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Clare Martin condemns NT intervention

Barney Zwartz

First published in The Age 3 September 2008

Last year's federal intervention in the Northern Territory was a blatant political exercise that shocked Territorians and wrongly painted all Aborigines as dysfunctional, former chief minister Clare Martin said yesterday.

In her strongest comments since she stepped down last year, Ms Martin said the intervention was confronting, done without consultation, ignored territory Government views, and cost a third of its budget while duplicating work it was already doing.

In a public conversation with Melbourne Anglican Archbishop Philip Freier and Aboriginal academic Marcia Langton at Federation Square yesterday, Ms Martin said: "Although the issues were important, the way the intervention was done was blatantly political. Alexander Downer (a senior Coalition minister) admitted shamelessly the day after the election that it was an attempt to lift the polls that failed. He was absolutely brutal about it."

She said after the intervention failed to bring a lift in the polls, the Coalition tried hospitals in Tasmania, then Queensland ports. Labour premiers used to discuss who would be next.

"One of the things that drove me crazy about the intervention is that it's painted one picture of dysfunctional communities. One leader said to me, it looks as though we are all drunk, all beat our kids, are all hopeless. That is not the case."

Professor Langton, chair of indigenous studies at Melbourne University, said the wider Australian community, in trying to avoid racism, in fact perpetrated it with a reluctance to criticise Aboriginal behaviour that would not be tolerated elsewhere.

"Most people have such low expectations of Aborigines, it is really soft bigotry. They are inured to the Aboriginal condition. They think it is normal for them to be sick, drunk and unemployed," she said.

She also attacked Australian governments as "recalcitrant" in tackling alcohol abuse in Aboriginal communities. They would not restrict alcohol because too many people were making too much money supplying it and because the tourism sector and white community would not accept restrictions, she said.

"I don't believe the intervention was entirely a cynical political exercise," she said. "What Aboriginal communities deserve more than anything is law and order, a decent night's sleep, peace and safety for the children."

Before the intervention, Ms Martin said she felt she had a constructive relationship with then prime minister John Howard. They had discussed Aboriginal disadvantage, and he had congratulated her publicly.

She said the automatic quarantining of welfare payments should stop because it caused great hardship. If people were not spending welfare money properly, the quarantine should apply as much in suburban Melbourne as in remote Aboriginal communities.

Each health check on Aborigines under 16 cost $600, only to discover that the main problems were hearing difficulties and dental health, which the territory Government already knew, she said.

'They didn't want to talk to us about the information we had. We had nurses in the bush and hundreds of files."

Ms Martin said the intervention health funding was only for a year, "but you can't come in, stabilise, normalise and exit. Children with hearing problems will need attention from specialists for a long time. It's hard to get that in rural Australia, in remote Australia it's even tougher."

The Rudd Government has ordered a review of the intervention, headed by Aboriginal leader Peter Yu, which is due to report this month.