Mal Brough at Bagot, Darwin
I gave up on hate as a waste of time many years ago and it is a very rare moment now that I can be bothered to even strongly dislike someone. Contempt and pity rise a little more easily but are still occasional pleasures. And I don’t like seeing small furry animals in pain and I think that there are some people who should just be removed from public life, with extreme prejudice, for all our sakes. And despite having little faith in anyone from a conservative party based in Queensland being able to do anything right anytime…you get lucky sometimes.
So it was with some pleasure that I read today’s reports in The Australian, Brisbane Times and Crikey that “Mad Mal” Brough (as he is known in these parts, largely for his weird dancing and impromptu verbal outbursts) has finally pulled the pin on his leadership of the Queensland liberals. One of those “You can’t sack me – I quit!!” moments.
I will leave fuller consideration and comment to you, my dear readers, and perhaps make some further contributions on another day when and if I can be bothered, but for now I’m just glad to see the back of Mad Mal, the man who will for ever rightfully be held responsible for that shameful blot on Australia’s history, the Howard Government’s Intervention into 73 Aboriginal townships and villages across the Northern Territory.
There are of course some worthy aspects of the Intervention, but the bloody-mindedness, incompetence and sheer wastefulness of its implementation, the shameful and pointless representation of all Aboriginal men in the NT (and by association, beyond) as vicious and drunken sexual predators and of all Aboriginal women and children as their unwitting prey was beneath contempt and served only to drive Aboriginal people further into the recesses of our imagination. Piled upon this contempt was the notion that, as a “special measure”, we would deprive Aboriginal people of that most precious and hard-won entitlement, the right not to be discriminated against on the basis of their race. “In order to save your rights we have to take them away from you”…or something like that.
A pox on all our houses for allowing this and other elements of this corrupt policy to persist as it has, but particularly on the houses of the politicians who cobbled this together in obscene haste and for bare-naked political ends.
Mad Mal’s been on a hiding to nothing since he deservedly lost the seat of Longman at last November’s Federal election Things really started to go downhill when he took the job of Liberal leader in Queensland, which has all of the cachet of being the President of the local Rotary Club in smalltown anywhere. Not long after that he picked up on the brilliant idea of folding his party into the National Agrarian $ocialist Party. Even from the NT it all looked too weird to be true and was bound to end in tears all around.
Which it now has. Good.
A few months ago Mad Mal turned up in the Pitjantjatjara lands south of Alice Springs, where he was (almost) hailed as some sort of saviour. Earlier he’d been seen on the Tiwi Islands in the deep north, where he was looking to set up a commercial housing project with the Tiwi. Neither of those projects seem to have gained any traction for Mad Mal, but as he told us all so many times last year, he cares…about something…we know not what…yet…
Mad Mal is the kind of guy that won’t keep his head down for long – and I fully expect that sooner or later he’ll sneak back over the border to cast his eye over some more “business opportunities” in the Territory. So I’m prepared to offer a small reward* to the first person who spots Mad Mal on the ground in the Territory – a sort of “Mad Mal Alert”.
And these words from today’s Brisbane Times will, hopefully, be the last we hear from Mad Mal for a very long time:
“Well, I’ve just had a gutful, quite frankly. I think this whole thing is a bit of a shambles,” he told 4BC radio.
“You try and do the right thing and, quite frankly, at this point it’s all over the shop and it’s no wonder voters get so disenchanted with the non-Labor side of politics.”
Mad Mal Brough – still not making any sense to me or anyone else I’d want to know.
* – I’ll think of something, honest…
5 Comments
His legacy lives on in the confusion and despair of many people in remote communities. Some good has come and is continuing out of the Intervention and, if it had been done with care and respect, it could have been a major step forward but the combination of arrogance and ignorance made it a disaster for many. I trust he never comes back.
Thanks for that David. I know you have much more experience in government policy-making and implementation in relation to Aboriginal communities in the NT than I have or am ever likely to gain. It is sad that think that without the posturing, arrogance, deceit and corruption that has blighted so many aspects of the Intervention it could have been a really effective step forward – not only in providing long-overdue essential infrastructure and services in the bush, but also building some bridges of trust and respect between Aboriginal people and their governments. I’ve said right from the start that we have to look for positives and opportunities in all of this but it is a bloody hard road from here on…I hope he never comes back – I don’t want to cough up for the reward!!
Talk about throwing out the baby with the bathwater…. not that Brough was a baby!
The important point is that, after 40 years of absolute mismanagement of a disadvantaged people, governments of all persuasions condemned, the NT Govt, knowing full well what the Wild/Anderson report would encompass, sat on it for months. (The old adage is that you never call for a report if you don’t know the outcome)
To their credit, Howard and Brough, when Chief Minister Martin finally handed over a copy, deemed it essential to act with speed and dexterity. The report was damning of all Governments, and demanded immediate and decisive action.
Grog, drugs, pornography and white man’s money had combined to destroy huge components of the lives of a people who deserved better of governments, and although Mal Brough’s intervention has had some unfortunate and unintended outcomes, it has also delivered lots of good. None other than Alison Anderson have shouted this from the rooftops. In so many communities, women and children can now sleep in relative peace.
It’s all very well for those at office desks in ivory towers to to shout theiir criticism, and let’s be very clear that the arrogance and ignorance that David Coles claims has made a disaster of the intervention, has existed for decades.If the NT Government had acted with the care and compassion that they claim as their own, when they first came to power in 2001, the initiative would have been theirs to do the things that have now at least been started. Mal Brough would himself agree that some things could have been done differently, but good things are now happening, and to their credit, the Rudd Government is not going to stop the processes that Brough started.
Graeme,
Thanks for your thoughts and (assuming you are the NT-based Graeme Lewis) what is implicit in your comments that the 27 years of CLP governance in the NT “absolute[ly] mismanag[ed]” their responsibility to Aboriginal people in the NT.
I also agree that labor have done little better – though they have/had a lot to make up – particularly in basic infrastructure.
I think it is clear from the record that Clare Martin either had no interest in and/or or no idea how to address these enormous challenges and that she wholly deserved being ousted from office in late November 2007 in the way she was – it was a direct result of her incompetence in the face of the Brough/Howard coup, and her repeated failures to give little more than lipservice to indigenous issues – her fate was sealed on 21 June 2007 when Howard announced the intervention.
At the time I wrote for Crikey about a number of things she could/should have done (http://www.crikey.com.au/Politics/20070622-Chief-Minister-theres-been-a-coup-.html) in relation to the Wild/Anderson report and Labor federally still do not seen to have yet latched onto the idea that it could use its Federal powers to both form a national consensus/approach to common issues of concern across the states and territories…instead they seem to be all over the place like the proverbial…
By the way – I’m not in an ivory tower but in the red dirt of central Australia (though I’m in perth right now)…I’m not too certain about Minister Anderson…frankly I don’t think she carries a lot of persuasive clout (either in or out of government) and I don’t see her doing much in the way that is constructive, in either a policy or practical sense – she, like Marcia Langton, makes a lot of heat but sheds little light. But I’ll keep a close eye on Alison’s actions and words (as will most of her colleagues in Government!!) and wish her the best.
I prefer Deputy Chief Minister Scrymgour any day – she has the intellectual and policy capacity to drive real change – pity she has been stuck with an incredibly heavy workload…
And I remain to be convinced that “good things are starting to happen” – sorry but what little “good” is happening is nowhere near enough – the grog measures were largely in place (NT laws) pre-intervention but needed enforcement, the porn measures were & are a joke, no “Intervention” houses have been built, the welfare quarantining has been a cruel farce, and enormous amounts of money has been poured into paying whitefellas to drive around in new 4wds and sit in offices making decisions about blackfellas.
Please feel free to show me where the ‘good things’ are happening.
Cheers, thanks and I look forward to further discussions on these and other points.
Far too complex an issue to debate in this format. Enough to say that the words of Alison Anderson do ring true – the women and children in the many communities I visit as far South as Tennant Creek, are unquestionably sleeping better than they did a year ago – a subjective judgement I admit, but so are many of your observations. And surely relative good has come on the remote communities, from the reduction in alcohol availability, and the resulting greater peace.
As for Marion Scrymgour, heavy workload or not, her policy and administrative leads in Education and in Family Services have been quite minimal, even disruptive. Sorry – subjective again, but I see no evidence of “intellectual and policy capacity.”
As to ivory towers or red dust, I know not from whence cometh your criticisms, but much criticism does come from ivory towers you have to admit. I am pleased if your observations – and criticisms – do come from the coalface, or even red dust.