April, 2012

“It’s terrorism.” she says. “The croissants have to be refrigerated because Sydney Airport says that if they aren’t then they could be used by terrorists so we have to refrigerate them.” That comment went through to the keeper until “terrorism” & “croissant” fell together in the back-blocks of my jet-lagged brain as unlikely companions. “What did you say?” “The croissants. We have to heat them up because Sydney Airport says so. It’s a terrorist thing.”

A real highlight for me was catching up with Amadeo Rea, whose magistral book “Wings In The Desert ” on the ethnoornithology of the Northern Piman peoples is one of my all time favourites. I’m looking forward to bringing my interview with him to these pages soon.

“Bad Law of the Week” will be an (ir)regular feature looking at my choice – or your nominations – of legal measures that are but should no longer be on the statute books. I can think of a half-dozen candidates off the top of my head. I’m sure that readers will be able to supply [...]

Hudson produces no evidence for a lack of willingness to become AHWs, but to this end Hudson footnotes an ABC Stateline NT report, and yet again provides her own spin in the hope that no one had seen the original report—or would check it later. There is nothing in this report that evidences Hudson’s alleged “lack … of interest among remote Indigenous people to become AHWs”. The television report says it is a tough job, and not one that everyone can do—but critical nevertheless to the running of Aboriginal health services. One interview in the television segment points specifically to shortcomings in the structure of training, and another into the racially discriminatory nature of work conditions. No interviews or editorial in the yarn point to a “lack of interest”.

The take-over, or Northern Territory Emergency Response, was conceived in Canberra without discussion with the NT government or the affected communities. The Northern Territory Emergency Response was coercive, heavy handed and designed on the run with limited planning as a short-term response to enable the commonwealth to obtain control, stabilise, normalise and exit. Although styled as an “emergency” government response to the 97 recommendations of the “Little Children are Sacred” report, the Northern Territory Emergency Response ignored those recommendations and it is common knowledge that the government ignored the dysfunction, disadvantage and disorder prevailing in remote communities for the last 40 years.