[csaa-forum] Howard's New Tampa - Aboriginal Children Overboard

[Stephen Muecke]

> Below is the text of an article by Jennifer Martiniello which will be
> forwarded to major newspapers in Australia. Please pass on to your
> networks. Jennifer Martiniello is a writer and academic of Arrernte,
> Chinese and Anglo descent. She is a former Deputy Chair of the
> Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander Arts Board of the Australia
> Council for the Arts, and a current member of the Advisory Board of
> the Australian Centre for Indigenous History at the ANU.
>
> Howard's New Tampa - Aboriginal Children Overboard
> Howard's new Tampa children overboard are our Aboriginal children.
> The Little Children are Sacred report does not advocate physically
> and psychologically invasive examinations of Aboriginal children,
> which could only be carried out anally and vaginally. It does not
> recommend scrapping the permit system to enter Aboriginal lands, nor
> does it recommend taking over Aboriginal 'towns' by enforced leases.
> These latter two points in the Howard scheme hide the true reason for
> the Federal Government's use of the latest report for blatant
> political opportunism.
>
> It has been an openly stated agenda that Howard wants to move
> Aboriginal people off their lands, and has made recent attempts to
> buy off Aboriginal people by offering them millions for agreeing to
> lease their lands to the Federal Government, e.g. Tiwi Islands and
> Tangentyere in Alice Springs. There was also the statement by the
> Federal Government that it could not continue (?!) to provide
> essential services to remote communities, which raised an uproar of
> responses in the press. The focus on the sexual abuse of children is
> guaranteed to evoke the most emotive responses, and therefore command
> attention, just like the manipulation of the Tampa situation. But
> while the attention of the media and the public is being emotionally
> coerced, what is being sneaked in under the covers?
>
> Two issues specifically - mining companies have applied for more
> exploration permits in the Northern Territory, the Jabiluka uranium
> mining operations at Kakadu have already hit the media because of the
> mining company's applications to the Government to significantly
> expand its operations, including establishing new mines at Coronation
> Hill, and another critical issue - nuclear waste. The Howard
> Government has already mooted that nuclear waste should be dumped in
> the Northern Territory, on Aboriginal lands. Aboriginal traditional
> owners are absolutely opposed to this. We have a long history of
> deaths and illness from radiation, from the atomic tests at Woomera
> in the 1950s to the current high incidences of carcinomas in the
> community at Kakadu near the Jabiluka site. The main obstacle to the
> Federal Government's desired expansion of mining operations in the
> Northern Territory and nuclear waste dumping is, of course, the
> Aboriginal people who have occupancy of, and rights under the common
> law to, their traditional lands.
>
> Following the stages of the Howard Government's usual modus operandi
> (defund, blame, eliminate), defunding of critical programs for remote
> Aboriginal community projects began in July 2004, with coerced
> changes to funding contracts, and monies for critically needed youth
> and health programs in remote areas being the first dollars to go.
> Take Mutitjulu for example, which was notoriously profiled by the
> ABC's Nightline program. I say notorious because one of Senator Mal
> Brough's personal staffers was the so-called ex-youth worker
> interviewed on that program, and the content of that interview was
> laden with myths and mistruths. The staffer in question failed to
> appear when summoned before a Senate inquiry to explain and the
> Senator's office is yet to issue a statement. When the community
> lodged a formal protest to Government, it was raided and their
> computers seized. But the program did show the effects of the Howard
> Government defunding of essential programs on that community, in
> particular the youth centre and health centre. The people at
> Mutitjulu also just happen to be the traditional owners of Uluru, one
> of this country's most lucrative tourist attractions. The Howard
> Government would not like us to ask who benefits by the people of
> Mutitjulu being forced off their community. Under the amendments to
> Native Title made by the Howard Government, once Aboriginal people
> have left their traditional lands, forcibly or otherwise, their
> rights under the common law that every other Australian enjoys over
> their land are significantly impaired.
>
> Progressive defunding of Aboriginal art centres has also begun, with
> a range of community art centres not having their funding renewed by
> DCITA in July 2005 and 2006 in the Northern Territory, from
> communities in Arnhemland to mid and southern Territory communities.
> The art production facilitated by those Aboriginal art centres are
> the only means through which members of those communities can
> actually earn a living, as opposed to being on welfare. But then,
> dependent people are easier to control by means of that dependency.
> The Howard Government's failed Shared Responsibility Agreements
> (SRAs) have also been the catalyst for further blame shifting and
> progressive defunding, take Wadeye for example.
>
> Our Aboriginal communities are being squeezed further into
> dysfunction and disenfranchisement by carefully targeted political
> engineering, the systemic and ruthless roll-out of a planned agenda.
> It is no accident that Howard's scheme to address what he calls the
> urgency of the Little Children are Sacred report's 97 recommendations
> was trotted out so very quickly, and addresses so very few of those
> recommendations. It is sheer political opportunism to advance an
> already in motion agenda, and to score points in an election year.
> After all, The Little Children are Sacred report is not the first of
> such reports, nor are its findings and recommendations new. The
> Federal Government has had the 1989, 1991, 1993, 1997 and 2002
> reports gathering dust and deliberate inaction on its shelves.
> Perhaps Mr Howard has been saving them up for a rainy election year?
> And of course Mr Howard's scheme targets only Aboriginal communities,
> despite the fact that the findings specifically state that non-
> Aboriginal men, that is, white men, are a significant proportion of
> the offenders, who are black-marketeering in petrol and alcohol to
> gain access to Aboriginal children. What measures is the Howard
> Government going to take about non-Aboriginal sex offenders,
> pornographers, substance traffickers and the like? Nothing according
> to the measures announced, but then, they're not Aboriginal and they
> don't live on the Aboriginal communities where their victims live.
>
> So who are the real victims here, the silenced victims of John
> Howard's scheme? Aboriginal children, of course, who will be subject
> to physically and psychologically invasive medical examinations,
> irrespective of their home and family circumstances, and who will
> deal with the mental and emotional fall-out from that? Aboriginal
> men, too, who become the silenced scapegoats, painted by default by
> John Howard as all being drunken, child-raping monsters. Perhaps the
> fact that almost every picture shown of Aboriginal men in the media
> these days shows them drunk, with a slab, cask or bottle under their
> arms leads Mr Howard to expect that one to pass unchallenged,
> irrespective of the fact that statistics show that only 15% of
> Aboriginal people drink alcohol, socially or otherwise, compared to
> around 87% of non-Aboriginal Australians. The greater majority of
> Aboriginal men are good, decent people. Perhaps the media would like
> to rethink its portrayals of Aboriginal men? How about some photos of
> the other alcoholics, you know, the white ones. There's more of them.
>
> And what of our communities? The Howard Government also hasn't
> mentioned that the majority of Aboriginal communities in the Northern
> Territory are already dry communities, decided and enforced by those
> communities. But then that would spoil the picture Mr Howard wants to
> paint of our Aboriginal communities. Other large communities, such as
> Daly River, have controlled the situation by only having alcohol
> available from the community's club and enforce a strict four can
> limit. Also forgotten in the current politically opportunistic furore
> is the fact that Aboriginal communities around Tennant Creek and
> Katherine have been lobbying Governments and town councils for
> decades to restrict the sale of alcohol on Thursdays, when Aboriginal
> community people come to town for supplies. So far their pleas have
> been rejected. Nothing in Mr Howard's plan to facilitate that,
> either. Or about the control of alcohol when those people, once
> forced off the communities into the towns, bring their problems with
> them, child abuse or alcoholism and all the rest. Of course that
> would make access to Aboriginal children a lot easier for white
> offenders, they won't have to go so far to find a victim.
>
> One last word on focus of attention. In the famous Redfern Address,
> the then Prime Minister, Paul Keating asked perhaps the most
> important question for all Australians to consider. He said 'We
> failed to ask the most basic of questions. We failed to ask - What if
> this were done to us?'  What if this were done to us - to Mr and Mrs
> Average Australian, to our schools, youth centres, health centres,
> access to medical care, communities, homes, children, grandchildren?
> After all, current national health reports from a wide range of
> health organisations name sexual abuse of non-Indigenous Australian
> children as a crisis area in need of urgent attention. And the
> numbers of victims are higher. National reports into mainstream
> domestic violence, alcohol and substance abuse also call for urgent
> action, again the issues are at crisis level, and the numbers of
> victims and abusers are far higher than in the Little Children are
> Sacred report. None of the recommendations in all of those hundreds
> of national health reports recommend compulsory sexual health tests
> for every Australian child under sixteen. Not one of them recommends
> that a viable solution is closing down youth and health programs, in
> fact they all advocate that more are needed. None recommend that the
> victims' or the offenders' communities and homes should be
> surrendered to the Federal Government and put under compulsory lease
> agreements, and none advocate processes which would lead to either
> the victims or the abusers losing their rights under common law to
> their property as measure to control or remedy the occurrence of
> abuse. Would the Howard Government even dare to contemplate such as
> that? I think not. It would be un-Australian, and the Government it
> would expect immediate legal repercussions on the grounds of
> impairment of human rights, extinguishment of rights under common
> law, discrimination, and a raft of other constitutional issues.
> Besides, Mr and Mrs Average Australian don't, for the most part, live
> on top of uranium and mineral deposits or future nuclear waste dumps.
>
> But seriously, the most critical question for all Australians to ask
> themselves in the lead up to this year's Federal Election is just
> that - What if it were done to us? With full acknowledgment of what
> has already been done to workers, trade unions, student unions,
> public primary, secondary and tertiary education, elderly care,
> palliative care, medicare, crisis health care, nurses, teachers,
> multicultural affairs, migrant groups, women, child care, small
> businesses and artsworkers, among the many, through the exercise of
> policies of social engineering and fear, your answer at the polling
> booth may just determine whether it will be done to you, or continue
> to be done to you. As reported in the Sydney Morning Herald 25th
> June, the Howard Government last week used the military to seize
> control of 60 Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory, which
> are now under military occupation. This is not Israel and Palestine.
> The Northern Territory is not Gaza or the West Bank. This is
> Australia - but is it the Australia you thought you lived in? Walk in
> our shoes, Aboriginal Australia's, and ask yourselves, what would it
> be like to have this done to us? And then, walk with us.
>
> Jennifer Martiniello
>
> Warning:
> This email may contain creative spelling!
>
> Jennifer Martiniello
> e: kemarre at optusnet.com.au
> m: 0423629470
> w: http://www.kemarrearts.com.au
>
>
> "There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world: and
> that is, an idea whose time has come".
> Victor Hugo.
>
>
>
>

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