Australians All

Article

It’s Time to Get Practical in the Northern Territory

Larissa Behrendt and Irene Fisher

What is known to work to make communities safer and to improve educational and health outcomes was ignored in favour of expensive, untried top-down, heavy-handed policy approaches.

The endorsement of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People on 3 April 2009 is, along with the national apology to the stolen generation, a clear symbolic difference between the Kevin Rudd’s government and John Howard’s on Indigenous policy.

While the endorsement of an international instrument on standards of protection for Indigenous rights is the antithesis of Howard’s attitude, there are still striking similarities between the practical approaches of the former government and the present. Nowhere is that clearer than the continuation of certain mechanisms first introduced as part of the Northern Territory intervention, particularly the suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act, the suspension of the right to appeal to the social security appeals tribunal and the suspension of the right to seek redress under the Northern Territory. Embracing the welfare reform measures that link welfare payments to school attendance was another central policy approach adopted from John Howard’s platform.

The suspension of rights of redress and complaint are human rights breaches that have not only left people subject to welfare quarantining no avenues of complaint or remedies if they feel unfairly treated, there are more reasons to be concerned about the continuation of the intervention by governments without reflection on what is working and what is not. While the Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Jenny Macklin, has said she is relying on conversations with some people about the need to continue without reviewing the policy, the evidence on the ground suggests it is time for Rudd’s government to seriously rethink the mechanisms it is using in the Northern Territory, especially around welfare quarantining.

The Sunrise Health Service has been at the frontline in dealing with the health components of the intervention. It operates in the region east of Katherine and covers an area of some 112 000 square kilometres and all but one community in that area are “prescribed areas” and so subject to the intervention including welfare quarantining.

Sunrise has been collecting data since before the intervention and has been able to compare that with data collected now. Anaemia is an iron deficiency that generally leads to poor growth and development and is a key performance indicator for the general health of children. Anaemia rates in the Sunrise Health Service region have jumped significantly since the intervention. From a low in the six months to December 2006 of 20 per cent, the figure had increased to 36 per cent by December 2007. By June 2008 it had reached 55 per cent, a level that was maintained in the six months to December 2008. This means that over half of the children in the area face substantial threats to their physical and mental development. In two years, 18 months of which was under the intervention, the anaemia rate nearly trebled. There is also a worrying rise in low birth weight amongst babies. In the six months leading up to the intervention, 9 per cent of children had low birth rates. This rose to 12 per cent in December 2007. In the next six months it rose to 18 per cent. By the end of December 2008 it was 19 per cent, double the figure at the beginning of the intervention. Other health concerns have been raised in the region related to the compulsory income management of welfare payments. Since this was rolled out in the region in late 2007, there have been documented instances in which the roll out affected people’s capacity to purchase food. This included diabetics, with no local store access, unable to access food for weeks at a time. Their response to this situation was to sleep until food became available. This regime of income management has not reduced alcohol or drug consumption, indeed alcohol restrictions on prescribed communities has merely shifted the problems to larger towns or bush camps. And it has not stopped “humbug” or the conversion of Basic Card purchases into cash for grog. There is also no evidence that it has increased the consumption of fresh food amongst Aboriginal families, which is vital to fighting anaemia. There was strong concurrence about the need to protect women and children from violence and to improve the socio-economic position of Aboriginal families between those who designed and welcomed the intervention and those who questioned its methods. The key criticism from those of us asking questions was why all the evidence of what is known to work to make communities safer and to improve educational and health outcomes was ignored in favour of expensive, untried top-down, heavy-handed policy approaches.

There are two significant challenges for the Rudd government in relation to its implementation of Indigenous policy. The first is to make it compliant with the standards it has just supported in the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. The second is to make real its promise that it will be led by the evidence of what works rather than ideologies that don’t. Both challenges will lead to more positive steps to addressing the socio-economic disparity experienced by Aboriginal communities and the issues of protecting women and children that has been the justification of the intervention.