First published on the ABC website

Thousands of people from around the country are expected to march on Parliament House in Canberra tomorrow to protest against the Commonwealth's Indigenous intervention in the Northern Territory.

The rally has been organised by Aboriginal leaders to coincide with the sitting of the new Parliament and Wednesday's apology to the Stolen Generations.

Barbara Shaw from the Alice Springs' Intervention Rollback Working Group says they will meet at the Tent Embassy outside Old Parliament House before marching up the lawns to Parliament House.

She says there is a lot of community support for the intervention to be overturned.

"We have other working groups around in major cities and they've all travelled here to meet us at the Tent Embassy ....and they've showed us a lot of support," she said.

Ms Shaw is a resident of the Mount Nancy Town Camp in the Northern Territory which is a prescribed area under the Commonwealth intervention.

She says one of the key issue is the quarantining of welfare payments, where half of people's payments are isolated for essential services like food and rent.

"No one needs to be told how to spend their money," she said.

"There is a lot of responsible people in our prescribed areas now up in the Northern Territory that do look after their children, that do spend their money the right way.

"Our men and women don't want to be paid in rations like the old days.

"A lot of the old people back home say that the intervention is just rolling back our people, because they've lived this life before and now the next generation has to live through it again."

Ms Shaw says they are also calling for the return of CDEP (Community Development Employment Projects).

The Federal Government abolished about 8,000 CDEP jobs across the Territory as part of its intervention.

A few thousand so-called 'real jobs' were created but the rest of the CDEP workforce was moved to Work for Dole or training programs.

Rehabilitation resources

Ms Shaw says the Federal Government needs to instead focus on resourcing, rehabilitation and health facilities.

"Especially with the hospitals and clinics out bush, we need rehabilitation centres out bush and stuff like that," she said.

"Once you turn the tap off you get a lot of other problems, you get all those health problems that follow.

"I know that there is a problem with alcohol in the Northern Territory and it's Australia wide and world wide - there's no proper fix solution for alcoholism."

Ms Shaw says people in remote communities are still drinking, despite the intervention.

"With the income management it's not stopping people from drinking, there's still people drinking out there," she said.

"You've got people who fought for this country that live on prescribed areas....you've got old people who worked for two bob on a cattle station.....people are old enough to make their own choices.

"Our choice now is to stop this intervention."

Political attention

Ms Shaw says she hopes the rally will grab the attention of politicians.

"We're sick of having consultations with people, we're sick of waiting for them to come back with answers," she said.

"So we got sick of it and jumped on a bus and asked for the rest of Australia to give funding and help support us in travelling and accommodating our people down here.

"It's been a worthwhile trip and hopefully it won't fall on deaf ears as we speak at the rally."