Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Hard line on abuses not working say Aborigines


Hard line on abuses not working say Aborigines
Federal Government intervention into Aboriginal communities is a "mess", former Northern Territory Chief Minister Clare Martin says. The Labor Government has continued the plan Liberal Prime Minister John Howard introduced last year but Martin, a former Labor leader, criticised it at an Anglican Church forum in Melbourne yesterday. The federal Government marched into NT Aboriginal communities last year and committed A$1.3 billion ($1.6 billion) without consulting the state government, Martin said. The Foreign Minister at the time, Alexander Downer, said the day after the election loss that the Government wanted the intervention to improve its polling, she said. "Although the issues were important, the way the intervention was done was blatantly political. Mr Downer said: "When it didn't improve our ratings, we moved on to something else. "It broke my heart because they committed A$1.3 billion without consulting us and were spending tens of millions duplicating things we had done." The Government said at the time the intervention aimed to stop rampant sexual abuse of children, improve services and introduce welfare quarantines to ensure families spent money on essentials and not alcohol. Martin's government was criticised for not tackling the issue and she resigned five months later. Compulsory medical checks of children were ineffective at revealing sexual abuse unless families co-operated, while welfare quarantining hurt families that did the right thing, Martin said.

What a surprise, hard line tough guy moves against Aborigines were a) racist and a play for power and b) totally pointless, which forgive me was the exact points that were raised when that racist John Howard implemented this bullshit idea to a ‘sudden’ crises that took him almost a decade to notice. I’m glad that smarmy little prick isn’t in power, but Rudd has done bugger all in stopping this nightmare from continuing, Aboriginal communities need investment not the fucking army.

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