In mid-2007, the former Howard government sent in troops and police to enforce the so-called emergency measures—-which included bans on alcohol and pornography, increased police powers, compulsory acquisition of land and “welfare quarantining”—-under the cynical disguise of protecting Aboriginal children from sexual abuse.
The powers enacted in 2007...covering 73 Aboriginal communities in the NT, were so openly discriminatory against indigenous people that they required the suspension of the 1975 Racial Discrimination Act. Now, under the guise of keeping an election pledge to reinstate the RDA, the Rudd government is expanding the core of the NT measures to apply to all working people. It will, in other words, side-step the RDA by extending them to non-indigenous people.
The Rudd government’s amendments will start by imposing welfare quarantining on all welfare recipients in the NT, whether indigenous or non-indigenous. Under welfare quarantining...the government withholds 50 percent of regular welfare payments and 100 percent of lump sum payments. These amounts can be spent only via “Basics Cards” on authorised purposes such as food, clothing and rent...
...the large obtrusive government signs erected outside prescribed communities, effectively labelling their residents as alcoholics and paedophiles, had caused “a sense of shame and humiliation”. Nevertheless, the signs will remain...There will be no fundamental changes to the intervention’s discriminatory police powers, which give police officers the right to enter a private residence and arrest anyone believed to be intoxicated...
Even the Australian Crime Commission’s unprecedented powers to summons and interrogate residents without revealing any information about their interrogation will be designated a “special measure”. This is despite the fact that the Crime Commission...found no paedophile rings in the NT, and the arrest and conviction rates for child sex abuse involving indigenous perpetrators had barely changed. In the two years before the intervention there were 15 convictions for child sexual abuse involving Aboriginal perpetrators...
The government’s acquisition of five-year leases on township land, supposedly in return for the provision of housing and other essential services, will continue until 2012, when the government will negotiate “voluntary” leases. Community store licensing and the substantial powers of business managers to run townships will continue...
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/dec2009/nter-d24.shtml
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