The political response has been limited to hand-wringing stop-gap measures and to paying for a series of failed attempts to plug the spill and some apparently ineffective mopping-up operations.

Atlas West oil rig. Photograph: Chris Twomey, office of Ausralian Greens Senator Rachel Siewert

This is a disaster of not only local, but regional and international proportions. And, while the weather conditions in and around the Timor Sea are relatively stable at present, the impending arrival of the seasonal monsoonal cycle in the coming months will substantially change the nature and location of the impact of this massive spill.

The Jakarta Post reports today that the slick is already in Indonesian waters and is causing illness and will have a substantial economic affect on traditional fishers and harvesters on Rote Island:

Four weeks after the oil spill, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) submitted an official report to the Indonesian government mentioning that volumes of crude oil had entered the Indonesian Exclusive Economic Zone, some 51 nautical miles from Rote Island.

Traditional fishermen operating off Pasir Island found an oil slick resembling a pool around 20 miles from Tablolong beach in Kupand, or around 30 nautical miles from Kolbano, South Central Timor regency.

Last week, fishermen on the coast of Rote Ndao regency started complaining of illnesses as a result of the oil spill that had reached land and damaged thousands of hectares of ready-to-harvest seaweed.

“Seaweed, which is one of the province’s prime commodities, has been polluted. If the farmers fail to harvest their seaweed, they would incur losses of up to billions of rupiah,” said the West Timor Care Foundation NGO director Ferdi Tanoni.

And the Timor Oil spill has been picked up by East Timorese bloggers here and here.

The West Atlas oil rig in the Timor Sea, operated by the Thai-owned PTTEP Australasia, blew on August 21 and has leaked over 400,000 litres of oil, gas and condensate into the Timor Sea at a rate of reported variously as being from 300 to 1,200 barrels a day.

The Fairfax Press reports that Greens Senator Bob Brown believes those figures underestimate the true position – though no material was provided in support of his claim that:

The Greens believe anywhere from 10 to 20 million litres of oil has spilled into the ocean since the leak began on August 21.

Three attempts to plug the hole – by means of intercepting the pipe more than 2.5 kilometres below the sea bed – have been unsuccessful.

A fourth attempt had earlier been abandoned but was apparently to take place sometime yesterday, Sunday October 25.

Photograph: Debra Glasgow/WWF

As Federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett told the ABC he is:

…confident everything possible is being done to stop the oil leak.

“The fact of the matter is, it’s a fiendishly difficult exercise – a little bit like threading the needle – to try to get this oil spill stopped,” he said.

And a fiendishly expensive one – estimates by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority given to the Australian Senate are that it has cost more that $AU5.3 million to date.

What 25,000 square kilometres of oil slick looks like. Photograph: MODIS/Terra/NASAS

The most comprehensive report I’ve been able to find on this oil spill is this article published last Friday in The Guardian by Toni O’Loughlin.

O’Loughlin’s article relies extensively on a series of reports by the World Wildlife Fund Australia.

Sea snake swimming in sludge. Photograph: Chris Sanderson/WWF

WWF are the only external independent agency to conduct a survey of the area affected by the spill.

WWF says that:

Dolphins, migratory sea birds and sea snakes were found in abundance in the area, in addition to marine turtles, and many of these species were recorded swimming through the toxic oil affected area during WWF’s recent expedition to Timor Sea…”We recorded hundreds of dolphins and sea birds in the oil slick area, as well as sea snakes and threatened hawksbill and flatback turtles,” said WWF-Australia’s Director of Conservation Dr Gilly Llewellyn, who led the team of ecologists.

Overall the expedition recorded 17 species of seabird, four species of cetacean and five marine reptiles including two species of marine turtle. At least eleven of the species were listed migratory and two – hawksbill and flatback turtles – are listed as threatened with extinction under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999.

On Wednesday, PTTEP, the company responsible for the oil slick, reported high levels of mortality among oil- affected seabirds. “Clearly, wildlife is dying and hundreds if not thousands of dolphins, seabirds and sea-snakes are being exposed to toxic oil. The critical issue is the long term impact of this slick on a rich marine ecosystem, taking into consideration the magnitude, extent and duration of the event,” said Dr Llewellyn. “We know that oil can be a slow and silent killer…we can expect this environmental disaster will continue to unfold for years to come.”

The true impacts of this most serious regional marine disaster will start to be felt – and recorded – in the Timor Sea in the coming weeks and are already having severe impacts on some parts of the Indonesian archipelago.

Just what will happen when the monsoon season starts and most likely disperses the spill over a greater area in the region – including back onto the Australian north-western coastline, remains to be seen.

But by then it may be too late.

You can see more of the WWF reports and survey here.

And more of the photographs collected at The Guardian’s Environment site here.

We share a fascination with raptors and in her most recent message she said:

Solitary Hawk! LIFER! 4 million migrating raptors for this season – not bad and still expecting four hundred thousand Turkey Vultures…Veracruz – River of Raptors.

Photo: Mercy Njeri

Mercy has been chasing the annual migratory movements of millions of raptors through the northern continental Americas and is now in Veracruz – where there is literally an aerial River of Raptors.

The wonderful people at HawkWatch International tell me will give Mercy and all the other lucky souls great views of:

Each fall, 4-6 million raptors migrate through Veracruz on their way to winter ranges in Central and South America. Because of the region’s geography, raptors from eastern, central, and western North America converge, providing visitors with a display unequaled anywhere on the planet.

As many as 2 million Broad-winged Hawks, 1 million Swainson’s Hawks, and 200,000 Mississippi Kites–nearly the entire world population for these three species–pass through Veracruz each fall. In addition, more than 1.5 million Turkey Vultures join the flight, as do thousands of other raptors, waterbirds, and songbirds.

Combine this with the hundreds of resident bird species in the state of Veracruz, and the scores of Olmec, Totonac, and Aztec archeological sites, all set in the friendly, unspoiled culture of east central Mexico, and you have the adventure of a lifetime.

Anyway – back to the barbie.

As anyone who has spent time in Mexico or the south-western USA will know, Armadillos are relatively common, and, as this entry at Wikipedia says:

Armadillos (mainly Dasypus) make common roadkill due to their habit of jumping to about fender height when startled (such as by an oncoming car). Wildlife enthusiasts are using the northward march of the armadillo as an opportunity to educate others about the animals, which can be a burrowing nuisance to property owners and managers.

Roadkill Armadillo. Photo: Professional Wildlife Removal

Anyway, in Mercy’s travels in Veracruz someone came up with the idea of barbecuing a few Armadillos.

Photo: Mercy Njeri

Mercy says that she is a bit ambivalent about the experience – delicious but:

Spiced Armadillo…poa lakini…ni Bush Meat…though nilimanga…now I am a vegetarian by circumstances…

Shell yenyewe ni ka ya tortoise…ati no nyama…tuiohere mehia maitu nitondu tutiui uria tureka…!

Super delicious, better than Crocodile meat!

Mercy told me that:

I preferred not to look at what i was munching because it gave me memories of our endangered African Elephant Shrew found in the Arabuko Sokoke Forest!

The meal is typical of traditional Mexican food. Eaten by locals and cannot be found in the markets – only occasionally in the homes of the locals. These was brought for us by the father of one of my colleague’s from upcountry.

Mercy didn’t have a recipe – “It’s a Mexican secret!!” – but I found this one from the folks over at Backwoods Bound:

Bar-B-Q’d Armadillo

Thanks to Jason Hunter for sending this recipe.

~ 1 armadillo

~ bacon grease

~ 1 cup butter

~ 1/2 cup ketchup

~ 1/2 cup grated onion

~ 2 tbsp mustard

~ tabasco to taste

In a sauce pan, combine the butter, ketchup, onion, mustard and tabasco. Heat over low heat until the butter is melted. Stir occasionally.

Rub bacon grease into the armadillo.

Grill over a hot fire for 5 minutes.

Reduce the fire by half.

Baste the meat with the sauce until done. Armadillo is cooked like pork.

Serve and Enjoy!

Serve and enjoy indeed! Photo: Mercy Njeri

Marie Munkara

In Part One of this interview here we talked about the great threads of humour and sarcasm that run through the Every Secret Thing and what seemed like an amazingly easy run that Marie had writing this book.

She didn’t get blocked, doesn’t seem to get too stressed and popped Every Secret Thing out like a perfect child in under 12 months.

In this second half of the interview we turned to the other, less funny threads that run though Every Secret Thing – the sexual politics and the lasting impacts that church-based institutionalisation has upon individuals and the broader community.

The Northern Myth – Correct me if I’m wrong but I think that there is this other undercurrent apart from the humour and the wonderfully drawn characters – and that is the sexual politics. There is a lot of sex in the book – and it seems like almost everyone is at it at different times with all sorts of other people…

Marie Munkara – even the geckos, yeah…

TNM – Yes, even the geckos! But there is the more serious side. You’ve got the religious members of the institutions and their staff having it off with just about everyone – sometimes in circumstances that would now be called pedophiliac conduct. Would many of your readers have a problem believing much of what you are saying here?

MM – You know, on the whole everyone…most except for one, have said “Oh, we’ve heard about things like this but no-one has ever said it.” I think that there is an understanding that this kind of conduct has gone on in the past. I think that it is just because it is the Church, because it is clergy and most people would think that they just don’t act like that and you just shouldn’t say it or talk about it. We are supposed to respect them, we have to show this…respect for the authority of the clergy.

TNM – And Every Secret Thing is not just about a couple of islands off the coast of the NT is it? It is really about a thick slice of life for a whole lot of people – Aboriginal and white – in the NT, isn’t it?

MM – Yes. Even though I didn’t want to focus too much on the sexual politics and the influence of the Church in the book it was there and it is a real fact of life for a lot of my family and it was a very sad part of their lives. It had to be there in the book- I just couldn’t have written Every Secret Thing without speaking about those issues.

TNM – Are you trying to get this off your chest?

MM – Yes I think you are probably right. I’ve never thought of it that way but I probably did have to get it off my chest.

TNM – And this is one of the great – and largely untold stories in the NT, isn’t it? Do you think there is a need for a broad investigation of what has gone on in these institutions in the past?

MM – Yes I do. It is not right that these horrible things were done when the Church was supposed to be protecting children. I think it should be investigated, we shouldn’t just let it go. For many people there was, and still is, a real fear of the church at times.

I remember one time that I was talking to my grandfather – I’d asked him, “Why do you put up with the church being here when you know that they do certain things?” and he said, “If they go, we won’t have a school, or the clinic or things like that anymore” And I told him “No, that’s paid for by the government – the church are just running those things”. And he had the belief, and a lot of people had the belief, that the church had paid for all of this and were paying for it all out of the goodness of their own hearts. And I would say to these old people, “No, no, no – they are getting their funding from the same place as everyone else – the government.”

A lot of people don’t like to speak up, because they are afraid that they might lose something if they make a noise or make a fuss, because they don’t know the full facts and I’m sure that the Church has been very happy to let people go on believing that they are the ones that are providing all of these services, and doing the good things.

TNM – People have told me that places like the institutions run by the Catholic Church in the NT posed very real threats to many people’s wellbeing – that rather than being a sanctuary for children they were places where children were harmed…

MM – I was only very little when I was there – I was very small. But the stories I’ve heard from people – they weren’t kind places. As I say in Every Secret Thing, the half-caste kids were just shaped into what the people in control of the institutions wanted and then they were just bundled off. And from the perspective of those in charge of the institutions it wasn’t fair for someone like the character Marigold to come back. “Hello, one of them came back!”.

MM – A very strange thing happened when I worked in central Australia as a public servant a few years ago. My department used to fund the Santa Theresa mission and I went there for work one time. One of the nuns in the clinic said “Come back to the convent for lunch” and I said “Okay”. And who should be there but two of the old nuns from Garden Point when was a little one there. They had looked after me when I was tiny. And do you know what one of them had the cheek to say to me?

She said “God we were sad when you had to go.” I said “But what about my Mum? You were sad when I had to go!” I was so freaking angry. I think I restrained myself from saying too much. But I was stunned that these two, they were lovely old nuns…but they said “Oh, God we were just so sad when we had to let you go.” It was nice that they cared about me but…

TNM – As if you were a possession…

MM – Yes! And what about my Mum?!

TNM - What happens to people when they are cast out of these institutions?

MM – For many people there is an absolute sense of helplessness – many of them come out with a total lack of control over their lives or understanding of how to live a life away from that control. And nowadays, with this Intervention, for many people it is just like back in the old days when people were told “You can’t do this, or that, God is the one.” People do not have any control over their lives because they cannot even decide what they can do with their kids, or their money. Someone in the government are making those choices for them. It is no wonder that so many people just give up.

TNM – You also talk about – how despite all of this despair there are still amazingly strong women out there…

MM – They have to be strong – the men are strong in their own way as well but the women always needed to have to hold things together. That is one thing that doesn’t change. I think we are genetically imprinted that way. The men go away to war and die the women still have to hold things together.

Have you read Marie’s book?

Got a view or a comment?

Post your comment here and join the discussion!

I’m sitting on a verandah at Yirrkala in the north-east of the Northern Territory looking out at one of those smoky-red sunsets that only the Top End can throw up on a hot day in the middle of the build-up to the wet.

All around me is waiting the wet wealth and abundance that the monsoons will bring.

Yirrkala is a couple of thousand kilometres north from where this dusty roadside tribute is on the side of the Tanami Highway 160 or so kilometres north-west of Yuendumu.

One of the subjects of this tribute was a Collingwood supporter.

The other supported the Sydney Swans.

This pair is from outside of Fitzroy Crossing on the Great Northern Highway in the middle of the Kimberley.

And this singleton is from the same part of the country…

And this last is from the western districts of Victoria…

Gerry Wood’s price was more extensive than you suggest. Not only must Henderson remain CM (an extraordinary provision in itself in an agreement between Henderson and an Independent MLA – Hendo was the only MLA on either side who looked happy during this morning’s debate), but the agreement effectively provides that the streets of Howard Springs and Humpty Doo must be paved with gold immediately. It also sets up a 5 MLA “bipartisan” parliamentary committee consisting of Gerry Wood and 2 CLP and 2 ALP MLAs which will have the function/power of reviewing all government programmes, holding inquiries, summoning witnesses, and broad right of access to government documents – in other words the Spanish Inquisition chaired by Inquisitor Gerry!!!

Essentially Hendo remains CM in name only and the Cabinet only nominally in charge: Gerry Wood has achieved an agreement with the CM to implement his wish list of pet projects and an effective veto on future legislation and programmes. If you want to get something done in the NT you’ll need Gerry’s approval. It’s the most extraordinary thing I’ve seen in 40 years as a close political observer.

On my (early) reading of the deal Henderson will be hard pressed to last in the job until the next general election is due in 2012 – he faces a strong challenge from his Treasurer and Deputy Delia Lawrie. And, as I note below, the pain will be shared around – I would put money on Terry Mills being rolled before the end of the year.

Meanwhile over at The Australian, with a depleted roster of NT-based journalists (Paul Toohey having resigned, Nicolas Rothwell, who apparently is reluctant to write on NT politics without declaring his obvious but to date publicly undeclared interests) it has bought in Tony Koch from north Queensland and seems to have re-installed Natasha Robinson as local correspondent, bolstered by a couple of others not seen on the ground here before.

All follow the usual party line of the Oz.

Of particular interest is that, rather than follow the real story – why Gerry Wood decided to do what he did and what the deal means to the future of governance in the NT, (apart from this brief piece from Robinson) – it has, somewhat predictably, chosen to focus on Anderson – running the full text of Anderson’s speech to parliament on the no confidence motion.

For those interested in wanting to make their own decisions about the rights and wrongs of this matter you can read the full Hansard of proceedings available here.

I also have a PDF file of the statement made by Gerry Wood that attaches a copy (unsigned) of the agreement between Wood and Henderson (note, not between Wood and the Labor party) and an annexure of the details of the deal. I’ll try to get this to a server somewhere so you can download it there if you want – otherwise send me a note and I’ll forward it by email.

And last night’s NT Stateline program from the ABC in Darwin ran with long interviews with both Gerry Wood and Paul Henderson. No mention of whether they approached Anderson or Mills. The transcript will be available in a few days here.

What happens next is anyone’s guess!

David Curl writes from Darwin:

Right now, the Darwin Parliament is the scene of an extraordinary debate: a Vote of No Confidence in the NT Government brought about by the fiery yet somehow-rather-predictable-from-the-start resignation of Minister Alison Anderson.

Conservative independent Gerry Wood has just delivered the verdict that will save Chief Minister Paul Henderson from ignominious defeat, just one year on from Henderson’s last extremely premature election. And it comes with a long list of demands that makes one wonder who will actually be the Chief Minister between now and the next election scheduled for the fourth Saturday in August 2012.

It may well be that Paul Henderson has been saved by his decision (as advocated in Crikey before the election) to establish fixed-term elections immediately after he scraped back into power last year with the narrowest of majorities.

No-one wanted to be seen as responsible for sending Territorians back to the polls so soon after the last. And the uncharted constitutional territory of a handover of power mid-term was probably just one factor too many for Gerry Wood, preferring a peaceful transition to his role of major powerbroker in the NT.

Perhaps the most extraordinary part of this saga, though, lies in the role of the media. Minister Anderson was the second of two indigenous Ministers to resign from the ALP and become an Independent in recent months, though Marion Scrymgour used Anderson’s more recent defection as an opportunity to creep back into the fold.

Both former Ministers cited not some major policy issue, but a newspaper article they took offence to in the NT News, as the actual catalyst for their resignations. The NT News, you need to understand, is not just any old newspaper. It’s THE Darwin newspaper, widely-read and playing a more pivotal role (clearly) in the politics of the Territory than you’d expect of any single metropolitan newspaper.

Both offending articles were written by senior journalist and some-time Chief of Staff Nigel Adlam who just happens to be married to Chief Minister Henderson’s Media Advisor, Andrea Adlam. With such a hotline to the Chief, it’s little wonder that Nigel Adlam’s stories have such an impact. Though, surely, it’s a relationship that should be the subject of more intense scrutiny given the impact of this particular newspaper and the ALP’s notorious media management skills.

This whole debacle adds one more question to the list that needs to be asked of Territory politicians. If the Territory is so small a place that it’s OK for a Chief of Staff of the Territory’s primary newspaper to be the partner of the Government’s chief media spokesperson, and where elections in all seats are determined by so few votes that they can swing so violently from one side to the other, perhaps the Territory is too small to have a Government at all?

Can we, in fact, really justify three tiers of Government to oversee a population somewhere in size between that of Geelong and Wollongong?

Meanwhile, Bob Gosford writes from Alice Springs:

Henderson’s government has been riddled by infighting and defections since it was re-elected with the slimmest of margins in an unnecessary and ill-advised election almost a year ago to the day.

This latest  - and almost fatal  - disaster was wholly the fault of Henderson and his poor management of Aboriginal issues. First, as Crikey reported in February this year, Deputy Chief Minister Marion Scrymgour stood down because of ill-health, later to spit the dummy and walk to the cross-benches as an independent.

Just ten days ago Scrymgour rejoined Labor on the day that her replacement as Indigenous Affairs Minister, Alison Anderson, quit it and indicated her support for a change of government.

For a day or so, many thought that Anderson’s defection would result in either a fresh election or, as Crikey now appears to have wrongly predicted on Monday, a deal that would see a bloodless coup, with the CLP opposition being gifted power by a Labor party staring down the barrel of political oblivion and desperate to hold onto its twelve seats until the next election due in 2012.

But Anderson’s two extraordinary statements appear to have fundamentally changed the prospects for the opposition Country Liberal Party’s not unreasonable expectation that they would be on the government benches as a matter of course by the end of this week.

The day after she left the Labor government, the ABC reported that:

Ms Anderson says Mr Henderson’s days in power in the Territory are numbered.

“I think the ALP is dead, I think he is just holding onto power and that is the very reason they ran back and got Marion Scrymgour,” she said. “He’s a dead man walking.”

The next day Anderson, speaking about the (then) scheduled resumption of parliamentary sittings on Tuesday this week, told the ABC that:

“Tuesday will be the biggest day in Territory history,” she said.

“Let’s all wait until Tuesday. I think it’s going to be the greatest gift to Territorians.

“It will be the greatest surprise to Territorians. I’ll leave the surprise as a whole package.”

But Anderson had spoken too soon and her predictions of a “great surprise”  - at least one that saw her cast as the saviour of parliamentary democracy in the NT  - would come to nought. Other more reasoned and considered forces were in play.

By Friday, Country Liberal Party Opposition leader Terry Mills presented Speaker of the NT Legislative Assembly Jane Aagaard with a letter signed by thirteen MLAs (11 CLP members and Anderson and Wood) seeking that the parliament sit for two additional days this week in order that a “want of confidence” motion in the Henderson Labor government be put to the Assembly.

Speaker Aagaard approved that request and Mills presented a notice of the motion that Henderson’s government “…no longer possesses the confidence of this Assembly” on Monday last, with three cooling off days until the Assembly resumed earlier today. You can read the text of that letter and the proceedings in the NT parliament on Manday from the Hanard here.

Anderson appears to have fundamentally misread her fellow independent Gerry Wood, presuming that he would support her in toppling Labor and installing  - either by election or by a deal on the floor of the Assembly  - Mills and his CLP party as the new government.

But, in this matter at least, Wood has always been aware that his primary responsibility as a politician is to ensure the stability and continuity of government.

Last Friday Wood spoke to Melinda James on the NT’s Stateline program:

MELINDA JAMES: What are you weighing up in your considerations. What sort of thing will be the deciding factor for you?

GERRY WOOD: The deciding factor would be if I go one way or the other will I actually produce stable government, that’s one of the key things.

…

MELINDA JAMES: Well, can I ask you do you think a coalition that includes the CLP, Alison Anderson and yourself would produce stable government?

GERRY WOOD: That’s exactly what I’ve got to weigh up, that’s…

And Wood expressed his concerns about the CLP’s capacity to provide stable government:

MELINDA JAMES: You’ve said you have some misgivings about handing power to the CLP because there are a few, quote “loose cannons” in their side and that concerns you?

GERRY WOOD: Oh yes, I haven’t always got on very well with the CLP. If anyone knows the history of my time on the Litchfield Shire Council, I had many, many arguments with the CLP.

…

GERRY WOOD: Well, I want to make sure that some of the issues that I had in those days are not repeated by some loose cannons.

As Crikey noted as long ago as February this year:

Anderson … is widely regarded as a loose cannon perhaps more closely aligned to the CLP Opposition than to the centre and left of NT Labor … there is the very real threat that she could jump ship, either as an independent or to surface as a member of the CLP, and force a change of government.

Anderson’s comments and behaviour over the last week ruined the CLP’s chances of success today and she presented Gerry Wood with a definite answer to his question as to who may best be able to provide stable government in the NT.

It’s a no-brainer really - while Henderson’s government has been a mess it is a far more attractive proposition than a CLP government that includes, or has to rely upon Alison Anderson.

There will be tears and recriminations all around. Henderson won’t lead his party to the next election and will be rolled by Treasurer Delia Lawrie some time in the very near future. And the likelihood of Terry Mills still leading the CLP by year’s end is a diminishing prospect - there is, at least, a trio of likely challengers for his job.

And Alison Anderson? As Kim Hill, the CEO of the country’s most powerful Aboriginal representative body, the Northern Land Council said earlier this week in this statement that called for her to resign from parliament immediately:

Ms Anderson’s selfish actions and self indulgence has delivered instability and chaos  - not “peace, order and good government”.

Roadkill – armadillo, cats, dogs, birds (various), opossums, squirrels, snakes, skunk, toads, raccoon, deer, Turkey Vulture…

I usually listen to the (mostly) wonderful National Public Radio in the US but even I get sick of the occasional overweening earnestness of NPR. I kept picking up small local stations – there are some fantastic soul & R-n-B stations in the south – that would fall off the dial after a few miles so I’d keep hitting the Scan button…grazing across the broad sweeping plains of Highway 61’s airwaves.

I’d picked up a couple of the wilder examples of fundamentalist christian radio along the way including “American Family Radio” (”Nominate your pastor to win a Trip to Israel! AFR wants to send your pastor to the Holy Land for the trip of a lifetime! Find out how you can win this trip for your pastor.“). AFR is one of the 600 stations that broadcasts “Homeschool Heartbeat“, a program produced by the Home School Legal Defence Association, and which was pouring lightly concealed vitriol from my car’s speakers.

Like many parts of the lunar right in the US, the HSLDA runs a fine line in anti-UN sentiment, most notably a stern disregard for the Convention of the Rights of the Child, including this helpful information:

Ten things you need to know about the substance of the CRC:

1. Parents would no longer be able to administer reasonable spankings to their children.
2. A murderer aged 17 years and 11 months and 29 days at the time of his crime could no longer be sentenced to life in prison.
3. Children would have the ability to choose their own religion while parents would only have the authority to give their children advice about religion.
4. The best interest of the child principle would give the government the ability to override every decision made by every parent if a government worker disagreed with the parent’s decision.
5. A child’s “right to be heard” would allow them to seek governmental review of every parental decision with which the child disagreed.
6. This treaty has been interpreted to make it illegal for a nation to spend more on national defense than it does on children’s welfare.
7. Children would acquire a legally enforceable right to leisure.
8. Teaching children about Christianity in schools has been held to be out of compliance with the CRC.
9. Allowing parents to opt their children out of sex education has been held to be out of compliance with the CRC.
10. Children would have the right to reproductive health information and services without parental knowledge or consent.

And here is a brief excerpt from earlier in April:

Practical Implications for Your Family

4/7/2009

Why should you think twice about supporting an accepted international human rights treaty?

Mike Farris:
On the last program, we introduced the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child-known as the CRC. While the use of any international law for domestic purposes in the United States is a threat to American self-government, proponents of parental rights should pay the most close attention to the CRC-especially since it appears that significant effort on this treaty will be made under the Obama administration.

So what does the CRC actually say about the rights of children?

…

In two very important areas of parental choice-religion and education-the CRC interferes with parental choice and elevates a child’s wishes over that of the parent. Realistically, it is neither parents nor children who make the final decision in the case of conflict-it is the state that has the power and duty under the CRC to make ultimate choices for kids.

I’m Mike Farris.

But the pick of the day was an interview with an attorney and author with the wonderfully evocative name of Randy Singer that I picked up somewhere near Vicksburg, Mississippi and that stayed with me clear to the Louisiana border..

Randy is described in his publisher’s blurb as a:

…critically acclaimed author of two nonfiction books and five legal thrillers, including The Cross Examination of Oliver Finney, a novel in which this book plays a key role. A veteran trial lawyer, he teaches at Regent Law School and serves as Chief Counsel for the North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention. He is also legal advisor for the American Center for Law and Justice, a public interest law firm specializing in religious liberties. He and his wife, Rhonda, and their two children live in Atlanta, Georgia.

Being Easter Sunday some programmer at one of the many syndicated stations called Hallelujah 95.7 FM(”Your Inspiration Station!!; “Your Clear Choice for Gospel Hits!!“) decided that it would be a good idea to get Randy on the air to talk about his book, “The Cross Examination of Jesus Christ“.

I’ve been unfortunate enough to have conducted a few cross-examinations in my time – it is never easy and can be the best and worst times of your life – all within the space of 5 minutes – ask a simple question – get an unexpected bonus in the answer – Heaven, and better than sex.  Ask the wrong question, fail to ask the right question – instant hell on earth and please open that hole in the floor so that I can fall into it.

And people wonder why lawyers – especially trial lawyers – have stellar rates of depression and alcoholism.

But Randy’s questions of the Big Fella definitely fell a bit flat for me as I was driving along on the day they rolled back the stone.

Here are a few examples from his an “editorial review” at Amazon:

· Can you prove that you’re the Messiah?
· How can you defend a woman caught in adultery?
· What does it take to reach heaven?
· How can we know God?
· What is truth?

Sorry Randy, but that would get you laughed out of Court in the Darwin Magistrates Court on any day…if not by the magistrate, then certainly by any witness with more than one brain cell bouncing around in his bonce.

All of this made for an immensely entertaining drive down through the towns of the great Civil War battles. I can’t find a transcript to show you just how entertaining Randy was on that day but you might get an idea from this passage – if you can make any sense of it let me know!

That’s when I discovered this mind-bending truth: if I want to be like Jesus, I must first realize how much I am already like the Pharisees. In God’s paradoxical way, that humbling realization is the first step toward becoming less like the Pharisees we loathe and more like the Savior we love. All of our mental gymnastics and convoluted questions can’t make it any other way. Tricky business, and dangerous, this road toward the mind of Christ. The devil is still a crafty cross-examiner, twisting the truth and distorting the testimony. Like Mike Tyson after his prime, Satan couldn’t land many direct punches on Christ, but he still had a nasty bite. At the cross, hell bit off more than it could chew.
“How do you know?” you ask (violating the cardinal rule of crossexamination).
“Because three days later they saw hell spit Him out.”

It is wintertime here in the north so our roads are clogged with hordes of southern tourists towing caravans.

Last week I drove south from Katherine to Alice Springs on the Stuart Highway and passed wave after wave of these brave souls venturing forth into the wilds in search of…well just what they seek escapes me. On one long, flat stretch of road south of Tennant Creek I counted 12 caravans stretching away in the distance – swarming from over their borders northward.

I have an occasional mean thought that when the get to Darwin they will all run out of road, over a cliff and into the Arafura Sea.

And the rest of the morning was the same – here a posse of 10 or so together, then a few singletons, then another cluster – and oh, look – a truck, a car, a bus…

There are three major classes of caravanners – the young families dragging their kids around the country during the school holidays or on some extended wagging session; the off-roaders, dragging purpose-built off-road trailers and caravans that wander well off the bitumen and into the dusty back-blocks; and the largest group – mum and pop dragging a tin box the size of a small house, and costing just as much, behind a late model four-wheel drive.

It is this last group that interests me most – they set out from their cold southern homes sometime in May or June and head north like a horde of plague locusts – I don’t know why – but it seems to me that most of them spend much of their time up here either locked in the car driving from point to point or in the ‘van in the company of their spouse or others doing exactly the same as them.

You know them as well as I do – they are that generation just older than us – Dad with his polyester shorts, paunch and enlarged prostate – Mum with her knitting and her obsessions with cleanliness and that little notebook with fuel prices and calculations of fuel consumption tucked away in the glovebox and pulled out for analysis at every refuelling stop.

And what do they do? Well, they spend a lot of time crawling along the highway at 80 km/h – to the absolute frustration of anyone wanting to travel a little faster than that; they cluster at the overnight roadside rest stops and caravan parks with other caravanners where they inspect each others rigs and debate the price of fuel, the state of the road and the rudeness of any driver that objects to their snail-pace progress across the country; and, it seems to me, not much more.

And they whinge – a lot – about each other, the state of things – anything – here that is different from home, about blackfellas, the price of fuel, the price of any thing slightly more expensive than at “home”, anyone who objects to their god-given right to go anywhere and do just about anything, the chihuahua’s constipation…

But I can’t object to any of that – if they want to live substantially the same lives here as they do in the suburbs at home well good luck to them – what I cannot understand is why you would drag yourself, your purported loved one and all the junk you can cram into a tin box across the north for a few months every year but so fundamentally fail to connect with the country and the people that live in it.

I know that is most likely a gross generalisation but many caravanners seem to be just too timid to actually connect with the reality of people and place up here – in many ways it is like those package tour to Europe – 30 countries in 30 days in a bus – you can come home and say “I’ve been to Paris, London and Bruges” – but if all you’ve done is see it through the windows of a bus then you haven’t really been to those places at all.

And the same goes for too many of the caravanners – they can say “I’ve been to Katherine, Darwin and Kununurra” but if all they did was drive from roadside stop to caravan park to service station can they honestly say they’ve been here at all?

Your thoughts please.

A "Sugarbag" bee. Photo: Peter O.

I was in the old High School at Katherine in the NT recently and came across this sign: “Please be careful of our native Honey Bees (They Do Not Sting)“.

That arrow pointed to a small, black greasy smudge at the base of the wall – as I watched I saw a couple of small, fly-sized insects leave the spot – Sugarbag bees. Sugrbag bees have become remarkable adopters of the buildings in our towns and cities in the NT – particularly buildings of a certain age that were built to a price rather than a standard.

One house I lived at in Darwin for a few years had several large sugarbag bee nests in the walls. They’d drilled into the gaps left by the crumbling soft mortar between the bricks – an old builder’s dodge was to use an extra shovel or two or three of sand in each mix – no-one would know for a few years and by that time the builder was long gone.

But good for the sugarbag bees.

The wonderful photo by Peter O above is one of a series of similarly beautiful photos in a gallery of his shots of Australian native bees at the homepage of the Australian Native Bee Research Centre, which is dedicated to:

Promoting the preservation and enjoyment of Australian Native Bees. The Australian Native Bee Research Centre is a privately-funded organisation based in the lower Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, NSW. It publishes information booklets, a field guide, a video and other products to distribute information on all native bee species to the Australian public and help ensure the bees’ survival in Australia.

I’ve spent quite a few hours in the scrub, mostly with local Aboriginal people, chasing these small insects around looking for their hives – which can be in the ground, there usually amongst rocks, and in trees, there usually inside a hollowed-out Eucalypt tree.

The product from those hives is an absolute wonder – far richer and less sweet that industrial honey from European honeybees and with the added bonus of the sugarbag-wax – a very useful byproduct that is most commonly used for mouthieces for digeridoos but has a host of other uses.

The Australian Native Bee Research Centre tells us that:

There are over 1,500 species of “true blue” Australian native bees.

Commercial honey bees (Apis mellifera) are not native to Australia. They were introduced from Europe in about 1822.

Australian native bees can be black, yellow, red, metallic green or even black with blue polka dots! They can be fat and furry, or sleek and shiny.

Australia’s smallest native bee is Cape York’s minute Quasihesma bee. It is less than 2 mm long.
Australia’s largest native bee is the Great Carpenter Bee of the tropical north and northern NSW. It is up to 24 mm long.

Most Australian bees are solitary bees which raise their young in burrows in the ground or in tiny hollows in timber.

Australia also has 10 species of social native bees (genera Trigona and Austroplebeia) which do not sting!

Stingless bee honey is a delicious bush food and stingless bees can be good crop pollinators. So stingless beekeeping is becoming increasingly popular.

Native bees are also important pollinators of Australia’s unique wildflowers and are a vital part of our Australian bushland.

And native bees aren’t just found in the tropical north – I’ve seen them in the suburbs of Sydney and thoughout NSW.

The Australian Native Bee Research Centre has a useful guide to which bees can be found where and they have also prepared a (sadly out of print) Field Guide to the Native Bees of the Sydney Region.

The Research Centre’s website has a great deal of other valuable information about these most useful of native insects – you can find information about setting up a home hive of native bees, watch videos and find out more about the species in your area.

And I have some references on the cultural significance of native bees to Aboriginal people – but not to hand as I write this – so I’ll update this post when I get to that information.

Got a native bee story? Send in a comment!

"Fluffy"

Someone suggested that we could call this fine specimen of a leatherback camp dog “Jenny” as a tribute to the abject failures of the Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin’s NT Intervention to do very-much-at-all-really about the parlous state of health of too many of the dogs that live in the 73 communities subject to that most flawed of recent attempts at social engineering on the grandest of scales.

But I thought it better that we give her a name that was more suited to her undoubted charm and character – so for present purposes we’ll call her “Fluffy”.

Fluffy is the best example of a leatherback camp dog that I came across during the last week or so of travelling through some remote corners of the NT.

In many of these communities the Federal government appointed “Australian Government Business Managers”, (AGBM’s) whose job it is to represent the interests of the Commonwealth there.

AGBMs live in demountable buildings or converted shipping containers in secure compounds behind tall barbed-wire fences. It is safe to say that the pay and conditions of the AGBM make the AGBM the most well-paid person in town – for an idea of their terms and conditions see this flyer from FaHCSIA.

How effective – from the perspective of local communities – those AGBM’s have been is a very open question. But it is undisputed that, like many of the measures implemented under the NT Intervention, AGBMs represent a clumsy and expensive attempt at delivering improved services to the 73 remote townships in the NT that they have effectively controlled for the last two years.

And, as one community member told me this week while we were watching Fluffy gobble a lump of meat I’d given her, if either of the NT or Federal governments allocated a mere fraction of the money they’ve wasted on the NT Intervention to looking after the health and welfare of the dogs in those communities then the Intervention might be seen as being more effective and would be more readily accepted by Aboriginal people here.

As it is now, there is no systematic approach to the health and welfare of dogs in remote townships by either the NT or Federal governments. But it is not all bad news – a number of dog health programs are supported on an ad-hoc basis and there is at least one non-government organisation that has done some great work to both raise the profile of dog health ad welfare as an issue for governments and to inform  Aboriginal people of the real benefits that can come from careful and well-planned programs of dog welfare and control.

In the past dog control in remote townships has been conducted by two main measures – either “do nothing” or to conduct unilateral control measures with minimal community engagement.

The do nothing approach is sadly typical of the approach of governments to domestic animal control generally. For many remote councils and the NT and Federal governments it has been seen as just too hard to establish and build lasting relationships with Aboriginal people to work out fair and equitable systems of animal control and welfare. Local councils were generally overwhelmed by gross under-funding, lack of administrative capacity and appreciation of alternatives. Territory and State governments appear never to have quite come to grasp the seriousness of the situation.

Too often the alternative to doing nothing was the apparently easier but far less effective option based on a unilateral decision by a local (usually white) town clerk or administrator that there were “just too many bloody dogs around town” and arranging for someone, often the local policeman, to round up the arbitrarily-selected “excess” dogs and shoot them – sometimes out of town – often in front of their owners. Sometimes the more humane, but no less traumatic for the owners of the dogs, alternative was to arrange for a vet to come out and do a mass cull.

Slowly – too slowly for many – more enlightened approaches to remote community dog management are emerging. In my home town of Yuendumu the local Warlukurlangu Artists arts centre has for several years been supporting and funding a dog welfare program.

You can see some photos of healthy Yuendumu dogs and their close involvement with Warlukurlangu’s artists at the art centre’s website here.

Warlukurlangu describes dog program as:

After several years of running an ‘unoffical’ dog program, the Art Centre Committee agreed to formalise the art centre’s commitment to improving the health of the many dogs in Yuendumu.

The management of the art centre strongly believes that ‘healthy dogs mean healthy people’. As part of this program the art centre feeds dogs, de-ticks and cares for sick and abandoned dogs as well as providing daily advice to community members on how to better take care of dogs. WAAA also helps to fund vets to come to the community and sterilise dogs and treat them for various diseases.

In November 2007 and January 2008 the art centre together with Yuendumu Council organised for the Veterinary Doctor Honey Nelson to spend several weeks in the community putting down unwanted dogs and inserting birth control implants on as many male dogs as she could.

Warlukurlangu has received some assistance from the local Council and has also recently received limited funding from FaHCSIA through the local AGBM.

Another example of a more enlightened approach to the management of dog health and welfare in remote townships is AMRRIC (Animal Management in Rural and Remote Indigenous Communities), an organisation that:

…is an independent group of Veterinarians, academics, health workers and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. We facilitate sustainable dog programmes in remote Indigenous communities to improve the health and wellbeing of the entire community.

AMRRIC receives some funding from FaHCSIA and some other government agencies and is gradually expanding its reach and programs. One important part of its work is to provide relevant and culturally appropriate training material for veterinarians.

Most recently AMRRIC has developed the first-ever manual for Veterinarians and communities undertaking dog health programs in remote Indigenous communities. Conducting Dog Health Programs in Indigenous Communities: A Veterinary Guide has been produced by Dr Samantha Phelan, a Northern Territory-based veterinarian with significant field experience in remote Indigenous communities.

AMRRIC has also recently received funding from the Australian Animal Welfare Strategy to produce a DVD based on Samantha Phelan’s Veterinary Guide.

AMRRIC Board member Dr Samantha Phelan wrote this guide for Environmental health Practitioners (EHP’s) nationally. This key resource is a reference guide for people wanting to make dogs healthier in their own communities or in communities they work in. It was written for the wide range of people who take part in Environmental Health Programs in communities, such as Indigenous Environmental Health Workers (EHW), Environmental Health Officers (EHO), Area Health Services and Health Boards, Departments of Local Government (DLG), State Government Environmental Health Units and Indigenous Land Councils, to name a few. ‘The book is written to help each of those people to do a better job’.

The AAWS Funded DVD will be a project that involves a number of key players. First of all the background will be Samantha’s AMRRIC manual information and some of its illustrations will be animated. There will be film footage taken by the Media Students from Batchelor Institute for Indigenous Studies. Our actors will be Indigenous Students from Batchelor who formed the focus groups for the development of the Manual. This education DVD will enable EHP’s to educate schools, individuals, communities and groups on issues such as Stopping Skin Sores, Stopping Ticks and fleas, the benefits of desexing dogs, Stopping dog bites and what to tell children for staying safe, Stopping Worms in dogs and stopping them getting into people and Stopping dogs getting diarrhoea and spreading germs to people. It is anticipated that the project will be completed by the end of August.

AMRRIC deserves more support from governments and the public – Fluffy looks like an absolute wreck that most people would not hesitate to put down immediately – but, as I’ve seen from personal experience – it is relatively easy to save dogs like Fluffy and restore them to the good health they deserve. All it takes is food, some treatment for mange and ticks and some loving attention.

We now understand that Ms Anderson was not responsible for the compilation of the list of growth towns. This list was decided by the Northern Territory government and the then Minister for Indigenous Policy some months prior to Ms Anderson being appointed.

Crikey apologises to Minister Anderson for any hurt which may have been caused by this.