NT intervention: dismantling self-determination

“A structural revolution in the Northern Territory is dismantling the whole infrastructure of self-determination”, Australian Workers Union national legal officer Zoe Angus said on November 15.

Along with Sean Marshall from the Construction Forestry Mining Energy Union (CFMEU), Angus was reporting back on a recent trade union delegation to investigate working conditions for Aboriginal people living under the NT intervention. She spoke at a public meeting organised by the Stop the Intervention Collective, Sydney.

Angus identified three main aspects of the intervention that are particularly undermining Aboriginal self-determination: the forced conversion of freehold and native title to government leases; the removal of Aboriginal decision-making, asset-management and control (the intervention dismissed community councils and imposed non-Aboriginal “government business managers” to oversee the running of communities); and the conversion of the Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) to work-for-the-dole programs.

“Where once (under the old CDEP), a person was an employee, they’re now a welfare recipient. In the context of the NT that means 100% unemployment of Aboriginal people now”, Angus said.

Under the changes to CDEP, Aboriginal workers get no more than the dole — and half of that is paid not in cash but onto a Basics Card, which can be used only on certain items at certain stores.

Marshall said the delegation, organised by the Australian Council of Trade Unions and led by ACTU secretary Jeff Lawrence, would now work with the Indigenous Committee to develop new Aboriginal worker policy.

Angus admitted she had been ambivalent about the NT intervention, having heard the about the squalor and child abuse outlined in the 2007 Little Children are Sacred report, used by the then Coalition government to launch the intervention.

“I was under the impression the intervention was consistent with that report”, she said. “Within 24 hours [of being on the delegation] it was obvious I’d been duped. The intervention bares no resemblance to the 80 recommendations of the report.”