Australia, Aborigines, child abuse, and land grabbing

In a post on Australia last year, I mentioned how the Australian government had made a very odd response to high rates of child abuse reported in Aboriginal communities.

Steps recommended to the government included:

Educating children in school about sexual abuse, and making the schools a safe place for children

Taking action to reduce alcohol consumption in Aboriginal communities

Improve family and community support services, and have them work with police

Empower Aboriginal communities

Appoint a Commissioner for Children and Young People

Instead, John Howard's government did the following:

1. Restricted alcohol.

2. Quarantined part of welfare payments to ensure they were being used for necessities, not alcohol

3. Linked income support and family assistance payments to children's school attendance

4. Introducing compulsory health checks for all Aboriginal children

5. Acquiring townships prescribed by the Australian Government through
five year leases including payment of just terms compensation

6. More police

7. Intensifying clean up efforts in communities ??

8. Improving housing and reforming community living arrangements in
prescribed communities including the introduction of market based rents and
normal tenancy arrangements

9. Banning the possession of X-rated pornography ??

10. Scrapping the permit system for common areas, road corridors and
airstrips for prescribed communities on Aboriginal land, and;

11. Improving governance by appointing managers of all government business in
prescribed communities??

12. Abolition of the CDEP scheme [a further key step in the Emergency Response
being implemented in the Northern Territory announced 23 July 2007]] ??

The bolded recommendations were not acted upon at all by Howard's administration.

Under actions, the ones with bolded question marks were actions that had absolutely nothing to do with the recommendations, and that in fact made no sense whatsoever. For example, why is watching acts of heterosexual sex likely to increase abusive behaviors towards children? Additionally, the CDEP scheme is, I think, some sort of community development scheme. I don't really have time to research that, though.

The bolded actions are not merely nonsensical. They are actions that in another context would be seen as a land grab. They could be a further act of dispossession, like the Stolen Generations that new PM Kevin Rudd just apologized for.

Oxfam Australia commissioned a report on the land rights reform, written by Professor Jon Altman, of the Australia National University.

First, Altman contends that land rights reforms have nothing to do with child abuse, that they are based on an ideological position that is opposed to the rights of Aboriginal Australians. Second, he contends the reforms could actually make the problem worse.

I am not familiar with Australian legislation. However, here is my reading. I believe that Aboriginal communities under the permit system require visitors to purchase permits, which provide an economic benefit to the community. It is, after all, Aboriginal land.

The Australian government alleges that the permit system has created closed communities that are hidden from outside scrutiny, and has enabled some insiders to create a climate of fear and intimidation. These allegations are unproven.

The government is also proposing that it use "constitutional powers to compulsorily acquire five-year leasehold interest in prescribed communities." This would be unprecedented. Some landowners have perceived this as a land grab, and might create a dangerous precedent, especially if minerals were to be discovered on Aboriginal land. The government also proposes to, after having grabbed the land, continue to negotiate 99-year leasing agreements. Altman points out that these negotiations would then be conducted under a severe power disparity: the government has stolen your land for at least five years, and now wants to negotiate a lease.

The government's stated rationale is they want to use the time to deliver better living environments for the residents. It's unclear that this would actually happen.

Altman's paper doesn't make for an easy read if you're not familiar with Australian government policy. He references the Aboriginal Land Rights Act of 1976, which was amended around 2006.

Nonetheless, he makes it clear that this particular response would be severely inimical to the interests and rights of Aboriginal Australians. John Howard had consistently refused to apologize for the harm done to Aborigines. His government's actions here seem to say that Aborigines seem to want to abuse their children, so the government needs to stop them. I pray that Kevin Rudd's government has the wisdom to take a different, more cooperative path.