ALP strangles Aboriginal communities for land

By Hamish Chitts

Recent reports and revelations have conclusively shown that the Rudd Labor government is using the Northern Territory Emergency Response (NTER) policy to dispossess Aboriginal people. Under the Australian government’s “emergency protection measures”, the situation for Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory has become worse. The government and the corporate media then blame Aboriginal culture for the dire situation, rather than the government’s own systemic neglect of the provision of adequate services, and the resulting extreme poverty of Aboriginal communities.

Gap widening
At the Council of Australian Governments meeting in Darwin on July 2, Indigenous affairs minister Jenny Macklin released a report titled Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage. The report, compiled every two years by the Productivity Commission, measures 50 economic and social indicators of disadvantage between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians. The latest report found no improvement in 80% of the indicators for Aboriginal people. They live in greater poverty and have poorer housing, poorer education and poorer employment prospects. Aboriginal people die on average 17 years younger than non-Aboriginal Australians. Aboriginal children under four years die at three times the rate of other Australian children.

More Aboriginal people in the NT are being imprisoned. Aboriginal people are 13 times as likely to end up in jail as non-Indigenous people. The imprisonment rate for Indigenous women and men has increased by 46% and 27% respectively since 2000. These increased rates not only reflect a racist system in which police more readily target Aboriginal people, and judges more often impose prison sentences on Aboriginal people. It is also due to Aboriginal people in the NT being jailed for minor offences under new NTER laws that apply only to Aboriginal people living in town camps or remote communities.

Capitalist politicians and the corporate media have justified the racially targeted NTER laws by citing high rates of substance abuse, violence and child abuse. These are realities in many remote Aboriginal communities, but are not due to some cultural or genetic quirk. All around the world and in pockets of Australian cities, the same social problems at similar rates can be found among non-Aboriginal people. Contributing factors include poverty, a sense of hopelessness, the sexist values of capitalist society and higher than average rates of imprisonment, especially when any of these factors are combined with overcrowded housing.

Overcrowding
In Darwin, NT Shelter executive officer Toni Vine-Bromley told ABC News on July 5, “Overcrowding creates conflict and family dysfunction and all those kind of problems. It also impacts on people’s health, their ability to study or get an education, or get food in the fridge and all those things that are really what you would just normally take for granted.”

The 2004-05 National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Survey estimated that 127,546 Aboriginal people aged 18 years and over lived in overcrowded households (one or more additional bedroom required). This accounted for 27% of all Aboriginal people aged 18 years and over. There were around 1 million other Australians living in overcrowded households in 2004-05, 5% of all other persons aged 18 years and over. Approximately 14% of Aboriginal people were living in households that required two or more additional bedrooms, compared to 1% of other people. The same survey found the NT had the highest proportion of Aboriginal people aged 18 years and over living in overcrowded households (65%).

Most experts studying Aboriginal disadvantage agree that the main problem in remote Aboriginal communities and town camps is overcrowded and inadequate housing. Yet the July 4 Australian revealed that not one of the hundreds of new houses promised in 2007 for remote communities has been built. NT Aboriginal affairs minister Alison Anderson revealed on July 23 that only 30% of the $672 million Strategic Indigenous Housing and Infrastructure Program would go to building houses. She told the Australian: “It was quite openly told to us that there will be 15 per cent administrative costs going to government, 40 per cent for the alliance (building) partners, and another 15 per cent for indirect costs, whatever that is, that leaves 30 per cent that will hit the ground.”

Moreover, the federal and NT governments have refused to offer new housing or services unless Aboriginal people sign 40- to 99-year leases handing their land to both governments. If there were genuine concern about Aboriginal poverty, these governments would fix housing in communities that governments have neglected for decades, without any demands. But the priority of these capitalist governments is the theft of Aboriginal land.

Refusal to consult
The July 6 National Indigenous Times reported on leaked documents revealing that Macklin was advised by her department against formally consulting with Aboriginal people over the compulsory acquisition of their land because it would be “too expensive”, would tie up too many resources and was unlikely to get the outcome the government wanted. The advice was “read, agreed and noted” by Macklin on March 26, just one week before the government endorsed the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Some of the documents focus on the NTER legislation and a much-publicised promise by Macklin to amend the laws to comply with the federal Racial Discrimination Act (RDA). The NTER legislation remains the only federal law exempt from the RDA, allowing a host of racially discriminatory government actions, including the compulsory acquisition of Aboriginal land. When the NTER began, the federal government said it was compulsorily acquiring the land to prevent any delay in the provision of housing. Macklin was also warned that if she brought the NTER legislation under the RDA, there was a “significant risk” the compulsory acquisition of Aboriginal land would not survive a court challenge.

The federal government is using the threat of acquisition without compensation to push Aboriginal communities to sign the leases. Those communities that were able to resist the pressure may be able to challenge compulsory acquisition of their land when the NTER laws are made no longer exempt from the RDA in either September or October. However, Macklin has been told by government solicitors that “some minor legislative amendments” to the NTER act will reduce the risk of court challenges.

The pro-capitalist Rudd government hasn’t built houses in remote Aboriginal communities in over two years with a budget of nearly $700 million. Compare this failure with socialist Cuba, a poor Third World country, and how it is meeting its housing problems. Last year hurricanes hit Holguin and Las Tunas, two of Cuba’s eastern provinces, destroying many houses. In Holguin, 53% of the more than 124,000 houses affected have been rehabilitated or reconstructed. In Las Tunas, hurricanes Ike and Paloma damaged more than 80,000 homes, of which 32,000 have been totally restored. Cuba can do this because it assigns resources according to social need, not according to the profitability of capitalist businesses.


From Direct Action Sydney, Australia http://directaction.org.au/

Labor steps up racist NT land grab

By Hamish Chitts

After PM Kevin Rudd’s February 13 official apology to the Stolen Generations, media outlets around the world hailed him as a great humanitarian friend of Aboriginal people. That day’s New York Times reported that “Rudd opened a new chapter in Australia’s tortured relations with its indigenous peoples on Wednesday with a comprehensive and moving apology for past wrongs and a call for bipartisan action to improve the lives of Australia’s Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders.” In his official apology, Rudd spoke of creating a “future where this parliament resolves that the injustices of the past must never, never happen again.”

Rudd would make a great snake-oil seller because for all his lofty words over the past year, his government has begun the biggest and most coordinated attack on the rights of Aboriginal people since the Stolen Generations. Rudd and his modern “protector” of Aborigines, Jenny Macklin, assisted by state and territory governments, have put in place laws and policies that together can only mean one thing for Aboriginal people — cultural genocide.

In June 2007 the Howard Coalition government used the Little Children are Sacred report into child abuse in remote Northern Territory Aboriginal communities to invade these communities under what it called the Northern Territory Emergency Response (NTER). At the time, many saw it as just a stunt by an unpopular government looking for ways to boost its chances in the upcoming federal election. However, the Rudd Labor government has not only maintained the NTER, but also extended it.

The real intention of the NTER is the theft of more Aboriginal land through the destruction of Aboriginal culture and links to land where it is strongest. The size of the Aboriginal land holding in the NT is considerable — 45% of the land and 80% of the coastline. 70% of Aboriginal people in the NT live on native title land. Aborigines make up almost a third of the NT’s population. Outside of Darwin, Alice Springs, Katherine and Tennant Creek, 75.6% of NT residents are Aborigines. The first language for most people is an Aboriginal language. Many speak several Aboriginal languages before they learn English. Cultural and social practices continue to be overwhelmingly informed by traditions that predate European settlement.

The NTER measures apply to “prescribed areas”. These include all land held under the Aboriginal Land Rights Act (Northern Territory) 1976, all Aboriginal community living areas and all Aboriginal town camps — some 600,000 sq km. Prescribed areas encompass more than 500 Aboriginal communities, over 70% of Aboriginal people in the NT and directly affect 45,500 Aboriginal men, women and children.

To enable the NTER, the federal Racial Discrimination Act (1975) was explicitly suspended and the protections of anti-discrimination law in the NT were removed. Macklin has said the suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act for Aboriginal people in the NT will continue until at least June 2009. Under the NTER, racist measures have been implemented, such as the withholding of 50% of the social security payments of all Aboriginal people in the NT.

Instead of receiving regular social security payments, some 13,000 Aborigines receive store cards that dictate where they can shop and what they are able to buy. Some cards are only for Woolworths, others are for Coles. Therefore, purchases are limited to what these stores stock. Some communities literally rely on the irregular delivery of food parcels. Others have to travel hundreds of kilometers to get to their nominated store. Many can no longer budget, and have no money to attend funerals, ceremonies, or even buy Christmas presents.

A statement from women at a Prescribed Area People’s Alliance (PAPA) meeting in Alice Springs on September 29 said: “For old people the intervention is bringing up bad memories of the past, the old days, the ration days, the dog tag days and the mission days.”

The NTER is forcing Aboriginal people away from their traditional lands to already overcrowded town camps in Darwin, Alice Springs, Katherine and Tennant Creek. As part of the NTER, all Aboriginal land in the NT has been compulsorily acquired by the federal government for five years and instruments of local self-democracy like community councils have been replaced by government-appointed “business managers”.

None of the NTER measures have improved the lives of those it was claimed it would help. Even Rudd’s handpicked NTER review board reported in October that the “single most valuable resource that the NTER has lacked from its inception is the positive, willing participation of the people it was intended to help”. The September 29 women’s statement from PAPA also commented on the outcomes of over one year under the NTER: “There’s no new houses, schools or anything for communities. They’ve only built new houses for the new intervention staff. We had programs created by the community for our community. We wanted more support for them. Community programs have been taken away. They’ve taken away our night patrol, community bus and women’s centres.”

Apparently though for the Labor government and its corporate masters, these measures aren’t working quickly enough to remove Aboriginal people from their land, so land councils in prescribed areas are being pressured to sign leases ranging from 40-99 years giving control of land to the federal or NT governments. If they do not sign, then communities will not receive urgently needed houses and infrastructure that most white people would take for granted.

Macklin has threatened to withhold funding for new housing in the 19 Alice Springs town camps after the Tangentyere Council raised objections to the proposed leasing agreements. “It’s not just about giving the government security for money spent, it’s about establishing absolute clarity about who is responsible for the management of public housing in these communities”, she told the November 25 Melbourne Age. This marks a major departure from the self-management regime established 30 years ago under which all aspects of housing were controlled by Indigenous housing authorities and community councils.

In partnership, the federal and NT Labor governments have flagged not providing future funding to smaller and more remote communities, known as “outstations” or “homelands”, that they deem unviable. In an October 26 message, the Gumatj clan, at the MataMata Homeland in northeast Arnhem Land stated: “People out here on the homelands are both saddened and angry. However, they are defiant, that no matter what the government does, they will not leave their sacred lands and their law. The government will be condemning them to a life of extreme poverty. Is this ‘closing the gap’? Is this ‘reconciliation’? They call this a representative democracy. What a joke — what representation do my family have out here? What say do they have in deciding on legislation that directly affects them and their children and their property?”

NT education minister Marion Scrymgour has announced that Aboriginal languages cannot be used in NT classrooms, except for one hour a day in the afternoons. Most affected are nine bilingual schools across the NT where people do not speak English as a first language in some of the few places left in Australia where Indigenous languages are still spoken fluently in everyday life. The governments claim that this an effort to address poor educational outcomes in Aboriginal communities yet the fact that the bilingual schools have better results in English than the English-only remote schools shows that this is another attack on Aboriginal culture. This attack has been fully backed by the Rudd government. Acting PM Julie Gillard said on November 20: “For Indigenous Australia, English is the language of further learning and English is the language of work.”

Attempts to destroy Aboriginal culture assist land theft by trying to break the strong link Aboriginal culture has with the land and which ties Aboriginal people to the homelands. Under the laws of capitalist Australia, if Indigenous culture is lost, if Aborigines move into towns and stop living on or going to their traditional lands, then native title becomes extinct.

Governments are going to great measures to transform Aboriginal land into crown land. Under Rudd’s leadership, these latest attacks on Aboriginal people have been increased in the NT and extended to affect Aboriginal people in Queensland, Western Australia and South Australia. Labor is making these attacks because in recent years remote Aboriginal communities have been successful in opposing the establishment of new uranium mines and nuclear waste dumps.

With an expected increase in global use of nuclear power, the price of uranium has rapidly increased and the big mining companies have been pressuring Australian governments to allow the opening of more mines and the establishment of a nuclear waste dump. The forced or coopted loss of Aboriginal control of their land is an important step to achieving this.

From Direct Action, Sydney, Australia www.directaction.org.au

Australia’s Indigenous health shame

Hamish Chitts

On April 2 the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation and Oxfam Australia published Close the Gap, a report highlighting the shameful state of Indigenous health in Australia. The report ranked Australia as the worst at improving the health of indigenous people compared with other wealthy nations.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders die nearly 20 years younger than other Australians. This is in stark contrast to the US, Canada and New Zealand, where the life expectancy for indigenous people is approximately seven years less than the non-indigenous population. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander infant mortality is three times the rate of other Australians.

Nearly three times as many Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children die before the age of five than indigenous children in Canada. Infant mortality rates for Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders are more than 50% higher than for indigenous children in the US and New Zealand. These figures reinforce the findings of the 2003 United Nations Human Development Report, which found the proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians expected to live to the age of 65 is lower than for Third World nations like Bangladesh and Nigeria.

While spending on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health has increased, it hasn’t done so any faster than for the rest of the population, so the expenditure gap hasn’t narrowed. The federal government spends approximately $0.70 per capita on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s health for every $1 spent on the rest of the population. Executive director of Oxfam Australia Andrew Hewett said: “At what point do we stand up and start shouting? It’s scandalous that in a country as wealthy as Australia we cannot solve a health crisis affecting less than 3% of the population.”

The report argues that the poor levels of health in Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population can be reversed. Most of the diseases leading to premature death, hospitalisation and chronic disability are preventable if diagnosed early and treated with affordable medicines. Many of the poor health outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders are related to social and economic factors: diseases triggered by poverty; overcrowded housing; poor sanitation; lack of access to education; poor access to medical care for accurate diagnosis and treatment; and poor nutrition.

The report calls for government action, including:

•Improving access for Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islanders to culturally appropriate primary health care, and to a level commensurate with need;

•Increasing the number of health practitioners working within Aboriginal health settings, and further development and training of the Indigenous health work force;

•Improving the responsiveness of mainstream health services and programs to Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islander health needs;

•Greater targeting of maternal and child health and greater support for Indigenous-specific population programs for chronic and communicable disease;

•Increased funding and support for the building blocks of good health such as awareness and availability of nutrition, physical activity, fresh food, healthy lifestyles, and adequate housing;

•Setting national targets and benchmarks towards achieving healthy equality, by which progress can be closely monitored.

Aboriginal rights and prison reform campaigner Alex Gater told Green Left Weekly, “We have the worst health in Australia. My elders died of old age; now as an Anglican priest I’m burying too many Aboriginal people that are too young.” She added, “Governments have been promising to fix Aboriginal poverty and health for too long. Oppression and racism have kept us on the bottom rung unable to access decent health, education and legal services. We want action and we want it now.”

The report provides several examples of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health successes like the Nganampa Health Council. Operating on the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands in the far north-west of South Australia, this health service has a sustained national reputation for best practice clinical services, leading edge collaborative program research and development and for the collection of outcome data as a basis for ongoing evaluation.

It is controlled, owned and managed by the Anangu people, who are responsible for all key policy, resource allocation and staff appointment decisions. The director and clinic managers are Anangu and together they ensure that all 120 staff are accountable to the Anangu people and that Anangu determine the development and delivery of services.

Oxfam is running a campaign to lobby the state, territory and federal governments to address the shameful state of Indigenous health. The full Close the Gap report and campaign information can be viewed online at http://www.oxfam.org.au/campaigns/indigenous/health.php.