Akashma Online News

Just over five years ago, on 21 June 2007, Australia’s then prime min­is­ter John Howard announced that rates of child sex abuse in the country’s North­ern Ter­rit­ory abori­ginal com­munit­ies were so high that they con­sti­tuted a national emer­gency. Draw­ing on the fed­eral government’s con­sti­tu­tional power to over­ride Ter­rit­ory legis­la­tion, and sus­pend­ing Australia’s Racial Dis­crim­in­a­tion Act 1975, Howard led the fed­eral gov­ern­ment in rush­ing through the North­ern Ter­rit­ory National Emer­gency Response Act 2007.  Pushed through par­lia­ment in less than four weeks, there was an almost total lack of con­sulta­tion with the abori­ginal com­munit­ies that were to be affected.

The Act and its asso­ci­ated amend­ing legis­la­tion, which quickly became known as ‘the inter­ven­tion’, intro­duced a range of racist and highly pater­nal­istic meas­ures to ‘pre­scribed areas’ of the North­ern Ter­rit­ory, all of which were abori­ginal com­munit­ies.

Those meas­ures included a total ban on the pos­ses­sion and con­sump­tion of alco­hol,

[1] com­puls­ory income man­age­ment for all wel­fare recip­i­ents (ration cards),

[2] com­puls­ory install­a­tion of anti-​​pornography fil­ters on all pub­lic com­puters as well as oblig­at­ory record-​​keeping of all com­puter users,

[3] the cut­ting back of the per­mit sys­tem for entry onto abori­ginal land,

[4] the fed­eral gov­ern­ment takeover of local ser­vices and com­munity stores as well as a min­is­terial power to sus­pend all elec­ted Councillors,

[5] the ban on North­ern Ter­rit­ory courts from tak­ing cus­tom­ary law into account when deal­ing with bail applic­a­tions and sen­ten­cing,

[6] and com­puls­ory rent-​​free five year leases of abori­ginal land to the fed­eral gov­ern­ment.

[7] As an emer­gency piece of legis­la­tion the Act had a sun­set clause of five years.

The inter­ven­tion was heav­ily cri­ti­cized by a wide range of NGOs, act­iv­ist groups, and by UN Spe­cial Rap­porteour on the Situ­ation of Human Rights and Fun­da­mental Freedoms of Indi­gen­ous People James Anaya.

[8] Des­pite the increased police powers of sur­veil­lance and arrest, the gov­ern­ment failed to uncover any evid­ence that rates of child sex abuse in the North­ern Ter­rit­ory were in fact very dif­fer­ent from rates of child sex abuse in other Aus­tralian jur­is­dic­tions.

[9] Yet even with the government’s own stat­ist­ics show­ing that there was no ‘national emer­gency’ con­cern­ing child sex abuse in the pre­scribed com­munit­ies, the emer­gency Act remained in force until it reached its five-​​year sun­set clause last month. The Act has essen­tially been replaced by the ten-​​year Stronger Futures in the North­ern Ter­rit­ory Act 2012, which came into force on 16 July (the day the 2007 Act ceased) and ensures the con­tinu­ation of most of the meas­ures begun under the 2007 Act.

The com­puls­ory leases of abori­ginal land to the gov­ern­ment met with sig­ni­fic­ant abori­ginal cri­tique and res­ist­ance, and were the only inter­ven­tion pro­vi­sions to be chal­lenged in Australia’s High and Fed­eral Courts (in Shaw v Min­is­ter for Fam­il­ies, Hous­ing, Com­munity Ser­vices and Indi­gen­ous Affairs [2009] FCA 1397 and Reg­gie Wur­rid­jal, Joy Garl­bin and the Baw­in­anga Abori­ginal Cor­por­a­tion v The Com­mon­wealth of Aus­tralia and The Arnhem Land Abori­ginal Trust [2009] HCA 2). The gov­ern­ment took out 64 com­puls­ory five-​​year leases around the Ter­rit­ory in 2007. Its reas­ons for want­ing the leases were always ambigu­ous, gen­er­ally com­ing back to a need for ‘secur­ity of ten­ure’ while the gov­ern­ment brought phys­ical improve­ments and provided ser­vices to these areas.

Whether the gov­ern­ment really needed such secur­ity in order to provide essen­tial ser­vices is dubi­ous con­sid­er­ing that the gov­ern­ment does not demand leases of non-​​aboriginal res­id­en­tial areas in order to provide them with run­ning water, health clin­ics and other ser­vices, but at any rate – as the video below shows – stand­ards of liv­ing, hous­ing con­di­tions and social ser­vices have not sig­ni­fic­antly improved in the Territory’s pre­scribed areas over the past five years, and has in some places become worse. Most of the government’s com­puls­ory five-​​year leases expired on August 17, and although 34 of the 64 affected com­munit­ies have already ‘vol­un­tar­ily’ agreed to grant the gov­ern­ment new 40-​​year leases, the com­munity of Amoonguna is refus­ing to sign any fur­ther leases, and has writ­ten to the gov­ern­ment ask­ing it to remove all its work­ers by the end of this month or face charges of tres­pass. The gov­ern­ment is yet to respond.

[1] North­ern Ter­rit­ory Emer­gency Response Act 2007 (Cth), s12.

[2] As above, s126.

[3] As above,Part 3.

[4] Fam­il­ies, Com­munity Ser­vices and Indi­gen­ous Affairs and Other Legis­la­tion Amend­ment (North­ern Ter­rit­ory Emer­gency Response and Other Meas­ures) Act 2007 (Cth), Sched­ule 4.

[5] North­ern Ter­rit­ory Emer­gency Response Act 2007 (Cth), Part 5, Divi­sion 4; Part 7.

[6] As above, ss90, 91.

[7] As above, Part 4, Divi­sion 1.

[8] James Anaya, ‘Obser­va­tions on the North­ern Ter­rit­ory Emer­gency Response in Aus­tralia’ United Nations Spe­cial Rap­por­teur on the situ­ation of human rights and fun­da­mental freedoms of indi­gen­ous people (2010).

[9] Bar­bara A. West and Frances T. Murphy, A Brief His­tory of Aus­tralia (Infobase Pub­lish­ing, New York 2010) 232; Hous­ing Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment Depart­ment of Fam­il­ies, Com­munity Ser­vices and Indi­gen­ous Affairs, ‘Clos­ing the Gap: Mon­it­or­ing Report July — Decem­ber 2010′ Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment Depart­ment of Fam­il­ies, Hous­ing, Com­munity Ser­vices and Indi­gen­ous Affairs (2010). Sec­tion 6.7.