Chief amongst those powers was the control over access to grog.

Brough told the House of Representatives that:

“The authors of the Little Children are Sacred report described alcohol abuse as the ‘gravest and fastest growing threat to the safety of Aboriginal children‘.

…

To dry up the lethal rivers of grog, this bill will enable the government to introduce a general ban on people having, selling, transporting and drinking alcohol in prescribed areas. At the same time, our measures apply tougher penalties on people who are benefiting from supplying or selling grog to these communities.”

The primary anti-grog measure introduced by Brough was contained in section 12 of the NTNER Act – which replaced the previous regime in section 75 of the NT’s Liquor Act of offenses and penalties relating to “restricted areas” with a regime relating to “prescribed areas“.

Brough’s “prescribed areas” expanded the area subject to the alcohol bans by several orders of magnitude to include all Aboriginal freehold land in the NT – about 42% of the Territory landmass.

And, as I explained in Crikey back in 2007 in relation to another contentious part of the NTNER legislation, the Devil would always be in the detail.

And Vince Kelly, now President of the Police Federation of Australia and in 2007, as he remains, also President of the NT Police Association, told the SBS program Living Black just prior to the introduction of Brough’s “tough on grog-runners” legislation:

VO: But only days away from the ban coming into effect, Northern Territory Police may not be ready to tackle this latest Government plan.

VINCE KELLY: I do envisage difficulties with prosecutions because of the way legislation is drafted. There has been limited training or no training provided to the NT Police on the practical implications of the legislative changes that are coming about because of federal legislation. So all these difficulties will flow through, ultimately, to prosecution.

In March this year the NT News reported that one particularly useless part of the NTNER legislation would be scrapped:

Under a rule introduced by the previous federal government, anyone who spends more than $100 on takeaway alcohol must have their ID recorded and say where they plan to drink it. NT Licensing Minister Kon Vatskalis yesterday said the law was “a waste of time, a waste of paper and a waste of ink”. He said he had discussed it with Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin and he expected the laws to be removed “soon”. “The Minister agreed with me that it was not the brightest idea of the intervention,” he said. The scheme was said to be an attempt to stop grog-runners but it doesn’t stop anyone buying booze – or taking it to alcohol-free communities.

Almost two years after the introduction of the NTNER scheme current Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin was asked about the effectiveness of the NTNER legislation in stopping the “rivers of grog”.

As Macklin told journalists at a press conference in Melbourne on the 5th of August 2009:

“…certainly all the evidence shows that that particular measure has not been effective. That said, I just want to reiterate how critical it is that we have strong alcohol controls on the supply of alcohol…one of the things that we have to do to control and reduce that violence is to see stronger alcohol controls.”

And, as the Fairfax Press reported last Friday, the rivers of grog are apparently flowing faster and wider than before:

“In the communities targeted by the intervention…there was a 34 per cent increase in alcohol-related crime, the report, titled Closing the Gap in the Northern Territory, said.

The last spike could be due to the criminalisation of alcohol possession in some remote communities. The Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Jenny Macklin, attributes the increases to higher police numbers.”

“An increased police presence in remote Northern Territory communities, particularly in places that previously had limited or no police, has resulted in more reporting in a number of offences, including violence, alcohol and child abuse,” a spokeswoman said.

For some time The Northern Myth has been aware that several NT Magistrates have been less than pleased that their sentencing options with regard to grog-running – particularly for serious and repeat offenders – have been seriously compromised by the supposedly tougher regime instituted by Brough and maintained by Macklin.

The Northern Myth also understands that many police – particularly those in remote areas that have to deal with grog-runners face-to-face on a daily basis – are particularly pissed off at this situation – they know that if they get a repeat offender “bang to rights” that they will only face a fine at most when the matter is dealt with by the Courts..

Before September 2007 a prison sentence was available as a sentencing option for a Magistrate dealing with a person convicted of a basic “restricted area” offence under the Liquor Act – an option increasingly attractive in respect of repeat or particularly serious offenders.

Since then, under the “prescribed area” provisions of the NTNER-modified Liquor Act, the maximum penalty available is a fine.

A prison sentence can now only be imposed for an aggravated version of the basic offence that relates to “transporting” more than 1,350 millilitres of pure alcohol with the intention to supply.

The pre-existing regime under the NT Liquor Act, at section 124A, always allowed (and still does) for Police officers to state or “aver” that seized grog was alcohol.

But there is no equivalent averment provision in the NTNER Act in respect of the 1,350 millilitres of pure alcohol situation.

The consequence of this is that if Police seize enough grog to trigger an aggravated offence and charge accordingly they will have to chemically analyse each item if the defendant opts to go to hearing.

The Northern Myth understands that the NT Police Forensic Lab in Darwin is not geared up to conduct such testing, and would have to send the seized alcohol interstate for testing.

The practical result of this snafu is that the vast majority of charges – including those that would clearly be classed as aggravated “grog-running” offences – are now processed by the Courts as basic “prescribed area” offences, and the only sentencing option is a fine.

Three weeks ago Marie Nudjulu stood before Court at the troubled community of Wadeye charged with a number of “prescribed area” offences.

The Northern Myth has seen the Court Transcript of Proceedings against Ms Nudjulu.

The Prosecutor read the following facts – admitted by Ms Nudjulu’s Defence counsel – into the public record:

Your Honour, the facts are that approximately 5:55 am on Thursday, 10 September 2009, Marie Nudjulu, the defendant, was the rear passenger in a green Holden Vectra sedan, registration: 536 888, driving to Wadeye from Darwin.

The defendant was travelling with Sebastian Cumpuda(?) and Terrence Parmbuck both rear passengers and Matthew Cumpuda driving. At that the defendant’s vehicle was stopped by police in the vicinity of Woodyculdiya Outstation turn off from Port Keats Road. The search of the vehicle apprehended nine bottles of spirits and 29 unopened 375 ml of cans of Victoria Beer on the floor at the defendant’s feet.

When asked who owned the unopened 29 cans of 375 ml of beer the defendant replied, ‘The VB is mine, I bought it for myself’, the two unopened 700 ml bottles of Bundaberg rum were located at the feet of the defendant were claimed by the co-offender Terrence Parmbuck. The remaining bottle of spirits was claimed by the co-defendant Sebastian Cumpuda.

The vehicle was seized and conveyed to Daly River Police Station. Both the defendant and co-offender, Parmbuck, were conveyed to the residence of Wadeye in a marked police vehicle. The defendant was advised she will receive a summons in relation to the matter.

At the time of the offences the whole of the Daly River land trust area is a prescribed area under the Liquor Act as amended by the Northern Territory National Emergency Response Act. The defendant was not the holder of a liquor permit in order to provide a lawful excuse for the liquor in question.

According to the transcript Ms Nudjulu had previous convictions for possession of alcohol contrary to the Liquor Act – and was currently subject to a suspended sentence. This meant that, in ordinary circumstances under the previous regime, she would be a prime candidate for a custodial sentence.

But, as Stipendiary Magistrate Melanie Little told the Court:

“Her Honour: Well she…I mean this just demonstrates how this legislation is not completely – look at this lady’s record, it’s inevitable she would have gone to gaol for this offence, absolutely inevitable, $2200 maximum penalty now. I wonder – I don’t understand Canberra, it just totally bewilders me.

…

Her Honour: Look at the record, look at it. How many, look, one, two – this is now her fourth bring liquor and she was on a suspended sentence. I wonder – it just – it seems to have accelerated and the message is out, isn’t it, there’s absolutely no deterrence anymore.”

And in sentencing Ms Nudjulu, Magistrate Little made her views on the practical effects of the NTER Act modifications to the NT Liquor Act clear as possible:

Her Honour: Ms Nudjulu, on 10 September you were in a car at 6 o’clock and the police stopped the car and there was other people there and quite a lot of alcohol was found. You said that 29 of those cans were beer, 29 375 ml cans of beer were yours, and you pleaded to guilty to bringing liquor into the community. The liquor and the vehicle was seized. You had no permit to have alcohol here. You said you bought it for yourself and you were in the – what’s called a prescribed area.

We used to call them restricted areas and the penalties were very significant, Ms Nudjulu, and as I mentioned had they been – under the old penalties and old regime you would be looking at a period of imprisonment today. The maximum penalty today is $2200 and I take that into account.

I take into account that you were told to keep out of trouble. This offence is not punishable by imprisonment so it’s not a breaching offence. I take into account that this now the fourth bring liquor, plus you’ve got other offences on your record. So it’s clear to me that you’re not taking any notice whatsoever of the rules, Ms Nudjulu.

I accept you have been trouble for some time since I put you on that suspended sentence, and I take that into account. You pleaded guilty the very first time in court so I take that into account as well. It’s not a small amount of alcohol, having said that it’s certainly not at the – completely at the upper end, but I take that maximum penalty to – to mean that – well I know that it covers all offences, control liquor, possess liquor, bring liquor, and I regard bringing liquor is at the upper end of the types of offences that are covered by the maximum penalty.

You’re convicted and fined $400, $40 levy, 28 days to pay. You’ll get a piece of paper explaining how to pay that money and – and how to get more to pay if you need that extra time. (emphasis added)

Canberra – weak as piss on grog and grog runners in the NT.

In April this year, Kevin Rudd, maintaining the fine Australian political tradition of vilifying people you’ve not met and never will, told the world that:

“People smugglers are engaged in the world’s most evil trade and they should all rot in jail because they represent the absolute scum of the earth. We see this lowest form of human life at work in what we saw on the high seas yesterday.”

Rudd was talking about the tragic events arising from an explosion on board the boat, known as SIEV 36, carrying a group of Afghani asylum seekers en route to Australian waters from Indonesia.

SIEV 36

Last week two of Kevin Rudd’s “scum of the earth” made guilty pleas before Justice Dean Mildren in the Supreme Court of the Northern Territory in the matter of The Queen v Mohamad Tahir and Beny.

Justice Mildren, here speaking in his Sentencing Remarks directly to Mohamed Tahir & Beny, summed up the background to the trip from Indonesia:

On 15 April 2009 a Type IV Indonesian fishing vessel, about 15 metres in length of wooden construction with an inboard engine, was intercepted by HMAS Albany approximately two and a half nautical miles south-east of Ashmore Reef inside the Territory of Ashmore and Cartier Islands. The vessel has been given the name SIEV 36 by Australian authorities. At the time of interception you were both inside the wheelhouse at the helm of the SIEV 36. The vessel also carried 47 unlawful non-citizens, 46 from Afghanistan and one from Iran. The SIEV 36 had been at sea for about five days and nights after leaving Indonesia. The vessel carried sufficient food and water and it was equipped with a compass but it only had one life jacket. The passengers each paid up to $6000 to reach Australia.

And, rather than being the “lowest form of human life”, the two men charged with bringing the boat into Australian waters – Mohamed Tahir & a man known only as Beny – were really just young innocents abroad on a folly – not members of some evil conspiracy.

Beny is one of twelve children and attended school in South Sulawesi till he was about seven years old and has mostly worked as a subsistence fisherman and labourer .

As Justice Mildren told the court on his Sentencing Remarks:

“…approximately 12-18 months ago, you left South Sulawesi to go to Java in order to find work. You obtained some employment but about a month before you became involved in this matter, you left Java to go to Lombok in order to find work there. You were approached in Lombok by an older man who offered you employment on this trip. You were to be paid five million rupiah (about $AU560) which to you is a very large sum of money. You were lured into the task by the money. You expected to be caught. You were told that you would be returned home after a short time.”

Mohamed Tahir was one of seven children had a similar work history as Beny and was:

“…born in a village called Muncar near Banyuwangi in East Java. You also had been employed as a fisherman. You were approached by two older men at the wharves near your village and were offered five million rupiah to undertake this job. You had not been in work for some months and to you this was a very substantial sum of money. You left your village with the men and you were taken to Lombok. There the vessel was loaded with the passengers on a beach. At the time of departure, a captain was also on board.

Beny and Tahir were both severely injured in the explosion.

As Justice Mildren told them in Court:

“Beny you received burns to your left leg, left arm, left foot and the left side of your back. You were also thrown into the water for about 25-30 minutes before you were rescued. You were hospitalised for about 20-30 days.  Following your discharge from hospital you…were arrested and detained at the Brisbane Immigration Transit Accommodation at Pinkenba in Brisbane. You falsely told officers of the Department of Immigration and Citizenship that you were 17 years of age. A bilateral wrist X-ray taken for the purpose of age determination subsequently revealed that you d the skeletal maturity of a male of at least 19 years of age. I accept your counsel’s submission that the question of your age is one of some difficulty. You do not know your date of birth and there were conflicting reports about how old you were. It is accepted now that you are over 18 and that you are probably about 19, although you may be 20. This information has been confirmed by your solicitors through speaking to your family.”

…

“Tahir, also received burns to right arm and left leg. You have permanent significant scarring. You are still wearing bandages and will need to wear the bandages for the next two years. You still have pain.”

…

You, Tahir, were arrested following your discharge from hospital and detained at the DIAC juvenile facilities at Redcliffe in Perth. You had falsely told officers at the DIAC that you were 13 years of age. A bilateral wrist X-ray taken for the purpose of age determination subsequently revealed that you had the skeletal maturity of a male of at least 19 years of age. You do not know your exact age but you accept that you are older than 18.

The question of Beny and Tahir’s age is relevant because of the operation of subsection 233C(1) of the Migration Act 1958 (the Act) which provides that a mandatory minimum sentence does not apply to persons under the age of 18 years.

Beny & Tahir entered guilty pleas to offences under section 232A of the Act for which the maximum penalty is imprisonment for 20 years or a fine of $220,000 or both.

The true evil for Beny, Tahir and for Justice Mildren, is the requirement that anyone found guilty under section 232A of the Act is liable to a mandatory minimum sentence of five years with a mandatory minimum non-parole period of at least three years as required by section 233C of the  Act.

These provisions were introduced as amendments to the Act in 1999.

Introducing the Bill to the House of Representatives, Peter Slipper said that:

“The bill…introduces a more severe penalty of 20 years imprisonment or 2,000 penalty units, or both, for the trafficking of groups of five or more people. This penalty recognises that organised crime groups are involved in people trafficking, and the penalty reflects the seriousness of the offence.”

Labor’s Con Sciacca responded:

“Overall in 1997-98 some 157 illegal immigrants arrived by sea on our shores. In 1998-99 this figure increased eightfold to 859, and more are coming every day. This increase in people smuggling, in the operation of the so-called `snakeheads’, signifies that Australia’s penalties for these offences do not go far enough to deter those who assist these criminal warlords on our shores.”

In Beny & Tahir’s case all in Justice Mildren’s Court knew that they were not members of one of Slipper’s “organised crime groups”, nor were they Sciacca’s “snakeheads” or Rudd’s “scum of the earth” deserving of the condign punishment required by the provisions of the Act.

In any other circumstances Beny and Tahir would be prime candidates for the exercise of long-standing judicial discretions and the application of the ordinary judicial Sentencing Principles that provide clarity and transparency in sentencing.

But in Beny & Tahir’s case Justice Mildren’s hands were tied.

In words that reveal his barely restrained judicial frustration, he told Beny and Mohamed that:

“But for the mandatory minimum sentences which I am required to impose, I would have imposed a much lesser sentence than I am now required by law to do. There are dangers when the Courts are required to impose mandatory minimum sentences. In cases such as this, the ordinary sentencing principles play no function.

…

The other dangers of mandatory minimum sentencing, apart from the fact that the Court is required to impose a sentence which is greater than the justice of the case would otherwise require include the fact that principles of parity between offenders has little or no role to play. All offenders that fall within the class will be treated equally no matter what their level of criminality may be.

However this is not the occasion to debate the merits of mandatory minimum sentencing.”

Beny and Tahir were both sentenced to five years “on the top” and a non-parole period of three years.

Justice Mildren recommended that Beny and Tahir be released after twelve months.

Maybe now is the time to debate the merits of mandatory minimum sentencing under the provisions of the Migration Act?

Readers will know that I have borrowed the name for this blog – The Northern Myth – from a favourite book of mine of the same name published in 1965 and written by the distinguished agricultural scientist and economist Dr Bruce R. Davidson.

Davidson was a man well before his time and of whom many of the current boosters of the mantra of “develop the north” should take notice.

He was highly sceptical of the overblown claims being made by politicians, commentators and other boosters in the 1950’s and 1960’s of the potential of the north as an unburdened paradise for broad-scale agricultural development.

Davidson’s The Northern Myth presents a brutally clinical assessment – based on good science and thoroughly researched economics – of the prospects for many areas of agricultural and pastoral development across the top one-third of the Australian continent.

Parts of Davidson’s book are of course somewhat dated – but I’m sure that Davidson would be just as sceptical of some of the current claims being made – by the same classes of people – about the apparently bountiful future of agriculture in the north.

The most well-known of the failed experiments in northern broad-acre farming in the Top End was the Humpty Doo rice farm project.

The good folk at the Litchfield Shire Council provide this useful snapshot of the rice project – and of the mood of the time that is strikingly similar to some current views:

Rice grown at Humpty Doo was going to feed the starving millions in Asia. The Northern Territory could become the world’s food bowl – and the post-war world desperately needed food. With new skills, new markets, big money, and big ideas, northern development would become a reality, not just a hollow cliché. Certainly there had been failures before, the optimists admitted. But things were different now, they reasoned. Past failures were attributed to bad luck, bad judgment, inadequate capital investment, and similar reasons. Now, all these limitations and reasons for failure could be swept aside by a new wave of large scale capital development. And the Territory’s coastal plains would at last live up to all the hopes which had been held for them since explorer John McDouall Stuart in 1862 said of the area “it could be the finest colony under the Crown – capable of growing any and every thing.”

It didn’t quite turn out that way.

Suddenly, in the 1950s, the area became the focus for national ambitions to develop the north. The spectacular failure of these ambitions made the name “Humpty Doo” part of Australian folk lore.

In 1954 the junior Menzies government Minister Harold Holt infected the American mega-millionaire Alan Chase with enthusiasm for rice growing at Humpty Doo. Chase formed a grand plan for planting half a million acres to make the NT the world’s biggest rice producer. Chase declared that the Territory would be a food bulwark against communism. “Hunger in Asia breeds communism, and I believe that we have here the means of removing that hunger.” A specially commissioned film, “The Miracle of Humpty Doo” was produced and widely shown.

Chase formed a company Territory Rice which began experiments and plantings. By 1959 there were 5,500 acres under cultivation. It was proposed that the rice growing area would be subdivided in to 400 small farms, with housing and townships.

Magpie geese got the blame, but there were many more fundamental reasons – the project was always undercapitalised; no allowance had been made for rainfall and sunshine variability; soils were poor and drainage unsuitable; costs were high and poorly controlled; and marketing was never properly organised.

A few years later the land-clearing bug was still afoot in the Top End.

This excerpt comes from the NT Government’s Department of Infrastructure, Planning and Environment report, Land Clearing in the Northern Territory, written by E.J. Hosking in 2002:

In 1967 the first large-scale clearing project occurred in the Northern Territory on Tipperary station by the Tipperary Land Corporation (TLC) and at the time was believed to be the one of the biggest single agricultural projects in the world (NT News, 24/07/1967). The scheme planned for 79,000 ha to be cleared over 5 years, however, poor management, seasons and trying to do too much too soon eventually sent the Texan-based company broke (Mollah, 1980). Not learning from these mistakes, the Agricultural Development Corporation (ADC) undertook a similar feat in the early 1970s on Willeroo Station. An estimated 48,600 ha was recorded as cleared, with only 16,000 ha ever being farmed (Fisher, 1977).

With self Government in 1978, the NT launched the Agricultural Development and Marketing Authority (ADMA) in 1981/82. This Authority assisted private cropping developments (Sturtz, 2000) that helped establish the NT horticultural industry, and resulted in further clearing on Tipperary station in 1988/89 and development of the Douglas Daly research farms.

The Senate Environment, Communications and the Arts Committee is currently having a close look at forestry and mining operations on the Tiwi Islands just off the coast from Darwin. The Committee was scheduled to submit it’s report by Monday 26th October but there is no sign of the report at the Committee’s website and it has yet to be tabled in Parliament.

I’d heard a few weeks ago that the Committee would not make that deadline, in part due to the sheer complexity of the matters it has been charged with investigating, and also because there is a fair likelihood of separate reports from the Committee members.

You can see the Committee’s Terms of Reference here.

I’ve previously examined the mess that is left of the Tiwi Forestry operations here and here.

Most recently I looked at the predictable failure of the MIS schemes promoted by Great Southern Plantations, the operators of the large-scale Acacia mangium plantations on the Tiwi Islands that have been left to rot after its collapse in May this year.

It is clear, to me at least, that the collapse of the forestry operations on the Tiwi islands represents not just a failure of an ambitious agricultural scheme but also a failure of good corporate governance and highlights the need to conduct appropriate risk, economic and environmental analyses of the overall project – particularly in environmentally and culturally sensitive areas.

And it is not just in Australia that the Tiwi Forestry operations have drawn attention.

In late September Verlyn Klinkenborg editorialised in the New York Times and pointed to the broader impacts of the collapse of the forestry scheme on the islands:

…this is not just another forestry project gone awry — 75,000 acres of bankrupt monoculture where there used to be native tropical woodland…What’s left behind is a sense of desolation and distrust. I talked with several Tiwi Islanders — over a dinner of mud crab, local barramundi, local mussels and magpie goose — and it was clear that many of them doubted the good faith not only of Great Southern and the Northern Territory government but also their own Tiwi Land Council, which had encouraged the partnership

...

The question that night at dinner wasn’t just the economic loss involved — the loss of jobs and royalties and individual investments. It was the meaning of this failure, its demoralizing effect on a people who have been striving to find a way toward economic self-determination. Like traditional owners on the mainland, the Tiwi have had to struggle with the cruel vicissitudes of Australian policy toward its aboriginal population — everything from the brutality of official racism to the confused tolerance that has come in more recent times with cultural and political empowerment.

Apart from the social fallout from the failure of the arrangements between the Tiwi Land Council and Great Southern Plantations there are the very real questions about what will happen to the trees in the ground – will they be left to rot or is at least some part of the project capable of being salvaged?

On 16th May 2009 Administrators were appointed to Great Southern Group. Subsequently, on 18 May 2009 McGrathNicol were appointed Receivers and Managers of Great Southern Limited and certain subsidiaries of Great Southern.

In September McGrathNicol issued Circulars to Investors advising that the Tiwi Island forestry schemes (which consisted of a large number of tree-plots leased by small investors) would be unfunded after 30 September.

On 2 October McGrathNicol issued a further Circular to Investors in the Tiwi Leases, advising that:

The Tiwi Island operations are commercially unviable. The operating costs and capital expenditure requirements are extremely high. As we have been without funding for the Tiwi Island operations from 30 September 2009, we have commenced cessation of these operations. We also wrote to the landlords, the Tiwi Land Council, on 30 September 2009 advising that we will not be accepting any liability for the lease costs from 30 September 2009.

On 1 October 2009 the Tiwi Land Council terminated all head leases on the Tiwi Islands, relying on a clause contained in the head leases which entitled the landlord to terminate in the event of the insolvency of GSMAL.

In June the Tiwi Land Council had told the ABC that it needed a total of $120 million in order to:

…make the forestry plantations on the Tiwi Islands viable following the collapse of Great Southern Plantations…the land council’s Cyril Kalippa says he has asked the Federal Government for help because Great Southern’s account estimates show substantial money will need to be found to keep it going. “We need about $80 million for the next three years – that’s for the wages and the things that we need to operate the forest. “And also we need $40 million to extend the wharf or the jetty so that 50 tonne ships can come in and pick up the chip wood.”

Apart from the huge sums to keep the trees in the ground and alive – and the money to rebuild a ruined jetty – there remain very real questions about the viability of the whole scheme and who might front the large sums of money in a very tight market to a project with a troubled past and a far from certain future.

In early October The Australian reported that the Tiwi Land Council was optimistic that the project was still viable:

Despite the withdrawal of support from a banking consortium last month, Tiwi Land Council chief executive John Hicks said global demand for woodchips indicated the scheme was “clearly a viable operation”. “We have got it debt-free,” Mr Hicks said. “And it has a minimal rate of return of between 15 and 30 per cent.” The plantations will be harvested on decade-long cycles and landowners now have title to all fixed assets, including the camp headquarters, sewerage farm, port infrastructure, and airstrips. The TLC estimates it will need $80m to manage the plantation to maturity in 2013 and fix the Melville Island wharf so the trees can be exported.

Mr Hicks said at least 15 private investors had indicated they were prepared to support the group in the run-up to the first harvest in 2013. Mr Hicks said the 20 staff on the operation had been retained and that the plant had the potential to create 660 jobs in associated industries.

The controversial venture has already fallen victim to a cyclone and Great Southern was last year ordered to pay $4m for breaching environmental guidelines.

On 2nd October – the same day that McGrathNicols described the Tiwi Forestry project as “commercially unviable”, Dr Judith Ajani gave evidence to the Senate Committee’s Inquiry at Hearings in Canberra.

Dr Ajani is an economist specialising in forest and plantation research at the Fenner School at the ANU, where she has worked since 1996.  She is the author of ‘The Forest Wars‘ (MUP 2007) and is well placed to comment on the Tiwi forestry schemes.

Dr Ajani’s evidence to the Senate Committee centred on her assessments of the short-term propsects of Australia’s woodchip production and exports, the likely demand for the low-grade woodchips from the Tiwi Islands over the period 2010 to 2014 and the looming glut in supply caused by the rapidly increasing supply of plantation hardwood chips from plantations planted under the MIS schemes.

This is a glut that Dr Ajani says will require Australia to double the volume of sales into a flat market (Japan) where we export up to eighty-five per cent of out chips and where we  already supply about one-third of their intake – and that this will commence as soon as early in 2010.

Responding to questions from Greens Senator Rachel Siewert, Dr Ajani told the Committee that:

Dr. Ajani: What we have at the moment, and it is the really crucial issue here, is a very big volume of hardwood chip resources coming on stream from [Australian] plantations and we also have the native forest resource hanging in there as a continuing significant supplier of hardwood chips.

…

So what we are looking at here is Australia’s plantation chip resource increasing from our current level of production of around 4 million cubic metres per annum—that is the volume of that resource that we export currently from hardwood plantations—to around 14 million cubic metres per annum by 2010-2014. Native forest resources in there at the moment are supplying around 5½ million cubic metres. We have inevitably some very big resource volumes coming on stream very quickly. Some people might say that this is not a glut situation. I think they are not being open in their assessment of the reality here.

…

…with a glut we have a problem that happens in any commodity industry. Lower quality resources are the ones that always struggle to get market share and, in particular, to get market share at the price they expect.

…

…the Tiwi Islands chips using Acacia mangium are of a lower quality. They are of a lower quality, according to Great Southern plantations, because they have a lower pulp yield—in other words, you need more wood to make the same volume of pulp—and they are of a lower quality in terms of the additional costs that are required with respect to bleaching for paper production. That is information that Great Southern itself presented.

NT Labor Senator Trish Crossin asked Dr Ajani how the Tiwi might deal with their very real practical problems – they have trees in the ground that will cost a lot to maintain before they can be harvested and sold into an uncertain market:

Dr. Ajani: …it is a complicated problem…the Tiwi Island issue is embedded in a much bigger problem, which is the plantation MIS arrangements as a whole. The first job is to contain the problem. It is not just for the Tiwi islanders but also Australia wide—that is, in my view we should terminate the plantation MIS arrangements, because the last thing we want is greater havoc being played because we have more investment going into these operations while we are facing the market as I have described. The issue you raise is: what then happens to the trees?

…

…given the information that Great Southern itself provided some time ago and given the market conditions, there should be a great care about further expanding the plantation estate.

Liberal Senator Ian McDonald, in previous governments a Minister that provided no small measure of support for the plantation industry in general and MIS schemes in particular, asked a number of forceful questions of Dr Ajani, concluding with a question that revealed his belligerence and inability to comprehend her evidence:

Senator IAN MACDONALD—Chair, I am at a loss to understand the evidence Dr Ajani is giving.

Chair of the Committee is the Liberal Senator for South Australia, Simon Birmingham asked Dr Adjani about the prospects of the world hardwood chip market.

CHAIR— Dr Ajani, is the global hardwood chip market still growing?

Dr Ajani—The global hardwood chip market is largely flat…The trade figures are largely flat. The current downturn also is not presented in this graph on page 4. I do not see the hardwood chip trade globally recovering to such an extent that the wood volumes that we have coming on stream, virtually immediately, are going to be cleared easily and without putting pressure on the price.

Dr Ajani—…We are seeing globally a very strong separation of wood into wood products—paper and sawn timber—and the actual production trends of those products. In other words, what we are seeing globally are resource saving technologies coming through such that the strong growth in wood products is not flowing through to strong growth in wood input.

CHAIR—Recycling technologies and so on are substituting for plantation and native woodchips—is that your contention?

Dr Ajani—Yes. The main play here in the paper market is the role of recycled paper dampening the demand for wood despite strong growth in paper consumption.

Senator McDonald returned for one last unsuccessful shot at Dr. Ajani:

Senator IAN MACDONALD—What is your concern about the Tiwi Islands, from the Tiwi Islanders’ point of view?

Dr Ajani—I think they have a product which is not well placed in the play that is going to unfold over the next few years as our hardwood plantation resource comes onto the market.

In short, it seems that the Tiwi have been landed with a white elephant of monumental proportions – large swathes of pristine, high conservation-value tropical forest have been stripped and burned – or sold off in curious deals that have only made a loss to date.

The Tiwi have now been forced to go cap-in-hand for money from a cautious market and Governments that, understandably, have little inclination to throw good money after bad for a resource of dubious sustainability and diminishing value.

Many think that Tiwi Forestry is just another Northern Myth – an ambitious but poorly-researched and managed scheme that will – if it has not already – see large tracts of precious tropical forest land laid to waste for no good end.

As I indicated above, the Tiwi Islands forestry case is complex and I have only just touched the surface here.

I don’t expect everyone to agree with me – so if you have a view contrary to mine please register, and leave a (hopefully constructive) comment.

Similarly if you feel you may have something to add to or support my comments then please do the same.

You can read some background material (from a blog run by the NT Environment Centre in Darwin) here.

And I’d encourage you to read the Submissions and Transcripts of Evidence given to the Senate Committee at the Committee’s website here.

Thanks for taking the time to get this far!!

I’ve written about the NT Ombudsman’s annual reports and the small glimpses that they provide into the various instances of misconduct by the NT Police before here – noting that her annual reports to the NT Parliament only document those matters that come to her by way of formal complaint.

The point that I made then – that Carolyn Richards’ reports into NT Police misconduct present convincing support for the need for an independent authority to investigate allegations of misconduct by NT Police and public officials – are only bolstered by the instances of appalling conduct of NT Police revealed in her latest report.

You can see all of the NT Ombudsman’s annual reports here.

The chapters on NT Police misconduct make for fascinating reading, and there is little to suggest that NT Police conduct, and the quality, supervision and investigation of that conduct, has improved over time.

As Carolyn Richards told the local ABC in Darwin, past NT Police recruiting and training policies may be making no small contribution to these issues:

“…a lack of senior officers in the police force could be a reason why there have been some serious breaches of police duty of care for people in custody. “Because of the influx of new recruitments into the police and because there was a five year delay prior to 2001 where [there] were no police recruitments, we are now in the situation where we’ve got all these young officers out on the beat with six months training.”

The Northern Territory’s Acting Police Commissioner, Bruce Wernham, said: “All new police recruits undergo thorough and intensive training prior to operating under full supervision as probationary constables. “I note the ombudsman’s comments with regards to increased recruiting causing more complaints against less experienced police. “However, I am not aware of any evidence to specifically support this.”

The material in this post comes from just one of the case notes of complaints against NT police documented in the 2008-2009 annual report to the local Parliament of the NT Ombudsman, Carolyn Richards.

Some of the comments made by the unnamed Police Officer in the unidentified NT watchhouse to a prisoner being processed included:

“shut your face.”

“dumb f**k”,

“f**king loser”

“d**khead over there”

“… no brain”

“f**king retard.”

The case note, headed “No brains” detailed the treatment meted out by NT Police to a complainant who was arrested:

“…for breaking and entering. This person had fallen asleep outside the premises, due to being highly intoxicated, and was arrested at the scene. A complaint was subsequently lodged relating to his treatment whilst at the watch-house.”

Even before he made it to the cells he was getting the full benefit of the cop’s limited vocabulary:

“The complainant could be heard mumbling something whilst he was seated on the bench, although it was not discernable as to what was said. One of the attending officers responded with “shut your face.” Further comments made to or about the complainant within the next 30 minutes included, “dumb f**k”, “f**king loser”, “d**khead over there”, “… no brain”, “he’s from CSI, one of our smart criminals who breaks and enters and then collapses outside the scene” and “f**king retard.” There were several officers present during the comments, not one of them suggesting they were wrong or inappropriate.”

And it just doesn’t get any better – for the poor guy in the cell or the cop with the potty mouth.

Further examination of the audio and footage from the watchhouse cameras revealed this tasty little incident:

“…the duty officer was eating a piece of toast. He was pointing to the toast and then himself and later pointed to another breakfast behind the counter. In the officer’s statement he claimed he was indicating to the complainant that his breakfast was behind the counter. However on viewing the video it appeared the duty officer ate the complainant’s toast that was sitting with the complainant’s weetbix. He then went to a box sitting on the bin containing breakfast rubbish and took out a white bag with toast and a carton of milk. The duty officer then poured the milk on the weetbix and brought this, along with the toast in the white bag, to the complainant. It was concerning that the duty officer provided the complainant with toast and milk which appeared to have been taken from rubbish sitting on the bin.”

And thanks to the watchhouse cameras we now know that:

In addition to the inappropriate comments identified above the duty officer was heard and observed making the following statements to or about the complainant:

• “stupid f**king idiot”

• “make things quite clear, …, if you wanna f**kin’ play up I’ll make things hard for you”

• “god, he f**king stinks”

• “didn’t bang head for too long coz it hurt” one officer apparently mocking the complainant to another officer

• Two officers were joking about the complainant hitting his head against the cell door because he

wasn’t given a blanket. One officer stating that the complainant had said he would jump in the air

and land on his head killing himself. The officer then stating “go ahead, do it.” The other officer

stating “make sure you do it in front of the cameras”

• “piece of s**t that he is”

• After the officer established that the complainant was dialling his wife whom he had a domestic

violence order against, the officer said “get back in your f**king cell you spastic”; “you’ve got a

domestic violence order that says you are not allowed to contact her, you f**king wanker. You’re

not allowed to approach her, you’re not allowed to contact her directly or indirectly you f**king

wanker”

• “how about you shut the f**k up”

• “spastic c**t” whispered by officer

And what was the sanction meted out to the officer?

Here again from the NT Ombudsman’s annual report:

It was determined that some of the conduct was highly inappropriate for police officers and in breach of the NT Police Code of Conduct and Ethics and General Orders. The JRC recommended that the officers receive managerial guidance in relation to appropriate conduct when dealing with detainees. The JRC noted that it had already been recommended that the officers receive formal counselling.

The investigation also revealed that appropriate entries were not made into the watch-house log or offender journal.

Great – “counselling” and “managerial guidance” – no mention of the slap on the wrist, an apology to the complainant or any action against those other officers who, by their silent acquiescence, condoned their brother officer’s conduct.

As Glen Dooley of the North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency (NAAJA) , which provides legal services and representation across the Top End of the NT, told the local ABC:

“…there should be tougher sanctions and more transparency.

“If we had a field officer and that field officer started calling that client a dumb whatever, a whatever loser and a whatever retard and then served them some food out of one of our garbage bins, that person would be sacked on the spot,” he said.

“The report here recommends the officers receive managerial guidance in relation to food hygiene and appropriate conduct when dealing with detainees. That’s limp to me.”

For the benefit of those members of the NT Police reading this who may have forgotten what it says – and for the rest of us who have most likely never seen it before – here is the NT Police Statement of Ethics:

STATEMENT OF ETHICS

Each member of the Police Force is to act in a manner which:

- upholds the rule of law;

- preserves the individual’s rights and freedoms;

- places integrity above all;

- seeks to improve quality of life throughout the community through involvement with the community;

- strives to attain maximum citizen confidence and satisfaction;

- strives at all times for professional excellence;

- strives to maximise the effectiveness of available human and other resources; and

- tempers authority with common sense, discretion and sensitivity

Any bids on how many of those points have been contravened here – all of them? – or none?

Have any thoughts about the effectiveness of the current investigative process for complaints against NT Police?

Your thoughts please!

Predictably the Bolter has picked this up and Australia’s blog with the most hits, and perhaps the least sense, has attracted the usual raft of ill-informed comments.

The Northern Myth isn’t familiar with the work of Mark Hughes, but Helen Hughes is a familiar conservative commentator with an interesting twist on matters indigenous and who has recently turned her attention to remote Aboriginal education in the NT.

And not without some controversy.

As reported by the National Indigenous Times in April 2008, Hughes wrote an opinion piece, published in The Australian, that drew on examples from one small north-east Arnhem Land homeland, drawing the following very general analysis from that meagre dataset:

“There are about 10,000 of these illiterate non-numerate teenagers who have been going to school … What is the government of the NT going to do about these 10,000 children?”

But [then] NT Deputy Chief Minister Marion Scrymgour has dismissed her findings and says the claims are “absolutely insulting and offensive”.

“I just find it astounding that she bases a report and a generalisation across the Northern Territory Aboriginal communities based on one small homeland centre that she has visited,” she said. Ms Scrymgour said Prof Hughes had left out “some fundamental pieces of information” and denied the government was providing misleading figures on education standards in the bush.

Nadine Williams, NT president of the Australian Education Union, said Prof Hughes needed to “stop generalising”.

“It would be helpful if Helen Hughes had ever been to some of the places she’s talking about,” she said.

Anyway, now it seems that Hughes and her research assistants are at it again.

In their opinion piece of last Friday, the Hughes’ say that, due to the NT Education Department’s training requirements for remote-based teachers:

Homeland Learning Centres lose eight weeks – almost 25 per cent of the school year – while their staff attend courses for the first and last weeks of each term.

Taking that statement on face value you would think that in each of the hundreds of small homeland schools across the NT students spend two months of each school year sitting in classrooms without teachers.

Fortunately for the students the Hughes’s version of events is at some considerable distance from reality.

It is true that at the top and tail of each term that a bunch of teachers from all over the NT – from homeland and “mainstream” schools – go off for professional development training.

But not all teachers go for that training at the same time. Depending on demand, individual needs or other factors some go several times a year, some perhaps once or twice.

And relief teachers and local Aboriginal team teachers are rostered on to fill the gaps.

How do I know this?

I asked a couple of the teachers here at Yirrkala where I’m staying with family while working on my Aboriginal bird knowledge book project.

The second line of attack that the Hughes’ make – on remote community festivals – suffers the same problem – a few facts and a dose of reality mug their story of apparent bureaucratic indulgence and neglect of the best interests of remote students.

The Hughes’s say that:

The limited school year is further eroded by cultural festivals and sports events regularly scheduled during school hours.

The commonwealth government is a serious offender with its Community Festivals for Education Engagement program. Under this program, 13 indigenous festivals are being held this year…all are held during term time rather than during school holidays.
…
As in previous years, the successful Garma Festival ran this year during the school term in August. Many children lost up to two weeks’ schooling. It would take little effort to reschedule next year’s Garma dates to the July school holidays. Financial sponsors of the festival, including the commonwealth and Northern Territory governments and high-profile private companies, should ensure this change is made.

Being in Yirrkala, just down the road from the Garma festival site at Gulkula, I was curious about the reference to the “many children” that apparently lost up to a fortnight of valuable schooling because of their attendance at Garma.

As the very informative Garma Festival website notes, the festival ran from 7 to 11 August this year – that is Friday through Tuesday.

I asked the organisers of the Garma Festival, the Yothu Yindi Foundation, about the Hughes’ claims.

The CEO of the Yothu Yindi Foundation, Alan James, told me that:

Garma formally starts at 4pm on Friday afternoon. The forums all finish by 4pm Monday afternoon – resulting in one school day “lost”.

Garma is not part of the Federal Government’s “Community Festivals for Education Engagement” program.

The music and multimedia training programs are integral parts of Garma and these operate in consultation and engagement with schools and other educational institutions and provides credits towards VET accreditation, so it is very much a part of formal schooling.

And in relation to the Hughes’ demand that Garma be moved to the June school holidays, Alan James said that:

Garma is strategically linked to a number of other events that are held in the Top End of the NT in and around August. Cooperation between Garma and the organisers of other large events is essential to ensure that logistical bottlenecks – on a national and local scale – are avoided where possible.

August kicks off with the week-long Darwin Cup Festival, then the three core days of Garma (with an extra couple of days for the tourists) the next weekend, followed by the Telstra National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Awards in Darwin the following week. The fortnight of the Darwin Festival follows.

The other important consideration – bearing in mind that the more than 2,500 people attending Garma are camping in tents – is that August is the driest time of year – the last thing we want is for Garma to be rained out.

As the Hughes’ should know – but apparently didn’t bother to find out for themselves – one of the most successful events at Garma is the Garma Miwatj Youth Forum, a cooperative venture with Anglicare NT.

As Ann Buxton, Executive Manager for the Youth, Family and Remote area programs at Anglicare NT, told the Senate Select Committee on Regional and Remote Indigenous Communities Inquiry at Hearings in Darwin in May this year:

Over the past four years Anglicare, in conjunction with the Yothu Yindi Foundation, started the Garma Miwatj Youth Forum, which runs parallel to the annual Garma Festival.

We bring together about 250 young people from communities in the regions and it has become a key event.

We promote youth leadership, do a lot of skills development work, and look at issues that young people are experiencing.
Garma has become an important event. It is a little event compared with the overall festival but it helps to give young people in that region a role.

For some time many elders have been interested in supporting young people, getting them engaged in processes, and putting some positive energy into some of the issues that they are dealing with. This forum, which has become important, also brings together about 40 organisations from around that region to help get it off the ground.

It is a great event.

A great event indeed – a bit of training, mentoring, skills development, community support and engagement and lots of positive energy and maybe a fair bit of fun.

Perhaps that is what so bothers the Hughes’ – the idea that a few kids might “lose” a day of school while they do the hard yards at Garma and have some fun while they are at it.

But in the apparently joyless world of the Hughes’ vision of remote education that would represent an abject failure by governments of their core responsibilities to school-children.

There is more – much more – that I could say about the Hughes’ opinion piece – including that their comments about the Central Desert Shire’s policy of only supporting cultural and sporting events held during school holidays was old news and the quotes attributed to the Shire CEO, Rowan Foley and the Shire President, Norbert Patrick, are cast in the present tense.

If the Hughes’ had done some basic research- like having a look at the Council Minutes for the Meeting of 30 September or reading this ABC News report – they would have found out that Foley was stood down as CEO at that meeting.

“Motion 3 was amended to the following: “Whereas the Central Desert Shire has recently suffered the resignation and loss of key personnel attributable to the management style of the CEO, and there have been various complaints lodged relating to the conduct of the CEO and Council management, the Council resolves to direct that the CEO step down on pay for the time being and that LGANT be approached for assistance in resolving the crisis that has developed”. Moved: Councillor Bruce Finter. Seconded: Councillor Ned Hargreaves.”

Sounds to me very much like a Council in crisis management mode.

Makes the Hughes’ call of “Three cheers for the Central Desert Shire!” sound just a bit hollow – particularly when you consider that one of the two organisations to be funded by the Commonwealth’s Community Festivals for Education Engagement 2009 – the Ti-Tree school, according to the information on the Commonwealth website, held it’s festival from Tuesday October 13 to Thursday October 15.

In term time.

And the local governing authority with responsibility for municipal services at Ti-Tree is…you guessed it, the Central Desert Shire.

Mandawuy Yunupingu. Photo by John Elliott, National Portrait Gallery

Mandawuy Yunupingu has fought more than a few battles in his time – most of which he has won hands down.

But, if you believed the title and tone of an article written by Natasha Robinson in The Australian in December last year – Songline fades for Treaty man Mandawuy Yunupingu – you could be forgiven for thinking that Mandawuy had given up hope and that he was soon to “finish up”, as we say up here.

Nothing could be further from the truth – anyone who knows Mandawuy is aware that the last thing he could ever be would be a quitter.

Tomorrow night, Monday 19 October, Jimmy Little, who has had his own battles with renal failure, will present an Australian Story on the ABC that sets out the real stories behind the fight that Mandawuy is having with end-stage renal failure – a curse that disproportionately affects many in Aboriginal Australia and that can only be treated by frequent dialysis or a kidney transplant.

Chart from the Fred Hollows Foundation

This chart produced by the Fred Hollows Foundation gives a stark – though dated – outline of the relative incidence of end-stage renal failure rates between the Aboriginal populations in the Australian States and territories and in the non-Aboriginal population.

The Fred Hollows Foundation says that the rate of death from Kidney Disease among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people is:

…approximately nine times the total Australian rate. In the Barkly region of the Northern Territory standardised end-stage renal disease (ESRD) incidence among Indigenous Australians is up to 30 times the national incidence for all Australians. The number of dialysis treatments in the NT is doubling every two years.

…

In end-stage renal disease (ESRD), kidney transplant or dialysis is necessary to maintain life. The health service costs of this rapidly rising epidemic are a major demand on resources. Projected cost of medical services required in the next five years for the treatment of end-stage renal disease in the Northern Territory is estimated to be $50 million.

The current epidemic is probably explained by the confluence of many risk factors over a short time period, associated with dramatic lifestyle changes and serious socioeconomic disadvantage.

I’ve known Mandawuy Yunupingu since the mid nineteen-eighties when I was working as a sound engineer and general factotum for a rowdy bunch of Darwin-based ratbags known as the Swamp Jockeys.

From the dim recesses of memory I recall that Mandawuy turned up one night while we were on tour in Sydney with an old battered guitar, a swag of great songs and a keen desire to get them heard by as many people as possible.

He did a few gigs as a guest with the Jockeys and it was soon pretty clear to us all that he was bound for great things – which he went on to achieve for many years as the frontman of that groundbreaking band called Yothu Yindi.

A testament to Mandawuy’s determination is that he already had a distinguished career as an educator – maybe enough for most of us.

But Mandawuy knew that he could do more to spread his people’s message through his words, music, songs and performances fronting one of the most musically dynamic and politically forceful acts we’ve seen in this country.

Through the work of Yothu Yindi and beyond he has raised awareness of any number of important issues that affect the daily lives of the Yolngu peoples of north-east Arnhem Land and of Aboriginal countrymen and women across Australia.

And these messages weren’t just for blackfellas – they reached out to mainstream Australia as well.

Yothu Yindi was always about more than music.

As their ground-breaking – and chart-topping – Treaty indicates, Yothu Yindi was all about building bridges between cultures and peoples:

Nhima Djatpangarri nhima walangwalang -
Nhe Djatpayatpa nhima gaya nhe-
Matjini…. Yakarray – nhe Djat’pa nhe walang – Gumurrtijararrk Gutjuk -

This land was never given up
This land was never bought and sold
The planting of the Union Jack
Never changed our law at all

Now two rivers run their course
Separated for so long
I’m dreaming of a brighter day
When the waters will be one

Treaty Yeh Treaty Now Treaty Yeh Treaty Now
Treaty Yeh Treaty Now Treaty Yeh Treaty Now

Nhima djatpa nhe walang
Gumurrtjararrk yawirriny Nhe gaya nhe matjini
Gaya nhe matjini Gaya gaya nhe gaya nhe
Matjini walangwalang Nhema djatpa nhe walang – Nhe gumurrtjarrk nhe ya-

Promises – Disappear – Priceless land – Destiny -
Lyrics by Yothu Yindi & Paul Kelly

The Yothu Yindi website explains that the band has deep roots into the land, traditional law and decision-making based on consensus and culture:

The Yolngu members of Yothu Yindi live in the tribal homelands of north-east Arnhem Land 600 kilometres east of the Northern Territory capital of Darwin. Some live in Yirrkala, a coastal community on the Gove Peninsula that was originally established by the Methodist Missionary Society in 1935. Others live in Galiwinku, a former mission on Elcho Island originally established in 1942.

A move pioneered in north-east Arnhem Land, the homeland movement has seen Aboriginal people returning to their traditional lands and lifestyles-relying less on the trappings of Western society and more on traditional activities such as hunting, fishing and cultural and ceremonial education.

Yolngu band members are drawn from two of the sixteen clan groups in the region, the Gumatj and Rirratjingu. The people of the region have had contact with Balanda (Europeans) only over the past sixty years or so. Consequently, their traditional cultural, religious, artistic and ceremonial activities are still among the strongest in the country.

The band’s approach to its career is deeply rooted in traditional decision making processes, so all traditional songs that have been performed or released have been done so as a result of substantial consultation with clan leaders and traditional lawmakers.

Yothu Yindi – the band – has cut back its activities over the past several years.

But Yothu Yindi – the concept and the philosophy – has gone from strength to strength through the work of the Yothu Yindi Foundation, which, among many other things, runs the annual Garma Festival at Gulkula, outside Yirrkala.

You can learn more about the musical work of Mandawuy and Yothu Yindi at the band’s website here, and see what the Yothu Yindi Foundation is up to here.

And have a look at this site to find out about the Garma Festival.

Wadeye township

I’ve written here recently about the fantastic (in the original sense of that word) approach that The Australian and its dwindling number of northern correspondents take to just about anything to do with Aboriginal affairs here in the NT.

This past weekend The Weekend Australian continued this dubious tradition when it ran this piece from its northern correspondent, Nicolas Rothwell.

Rothwell examines apparently new economic and governance developments at the troubled remote township of Wadeye, in the west of the NT’s Top End.

And Rothwell, after many years in the NT, has apparently finally realised what anyone with any experience in remote Australia would have found out a long time ago – that Wadeye, like most small townships in the NT, and elsewhere – is a town that is “mostly ordered and peaceful”.

If you take the assertions in Rothwells piece at face value you would think that the good citizens of Wadeye had turned their backs on all forms of Australian mainstream governance and were boldly charting a course of their own, free from the controls imposed by Australian governments at all levels.

As Rothwell says:

“…what bureaucracy gives, it can also take away. Not only did the federal intervention of mid-2007 sweep through Wadeye; the Thamarrurr local council was wound up as the Northern Territory unveiled its new regional shires. The council, though, gave birth to a new Thamarrurr Development Corporation, which was bolstered by strong support from the Rudd government. The upshot of this administrative upheaval was a deepened desire among the Wadeye leadership group to pursue their own path.
…
“The idea aims to assert control over their own region and in time to supplant the long-established Northern Land Council, which is widely seen as a moribund arm of the Territory Labor Party. “We will set up our own council,” Nganbe says bluntly. TDC’s Berto says: “There’s a lot of people here not happy with the NLC and its complete lack of service, and its standing in the way of progress. We want to set the political agenda from the ground.”

And notwithstanding the brief reference to “strong support” from the Rudd government, Rothwell reckons that the people of Wadeye:

“…don’t like the deal on offer from mainstream Australia’s authorities. They want to keep their own culture, they want economic development and they want it on their own terms, under their control.”

What Rothwell is of course talking about here is localised Aboriginal self-determination, an aspiration that he has frequently, and as recently as six weeks ago, condemned to the dustbin of Australian political history:

“For some time it has been clear Aboriginal self-determination has had its day.”

Due credit should be given to the good citizens of Wadeye for getting their act together in what are incredibly difficult circumstances. By all accounts they have established a range of business enterprises that will provide real jobs and offer economic opportunities to locals.

Rothwell implies that the people of Wadeye have achieved these successes in spite of the bureaucratic and administrative barriers set up by governments at every turn. But it may be that a few inconvenient facts – for Rothwell’s thesis at least – might explain a somewhat different basis for some of Wadeye’s recent successes.

The bureaucracies that Rothwell says have taken so much from the people of Wadeye with one hand have been very busy giving bucketloads of money to the recently-established Thamarrurr Development Corporation Ltd (the TDC) with the other.

The TDC is a non-profit commercial operation limited by guarantee with no shareholders – just members that represent the 20 clan groups of the Wadeye region.

In the 2008/2009 round of funding for the Indigenous Heritage Program announced on 7 July 2008, the TDC was given two grants to a total of $62,704 for “the investigation and management of cultural heritage” of the Thamarrurr region.

On 8 October 2008 Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin announced that TDC would receive $500,000 as “an establishment grant to deliver a range of business services” to the Wadeye region.

At it’s meeting of 10 February 2009, the Victoria Daly Shire Council (the Council), the local government body that replaced Thamarrurr’s predessor, the Thamarrurr Regional Council, passed the following Motion:

“That Council agrees to lease for one dollar ($1.00) to Thamarrurr Development Corporation for the period from the 10th of February 2009 to the 7th of December 2009 all non – fixed assets.”

At the following meeting on 7 April 2009, the Council, in the course of the Confirmation of the Minutes of the previous meeting, amended that Motion:

“The minutes of the ordinary meeting, item (8) TDC were amended with a further dot point
added, saying that if all the above conditions were met the vehicles would then be sold to the TDC for the sum of $1.00. The minutes were  then taken as read and accepted as a true record of the Meeting.”

The value of the assets leased to the TDC for $1, according to the Report provided to Council, was $760,073.

According to the same report, the insured value of the vehicles to be sold to Tharmarrurr upon it meeting Council’s conditions was $482,273.

You can read the Minutes of Council meetings and the Report from Council staff for yourself here.

On 4 March 2009, by joint press release Minister Macklin and Member for Lingiari, Warren Snowdon announced that TDC would receive a total of $650,000 to provide painting services and the purchase of civil construction machinery.

On 11 June 2009, in another joint press release, Snowdon and Macklin announced that TDC would receive a total of $1.422 million to purchase a mobile concrete batching plant and to provide accommodation for “key staff” at Wadeye.

As the ABC reported last month, the Thamarrurr Association, (also based at Wadeye but a separate entity to the TDC) following representations from then NT Indigenous Policy Minister Alison Anderson, received a $250,000 grant from the NT government in circumstances yet to be fully explained:

“Ms Anderson secured $250,000 of taxpayer funds for a corporation run by the powerful Yunupingu family in Arnhem Land, including Galarrwuy Yunupingu. The only other organisation to get $250,000 for community consultation is the Thamarrur Association at Wadeye, which has never declared an income before. The Government has not announced the payments and is yet to explain how the companies were selected. It says the money will pay for consultation on the Working Futures policy to help the Government get its service delivery right.”

I’ve not yet been able establish any direct connection between the TDC and the Thamarrurr Association – other than that they both do the same kind of business in the same small town.

On my back-of the-envelope reckoning the TDC has received control over $760,000 worth of assets for the bargain basement price of a single dollar from their local Council and, including the grant to the Thamarrurr Association, close enough to $3.5 million from the NT and Federal governments.

Not bad for a group that Rothwell says, “…don’t like the deal on offer from mainstream Australia.”

And what of the assertions in Rothwell’s article by TDC’s John Berto of the Northern Land Council’s “…complete lack of service, and its standing in the way of progress” at Wadeye?

John Berto should know all about the NLC and service delivery at Wadeye. After all, he had been a long-term employee of the NLC and for a period up to late 2006 he was the NLC’s Deputy CEO.

But Rothwell and Berto would also be aware of the benefits to the Traditional Owners of the Wadeye region (and beyond) resulting from the NLC’s negotiations on their behalf over the Blacktip gas plant and pipeline.

The deal negotiated by the NLC has given, and will provide into the future, significant economic and social benefits to the traditional owners and residents of the Wadeye region.

Indeed, there is every appearance that Rothwell consciously excluded these well-known and readily available facts from his piece because they did not support his oft-repeated spurious claims about the NLC. I found all of the material noted above after about ten minutes of searching on the web and a bit of scurrying about in the backblocks of various websites.

Rothwell ends his piece with a dubious comparison between Longreach in far-western Queensland and Wadeye, implying that Wadeye should be accorded the same services, government support and facilities as Longreach.

Longreach is a service centre in a region with a long history of extensive & highly productive mining, pastoral and agricultural activity. It is also has roads that lead from somewhere to somewhere else.

Wadeye services only itself and a few small homelands. It is at the wrong end of a long and rough road in a region with no history of pastoral, agricultural or any other significant development – apart from the above-mentioned Blacktip gas project.

Pity about those annoying facts getting in the way of a fantastic story.

Declaration: Bob Gosford has worked for the Northern Land Council as a legal advisor, most recently in 2008. He had no involvement in matters at Wadeye apart from a single meeting with an early version of the Thamarrurr council in about 2000.

From Geoff Vivian's Kimberley Page

I’ve written about the Tanami Track/Road/Highway here before – but that was based on a couple of years of driving the  short stretch of one hundred horrible kilometres or so of occasionally-maintained dirt road between my home at Yuendumu and the end of the bitumen at Tilmouth Well, two hundred kilometres from Alice.

But this past month I’ve had cause to travel the rest of the road from Yuendumu north-west to where it ends, seven hundred lonely kilometres away, just outside of Halls Creek in Western Australia.

Image from David Grant's Holidays page

There isn’t a lot between the two points – occasional signposts point to station homesteads or outstations set well off the road, a cluster of mine sites – The Granites, Tanami, Coyote – and one roadhouse, Rabbit Flat.

I’ve driven from Lajamanu to Rabbit Flat and Yuendumu before – but twenty or so years ago – and my memory of the state of the road then has faded into a haze of dust.

As I’ve noted previously, one of the major impacts on the Tanami Track is the steady stream of fuel and chemical trucks that service the Granites Mine at about the six hundred kilometre point on the road.

Tanami fuel tanker

These massive trucks can drag loads of up to 140 tonnes and cause an enormous amount of damage to the roadway, which for large stretches of the Tanami Track have never been properly formed and sheeted.

In the long dry season the Tanami Track is a sandy, shifting surface of corrugations, dust and huge potholes, and in the wet the roadway turns into little more than a muddy ditch, with long pools of water lying in the many un-drainable sections of the road that have been cut down below the level of the surrounding countryside by the constant grading required to maintain some similarity to a road.

The Tanami Track falls within the jurisdictions of two large Shire Councils, the Shire of Halls Creek in Western Australia and the recently-constituted Central Desert Shire in the NT.

The Central Desert Shire, which has about 700 kilometres of the Tanami Track in it’s area, has had little to say about road  conditions and how it may affect local communities and businesses.

There is not much in it’s Plan of Management and the web home page is, at the time of writing, out of action.

The NT Government does most of the regular maintenance and is currently spending about $12 million to upgrade and seal a 14 kilometre section at the south-eastern end of the road that regularly floods in the wet season. That work is certainly welcome, but there will still be an awful long stretch of the Tanami Track that will continue to be maintained only by several grader skims a year.

The Halls Creek Shire appears to take its responsibilities to its residents more seriously than governments in the NT do.

Recently the Halls Creek Herald reported on the Shire’s recent efforts. Earlier this year the Shire commissioned a cost benefit analysis on the Tanami from Cummings Economics.

Shire President Lynette (”Jim“) Craig told the Halls Creek Herald that communities along the Tanami Track rely upon it:

“…for their supplies of food, fuel and services and the artists rely on the passing tourists for a substantial proportion of their livelihoods. The current condition of the road deprives them of income as well as adding to the costs of their stores, and the costs of doing business for the mines and stations.”

Shire CEO Warren Olsen told the Halls Creek Herald that:

“The Shire does its best within its resources to maintain and upgrade the road…But without sealing we know that after the wet season you won’t see where the money went, and that’s a heartbreaking waste of scarce materials and taxpayer’s money.”

In June this year the Shire released a report (Regularising Local Government Services in Halls Creek Shire – available by search at the Shire home page) into council services to the communities along the Tanami track.

A major part of that report considers serious legal liability issues for the Shire and the costs and lost economic opportunities arising from the road’s condition.

The report is refreshingly blunt in its assessment of the Shire’s capacity to provide services and of the state of funding from other levels of government required to provide those services.

For me this bluntness is rare and welcome – and certainly worlds away from the kind of comments that I have heard from either the NT Government or from the recently-established Shire councils that operate in remote areas of the NT – where there are similar concerns about roads of of the same nature and magnitude as raised by the Halls Creek Shire but that the NT Shires and the NT Government appear disinterested in.

It is worth quoting from the Halls Creek Shire report at some length:

The Shire of Halls Creek is particularly impecunious; it has a very small rating base and few other revenue opportunities, its remoteness causes it to have a very high cost structure both for labour and for the supply of goods and services, it is responsible for a very large road network that it does not have adequate resources to maintain at an appropriate level (including a major interstate road1 that should more properly be a state or federal responsibility), and its communities have been identified as among the most disadvantaged in Australia – consequently requiring a high level of local government services per capita in order to try to redress the high level of disadvantage.

…

Across the state, the funding available for maintenance of roads to remote communities is woefully inadequate for the work that ought to be performed to maintain the roads in a reasonable condition.

…

The poor state of the Tanami Road is a serious impediment to providing services of all kinds to the communities of Billiluna, Balgo and Mulan (as the poor state of the Duncan Road also impedes the provision of services to the Ringer Soak community).

And there is evidence that the state of the road not only results in highly inflated costs to offset expected damage to vehicles, but that in some instances contractors refuse to tender, or tender at unacceptably high prices, for work that involves use of the road.

There is also evidence that occupational health & safety issues are emerging as a barrier to service provision:

“…we have sought proposals from various contractors to either directly provide services to the communities or to provide backup services in the case of service disruption, we were unable to obtain any prices because potential service providers are unwilling to provide services to communities located along such a vehicle-damaging road.

The Department of Housing…advises that the condition of the road is causing the Department delays in having contractors undertake work in those communities. It appears that contractors regularly report vehicle damage on trips to those communities. While vehicle damage might well explain the reluctance of contractors to service those communities, it is reasonable to assume that it also affects the prices that contractors charge to service the communities.

The Department of Housing also expresses concern for the safety of its officers when they are travelling on the Tanami Road.

Mulan Community Store reports that it suffers from considerable damage to its stock, particularly fruit and vegetables, soft drinks, freezer goods, and some dry goods such as cans – which it attributes to the condition of the Tanami Road. On the morning the Store management wrote its letter to the Shire, they reported destroying 74 cans of Coca Cola due to road damage. They also reported fortnightly losses in the range $250 to $400 due to damage in transport.

The freight company that delivers to the community stores has reportedly given notice that it intends to seek a substantial increase in its rates when its contract expires in September 2009, which will cause food prices to increase and add to hardship in the communities.

The Shire report also notes the direct and indirect economic effects that the road condition ha upon the remote communities in its area, particularly those enterprises that rely upon passing tourist trade.

Warlayirti Artists is the indigenous-owned Art and Culture Centre in Balgo Community. This art centre supports over 200 indigenous artists in the communities of Balgo. Mulan and Billiluna. Other than Centrelink payments and CDEP it is the major provider of the income for many of these artists. In 2007-2008 it contributed $ 1.5 million in direct payments to artists across these communities. The dry season (April to October) is the art centre’s busiest time of the year and when most of the income is earned to sustain the artists through the wet season…significant volumes of artwork are sold directly to tourists and collectors travelling to the Art Centre along the Tanami Track from either Halls Creek or Alice Springs.

Warlayirti Artists report that the condition of the road is discouraging tourist traffic and thereby reducing the potential sales that they would otherwise expect to sustain the local economies. They also report that a builder they had lined up to commence building work has pulled out of the job because of the damage the road is doing to his vehicle and the time it is taking to reach the community.

And the Tanami is also used extensively, particularly during the dry season, to ship cattle out and to carry material for pastoral, mining and exploration activities into the region.

…it is heavily used by road trains and other heavy vehicles that cause considerable damage to the road.

The Shire is in receipt of complaints from various pastoral companies along the road, including the owners and managers of Youga Walla Station, who state (inter alia) that: “Carriers of livestock, general freight and fuel are now refusing to come down the road and deliver our freight. If you can even convince them to come down it will be at a rate of 5 to 10 times the normal going rate. For example I was recently quoted $5500 for one trailer of goods from Halls Creek to the station. I can get the same goods from Adelaide to Halls Creek for $6500. A recent purchase of cattle has had to be stopped due to the carrier refusing to use the Tanami Road. This is obviously having a huge impact on the ability of us to run our business viably . . . We have had staff and visitors who have travelled here from Alice Spring on the Tanami who have commented that the road is in excellent condition until you get to the WA border. This is an entirely unacceptable situation and needs immediate attention.”

Not only is the Tanami Road a huge burden on the Shire of Halls Creek that it cannot afford, but it is an inequitable situation that the Department of Main Roads takes responsibility for two intra-regional roads (both the Great Northern Highway and the Gibb River Road) linking the West Kimberley towns of Derby with the East Kimberley towns of Wyndham and Kununurra, while leaving the Shire of Halls Creek with the burden of this important interstate road.

The Northern Territory end of the Tanami Road is currently being sealed to within 80 km of the state border. Upgrading the Western Australian end of the road to the same standard (at an estimated cost of $60 million) would not only provide the opportunity for alternative modes of service provision to the Tjurabalan communities, but it would also reduce costs significantly to the Shire and to the road users, and facilitate the economic development of Balgo, Mulan and Billiluna by reducing their transportation costs, bringing more tourist traffic, and making businesses in those communities more viable.

…

the estimated cost would be in the order of $60M.

I’ll be keeping an eye out for further news from the north-west about the state of this road – and also whether the NT agencies see fit to change their approach to the parlous state of the road and their reluctance to acquit their responsibilities.

And if you are interested in matters north-west I cannot recommend the many great stories and links at Geoff Vivian’s Kimberley Page highly enough. Not only does Kimberley Page have original contributions from Geoff but it pulls in all manner of articles and links on matters of current and historical interest from around Australia and the globe.

Well worth an hour or two of browsing.

And me, I wimped it – after driving up the road and spending a couple of weeks wandering around the Kimberleys I had the choice of taking the short route (700k’s) via Balgo home to Yuendumu – or going the long way round via Kununurra, Katherine, Tennant Creek, Alice Springs (approximately 2,500k’s).

I will admit to having lost my bottle on the Tanami Track – and I took the long way home after convincing myself that I had business in Darwin…and not being able to face the likely repair bills to sanity, health and vehicle after dragging it across the horrorshow that is the Tanami Track right now…

Got a story about the Tanami Track – send in a post and tell me, and the rest of us, all about it!

Mundine didn’t hold back and his voice was but one of a chorus – from both sides of politics – of those that shouted down the good Professor and his findings.

Maybe for the good Professor it is a case of when everyone disagrees with you then you must be getting it right!

Here is what Warren Mundine told the ABC’s Samantha Hawley:

Aboriginal leader and former ALP president, Warren Mundine says that’s the right action to take. But he’s outraged by Professor Anaya’s findings and says his views should be completely ignored.

WARREN MUNDINE: I think this Rapporteur’s report should be dealt with the same as every other Rapporteur’s report; just drop it in the bin and actually get on with the job. What is detrimental about the protecting of children, the protecting of women against sexual assault, physical assault?

SAMANTHA HAWLEY: He has found that elements of the intervention are racially discriminatory; but are you saying that that’s okay given the problems that were in those communities?

WARREN MUNDINE: When Aboriginal women or Indigenous women I should say, are being raped then we need to have policies in place that deal with the rape of those women.

SAMANTHA HAWLEY: The Rapporteur also said there is entrenched racism in this country; would you agree with that statement?

WARREN MUNDINE: (laughs) Look, I think Australia is a great place. I think Australians are great people and decent people. We are one of the most modern, human rights, civil societies in the world.

SAMANTHA HAWLEY: Okay but, so there’s not an entrenched racism in your view in this nation?

WARREN MUNDINE: There are issues in this nation and there is racism in this nation, anyone would be a fool to say there’s not. But there is racism and there’s problems in all nations. We are actually, in Australia, working towards resolving those issues.

MARK COLVIN: The former ALP president and Aboriginal leader, Warren Mundine ending Samantha Hawley’s report.

Richard Downs will be familiar to readers of these pages from recent posts about the fight that he and the Alyawarra people of Ampilatwatja north-east of Alice Springs from recent posts here and here.

For mine, if you wanted to speak to or hear from a real “Aboriginal leader” and you had a choice between Richard Downs and Warren Mundine then I would take Richard Downs without a blink.

Richard Downs and his people sit out in the dust and heat at their bush camp after walking off from the township of Ampilatwatja in protest at the abject failure of this and previous Federal governments to accord his people their dues as Australian citizens – they want back what the government stole from then when the NT Intervention rolled into town.

They want the government to give them back their equality, their dignity, their freedoms and their right to live their lives as they decide – not as decided by some shiny-bummed bureaucrat in far-away Darwin or Canberra.

And Richard Downs isn’t just a man of action – he is also a man of words – and I for one would give good money to see a stand-up debate between Richard and Warren – I reckon Warren wouldn’t stand a chance.

Maybe that is why Warren and the other so-called Aboriginal leaders don’t dare take a step inside the Territory – if they did they would find themselves outclassed by the many people of Richard Down’s calibre who live their quiet lives in ever increasing desperation – not due to their own failings or the failings of their people – but a desperation caused by the manifest failings of governments that reckon they know how Richard and his people should live their lives and fail even in that task almost absolutely.

Here is what Richard Downs and his people said to Warren Mundine this afternoon:

STATEMENT
PRESS RELEASE FROM RICHARD DOWNS
WARREN MUNDINE

On behalf of my people I am calling on you to heed the advice of the UN special rapporteur on Indigenous rights and support your people demanding an end to the NT Intervention.

In your statement against the rapporteur you say the Intervention is protecting of women against sexual assault, physical assault. But this is not true – you need to focus on the big picture of what is happening to us. Your governments so called measures under the intervention go far beyond this to take away our dignity, our self esteem, and land control, disempowerment, human and indigenous rights.

More oppression, more young people in goals, we have no say in the justice system, which is failing. Your system is about creating divisions, hate and racism and control over people who are already struggling under oppression.

Get out of your air-conditioned office. You need to visit the people on ground, see and listen to them or are you afraid to find and learn the truth. You are an outsider, an outcast, a nobody just like us. The governments have taken away all our indigenous and human rights in this country. We are now are separate from rest of Australian people. Otherwise I urge you to show aboriginal people evidence and proof that we are all equal.

Show me where you and your government have had consultation, meetings with my people. Show us where this great law is protecting women and children, give us the evidence on how many convictions there has been with sexual child abuse, rape, murders, where is this indigenous pedophile ring your governments statements stated at the beginning. We don’t need any controls and measures and taking away of our land to negotiate to come to an agreed partnership arrangements with governments and others.

Make your stand Warren, Human Rights for all people of different cultures. Support your peoples United Nations DECLARATION on the Rights of INDIGENOUS PEOPLES.

Start your journey on discovery of yourself, your people, humanity our brother, open you mind and let your spirits guide you. Focus on the whole issue not on particular points to pull the wool over our general public friends.

Tell the general public the truth don’t hide the rest.

A man who takes away another man’s freedom is a prisoner of hatred; he is locked behind the bars of prejudice and narrow-mindedness. I am not truly free if I am taking away someone else’s freedom, just as surely as I am not free when my freedom is taken from me. The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of their humanity. Nelson Mandela – Freedom – Compassion

Richard Downs
Ampilatwatja Community walk off spokesperson
Contact: 0428611169
www.interventionwalkoff.wordpress.com

Richard has been a vocal spokesman for the Alyawarra people living at the township of Ampilatwatcha, 350km north-east of Alice Springs.

As the Green Left Weekly reported a few weeks ago:

But on July 15, with 25-year-old pipes broken and sewage running through the streets, residents left the township and set up a camp outside of the boundary of Ampilatwatja. They said the NT intervention had done nothing to solve their problems and had actually made things much worse.

Richard Downs, spokesperson for the camp, told Green Left Weekly: “Nothing has happened in the community in the last three or four years. There’s no consultation. People are pushed to one side and not involved in any of the discussions. We realised that the government is just ignoring people and we realised that this was just a waste of time.

“We’ve got no response from [Aboriginal affairs minister Jenny] Macklin, she hasn’t shown any interest or shown any courtesy or respect towards us. Discussions with her have become a waste of time so we said ‘bugger it’ and set up a permanent camp out there.”

Richard and his people have been at that camp ever since.

I asked him if he had heard back from Jenny Macklin:

Richard North: (laughs) No, nothing – I mean we got a letter about 5 or 6 weeks after we wrote to her but the letter clearly had nothing in it. And we had a consultation meeting with FaHCSIA staff but we virtually said “No, you people are not listening to us – so we are going to keep going with our walkout”. That was it.

And when they came to talk to us about that lease – the Commonwealth has that compulsory five-year lease that they didn’t even ask us about – but now they want to make a forty year lease. The lease they showed us was not a good deal at all – it was like a blackmail. Just a total blackmail. We just told them that we would not be renewing that lease.

We reckon that she should resign as Minister – she is just not suited to the Aboriginal Affairs portfolio – she has no results, she doesn’t – or doesn’t know how to – listen. I mean, she ignored the Review of the Intervention that Peter Yu did and we don’t think she will restore the Racial Discrimination Act. She should go, and the sooner the better.

And, as I’ve noted previously, Richard and his people weren’t very impressed with the no-show of his local member, Alison Anderson, up until recently a Minister in the NT Government and now an independent MLA.

But that has all changed since Anderson visited late last week:

Yes, we wanted to talk to her and to give her a wake-up call. Alison needed to listen to the people out here and we thought that she was on the wrong pathway. Alison needed to be bought back in and embrace us. The fight we are putting up here is the Aboriginal way, the traditional way, through the country, the dreaming and through the ground and so on and Alison needs, as a traditional woman, to come back on that line.

Alison has made a total 100% commitment to the traditional Aboriginal way. And we told her that if she goes off that line – that would be a big embarrassment that she’s gonna have to live with for the rest of her life.

It is our history you know, and she is seeing what is happening. We just aren’t seeing the results on the ground and its all controlled by the Federal government under the Northern Territory Emergency Response legislation. That’s what Alison was saying to us – “I watched it, and I seen what’s happening and and now I’m ready to go back to my people“.

I asked Richard about what he thought might have led people like Alison Anderson, and many other people who previously supported the NT Intervention, to change their minds:

Many Aboriginal people, even people like Galarrwuy Yunupingu, Alison Anderson and myself, we said “OK – this [the Intervention] could be good for our people“. So we said “Well, maybe we’ll see how it develops in the first eighteen months or two years“.

But what we are saying now is “We’ve given it a go – we’ve given the government’s a chance under the NTER measures to solve a lot of the housing and health issues and two years down the track now we’ve seen that there is nothing. It has just gone backwards.” That’s why people like Galarrwuy, Alison Anderson and me have changed our thinking about this Intervention. We’ve changed our minds and said “No, it’s not working so we need to be a lot harder on the governments.“

I’m not surprised that Alison Anderson has changed. It is just that after two years Alison hasn’t achieved any results within the Labor party in the NT. She hasn’t seen any fruitful outcomes from the NTER measures in the two years and now she is seeing that. And that is why she is one hundred per cent behind us. When she was sitting down with us she said “This is the happiest day of my life since 1982“.

I asked Richard about some of the Aboriginal people that are given space and time in the media and are generally accepted as “speaking for Aboriginal people”:

Nobody else speaks for us – we are taking control from the remote areas and our homelands. I started it, then Rosalie Kunoth-Monks came on board and then Alison Anderson came on board. Because all the Aboriginal leaders sound like they have shut up shop. They are hiding in hollow logs and nobody is saying anything anymore, nobody is pushing the issues to bring it to attention. We need to work on a two-way partnership between the Aboriginal people across the Territory and the government.

We don’t want any other Aboriginal leaders like bloody Warren Mundine or so on. This is gonna come from the grass roots here in our own country. And poor Warren, I don’t know what planet he is on! He needs to realise that he is isolated, he is on the Rudd side and Warren, and people like him, are going to be pushed out of there. Rudd and Macklin aren’t going to be supportive of Warren as soon as we start attacking him because he’s on our list.

I know Bess Price. [the Chair of the NT Indigenous Affairs Advisory Council] I haven’t spoken to her but I think she is all for the Intervention. Her and her husband Dave Price. That is fine…But it is a false vision from the Government and others like Bess Price. I don’t know what that NT government Indigenous Advisory Council does or what it stands for but they should come and tell us what they stand for.

I asked Richard what the group of himself, Roslaie Kunoth-Monks and Alison Anderson would be doing.

He explained that:

We are all going to get together in mid-September on our land, on Alyawarra land, and we will have anything from about two to three thousand people coming here from all the language groups.
Alison has been out bush and I’m going to try to contact her today because I’m back in ‘phone range and the same with Rosalie Kunoth-Monks and give them the dates that we’ve agreed on – the dates for the 16th to the 20th of September when we are going to get together and sit down out bush here at Ampilatwatja.

And the main thing is, we don’t want any other Aboriginal leaders speaking up for us on our behalf – if they do then they must go through us. This is from the grass roots.

I’ve spoken to people at Yuendumu over the past few weeks – they have their own problems there with the Intervention and I told them that we need to start getting together.

I explained to Richard that earlier today I’d called Alison Anderson’s office in Alice Springs and had spoken to an electorate officer there. I’d called her office on Friday last week to speak to her about the media release but she wasn’t available to answer my questions then so I called back earlier today but was told she was “out bush for the rest of the week.”

Alison’s electorate officer also told me that Alison:

“…now has concerns about the media release and would make no further comment”.

Her electorate officer also said that he was not sure about which part of the media release Alison had concerns with.

I asked Richard if Alison Anderson had said anything to him about any concerns that she may have with the contents of the media release?

No, no. She shouldn’t be because we, that is Alison, Rosalie and me agreed on doing that media release. Yes, between the three of us. We sat down and agreed, before we put out anything this is what the media release should include. And we ended up doing that one page media release. Alison was there just by herself. She went out there with Rosalie and me and we had a meeting looking at things. We agreed on where Alison stands and where we stand and where we are all going to go in the future.

Earlier in the interview, Richard had told me that:

Alison will be independent now. She realises that she is coming on board, which is really gonna give her that strength from the grass roots. Not only from the Aboriginals – but from the white people. So she is really gonna be a strong player there, more so than that Gerry Wood, that independent that is there now. If she steps out of that, if she goes off that line – she has automatically lost it.

Well, if Alison does that [goes off that line] she won’t get that support from me and my people. And that is why we are 100% behind Alison now with the way she is speaking. And she is going to be consulting with me, and Rosalie pretty well every week.

Definitely [we are confident she will stick by us]. Like I said, this is Aboriginal way we are doing now and she knows all the traditions and the customs and she will follow that line.

I thanked Richard for his time.

He told me that he and his people were trying to raise funds to buy and install a bore at the Alyawarra Intervention Walkoff camp so that they wouldn’t have to cart water from town.

If you want to donate some money to the cause of Richard and his people – or want to find out more about the reasons why Richard and his people have walked away from Ampilatwatja to their remote bush camp then you can read all about it at the group’s website at Interventionwalkoff.