[southnews] Aussie Aborigines Threaten Ayers Rock Ban
 
Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2007 00:04:26 -0500 (CDT)

An Aboriginal town threatened to ban tourists from scaling giant Ayers 
Rock in central Australia to protest a heavy-handed government crackdown 
on child abuse in Aboriginal areas, a local leader said Tuesday.

The sweeping changes, which include alcohol bans and scrapping the 
permit system for non-Aboriginal access to indigenous land, prompted an 
immediate outcry from the region's two key Aboriginal organisations.

Calling the unprecedented commonwealth intervention "hasty and 
ill-conceived", director of the Central Land Council (CLC) David Ross 
said the move was a cynical ploy to abolish hard won land rights.

Community considers tourist Uluru ban

AAP June 26, 2007 - 8:30AM

Residents of the Northern Territory Aboriginal town of Mutitjulu are 
considering banning tourists from climbing Uluru as part of a campaign 
against the looming federal intervention in their community.

Mutitjulu is the first township set to receive police and troops as part 
of the Federal Government's radical intervention plan to stop abuse in 
indigenous communities.

The community have drafted a statement that welcomes some measures but 
condemns the compulsory health checks for every child.

The statement reads: 'Our women and children are scared about being 
forcibly examined. Surely there's a need to build trust. A wholesale 
intrusion into our women and childrens privacy is a violation of our 
human and sacred rights', ABC radio reports.

Mutitjulu elder Vince Forrester said local residents are terrified.

"The community are bewildered as why there is a military operation 
against the most poverty stricken members of Australia," Mr Forrester 
told ABC radio.

He said as the traditional owners of Uluru Mutitjulu residents are 
considering a ban from climbing Uluru as part of a disobedience protest.

"The tourist industry brings a lot of dollars into the territory and 
tourists all come to Uluru," he said.

"Obviously civil disobedience can come in protest form."

Mutitjulu resident Mario Giuseppe said people in the community had also 
talked of fleeing into the sandhills around Uluru.

"I thought the Government was here to protect them they're scaring the 
living daylights out of the kids and women, they think that the army's 
coming to grab their kids and the police are coming to help them take 
them away," he said.

But Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough said talk of women and 
children fleeing Mutitjulu was unjustified.

"It's a ridiculous thing for anyone to be doing and I don't believe they 
would be doing that unless someone had deliberately told them lies about 
what's occurring and if they're doing that you would have to query their 
motivation," Mr Brough told ABC radio.

"The reality is that when police come into a community people generally 
warm to them because they're there to help them and that's no different 
on this occasion."
__________________________________________________________---

Letter warns indigenous plan won't work

 AAP June 26, 2007 01:06pm

MORE than 90 individuals, indigenous groups and community organisations 
have put their name to a letter delivered today to Indigenous Affairs 
Minister Mal Brough, warning him that the Government's plan to tackle 
child sex abuse will not work.

Prime Minister John Howard last week announced plans to seize control of 
more than 60 NT Aboriginal communities, banning alcohol and hardcore 
pornography and putting in place conditions on welfare payments and 
compulsory health checks for children.

The letter says while the commitment to tackle abuse in indigenous 
communities is welcome, solutions must be developed with the 
communities, not prescribed from Canberra.

It also warns the measures could weaken families and disempower 
Aboriginal people.

"The proposals go well beyond an emergency response and will have a 
profound effect on people's incomes, land ownership and their ability to 
decide the kind of medical treatment they receive," the letter says.

"Some of the measures will weaken communities and families by taking 
from them the ability to make basic decisions about their lives, thus 
removing responsibility instead of empowering them.
"In their present form the proposals miss the mark and are unlikely to 
be effective."

Pat Turner, a former head of the now defunct Aboriginal and Torres 
Strait Islander Commission and a former senior bureaucrat in the 
Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, said Mr Brough was drawing too 
heavily on his military background to implement the Government's plan.

"What the Prime Minister and his minister Mal Brough are proposing is, 
in the view of the combined Aboriginal organisations in Alice Springs, 
totally unworkable," she said.

"Mal Brough is drawing too heavily on his military background to swoop 
into our communities and do a quick fix."

A key issue for Aboriginal leaders is the plan to scrap the permit 
system, which restricts non-Aboriginal access to indigenous land.

"We are totally against tying serious social need to our hard-fought 
land ownership and land tenure," Ms Turner said.

"We believe that this Government is using child sexual abuse as the 
Trojan horse to resume total control of our land.

"No compensation will ever, ever replace our land ownership rights."

Greg Phillips, a population health expert at Melbourne University, 
warned that victims of abuse could face additional trauma if they were 
forcibly examined as part of compulsory health checks.

"If children and adults ... have been abused and are forced to take 
medical examinations then significant psychiatric literature and 
practice shows that victims are likely to be retraumatised," he said.

Mr Phillips said there was evidence to show that Aboriginal ownership of 
their lands helped promote good health.

"Land is essential to Aboriginal cultural identity, sense of 
spirituality and is therefore protective of good health," he said.

"There is no need to tie sexual abuse interventions with land tenure, 
it's too much of a stretch for this nation to take and the Government is 
lying through its teeth to do so.

"You do not have to take children away and you do not have to take 
communal rights to land away to deal effectively with sexual abuse and 
violence."

_________________________________________________-

Aboriginal reforms arouse distrust

AAP June 22, 2007 - 10:59AM

Scepticism, confusion and distrust are among the reactions from 
Aboriginal people to the federal government's radical reforms to curb 
indigenous child abuse in the Northern Territory.

The sweeping changes, which include alcohol bans and scrapping the 
permit system for non-Aboriginal access to indigenous land, prompted an 
immediate outcry from the region's two key Aboriginal organisations.

Calling the unprecedented commonwealth intervention "hasty and 
ill-conceived", director of the Central Land Council (CLC) David Ross 
said the move was a cynical ploy to abolish hard won land rights.

"Under the smokescreen of helping children, the federal government is 
taking the opportunity to impose its ideological agenda in relation to 
Aboriginal land," he said.

"The proposals seem to be a grab-bag of unrelated strategies aimed at a 
quick fix in a pre-election period."

The reforms also include compulsory medical checks for children, 
pornography bans, increased police numbers and the quarantine of welfare 
payments to ensure the money is spent on essentials like food, instead 
of drugs and alcohol.

About 60 communities have also been seized for control by the federal 
government under a five-year lease scheme.

Mr Ross said none of the measures enforced by Mr Howard regarding leases 
or permits were in line with the recommendations of the NT government's 
child abuse inquiry or the recent federal Senate committee on Aboriginal 
art.

"In fact, they seem to be contradictory," he said.

"Removing permits from major communities could provide a free-for-all 
peddling of alcohol and marijuana and pornography or the inflicting of 
further sexual or physical abuse on children."

Director of the Northern Land Council (NLC) Norman Fry agreed.

"All communities opposed the removal of the permit system because it 
allows police to remove drug dealers, carpetbaggers and sexual 
predators," he said.

The council also had serious questions about the taking over control of 
the 60 communities, which Mr Fry said "reflected the abject failure of 
all governments to properly resource remote communities".

"(Governments have) failed to supply the resources to address the true 
causes of violence, of poverty," he said.

Indigenous author Alexis Wright, who on Thursday night won Australia's 
prestigious Miles Franklin Literary Award, said the government's 
approach was heavy-handed.

"(It's) a tragedy I think for the country as a whole that John Howard 
would take this sledgehammer approach," said Ms Wright, who is a member 
of the Waanyi people from the Gulf of Carpentaria.

"Australia has to stop treating Aboriginal people like children and has 
to understand that we need to have dialogue."

"Those ideas of Aboriginal people trying to talk about what we might 
want to do have been totally ignored by governments in Australia ... 
until we get today (John) Howard blaming this terrible situation on us."

Aboriginal activist and Australian National University professor of law 
Mick Dodson said he welcomed the plan to finally take child sexual abuse 
seriously, but he said more needed to be done.

"It's been a national emergency for two decades, with total inaction of 
governments at all levels," he said.

"Where's the proposal to deal with all the other things that contribute 
to these things, particularly housing?

"The prohibition of alcohol - that doesn't work because we have to deal 
with not just banning alcohol but we've got to deal with the addiction 
.. we've got to give these people support, counselling."

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner Tom 
Calma said the plan also lacked preventative measures to stop violence 
and ensure it does not re-occur.

"Nor does it provide the measures or services to support indigenous 
people once these changes are made."

Northern Territory Chief Minister Clare Martin said the reforms were a 
vote-grab ahead of the federal election and warned that many of the 
emergency measures would need to be in place for a generation.

"We have to make sure that they are long term and workable solutions," 
she said.

"My fear today (is) that this might be just an initiative before an 
election. I'm asking the prime minister to make sure that doesn't happen 
because this is too serious a problem to treat in such a way."

Northern Territory anti-discrimination commissioner Tony Fitzgerald said 
the measures defied anti-discrimination laws.

"The restrictions [are being] imposed on territorians because of their 
race," he said.

"Even if the feds are sincere about indigenous welfare, the fact that 
they (the reforms) are unfair makes it discriminatory."

Northern Territory Police Association president, Vince Kelly, said the 
proposal was ill-defined and ignored the policing shortages across 
Australia.

) 2007