Mutitjulu indigenous people fleeing Brough justice
Wednesday June 27th 2007, 11:15 am

image: Bill Leak for The Australian
image: Bill Leak for The Australian

Terrified families flee in panic

Lindsay Murdoch in Darwin and Stephanie Peatling
June 27, 2007

PANIC about the Howard Government’s crackdown on child sexual abuse has spread widely throughout remote Aboriginal communities, where parents fear their children will be taken away in a repeat of the stolen generation.

Some families have already fled the first community to be targeted, Mutitjulu at Uluru, but the Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Mal Brough, blames “liars” who have something to hide from police and military personnel for terrorising people and spreading hysteria.

A 6 month, authoritarian, paternalist policy unveiled 6 months before an election. Boffo. If indigenous people are lucky, it’ll go away at least that quickly, but HoWARd is signalling years of occupation.

Now, who will be explaining to the parents that the government is going to put their minor children through compulsory sexual health examinations? I sure hope it’s Johnno- and that he’s got some asbestos earmuffs. Indigenous folk are pretty obviously seeing this as more of the same- and with some fairly reasonable cause for suspicion.

Rotating community health workers through aboriginal communities or even worse, bringing in the Army, will simply not work in these communities. Aboriginal people develop trusting relationships with outsiders much more slowly than other Australians, if at all. Bouncing workers in and out means the people have to re-develop their relationship with these workers, something which may exceed the period of posting. These communities need permanent facilities with long-term staff to have any chance at success- and preferably, they’d eventually be staffed with community members who have sought an education and returned to help their own mobs.

Let’s all get a grip. This ‘national emergency’ will take at least as long to address as it took to develop. If HoWARd thinks he can ramrod a quick-fix in this case, he’s doomed to fail.

-weez


7 Comments so far
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Weez,I thought the best media report i’ve seen, so far, was this one from Crikey. It is a direct unfiltered plea from people living in Mutitjulu. Funny how their voices are being drowned out in the war game rhetoric.

Comment by joe2 06.27.07 @ 12:53 pm

Joe, Dorothea and Bob Randall have been all but called liars by Brough… but check the charcoal grilling that Brough copped on tonight’s 7.30 Report. Red Kezza sure didn’t spare the rod with Mal- totally hammered Brough on the compulsory sexual exams for children under 16. Kezza hit Brough with the same question at least 6 times until Brough began to lose his cool- and got him to reveal that the gubmint doesn’t really HAVE a plan… more proof that this is all just HoWARd’s electioneering wedgemanship at work yet again.

Tonight’s 7.30 xscript isn’t up just yet.. must see when it’s posted.

Comment by weez 06.27.07 @ 10:37 pm

Saw a bit of it Weez. Go Kezza. Things are starting to unravel for this mad plan. At the least, it has drawn attention to a hell of an important issue.

But hold on. Some troops may be needed back at home base. Looks like the enemy is creeping out from everywhere.

It’s really hard to where these primitives learnt such bad behaviour, isn’t it?

Us whiteys never do that kind of stuff.

Comment by joe2 06.27.07 @ 11:23 pm

Indeed, joe. Whitey has all his demons leashed and thus is qualified to impose order.

I was SCREAMING at the tele while Brough was trying to ooze his way around Kezza. Thankfully, No Fucking Sale, Kez was having none of it. Brough was trying to run out the clock but the ref kept calling him back to the point of the knock on. 😀

Comment by weez 06.28.07 @ 12:55 am

Here’s the 7.30 Report xscript, looking for a vid file to link.

Comment by weez 06.28.07 @ 1:00 am

PM’s ‘got it wrong’ on abuse plan

Brendan Nicholson, Tony Wright and Misha Schubert
June 28, 2007

JOHN Howard’s radical plan to protect Aboriginal children from sex abuse has come under strong attack from the man whose report inspired him to act.

Days after the Prime Minister announced his unprecedented intervention, Rex Wild, QC, has accused the Government of adopting an excessively heavy-handed approach, sending people to descend on remote indigenous communities “like a plague of locusts”.

Mr Wild, co-author of the landmark report Little Children are Sacred, said Canberra should have been trying to build up trust with indigenous people. “Now you’ll find the problem is that people’s backs are up,” he told the ABC’s Lateline Business.

Balance of the story on The Age’s website.

Comment by weez 06.28.07 @ 9:18 am

The video of Kezza roasting Brough is now online [win|Real]

Should be able to play it just by doing a mouseover on the links thanks to the Snap previews.

Comment by weez 06.28.07 @ 8:12 pm



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