Australia cracks down on Aborigines
Federal troops arrived Wednesday to enforce tighter regulations on welfare payments and a ban on pornography and alcohol in Aboriginal communities.
from the June 27, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 3
Blighted Aboriginal communities
The federal investigation shattered any lingering image of Aboriginal communities as tranquil desert outposts of dot painting and didgeridoo-playing. It showed that a large proportion of the country's 450,000 indigenous people struggle with unemployment, ill health, high rates of crime, social alienation, and suicide.
Announcing the most dramatic shakeup of Aboriginal affairs for 40 years, Howard said the alcohol-fueled sexual abuse of Aboriginal children was a "national emergency."
"We are dealing with children of the tenderest age who have been exposed to the most terrible abuse from the time of their birth, virtually," Howard said.
A former conservative prime minister, Malcolm Fraser, said the government's actions were a "throwback to past paternalism" because there had been no consultation with Aboriginal people.
An Aboriginal activist and academic, Boni Robertson, described the emergency measures as "knee-jerk nonsense" that breached Australia's antidiscrimination laws.
As part of its sweeping overhaul, the federal government plans to scrap a 30-year-old system by which outsiders had to have a permit to visit Aboriginal townships.
The government said the permit system had enabled a veil of secrecy to be drawn over appalling levels of gang violence, substance abuse, and domestic violence.
But Aboriginal groups said that scrapping the permit system meant that settlements would be more vulnerable to drug dealers and "sly-grog runners," as smugglers of prohibited liquor are known.
"Removing permits could provide a free-for-all peddling of alcohol and marijuana and pornography, or the inflicting of further sexual or physical abuse on children," says David Ross, director of the Central Land Council in Alice Springs.
"At least with the permit system it was possible to ask somebody what they were doing in the community," he says.
One of the communities to which troops and police reinforcements will first be deployed is Mutitjulu, located in the shadow of Uluru, also called Ayers Rock.
The village has been branded a national disgrace – a forlorn shanty-town ravaged by the scourge of petrol sniffing. But indignant community leaders in Mutitjulu say they need social workers, not soldiers, and, on Tuesday, threatened to stop tourists from climbing Ayers Rock in protest of the government's actions.
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