Lovely article Barbara, thanks much for reporting on Australias real heros. I'd love to see a column in the newspaper detailing exactly such successful community efforts, daily proof that there IS such a thing as society and its US who maintain it, not cops, priests or bean counters. Sadly that would be too awkward for the greed-is-good fundamentalists who own our media (and government).

Barbara,
Great positive article and would much like to read more. I read it a couple of times to see if there was info about how they went about it. Alas there isn't any. Perhaps Barbara will give more info as I am sure many would like to know.

Barbara said "But isn't thejournalist's code of ethics and agenda about presenting a balanced view and keeping up with the times" Afrais not. Jounalist have little ethics about a balanced view and will write anything that sells. Their agenda is for self promotion. As a former journalist Barbara should be aware of this.

It looks very much like the Windale community has done most of the hard yards themselves and are to be congratulated. Self help is a wonerfull thing. Hope for more info and Windale keeps getting better.

How dissappointing but not entirely unexpected.

After 2 days there are only 2 comments on this positive article.

One would think that after all the ardent support and the bitter critisism of the Governments intervention in NT communities, posters would be keen to congratulate those who have shown success in reducing child abuse and want to know how they did it. But no.

One can only conclude that the vast majority of posters commenting on the Government intervention in NT communities did not have the welfare of the children at heart. It is obvious the posters only had a political barrow to push.

No wonder newspapers only print conversial stuff and no good news.

Rainier,
If you happen to read this, I want to let you know that I have sent a copy of this article, with letter, to Minister Mal Brough MP.

This is to ensure that he was aware of the acheivements by the people of Windale in reducing child abuse. I suggested that he look at the Windale situation with the view that we can learn from it.