Federal indigenous affairs minister Jenny Macklin announced on October 23 that the Labor government will not implement the key proposals of the independent review into the Northern Territory intervention. Aboriginal critics have described the decision as the government turning its back on Aboriginal people.
The intervention review, released on October 15, called for, among other changes, the immediate reinstatement of the Racial Discrimination Act in proscribed Aboriginal communities and a significant winding back of the policy of welfare quarantining. Macklin said that the RDA will be reinstated, but in one year rather than immediately, after the government has redrafted the intervention legislation. Compulsory welfare quarantining will continue, she said.
According to ABC Online on October 21, Macklin said: "The government is committed to compulsory income management as a tool to reduce alcohol-related violence, to protect children, to guard against humbugging and to promote personal responsibility. We will immediately start to design a compulsory income management policy which does not require the suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act."
"We've seen some reduction, we certainly want to see more, of alcohol-fuelled violence", she added. "We do want to make sure that what this is all about is the protection of women and children from violence and the evidence shows compulsory income management has been very helpful in that regard."
However, many of the submissions to the review noted that the welfare quarantine system has further impoverished Aboriginal people, is as susceptible to harassment by friends and relatives for money (known as "humbugging") and is perceived by people in targeted communities as inherently racist.
Stephanie Bell from the Central Australian Aboriginal Congress, which was represented on the review board, told ABC Online on October 23 that by opposing the recommendations of the report the government is turning its back on Aboriginal people. "I think it's a misinformed, misguided policy that is racial in every aspect and I think the Minister needs to recognise that the policy doesn't contribute to Aboriginal people as a society being made to feel like they're equal like every other citizen", she said.
"If the Minister applied the same level of rules across all citizens she wouldn't need the RDA to be suspended. I think the human rights of the Aboriginal people continue to be breached and I think she needs to rethink the policy framework that she's working in [and] address the gap for Aboriginal people."
Western Australian Greens Senator Rachel Siewart said that the government's decision meant that evidence-based policy is "dead in the water", according to the October 24 Sydney Morning Herald.
Human rights lawyer George Newhouse argued, also in the SMH, that the link between welfare quarantining and perceived reductions in violence, or child neglect or abuse, was extremely tenuous, with little or no evidence to support it. Newhouse is preparing a racial discrimination case for the United Nations on behalf of residents of proscribed communities in the Northern Territory.