A medical professional from the Sunrise Health Service has attacked the Rudd government for continuing with the NT intervention policy. Instead of "closing the gap" between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal health outcomes, the intervention has made Aboriginal people less healthy, she says.
Irene Fisher, CEO of Sunrise Health Service east of Katherine, argued at a March 22 meeting in Sydney that the system of income management, or "welfare quarantining", had reduced people's ability to buy healthy food.
The Sunrise submission to the inquiry into the NT intervention stated: "It should be noted that Aboriginal people of the region have lived under conditions of extreme poverty all their lives. To this extent, they have always been effective at individual and family budgeting in ways only similarly poor people can contemplate.
"The removal of discretionary budgeting for the people only reduces rather than enhances people's capacity for personal and family budgeting. Its infantilising effect is deeply resented by many people, especially women, in the Sunrise/East Katherine region."
Income management was introduced as a compulsory policy by the Howard government in 2007. It "quarantined" 50% of the welfare payments of people in targeted remote NT communities.
Quarantined funds can only be spent on food, clothing and health care. The government argued this will reduce cases of neglect in Aboriginal communities by reducing the amount of income spent on alcohol or drugs.
At first the program used gift cards for large department stores and supermarkets that were often hundreds of kilometres from the people who had to use them. This meant those targeted by the intervention had to spend far more money on transport.
While the gift cards have been replaced with the more secure and usable Basics Card, many communities must still travel for hours to use them.
The income management scheme has carried on largely unchanged by the Rudd government. Fisher claimed it is now much harder to get fresh healthy food in remote communities.
She said that this was clear from both her organisation's immediate experience and the federal government's own health checks all through the region. In particular, anaemia, a lack of iron often caused by a poor diet, has become far more common since the intervention.
"Anaemia rates in children under the age of five in the Sunrise Health Service region have jumped significantly since the Intervention", Fisher said. "From a low in the six months to December 2006 of 20% — an unacceptably high level, but one which had been reducing — the figure had gone up to 36% by December 2007.
"By June 2008 this level had reached 55%, a level that was maintained in the six months to December 2008.
"This means that over half the children under the age of five in our region face substantial threats to their physical and mental development," she said.
"In two years, 18 months of which has been under the Intervention, the anaemia rate has nearly trebled in our region."
She added, "income management has not reduced alcohol or drug consumption, indeed the alcohol restrictions on prescribed communities has merely shifted the problem into town.
"It has not stopped grog or the conversion of Basics Card purchases into cash for grog. There is also no evidence that it has increased the consumption of fresh food among Aboriginal families, which is vital to fighting anaemia."
Fisher also said that low birth weights among Aboriginal children in the NT had more than doubled since the intervention began. Nine percent of Aboriginal babies had a low birth weight in August 2007 and the rate now stands at 19%.
"If these rates were being seen in the leafy suburbs of Sydney or Canberra, it would be seen as a major childhood emergency."
The intervention was flawed from the beginning. It was proposed as a re-election strategy by the Howard government, based on creating a moral panic about Indigenous communities. The government hoped to get people to vote for its conservative policies and against "rights based" legislation.
Tellingly, the Racial Discrimination Act had to be suspended so the intervention could become law. It failed to win Howard the election and yet the policy remains.
The Rudd government has used a lot of symbolism to mask its support for Howard's policy on Indigenous rights. In February 2008, Rudd gave an apology to the Stolen Generations.
The ALP government has also promised to endorse the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, but many activists remain doubtful.
On April 3, the Darwin Aboriginal Rights Coalition (DARC) responded to the government's announcement about the declaration: "The glaring hypocrisy between this symbolic recognition of Indigenous rights whilst continuing with explicitly racist policies such as the NT Intervention, makes this historical occasion almost impossible to celebrate."
Tibby Quall, a Larrakia elder working with DARC, was "not convinced that supporting the declaration will result in real change whilst racist, paternalistic policies continue".
He said: "Until the issue of Aboriginal sovereignty is resolved in Australia, there will be no change for Aboriginal people."
DARC called on the Rudd government to respect the declaration in practice, not just in words, and collaborate with Aboriginal people in developing policies that affect their lives.