George Newhouse, The Australian

Barack Obama's inauguration speech reminds us how far the US has come from
the stain of segregation and racial discrimination.

How insulting, more than 40 years after racist laws were repealed in the US, that the Northern Territory intervention laws have had the effect of forcing Aboriginal Australians into segregated queues in Centrelink and in some supermarkets and shops in the NT.

Recent complaints by indigenous Australians about breaches of human rights have been dismissed by our leaders, but there are good reasons why Barbara Shaw's protest to the UN and Peter Yu's critical review of the racist NT intervention laws should sound a warning to our leaders that the intervention has passed its use-by date.

On the anniversary of the apology critics of its symbolic power suggested that it had not achieved anything. I disagree. The apology gave the federal Government the opportunity to build bridges and reconcile with indigenous Australians, but anyone living in the NT knows that after 18 months the intervention has run for too long and achieved too little for the enormous costs involved.

That news would come as no surprise to those who followed the debate. The Howard government made it clear that the intervention was not a solution to indigenous poverty or disastrous health and education outcomes. It was cleverly touted as an urgent response to the scourge of Aboriginal child abuse.

A recent report by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare suggests that it isn't pedophilia but child neglect that is endemic in indigenous communities. Anyone who works in welfare knows that the responses to the two problems are quite different. You can't teach a mother or father to parent at the point of a gun, or even with high-handed chequebook diplomacy.

Time has proved the intervention to be a distraction from far more serious challenges facing indigenous communities. It has relieved the pressure on the federal Government to take long-term action and shifts blame to the victims by reinforcing negative stereotypes of Aboriginal men as drunkards, wife-beaters and pedophiles.

Most indigenous Australians affected by the intervention complain that there is very little support or capacity building going on in Aboriginal communities. It is galling to them that much of the money earmarked for improving their welfare is paid to newly appointed non-indigenous bureaucrats or contractors from outside communities.

But the worst thing about the intervention is that it profoundly undermined the relationship between Northern Territory Aborigines and the federal Government, resulting in distrust, hostility and suspicion.

It's time for an end to the first phase of the intervention, not just because it is overtly racist but because it isn't achieving real improvements on the ground. The federal Government must explain and implement the next phase of the intervention rather than just extend "stabilisation". If they don't they will bear the awful price of continued inaction. I'm not talking about a stream of announcements about funding initiatives that are never implemented or take the form of payments to government administrators and contractors.

To make real inroads in alleviating indigenous poverty, the federal Government needs to bring to an end the racially discriminatory aspects of the intervention and engage with indigenous Australians at a grassroots level, community by community.

We might have been much further down the track if, following the apology, each community had developed its own action plan, supported by government, that directed funding to priority needs and identified individuals for training and employment. That would ensure that the benefits of government funding created sustainable change. A co-operative approach is far more likely to leave a lasting legacy of housing, infrastructure, primary healthcare facilities, employment, training, community capacity, support for local economies and growth than the enforced
policies of the intervention.

George Newhouse acted for the Mutitjulu community against the federal Government.