The report from independent review of the federal Intervention into Northern Territory Aboriginal communities is being attacked before the ink is dry.  Yet almost all the attacks seem to be ignoring the evidence about what has been happening on the ground, and the views of the people that live there, instead treating policies such as universal compulsory quarantining of welfare payments and scrapping the permit system as sacred totems which cannot be touched, regardless of the evidence.

NSW based Warren Mundine, described by The Australian newspaper, as an “ALP powerbroker and indigenous leader”, provides a range of insults of the Indigenous leaders involved in the review, saying the report is “touchy-feely nonsense”  and “a joke” written by “people who want to accept second-best.”

What I find especially strange are reports in The Australian which quote at least three people, including Mr Mundine, attacking an alleged recommendation to make the quarantining of welfare payments voluntary, yet the same newspaper explicitly lists one of the report’s main recommendations as requiring compulsory income management “on the basis of child protection, school attendance,” etc – similar to what is currently being trialled in four communities on Cape York in far north Queensland.

It is true that the Cape York trials use the framework of a Family Relationships Commission, which involves some elders in determining who should be subject to income quarantining.  But what should also be recognised is (a) it is for four discreet communities, not across the vastly larger number of communities across the entire Northern Territory and (b) the processes used in the Cape York trial could well see a lower proportion of people subjected to income quarantining than will continue to apply in the Territory if the recommendations of the NT review are accepted, and (c) the processes on Cape York are still a trial which have to prove their effectiveness.

The inference that any changes to the Intervention constitutes a ‘softening’ is particularly ludicrous given the strong comments at the time of the original legislation setting up the Intervention was passed by Noel Pearson – The Australian’s main standard bearer in justifying their strident support for every original facet of the Intervention and attacking anyone who raised concerns – that the Intervention process “needs to be decisively improved” and it would be a “grave mistake” to be intransigent to any amendments.