Opinion piece by Janet Hunt, President of ANTaR. First published in the Canberra Times, 29 October 2009

One year ago the Federal Government received the final report of the Northern Territory Emergency Response Review Panel. It concluded “the intervention diminished its own effectiveness through its failure to engage constructively with the Aboriginal people it intended to help”.

ANTaR is launching its "A Better Way" campaign today. The campaign aims to highlight that there is a better way to work with Aboriginal people than the coercive and stigmatising approaches still continuing under the Northern Territory Emergency Response (NTER) and related Aboriginal policies.

One year ago the Rudd Government's independent review recommended that governments must genuinely and respectfully engage with Aboriginal people to find solutions to child abuse and related community problems. Yet, punitive and discriminatory measures remain in place for the 73 prescribed Aboriginal communities.

ANTaR (Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation) is launching a campaign to urge supporters to write to the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) about critical weaknesses in its $4.6 billion 'closing the gap on Indigenous disadvantage' strategy.

ANTaR National Director, David Cooper, said that key social determinants - the major contributors to Indigenous health inequality and disadvantage - have been overlooked in COAG's strategy.