Indigenous affairs minister Jenny Macklin announced in May that the federal Labor government would reinstate the Racial Discrimination Act by the end of October. But she has also said key policies of the Northern Territory Emergency Response (NTER) would remain — discriminatory policies that required the suspension of the RDA to be passed.
It now appears unlikely the government will live up to its promise to reinstate the RDA in October. But the fact that such a commitment was made, while pledging to retain such racist policies, makes a mockery of any concerns about racial discrimination the government might claim to have.
The NTER, better known as the NT intervention, was announced in June 2007 by the then-Coalition government of John Howard. It introduced a raft of discriminatory legislation in response to the Little Children Are Sacred report, which outlined serious cases of child neglect and abuse in remote Aboriginal communities in the NT. None of the report's recommendations were included in the legislation.
Instead, the government introduced widespread alcohol, tobacco and pornography bans; "star chamber" powers for police to investigate and interrogate suspected pedophiles; the forcing of Aboriginal communities onto compulsory leases; and "income management", which transferred 50% of welfare recipients' payments into cards that could only be used in certain stores, and only spent on food, clothing and medical supplies.
These policies targeted only Aboriginal people. Huge blue signs proclaimed the bans and restrictions outside Aboriginal communities and, in some cases, individual houses. Accompanying this was a barrage of media attacks portraying Aboriginal men, in particular, as child abusers and pedophiles.
The policies met immediate resistance from the targeted communities. Some stores refused to implement the policy and protest groups formed in Alice Springs and remote communities.
After two years of this treatment, the elders of Ampilatwajta — a community three hours north of Alice Springs — walked off and set up a protest camp, outside the boundaries of the government-imposed lease on the town.
Richard Downs, walk-off spokesperson, said on October 8: "The NT Emergency Response (NTER) measures have disempowered Aboriginal people. The suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act has taken away our rights. It has taken away our land rights, our ownership and control. We have no say in the running of our communities or lands. There is no self-determination."
Such strong resistance to the intervention, however, didn't stop the ALP supporting it in opposition, or continuing it in power. Since coming to power, Labor has actually extended some aspects to other regions.
On October 2, Macklin said a voluntary version of income management was trialled in parts of WA from November 2008 and began in Perth in April. It will be expanded across Perth in coming months. Macklin's press release said the new laws gave the "Western Australian Department for Child Protection the power to recommend to Centrelink that a family's income support and family payments be quarantined to be used for the benefit of children".
This is different to the NT intervention in that, in WA, welfare quarantining is only applied in proven cases of child neglect. The NT policies were blanketed across all Aboriginal communities, regardless of the existence or otherwise of neglect or abuse.
Some communities have called for these measures to be applied in a non-discriminatory way — i.e. on a voluntary basis or in cases of proven neglect by individuals or at the request of individuals affected. However, there is little proof welfare quarantining has improved the lives of Aboriginal children or their communities.
Amnesty International's Sarah Marland told ABC Online on October 19: "We think that rather than actually providing the urgently needed protection for children and women in Aboriginal communities that the discriminatory application of the regime undermines any of the benefits and is actually deepening insecurities and deprivation of affected communities."
But the ALP is continuing the policy and attempting to make it comply with a reinstated RDA. There are two ways they could do this. The first is to make the NTER a "special measure": a loophole in the act allows for racially discriminatory policies, as long as they are for the benefit of those affected.
The loophole requires the informed consent of those affected, so the government has spent months and millions of dollars in "consultations" with communities in order to get their "consent". These consultations have either been ignored by Aboriginal people, or met with outright hostility.
The second option, according to leaks from Macklin's department reported in the October 21 Crikey.com, is to extend income management to all welfare recipients, not just Aboriginal people. Presumably the government could then boast: "It's a policy that's demeaning, doesn't work and actively harms the health and well-being of those affected, but at least it's not racist."
The fact that the government could consider re-introducing the RDA without repealing any of the paternalistic, racist policies of the intervention highlights the need for the campaign to continue, regardless of the status of the RDA.
"The Federal Government's promised reinstatement of the Racial Discrimination Act will be an empty gesture if it retains racially discriminatory elements of the … NTER", Amnesty said on October 21.
Downs is one of many committed to continuing the fight. "We are taking our message to the Australian public to let them know exactly what is happening under the NTER", he said on October 8.
"We need to get rid of the racial discrimination policies that are imposed by the federal government!"