "We could be finically independent if the Government gave us more money".
Needless to say his own people rejected him not long after..

Individual,

You're not playing the game :( You know very well that 'self-determination' means maximum dependence on external financial support and service provision, with minimum - or no - political oversight or accountability, forever.

Meanwhile, in 'southern' Australia, many Aboriginal people are getting on with the business of coping with all of the problems that preoccupy other people, taking care of business and trying to get on their feet.

By the end of this year, across the country but mostly in urban areas, there will be close to thirty thousand Indigenous university graduates - mostly from genuinely rigorous courses, Individual, there are not that many who have come through Mickey Mouse courses down this way. There could be another ten thousand Indigenous people with trades qualifications as well. That total (40,000) is one in seven of all Indigenous adults (around 270,000). By 2020, it could be one in five (70,000 out of 350,000).

The positive dynamic in Indigenous affairs is now in the urban areas, not in remote sink-holes. Cities belong to Indigenous people as much as anywhere else. But so many people are quite content to condemn as many Aboriginal people as possible, including the next generation, to miserable and short lives out there in the sticks. The question is: how to give each person out there a fair and informed choice ?

And let all those who want to stay - or move from comfortable city life to remote areas, if their actions ever catch up with their mouths - to do so and stop whingeing.

another ten thousand Indigenous people with trades qualifications as well.
Loudmouth,
As you said there could be. Problem is there aren't. Not as yet anyway. That is not being sarcastic, it's a sad fact. Only last week I had a long discussion about this with an indigenous pensioner who had to go back to work because none of the younger are reliable enough to front for work.
He & other older people in the communities constantly express their dismay at this situation. Literally hundreds of thousands of Dollars are spent in each community on schemes of training & employment but alas it always ends up as a waste of time & money. The only benefit goes to the bureaucrats who dreamed up those schemes. They get a big Bravo from other ignorant bureaucrats for making it look like progress whilst it is merely progressive regress.

if we had a democracy working properly we would not have a tent embassy in Canberra although I expect its been abandoned with the rain.

VK3AUU reflects the accurate feeling of most Australians, who do not -or have not, live in these communities.

Successive governments are responsible for parlous conditions people in these communities find themselves. Successive governments exempted relevant corporate Land Trusts, entities, from accepting their responsibilities as landlords to their tenants.

Even today a "Traditional Owner" does NOT have right have family live with them or visit them, NO right to exclude others from entering "their" publicly funded homes - unless they given valid leases, which these corporate cowboy Land Trusts refuse.

Despite getting these houses built for these corporate entities with public funds, they refuse to issue their tenants leases because the Commonwealth and State governments let them.

To establish, run and develop businesses we need leases more than qualification certificates - though they help.

Jungarrayi was correct, Parliamentary Committee hearings been ongoing for over hundred years, hearing same problems then hiding them away.

Commonwealth blames racism as the cause, whilst same time claiming its brand of racism is not the problem.

Commonwealth racism is the problem.

Commonwealth racism supports community racism, bigotry and violence, which Yuendumu's ongoing problems demonstrate.

Is time our Commonwealth accepted Australians instructions - at federation then repeated in 1967, that NO legislation in Australia may discriminate between Australians, may qualify the rights or responsibilities of any Australian, using race as a measure.

Commonwealth Attorney-General lies to Australians, to Parliament, whenever purporting NO racial measuring or qualification of rights or responsibilities is happening, it is - all of it by the Commonwealth.

Today, apartheid and segregation remain Commonwealth policy tools.

.