Dear Maracas1
Don't fall for all the anti-Intervention hype.

By no means have all the Brough / Macklin policies failed to "provide respite for remote Aboriginal Communities after more than two years": there are many benefits accruing from it - better stores that are better managed, far less failure to thrive amongst small children, far better management of household budgets leading to less debt and stress, family life functioning much better in most cases, greatly improved health services, improvements to education and policing.

You seem to be ignorant of the fact that the changes to "Community Council development" have come about not because of the Intervention, but rather as a result of the NT Government's changes to the Local Government Act, with its creation of Shires that took over the functions and property of the old Community Councils. Whether this is good or not, it is not of Brough and Macklin's doing.

CDEPs were generally not "working programs" to any great extent, but most of them are still operating anyway, albeit under different management.
Not many people have gone "back on the dole", some have transferred to waged work, but most are still on CDEP. Nor do Centrelink figures support your contention that "there been a major migration to centres such as Alice Springs and Katherine."

The urban myth about the Intervention causing "people having to hire taxi's to get into town to purchase their groceries" ignores the fact that this pertains to only a very small number of people, and was the case for just about all these people before the Intervention. For the great majority of people there is now far more choice and value for money available in most community stores since the Intervention measures were implemented, as well as a much improved ability to retain money for shopping in the bigger centres. You see many more people from remote communities shopping in Woolies, Coles and K-Mart in the major centres these days, but less in the bottleshops. Just open your eyes and your mind a bit, and have a bit of a gander at reality.

Good piece JT,

Col, give your right/ left hand a rest and read this: http://slackbastard.anarchobase.com/?p=279

Yeah - let's do away with all this racial discrimination and just deal with all Australians on an equal footing - under law and Centrelink. No special payments, no 'cultural' allowances, just the same old for everyone.
That would make sense. Those who are born here can just get on with life and those who have come here and expect to live by a different set of rules can go back to where they came from.

Problem solved!

Thanks for the article John, it is good to see somebody actually provide references. I would agree the the current Labor government has not exactly lived up to expectations on Aboriginal affairs, but what exactly is the end game that will end what is clearly a huge divide between indigenous and non-indigenous society? The reference to the Namibian experiment would suggest that self determination is the solution, but in light of the outcomes of Whitlam era policies and ATSIC, this does not appear to be true.

What troubles me about trying to formulate effective policy is that even if self determination was successful and Aboriginal people were able to carry on their culture and lifestyle from pre-European settlement days, the health and life opportunity outcomes would likely be lower than that of western society. This may sound very culturally biased but I suspect that nomadic living in a country as harsh as Australia is not going to produce outcomes on par with contemporary standards. I agree that the suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act should be reversed and policy applied in a uniform and colour blind fashion, but then I could then be accused of trying to implement assimilation. What do you do?

I am keenly interested in Aboriginal affairs, but this is my first foray into contributing to the discussion. I trust that the fellow OLO contributors will treat my contribution with the usual harsh working over so that I can engage and refine my ideas.

Rex

Before you can begin a problem solving, you must first determine which people can interact into a mixed society. To say all can intergrate is not possable.
You may end up with 2 or 3 different groups with in the same cultural bounds.
There are some that want to help themselves and there are some that would be better served by living the traditional lifestyle elsewhere.
Has any one actually asked these people what they want.
This has got nothing to do with coulture.
This is about those who want to integrate, work, and live as a human being with running water and power.
A blanket job lot type of help can never work.
Coulture is not a must have lifestyle. Any one can live 2 lifestyles if you want to.
As soon as you get a crossbreeding of coultures it is a completely different story.
To refer to people with a hint of their former coulture as being their major nationality should be abolished.
This is only a tool for handouts when the opertunities arise.

I can't understand why Indigenous people aren't given self determination - they couldn't do a worse job than white people have.