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.