re:

"Jenny Macklin, threatens to withdraw government support from remote communities that are “economically unviable”. The Northern Territory is the only region where Aborigines have comprehensive land rights, granted almost by accident 30 years ago. Here lies some of the world’s biggest deposits of uranium. Canberra wants to mine it and sell it."

The material leading up to this quote is a good argument, but where and when did Jenny Macklin say the above? Does Jenny Macklin want to facilitate the nuclear fuel cycle? Tell us more.

re: "Canberra wants to mine it and sell it."

If digging into this story is to be done, we need more people and organisations named. We need greater specificity than "Canberra".

It may be that the story, as first submitted to The Guardian, originally had a bit more meat on its bones, regarding the present and near future - I'm interested.

Recolonisation of previously colonised peoples is the latest method by which governments and corporations achieve their ends. I had hoped that once the Howard government was out, that such activities would come to an end. Howard and his ministers specialised in recolonisation strategies.

Women and children are easy targets for such policies and I call on all government politicians to refuse to participate in giving a facelift to Howard government practices. It may look better, but the underlying structures will benefit not Indigenous people but corporatised governments and their profitmongering mates.

In the last month we have seen where this kind of thinking takes us.

There are times when human rights must be made subservient to other more urgent human needs. The shameful situation in many NT and WA outstations is one such example when the physical and emotional safety of women and children takes precedence over more esoteric rights.
Pilger's attitude is typical of people who claim to see the problems clearly but can only come up with solutions that have been tried for 30 years and been shown to fail almost totally.
Pilger should live in one of these communities to discover the fear that the withdrawal of the intervention would bring to the people who live there.
We must fix the immediate problems via a solution like the intervention and then we can put in place practical, work-creating solutions to the long term problems as suggested by people like Noel Pearson.
Pilger's article is typical of someone living in a rich urban environment far from the real world of the outstations: full of empty rhetoric and lacking understanding and practical solutions.

Ah, another tidbit of semi-hysterical conspiracy-mongering by our own world class expert on moralistic posturing.

Jenny Macklin, of course, has never said she will 'withdraw government support from remote communities that are “economically unviable”.'

NT Land Rights were not granted 'almost by accident': the legislation was passed by Malcolm Fraser's Liberal National Government, with the support of Whitlam's Labor Opposition, after a long struggle by Aboriginal activists (led by Marcia Langton) and their supporters across all sections of Australian society, despite strong opposition by sections of the pastoral and mining industries.

Pilger seizes on one untruthful crumb to provide evidence for his current conspiracy theory: '“The land grab of Aboriginal tribal land has nothing to do with child sexual abuse,” says the Australian scientist Helen Caldicott, “but all to do with open slather uranium mining and converting the Northern Territory to a global nuclear dump”.'

Well, hells bells, Johnny Pilger is really outdoing himself here.

For starters, Helen Caldicott is an anti-nuclear activist GP, and long term conspiracy theorist herself, not some kind of independent expert scientist of international repute.

What Helen imagines as a "land grab" is in simple fact actually an important necessary attempt to amend a flaw in the NT Land Rights Act 1976. This amendment is enabling governments (Commonwealth & NT) to secure these very small areas (less than 1% of Aboriginal land in the NT) for the common wellbeing of the residents of the patches of land on which Aboriginal communities are built, by placing them under leases (with compensation going to the traditional owners).

This is so that these town areas can be better developed with $700 million worth of housing and essential services for the wellbeing of all the (overwhelmingly Aboriginal) residents - not so that they can be closed down or mined for uranium or used as nuclear waste dumps.

How this socially responsible move can be characterised as a land grab on behalf of yankee nuclear interests is completely beyond my comprehension.

I would suggest that Mr Pilger try to stick to topics about which he actually knows something worth saying.

This causes me to wonder what the Minister thinks of Home Education:

From:
http://www.jennymacklin.fahcsia.gov.au/internet/jennymacklin.nsf/content/nter_anniversary_21jun2008.htm

Transcripts
First anniversary of the Northern Territory Emergency Response
21/06/2008

Darwin

E & O E - PROOF ONLY

Macklin: Thanks everyone for being here today.

(snip to last three paragraphs)

Journalist: Would you envisage that people might be forcibly removed from communities deemed unviable?

Macklin: I think this idea of forcibly removing anyone is way off the mark. I think what's important to recognise - if I go back to the principles, what's important is to make sure that children go to school. What's important is that parents have the capacity and the opportunity to get a job. They're the principles that I'd be working towards.

Journalist: [Indistinct] people might not want to leave. So what would happen there?

Macklin: I think the critical thing is to make it clear that the law is very, very clear on this issue. Children must go to school. Every child in Australia has to go to school. There's a responsibility in each state and territory to make sure that's enforced and just yesterday we've introduced a new mechanism to make sure that children go to school. Parents have a responsibility to make sure that their children go to school and if they don't take the responsibility seriously, their welfare payments will be suspended until they get them to school. I think these are the critical ways to look at this issue. Make sure the children go to school, make sure the parents are able to get work, and then we'll see some improvements in people's lives.

'The land grab I can't comment on' although if Mr Pilger is as dishonest about this as he is aboriginal sexual abuse I have my doubt. Anyone who has worked in communities in WA will confirm that child sexual abuse is at horrendous rates. You can be sure that suicide is a lot more about internal abuse than 'land grabs'. Whilst it could be argued strongly that mining has done damage to the environment it has and is also pouring large truck loads of money into aboriginal communities (much of it squandered). Mr Pilger's own view of history prevents him from having any constructive solutions to child sexual abuse. The view that the problem will just go away if we ignore it or say 'sorry' is one that has been held for 50 years and we have gone backwoods.