Government, the Opposition and minor parties should unanimously support the recommendations of the Northern Territory Emergency Response (NTER) review report, according to Indigenous rights organisation, ANTaR.

ANTaR National Director, Gary Highland said the report, written by Aboriginal leaders, Peter Yu and Marcia Ella Duncan and former senior public servant, Bill Gray AM, was comprehensive and balanced and provided a blueprint for improving the NTER.

ANTaR has welcomed this afternoon’s announcement of the Northern Territory Emergency Response Review Board by Indigenous Affairs Minister, Jenny Macklin.

ANTaR National Director, Gary Highland said Western Australian Aboriginal leader, Peter Yu was a wise choice to head up the review.

First published in The Australian

THE Northern Territory Government has split over the commonwealth's intervention in remote communities after an Aboriginal MP threw her support behind the reforms and criticised "urbanised saviours" in the indigenous community who had condemned the dramatic measures.

Labor backbencher Alison Anderson, who represents the central Australian electorate of Macdonnell, told The Australian yesterday the intervention was targeted at indigenous people who were "desperately in need of help". The former Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander commissioner was responding to comments from her Labor colleague, Territory Community Services Minister Marion Scrymgour, who on Tuesday attacked the reforms as a "vicious new McCarthyism".