Have you lived in a remote indigenous community? I have. I’ve lived in seven different ones over a period of around six years. Most of them I have lived in for a period not less than ten months.

Mal Brough first and now Jenny Maklin are purely acting in emergency response to a most violent, unequally powered society that habitually kills its women and children by outright violence, sex abuse and negligence. I have seen all these things in my six years working out there as a nurse, and even my own family found it impossible to believe, when I told them the conditions I worked under.

I understand that a person (maybe like yourself), raised in an urban area of Australia or anywhere outside of Alice Springs, Kathryn and other towns where the remote problem has relocated, could not possibly understand what is going on in these areas. And it really isn’t your fault, because it is hushed up. Mal Brough and Noel Pearson know what is going on out there and it seems that Jenny Maklin does too and I applaud them all for it.

Aboriginal women have a huge respect for Mal Brough. I know because they talked to me about him. They saw him as being the reason they no longer could be physically abused for money, they liked to be able to spend their money on food instead of gambling and grog. They saw him as a protector that missions, health departments and state governments had never been. So don’t bag Mal Brough! He was the right man in the right place at the right time responding to a crisis. And now thank God, Jenny Maklin has insight into the catastrophe of the situation and is continuing these urgent measures.

John,

I don't know if you have visted many or any of the communities spread around Australia. If you haven't then commenting is pointless as you wouldn't understand the problem.

I'll asume you have done so and have seen the disgusting conditions that exist at most, if not all, of these communities.

These communities did not start as they are. They were driven down to that level by a combination of pointlessness from the residents, greed by the few whites willing to go and run a business or practice there or a combination of both.

Basically there is nothing for people to do there so they drink. There are no facilities so they fight and worse.

Adding in a few Police foir a time and rebuilding is a waste of both time and money as they will be degraded very quickly for the same reasons. Nothing else to do.

These communities are very remote and no amount of taxpayer funding is going to change that into a thriving community. They are in places most would refuse to live, except as a hermit.

Building houses, schools and hospitals is money down the drain. They couldn't staff them anyway.

The people on these communities must be given a choice of integrating or making their own lives in those places. We can't afford to keep subsidising the vandalism, through poverty and depression, that exists there.

The same thing would result if any group of people lived in these places, regardless of skin colour or any other factor.

There is just no commercial future in these places. Some of them are unbearable. Heat, oil stained red dirt, flies, mosquitoes, drunks. What a pleasure.

Close the places down and move them or let them decide where they will go. But stop trying to create Heaven out of Hell. As that's what they have now, hell.

Right on the money John, which is not surprising considering your decades of experience battling against the failed policies of Governments both State & Federal of all parties in their refusal to accept informed advice.

The intervention dealt with an alcohol problem in some remote communities by unintentionally moving the problem into the back yards of Alice Springs, Katherine, Tennant Creek and Darwin citizens who are now complaining about drunkenness and anti-social behaviour now that quarantining of benefits meant people had to move to centres where they could use their 'cards'

You correctly noted that the intervention has failed in it's most important function of involvement and community participation of the very people they are supposed to be helping.

I was optimistic that the Rudd Government would correct the grave errors of the Howard / Brough politicization of the matter of Indigenous community development. But not so, Jenny Macklin has apparently failed to understand the complexities of the problem as decades of politicians have before her.
The task is enormous and completely beyond her if she thinks she can connect with 'some' women to the exclusion of whole communities.

She should resign if she cannot work with the wealth of experienced people who continue to work successfully with Indigenous communities but have been thwarted in their efforts because of lack of adequate Governmental Budgetary support.

Maracas 1 (previously maracas)

'Yes, grog can be a problem in some areas of the Northern Territory. '

The understating of this problem serves no one. Personally I have witnessed aboriginal woman getting their flogging. In fact it is so much common place that even the police accept it as somewhat the norm. To say these people can determine their own destiny might give civil libertarians the 'warm fuzzies' but if you visit a Regional Hospital casualty area those fuzzies turn to sickness.

Many cheer and feel smug about aboriginals getting a vote and having sorry said to them. The problem is that many of them are worse off now than ever before. At least Mr Brough and Ms Macklin are attempting to deal with some issues as politically incorrect as they are.

Good post Helen54.

The MAJOR problem is aboriginal men abusing and assaulting aboriginal women and children. The immediate intervention focus is on the women and children, and that's precisely where it needs to be.

To re-educate and reform the 'guilty' aboriginal men, and change that type of non-traditional, modern, violent culture, will take decades. It is NOT traditional culture for aboriginal men to be violent and abusive towards aboriginal women and children. Many are not, but they are almost powerless to act.

The immediate focus MUST be on the immediate protection for the children and women. After that's secured, and there's a heck of a long way to go there, then we can address the modern non-aboriginal/non-traditional male culture of violence and abuse practiced within communities by 'some' aboriginal men. This is the long term solution. Many of these men can't speak English or have English only as a second language. Many are brain damaged through years of alcohol and substance abuse. Many have almost no education whatsoever, including traditional education. People on communities are not, and never will be, part of mainstream society. Trying to turn remote aboriginal people into honorary white people is doomed to failure. Solutions need to be worked out within the context of their own culture.

Surely not emasculate offending males? Although castrated offenders couldnt offend again.Children and women would be safer.

It may sound racist but I recommend it for EVERYONE. There is an undeniable logic to the proposition here,surely.

socratease

"Minister Macklin claims that many women have told her that if the quarantining wasn’t compulsory for everyone then they would be humbugged for money by violent husbands or relatives. This is a problem for some women in many parts of Australia. But imposing paternalistic quarantining for another year just prolongs the problem: it does not solve it. If there was a real intent to solve the problem, then the government would engage in a community development program to work with the community to fully discuss the issues and come to solutions which would prevent such humbugging. Such programs have succeeded previously in the Territory."

Minister Macklin ought to talk to the girls of all hues who are being humbugged by the father's of their children, some of them are also their statutory rapists.
The same paternalistic Centrelink gives these child/mothers large sums of money for six months, enough for them to choose to live independently from their families, perhaps choosing to live with the law breaker/father. And what does centrelink say when the concerned parent/s of these child/mothers ask about their daughter, "sorry we can't tell you anything about your child, it's confidential"
Meanwhile in the NT we have Elder Indigenous Australians who have never used alcohol or any other drug and never abused their children having their payments quarantined. This is obscene.

No,no,NO!
Dont ignore the men.

Surely you dont recommend castrating them?
Mind you , this should apply to EVERYONE,not just aboriginal men.We have teachers and priests who would qualify.
They wouldnt re-offend,that's for sure.
Women and children would be a lot safer.

A bit drastic?

socratease

Don't you mob pretend Macklin & Brough are or have the answers to Aboriginal problems, they should be coming from the people themselves & therefore we should be taught, not over-ridden to achieve socio-political change, as well as supported financially.

Anyone who thinks THIS intervention is working is wrong, it is not aimed at improving social & health services for women & children, take a look at where the funding mostly goes... to Centrelink & the Ginger Bread Men, government business managers who are paid around $180, 000 pa, white fellas who don't know the communities they are dumped in then give thier advice about what is best for the people who have been there about 10 billion times longer.

What your anti-bleeding hearts perpetuate is the myth that all Aboriginal men get drunk, bash their wives, abuse their children & destroy thier communities, this is wrong, deeply wrong & just a perpetuation of excuses made to prolong the injustices you say we have to put up with, grow up Australia, you can't apologise a past wrong while continuing an ongoing one while hiding behind propoganda which falsly vindicates the coastal communities from accepting that this is social engineering made to centralise service delivery, force Aboriginal people off homelands into town for slave labour while the mining trucks come in, take over & make millions for international companies leaving the culturally inept blacks nibbling the peanuts they get for cleaning tables in shopping centres.

Bundagee

'leaving the culturally inept blacks nibbling the peanuts they get for cleaning tables in shopping centres.'

This would be better than getting sit down money in order to buy grog. There are plenty of whites, Asians and Africans cleaning tables. I did it for 2 years in order to pay for food, clothing and rent. Not everyone can have an ATSIC funded and Aboriginal Legal services jobs that pays high wages for little return. A number of mining companies I know of have bent over backwards in order to give Aboriginals good jobs. Due to a number of reasons they find it difficult to keep paying for people who regularly don't turn up for work. I suggest it might be your stereo typing that is keeping your people in bondage.

What stereotyping, I've seen the Aboriginal cleaners & crap kickers, what I don't see is the Aboriginal managers in these shopping centres, it is the conservative right who keep bringing up stereotypes to justify ignorance & discrimination like bringing up ATSIC again, which has been dead for years.
How's this for stereotypes, I have full time employment, my children go to school & childcare, I have a mortgage not a criminal record.
What I lack & am frustrated with is the ignorance of cultural integrity, without culture I am just a coconut, a brown Australian, not an Aboriginal Australian. If people don't get a comprehension of cultural obligations then they won't fully comprehend Aboriginal Australia.
Talk about hypocricy, bring up ATSIC then accuse me of stereotyping?!

Good article John, as always the "real white experts" here on OLO will indirectly rebuke you on your plea for justice to compensate for their own ignorance.

Runner,
it is interesting to note your use of the word 'bondage' because since invasion that is exactly what has happened to so many Indigenous Australians. Starting at the very beginning, the bondage of our mob for the sole benifit of the settlers has been going on.

Early settlers accounts tell of sexual bondage of children and women by the early british invaders, and shockingly there is a documented account of it occuring in the 1970's. People were forced into bondage to work on cattle properties, farms, and so on. Again this is documented by the settler/invaders themselves. Working for wages that were never paid, being dictated where they were allowed to go and being sent to work without the rights to refuse ... the list goes on.
Bondage and slavery - curse of colonisation.

The settlers caused the disarray of Indigneous society and have directly been the cause of the disfunction that you are commenting on. Surely it is time for Indigenous Australians to be listened to on what is needed here. We have been ignored for over 200 years

Aka

I have no doubt some of the accounts of the British settlers sexually abused children and women. This is repulsive. You must acknowledge that some of the British settlers also raped and were violent against their own just like your own people have had sexual abuse and violence prevalent for a long time before white man landed here. It goes on today at a far higher rate among the aboriginals than most places. I acknowledge that much of this is due to alcohol and drug issues.

The point is that many people living in this nation have come from very tragic backgrounds. Speak to any South African and you will be flat out finding one who has not had a friend or family member murdered or seriously injured due to crime. Speak to some whites (like my mother) who spent 8 years in an orphanage. Everyone can find a reason to remain a victim and live an unproductive drunken life. The only ones that are suffering are your own people (and a few victims of crime).

Through your indoctrination and very one sided view of history you may look at Colonization as a curse but without it tribal warfare and conditions much much worse than you have today would exist.

It's unfortunate that discussion on this very important issue gets sidetracked by people who only wish to air their personal prejudice and ignorance, judging a whole race of Indigenous people within the confines of their prejudice and the examples of a minority of people who have taken to alcoholism, petrol sniffing and drug taking in their descent into hopelessness.

That hopelessness is created by successive administrations who have gone before Jenny Macklin and Mal Brough, implementing their own policies arrived at through their paternalistic models without reference to the very people they are meant to be helping as John has already pointed out.

It is not a valid argument to refer to ones own misfortune.

The matter of Indigenous development is one which must look at the realities of each Community in consultation with the whole community including the men.

The issues that are common throughout ALL communities are Lack of employment and/or training, the overcrowding in unsuitable housing,
through the lack of understanding and ignorant disregard for the extended family structure and culture in Aboriginal Society,

The absence of services that all other Australians take for granted.

The various ministers talk about providing houses instead of providing the training and means for Aborigines to build their own houses as just one example of the negative way the enormous problems are addressed.

Australian white society prefers to ignore the crimes that have been and are still committed against Aboriginal people such as deaths in custody and stolen wages that would not be tolerated if the victims were any race other than Aboriginal.

maracas1,

It is your prejudice that compounds the problems of the Aboriginals. When houses are built and then destroyed in large numbers it is obvious that there are internal issues to deal with. When education is provided and the kids don't turn up for school it is obvious that money is not the problem. Carry on with the dogmas about not enough money but anyone who has observed the issue and have not got a political axe to grind knows better. You would do well to listen to the likes of Noel Pearson who is prepared to face the truth and get off his bum because he genuinely cares for aboriginal people. He understands that long held unproductive belief systems need to be changed. The assertion that deaths in custody is somehow the whites man's fault is offensive and racist. Probably the white man's biggest crime is to give sit down grog money to both blacks and whites.

Runner;

Your accusation of prejudice on my part is rich coming from an apologist for past and present treatment of Aboriginal people expressed in one of your earlier posts.

Your references to damage to housing and absenteeism from school might have been current during transition periods 40 years ago is reminiscent of that element in our community who continue to blame the victims for their predicament and don't present evidence to support assertions or recognise problems of overcrowding due to insufficient housing.

You are so prejudiced you cannot bring yourself to recognise any of the positive progress and developments in Aboriginal Communities such as successes in promoting their Art and world recognition of their music.

You identify Noel Pearson as a person with the answers.

Noel Pearson appears to have identified a problem but the quality of his leadership and success of his proposals will depend on whether or not he has the ability to involve his whole community in a solution.

Otherwise he just becomes a stooge for the Howard/ Brough intervention which is now seen one year down the track with no evidence of widespread child abuse as a hastily executed political stunt prior to an election as they pulled off in the 'children overboard' fiasco.

Congratulations on a thoughtful piece of writing John.

It's unfortunate that many posters to this forum decline to read these pieces closely and engage in genuine discussion.

Vitriol is easy. We need cool heads and rigourous examination.

Strength to your arm.

Aboriginal males are important when it comes to impacting indigenous lives, I feel without our men it will be hard to cope as it was in the past. We have had great leaders but what we need is services that are easy to access to help our people in areas that are affected. As most of you already know in certain places they have no proper infrastructure or support and some people are just to scared or to lazy to do anything about it. I don’t understand why they pick these people to do these jobs and they can’t even handle it.