Close the Gap and Intervention events coming up...

There will be a Close The Gap event at the Victorian Aboriginal Health Service, 186 Nicholson Street, Fitzroy on Wednesday 25 June from 10am-2pm. Attendance at this event would provide an opportunity for those with a health interest to build bridges and network with health providers in the Aboriginal community. However, it would be helpful and courteous if you could phone ahead and express your interest in attending on 9419 3000.

On Saturday 21 June next, there will be rallies right across Australia as part of a National Day of Action to protest the intervention by the Australian Government in Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory. If you are interested be outside the State Library of Victoria on the corner of Swanston and La Trobe Streets, Melbourne at 12 noon. Planning for these rallies has been taking place for some time within Aboriginal communities across the country. Focus will be the non-consultative approach of the intervention and the over-riding of the Racial Discrimination Act to provide the legislative base for the intervention.

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When you can do nothing else: bear witness.

Of floods, potholes, and infrastructure

For the story that goes with the picture above, click here.

The Big Wet continues in North Queensland as the flooding moves north. Mackay is mopping up from its biggest wet. I have posted on the Don River and associated flooding in Bowen. Now Townsville is having its problems. Miss Eagle is a banana-bender. She lives in Victoria now - but cannot yet say that she is a Victorian. Most of her life has been spent in North Queensland. Before coming to Melbourne and Upper Gully, Miss E lived at Bluewater only 15 minutes away from where the flooding, pictured below, has occurred.

But there is one thing that bugs Miss Eagle - and that is the fact that there is not a flood-free four-lane highway in North Queensland from Sarina to Mossman. When I visit Brisbane I see all the money that is spent just to keep pace with congestion. In North Queensland, however, the necessary road spending is not a matter of congestion. It is a matter of being able to move around in The Wet. Of being able to keep industry going, of being able to transport people needing medical attention.

When Miss E was a whipper-snapper in North Queensland and went on the annual road-trip to the Brisbane rellies for Christmas, January was not quite the same if one was not stuck beside a flooded creek or river on the way home. That has been more or less in the past as high level bridges have been constructed. However, all that bridge-building has still left the north with flood-prone pot-holed "highways", some quite narrow and curvaceous and dangerous. This is not a wishlist. This is a demand for necessary infrastructure.

It is high time that governments of every hue and classification - local, state, territory, federal - woke up to themselves on infrastructure spending. We have talked a lot of garbage for over two decades now about how Australia believes in a level playing field and does not subsidise business and agriculture. However, just as a lack of investment in the family home means it goes to rack and ruin and loses its value in the market-place, so does lack of investment in our nation. Investment in infrastructure such as road and rail provides jobs for the community, necessary business inputs, lifelines to health, education, and economic access. In short, investment in infrastructure is an economic subsidy which benefits the whole community - not just vested interest.

If we are to remain a truly cohesive and equitable nation, then investment in infrastructure is necessary. We have apologised to Aboriginal people this week and talked about health and education and employment inputs. But one of the most vital things you can do for Aboriginal communities is to provide them with all-weather road access. Without good road access, Aboriginal communities cannot begin to build any form of local economy. Without good road access, it is difficult for them to access services the rest of us take for granted. Without good road access, it is difficult for Aboriginal people to access medical services or for medical services to access Aboriginal communities.

And, dear Reader, guess what the problem is? It is the out of sight, out of mind syndrome. In Queensland, Brisbane is at the very bottom of the state, far far away from Mackay, Bowen, Townsville, Cairns. And let's not mention Mount Isa and the Gulf country - the Gulf country which can remain immersed in and cut off by floods for three months of the year because the country is so close to sea level.

People are hearing horror stories of children in Aboriginal communities on Cape York. Now that is even further out of sight and out of mind from Brisbane. To the extent that political leadership has almost certainly never had anything to do with the Aboriginal communities of the Cape and their traditions. How different from the Northern Territory where representation of Aboriginal people in the Parliament of the NT almost exactly matches the proportion of Aboriginal people in the Territory population.

So it can be very difficult to make yourself heard in the Parliament of Queensland if you are from the North and it gets more difficult the more remote you are from the east coast.

This problem of the lack of decent road infrastructure has always been there. We are only now starting to understand the La Nina effect and old hands look back to the floods of the forties and fifties and say "Ahah - that's what is was all about, eh!" But now there is another addition to our knowledge - Climate Change. And, if governments don't bite the bullet and do something about all-weather highway access and all-weather access to remote communities, matters will only get worse.

As any North Queenslander knows, Brisbane loves the money that flows from the North from mining, grazing, sugar, horticulture, tourism. But getting money out of Brisbane for necessary infrastructure and services is, all too often, like getting blood out of a stone. Or if funds are given they are not given with the same largesse as the funding given within the Sunshine Coast, Brisbane, Gold Coast axis.

So, North Queensland, when the mopping up is over and you see all those local authority and bitumen people patching up the potholes to make some new bumps in your patchwork quilt of a road, get your act together and start kicking up a fuss. The squeaky wheel not only gets the most grease, it is frequently the only wheel to get any grease at all. Demand a fair share + catch up on road spending. And all you southern tourists who love to winter in the tropical sun, please get right behind them.

A photographic instance of the lack of a flood-free four-lane highway.

Please note: To the left is the high bridge over the Bohle River, just north of the twin cities of Townsville and Thuringowa. To the right is the low bridge. The high bridge carries two lanes of traffic. In dry times it is one-way traffic. In flood times, it is two-way traffic. Townsville is the industrial hub and de facto capital of North Queensland. It deserves better than this. Local Authority elections for an amalgamation of the two cities are coming up. Who is going to push this infrastructure barrow?

A mandate for intervention in the Northern Territory?

Miss Eagle has often thought that one of the difficulties for Aboriginal people goes to the very heartbeat of democracy. A simple definition of democracy which, at least in my generation, was learned at school is: government with the consent of the governed. Miss Eagle has often thought as she has seen mainstream communities battle with issues of law and order relating to the Aboriginal community that the nub of the problem was old and pervasive: how often had the Aboriginal community given its consent - been included, consulted, informed and given the privilege of having its opinion listened to? And if not - as so often has been the case - how can we expect people in such circumstances to have respect for our laws?


Behind the Howard/Brough Military Intervention in the Northern Territory were all the sins of the non-inclusive past: neglect, lack of consultation, no information, and certainly no one listening.


But Aboriginal people vote too. Out there in the bush, the planes fly in with mobile booths. If no one bothers to take any notice at any other time, then this is the time when someone CAN take notice. But will anyone notice?


In relation to whether there is a mandate for the Howard/Brough concept of military intervention in the NT, there are a few election results to be taken notice of:

• Howard's seat of Bennelong. He was defeated.


• Brough's seat of Longman. He was defeated.


• Snowdon's seat of Lingiari which contains virtually all communities affected by the intervention. Resounding vote for Snowdon and Labor.

I am indebted to Chris Graham of the National Indigenous Times writing in Crikey for the following information:

The vote for the ALP and against the Howard Government:

• Wadeye: ALP 95%. 723 voted Labor and 26 voted for Howard


• Angkarripa: ALP 99.01%. 503 voted Labor and 5 voted for Howard


• Yirrikala: (Home to Galarrwuy Yunupingu, the prominent Aboriginal leader who outraged colleagues by reversing his opposition to the NT intervention on the eve of the official start to the election campaign.) Of the 266 votes up for grabs, the Howard Government secured just two of them - 0.75 percent of the primary vote.

Many whitefellas who don't know a lot about Aboriginal matters have fallen for the Noel Pearson line. The politest public view that can be expressed was once expressed by NSW Aboriginal MLA, Linday Burney, when she said that it has to be realised that one size does not fit all. Noel is a big fella - in more ways than one - up on the Cape where there are a lot of Pearson family interests. He famously vented his spleen against the "Left" at the recent Melbourne Writers Festival. So what did people reckon electorally in Hopevale - the former Lutheran mission, pride and joy of Bjelke-Peterson regime where Bob Katter Jr negotiated the Clayton's land rights known as DOGIT (Deed of Grant in Trust).

The vote for the ALP in the booth of Hopevale was 75%.

It is going to be interesting to see what happens with Yunupingu and Pearson in relation to the new Rudd Government. Certainly, Central Land Council has some good things to say about what should be happening in relation to the intervention, the funding, and the holding of Aboriginal land to ransom.

Now Miss Eagle has never expected Aboriginals to speak with one, monolithic voice. Whitefella society doesn't. Why should it? In fact, Miss Eagle has been amazed over the decades at the united front projected by Aboriginal leadership at national level even though she was aware of undercurrents unseen. But those who have valued personal self-interest above all else have broken away for all to see. Yunupingu and Pearson are canny beings to be sure - but whitefellas have to realise how much their personal self-interest affected their actions and their decisions. Again, nothing new about that. Whitefella politicians have been hoodwinking their respective publics in exactly the same way since Moses was a boy. But let's get real.

It is time to acknowleddge the Aboriginal people and organisations who are working sensibly and in terms of sound, measured public policy and time to take note of those who have an eye to the off-chance and prepared to negotiate their own way forward when they are unable to bring their own constituencies forward with their informed consent.

So it is back to government with the consent of the governed. The Big Man role can be played irrespective of ethnicity or who was here first. The role of the inclusive, listening person is a harder role to play. Takes more time. Often there is less personal kudos. But including, listening, and acting with the consent of the people involved will always take one further. There are no guarantees that the right answers will always be there. But Aboriginal people have a right to expect the same civic rights and fulfilment of civic obligations as any other Australian. They have a right to lobby their politicians and they have a right to have their politicians consult with them.

The overwhelming vote in Aboriginal communities has been for the Rudd government. Aboriginal communities expect that with the dramatic intervention some of the drama will be retained to good effect by pouring in funding, energy, direction and policy to supplant the years of neglect. But modifications there have to be.

There is not only a mandate to get rid of Work Choices.

There is a mandate for revising the Military Intervention.

HENDERSON & SCRYMGOUR: Another generational change

Generational change is the name of the game all over it seems. In half an hour from now Paul Henderson will hold his first Press Conference as Chief Minister of the Northern Territory following the resignation this morning of Clare Martin. Miss Eagle is all excited. She knew Paul before he entered Parliament in the late 90s. He was an energetic man of ideas then and, it seems, is still so to-day.

Syd Stirling stepped down with Clare. Fare thee well, Syd! You have been there a long while - and done (pardon the bad pun!) stirling service to the NT and the people of Nhulunbuy.

Stepping into Syd's shoes is Marion Scrymgour. Marion is an Aboriginal woman who knows from experience about the hard decisions a political life demands. She knows what leadership is about. This is the highest ranking political position ever held by an Aboriginal person in this nation. Proud of you, Marion.

Miss Eagle thinks that with you two in charge and a new tenant at The Lodge that good will come considering that the two architects of the Military Intervention in the NT have lost their seats in Parliament. Clearly, the people of Australia took note - and such poor policy is not on. We wait to hear the good news of a sound policy substitute from your own government in collaboration with the Commonwealth.

Sign the petition : end non-consultative intervention

Miss Eagle has to-day received information about a petition relating to the Howard/Brough Northern Territory Intervention into Aboriginal Communities. Links at the top of this blog detail the history.

This petition has come to me from Patricia Corowa who grew up in Bowen like I did. Patricia was an activist in her young days back in the campaign for and surrounding the 1967 Referedum. She has been an adviser to two Labor Ministers for Aboriginal Affairs.

The petition was initiated in Yuendemu in the NT. Patricia received the petition information from Ray Minniecon, a well known Aboriginal and Christian leader. Old Mount Isans remember his father Stirling well who, with his wife Di, was a missionary with AIM at Dajarra in north-west Queensland for many, many years.

Could you please, dear Reader, take a minute or two to go to the link here. There you will able to sign the petition. There is also a link at the top of the page. When you have done this, could you please forward this information on to your networks. That would be much appreciated.

Whichever party comes to power on Saturday 24 November 2007, the message has to be given:

Aboriginal communities have a right to be consulted

- proper two-way all-parties-concerned consultation - on matters affecting themselves, their children, their families, their communities, their land and their place in broader Australian society.

Anything less is not good enough.

Fifty years ago THE great petition began.

Fifty years later, still petitioning for basic human rights and self-determination.

Aboriginal alcohol reforms: you would never ever know if you never ever go

In all the brouhaha of John Howard's and Mal Brough's military intervention in the Northern Territory on the pretext of protection of Aboriginal children from sexual abuse, there has been one clear hallmark - lack of consultation with Aboriginal communities.

There is glib talk about banning alcohol in Aboriginal communities in complete ignorance - or taking for granted the complete and utter ignorance of white Australia - of the reality: that a significant proportion of Aboriginal communities are dry and that Aboriginal communities - particularly older Aboriginal women in communities - have worked hard and spoken loud and long to get control over alcohol frequently in the face of feigned deafness on the part of the white powers that be.

The Tennant Creek story is very different. This is the mainstream town that closed the pubs at the behest of a powerful Aboriginal community. It is documented by the 2007 Miles Franklin Award winner, Alexis Wright, in her book Grog War which was commissioned by the Julalikari Council.

To-day, on The World Today on ABC's Radio National, there is the report of an investigation by the National Drug Research Institute - including Dr Tanya Chikritzhs and fellow researcher Professor Dennis Gray from Perth's Curtin University - which has found that, ten years on, there are positive statistics demonstrating the impact of what Tennant Creek did more than a decade ago. Transcript available here.

How good it is to hear Tennant Creek being recognised; their work being justified and verified; and the public statement of indigenous instigation of alcohol reform.

If you only listened to Howard and Brough, you would never ever know if you never ever go!

Economy where, employment when??

It comes as no surprise - the Minister's announcement regarding the abolition of the Community Development Employment Program (CDEP). CDEP schemes operating in Aboriginal communities in various regions across Australia were precursors of Work for the Dole schemes in mainstream communities.

Miss Eagle has made her suggestions previously on economic participation in and by Aboriginal communties:

1. All weather roads to Aboriginal communities. Without this basic lifeline of transport and communication no community, black or white, can begin to build an economy.
2. Air strips - for similar reasons.
3. Building communities which specialise in the delivery of community services. Employment classifications for Tennant Creek are dominated by the number of people employed in community services. This is duplicated across the nation in rural Australia. With investment, intentionality, mentoring and direction, Aboriginal communities - just like white communities - can build themselves up economically as a service centre. Services can be commercial, health, educational, or tourism.
4. Such participation should go far beyond the Work for the Dole schemes. Work for the Dole schemes should be seen as transition schemes of basic economic participation - not as ends in themselves

The Minister says the CDEP will be progressively replaced by real jobs, training and mainstream employment programmes, complementing the work already in train to lift remote area exemptions.

Radio interviews with the Minister earlier this evening indicate that the Government plans have an initial focus on local indigenous replacement in local positions where outsiders (can one read hear non-indigenous outsiders rather than indigenous outsiders?) are presently employed.

This, in principle, is a reasonable idea - but it is clearly one that has been implemented as far as possible by local indigenous organisations. Aboriginal organisations have been active in or actively managing and sponsoring training schemes for many,many years. Is the minister merely re-branding previous ATSIC-funded programs? Is he going to stand up and take credit for operational modes currently in place with strong indigenous organisations?

But, the question to be asked above all is this:

Is the Howard Government going to fund basic economic infrastructure such as transport and public utilities as well as the buildings and staffing levels for public service provision regarded as the norm in mainstream communities?

The Howard Government has been a poor steward in provisioning infrastructure replacement and development in mainstream communities preferring to fund endless tax rebates and refunds to individuals for personal spending rather than stewarding (or should one say quarantining?) the money and channelling it into economically productive infrastructure.

Governments, Federal and State, seem to be establishing public projects which can be built by Thiess and privatised by Macquarie Bank.

If the Howard Government does not come to the party with funding for economic and service infrastructure will it turn to the Mac Bank and the BOO (build-own-operate) schemes to establish infrastructure in regional and remote Australia?

But if none of this happens and people who cannot be placed in meaningful work end up on Work for the Dole schemes rather than the abolished CDEP schemes (as the Minister's media release seems to indicate) what will all this mean? Just more venal grandstanding by Howard and Brough?

A royalty, a river and a ripoff

A royalty payment at last!

But what's the cost when compared with what is lost - the river!

Howard's Shock and Awe Campaign: planning and evaluation

The days when organising anything from a street stall to the implementation of The Grand Plan, there are two key axes: planning and evaluation. In to-day's Crikey: Bob Gosford from the metropolis of Yuendemu writes of LGANT's concerns about plans for local government in small communities:
Local Government in the NT – Howard & Brough’s plan for privatisation by stealth?

Local Government in the NT has been in a mess for decades and Howard and Brough’s intervention is about to make it a lot worse. The six "municipal" councils of Darwin, Palmerston, Litchfield, Alice Springs, Tennant Creek and Katherine are the subject of separate parts of the Local Government Act to the 57 or so other small remote Councils. These small Councils are mostly on Aboriginal land and vary from well-run and effective local administrators to grossly dysfunctional centres of corruption, nepotism and benign neglect and it is they that are in the sites of Howard and Brough’s intervention.
Clare Martin’s Labor administration inherited the legacy of poorly-run local government from the 26 year reign of the Country Liberal Party. To her credit she has decided to bite the bullet and implement long-overdue reform of the sector. Whether Martin’s reform proposals are appropriate or not will be left for another day.
What is of greatest concern at the moment is the cumulative effect of a number of recent decisions by the Howard and Martin governments that have and will negatively affect the administrations of local government in the NT. Of particular concern are a raft of recent decisions relating to the Howard & Brough intervention in the NT.
Crikey spoke to Kerry Moir, a current Darwin City councillor and President of the NT’s Local Government Association (LGANT) – the peak-body for all NT local government authorities. Alderman Moir has lived and worked extensively throughout the NT and she is intimately familiar with and concerned for the future of many of the small councils scattered across the NT.
Moir is particularly concerned that the Commonwealth intervention has been so poorly thought out that it will only worsen the current situation. She is particularly concerned that there appears to be no effective coordination between the NT Government’s Local Government Reform program and the elements of the Commonwealth intervention that will affect local community administrations:
I don’t believe that the people the Federal government will send up here will have any idea of what they are going to do or where they will be going. It won’t be like working in their nice air-conditioned offices down south. I don’t believe they will know anything of how remote community Councils work and the constraints they work under. They will have no understanding of local Aboriginal cultures.
Moir and LGANT argue that the formulae used to calculate the Financial Assistance Grants that the Commonwealth provides to all local governments have particularly disadvantaged small community Councils in the NT:
There’s never been enough money provided to communities to do the sort of jobs that have been expected of them. Some communities are dysfunctional, but there are others who struggle, with good people in charge, to try and do something about the housing, do something about the infrastructure. They’ve just never had enough money to do so.
Moir has grave concerns about the uncertainty created by the lack of information provided by Howard and Brough:
Have you seen a plan? No – there isn’t one, at least that they are releasing to the public and my members. At least the NT government has prepared some information on its website about its role in the intervention. My members are fearful for their jobs, they are incredibly worried about their own circumstances and for their communities. I mean, imagine how you would feel if you saw a statement from the NT government that it ‘…will seek to use the Commonwealth appointed administrators to deliver its programs’ – that is the jobs of my members that the government is talking about. Of course there is fear and uncertainty.
But her biggest concern is for the continuing existence of LGANT’s member communities. She is particularly concerned that services currently provided by remote councils will be contracted out to private service providers and that Howard and Brough’s intervention might be an attempt at privatisation by stealth.

And then there's the process for evaluation so that an assessment can be made about how things have gone, how effectively policy has been implemented:

No signs of benchmarks in NT intervention
Health journalist Melissa Sweet writes:

Let’s assume, for argument’s sake, that the Federal Government’s foray into the NT is more about achieving policy goals rather than political objectives. In which case it’s timely, four weeks after the Government announced its "national emergency response" to s-xual abuse of Aboriginal children, to ask: how will we know what difference the initiative has made? More importantly, how will we know that any potential harms -- and it’s hard to think of a health or social welfare intervention which doesn’t involve risks -- outweigh the benefits? Harms are particularly likely when policy is being made on the run and without consultation, careful planning or drawing on the evidence base about what interventions are most likely to be helpful. (If you doubt that’s what’s been happening in the NT, check the Government’s statement of June 21 announcing plans, which were quickly shelved, for "compulsory health checks for all Aboriginal children.") These are important questions, deserving serious attention. But there are no signs the Government has any intention of putting in place an independent, credible evaluation process. Professor Ian Anderson, Director of the Centre for Health and Society and the Onemda VicHealth Koori Health Unit at the University of Melbourne, is one of the country’s gurus of Indigenous program evaluation. If any evaluation was planned, he would likely know about it. But he hasn't heard a whisper. Anderson supports some of the Federal strategies, including ensuring a police presence in remote communities, but worries that pressing children to disclose s-xual abuse without providing long term follow-up may lead to harm. "Any focus which brings a child to disclosure without having in place adequate and sound referral and follow-up services is quite risky," he says. "Children are at risk of suicide for some time after disclosure. "Suicide is one of the extreme consequences but there is a whole range of possible emotional harm that results from well-intentioned interventions by people without the appropriate experience." Anderson says enforced alcohol bans are "bad policy" when they are not linked to a more comprehensive strategy and are likely just to transplant problems -- he has already heard of groups of people moving across the NT border -- rather than solve them. They also encourage sly grogging and more risky forms of drinking, and many also encourage the use of other drugs, such as cannabis. Evaluating the initiative wouldn’t be easy -- an increase in child s-xual abuse notification rates in the NT might be a positive development if it means, not a real increase in cases, but an increase in children and families getting help. But Anderson says there are plenty of existing health and criminal justice data systems to provide a basis for evaluation. The main problem in evaluating the initiative would be its lack of forethought, he says. "In evaluation we identify program logic and the over-arching goals of a program," he says. "This is a policy initiative that doesn’t necessarily have a coherent program goal." If the Government really wants to understand the impact of its initiative, it should be speaking to people like Ian Anderson. But he’s not expecting that call anytime soon. "There’s been no talk of evaluation at this stage and, to be frank, I’m not sure the Australian Government is that interested in it," he says. Which suggests that the opinion polls may provide the only measure that really counts in the current political climate.

So, dear and gentle Reader, had Howard and Brough any idea what they were going to do and where they were going to go? And will they be able to recognise when they have done it and when they have got there?

Moriarty's view

Photo by Ben Rushton for The Age

John Moriarty - an Aboriginal traditional owner originally from Borroloola in the Northern Territory and now a very well-heeled businessman - gives his view of Howard's Shock and Awe intervention.

Let there be light: trustworthy and knowledgable

Many Australian's are suffering shell-shock in trying to comprehend the Howard Shock and Awe Campaign of intervention in the Northern Territory. Those who have never been to the NT or only done the tour up The Track have difficulty understanding why there is an uproar about the Howard/Brough activity.

The nub of the problem is that Howard and Brough have not been there - except in an adverse manner - to achieve outcomes in the very deep concerns of the Aboriginall people and those who work side by side with them. So who to believe, these people ask?

To-day's The Age carries two articles which fall into the category of :

Here's another point of view which is different from the Government which is trustworthy and knowledgable.

The first is from James Ensor, Director of Public Policy at Oxfam. James is well-known for his articles contributed to On Line Opinion. To-day he explains about the need for solutions implemented over the long term and points us to the Close the Gap Campaign.

The second is from the distinguished John Fogarty, former Justice of the Family Court of Australia. His article seeks to bring some rationality to the debate about parents having social security benefits quarantined in relation to child abuse.

The Howard Government has always been free with its abuse using the pejorative term political correctness slander and/or shut up its critics. Miss Eagle, dear Reader, has seen some funny sights when the ultra-conservative sector of the population seek to prove that they, too, know how to be non-discriminatory. Howard's extension of the quarantining idea to all parents - not just Aboriginal ones - is an example of ultra-conservatism tipping its lid to a heavy hitting policy implemented, in its view, in a non-discriminatory way. Crikey to-day has a good critique of Labor's me-tooism on this matter.

So Miss E's advice is to remember two things:

• H.C. Andersen's tale of The Emperor's New Clothes
• The quote attributed to Edmund Burke : The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

Tennant Creek liquor laws half-hearted?

The Grog Book. Strengthening Indigenous Community Action on Alcohol. Revised Edition. Department of Health and Ageing, Canberra 2005. Available from http://www.alcohol.gov.au, or phone 1800 020 103 ext. 8654.

Miss Eagle has received the following comment with regard to the post on the Night Patrol at Tennant Creek:

I've driven through, and stopped overnight in, Tennant Creek in each of the last two years but wasn't aware of the night patrol. I did note that some types of alcohol, eg fortified wine, are not on sale. This seems to be a half hearted way of approaching the problem, though it's better than nothing.

Miss E started to respond in the comments but the response was a bit long and deserved a better exposure than being tucked away in the comments.

Believe Miss Eagle when she says there was nothing half-hearted in Tennant Creek's approach to the liquor problem.

Miss E can understand someone calling the respoonse half-hearted but, from her viewpoint, the only whole hearted response would be to ban liquor for blackfellas and whitefellas alike. But this would cause an uproar among the whitefellas (as the Tennant Creek laws did - an effigy in someone's front yard) and lead to an even greater outbreak of grog smuggling by both blackfella and whitefella alike.

Two things: we live in a democracy and places like Tennant Creek have to live on a daily basis with Aboriginal people and their culture. Such a situation is unknown to the majority of Australians living on the urban fringes in a white dominated culture. Aboriginal culture is not some nice abstract thing which includes eating kangaroo and doing dot paintings. Living with Aboriginal people of significant numbers (half TC's population is black and approx. half of those are traditional Aboriginal people) means that their culture impacts on whitefella culture. The two cultures have to acknowledge each other and live together on a daily basis.

One of the factors which should be acknowledged with drinking in the Aboriginal culture is that the right to drink is tied up in a very real and historic way with Aboriginal civil rights -predominantly because of the experience of Albert Namatjira.

So in Tennant Creek not only whitefellas were unimpressed with the new liquor laws. A number of Aboriginal drinkers were unimpressed as well. One Aboriginal man said to Miss Eagle that, each pay day, he gave his pay to his wife and kept out his drinking money. Why should he not be able to drink as he pleased? All Miss Eagle could say was to get together the people who thought like he did and have their say. This voice, as far as Miss E could tell, was never heard.

The publicans of Tennant Creek fought the introduction of the new liquor laws through the court in a quite protracted case. They lost. Always remember vested whitefella interest and the way it markets its product. Never forget - as whitefellas do when comdemning blackfellas for drinking - the whitefellas who will do anything to get grog to blackfellas for profit.

Miss Eagle remembers years ago the publican in Burketown in the Gulf country who was such a thoughtful person that he sold a very, very rough red to the blackfellas in plastic flagons so that they would not cut themselves. Then there was the shop in Mount Isa just around the corner from the Mount Isa High School which met customer demand in a thoughtful way as well by selling methylated spirits ready mixed with Orchy (orange juice) which could be purchased chilled straight from the refrigerator and then taken the 50 meters or so across to the bed of the Leichhardt River to drink with friends while doing a spot of gambling. Mental note: Must talk about gambling which is an even worse problem than grog and no one ever mentions it or does anything about it.

With the mention of methylated spirits, Miss Eagle must refer to the campaign conducted for many years by Tony McGrady, former Mayor of Mount Isa and Speaker of the Queensland Parliament, to have methylated spirits made unpalatable for drinking. He did succeed - eventually. Let's ask ourselves why such a simple matter took so long? How many blackfellas' brains turned to jelly while whitefellas looked the other way and could not make a simple administrative decision in a matter which did not affect their well-being or profit?

The laws that were introduced in Tennant Creek were not iron clad. How could they be? But thanks to the nous and organisation of Julalikari Council, Tennant Creek - black and white - went on a journey which no mainstream community had been on before in this nation and no one has had the guts to follow since.

Now, contrary to public opinion, the drinking blackfella has always known how to get the most alcoholic bang for his buck. That's why the popular purchase was always a five litre cask of moselle. The sale of this was banned. But, of course, there were substitutes - Fruity Lexia, port and sherry.

Another problem developed with the consumption of port and sherry: the littering of streets with broken glass. Hardly a street corner was exempt. The problem had never been quite so evident with the casks. So the Tennant Creek Town Council applied for and received funding from the Northern Territory Government to pay for a ute and two men to keep the streets clean. The Northern Territory has a wine cask levy which makes such things possible. However - and isn't there always a 'however' - TC's wily General Manager of the time used to divert the two men and the ute to other tasks so that the original purpose of the funding was frequently unfulfilled.

Get the message! We complain about blackfellas - from ATSIC to drunks on the street - but where do they learn their lessons, what examples are set for ethical behaviour in the white community?

But back to half-heartedness. There was great co-operation to make the new laws work. Antipathy to the laws - with the exception of the publicans - in a public way soon subsided. The NT Liquor Commission and the Police were on side. Pubs which did the wrong thing were shut down - albeit temporarily. The Shaft at the Tennant Creek Hotel (otherwise known as The Swan) was caught by the Liquor Commission serving grog to drunken blackfellas. The owners were taken to Court and were forced to close all their outlets for three days - including their popular Steakhouse restaurant. The Goldfields was closed on a couple of occasions because of the raucous behaviour of drunken blackfellas.

Word to Miss Eagle is that the laws have fallen into disrepair because they were constructed around Thursday as the uniform Social Security benefit pay day. The government began to stagger paydays for different benefits and Thursday - the one day when public bars and bottleshops were closed - no longer has the same significance.

Now there is one little thing the Howard Government could do, without uproar, by administrative fiat - go back to a uniform pay day and get the NT to close public bars across the NT every Thursday.

Tennant Creek, Night Patrol, and Thirsty Thursday

Logo: Julalikari Council,

Tennant Creek, Northern Territory

So you, dear Reader, are a bit non-plussed about Mal Brough's apparent about face on grog access for Aboriginal communities? Get a dose of reality on the whole Shock and Awe Campaign.

Howard and Brough are strutting the national stage as if they are the only ones with ideas, the only ones to think of solutions. No, they are not. But they are part of the problem - the problem that has cut funding for Aboriginal initiatives, refused to listen to Aboriginal people making their needs known, failing to fund their reasonable and justifiable proposals.

Aboriginal people - particularly the women and, of them, the grandmothers - have strong views about alcohol and access to it. Most Aboriginal people, in spite of white views to the contrary, do not drink. Survey after survey outlines this. Some believe that alcohol and the way whitefellas make money out of blackfellas by selling it to them legally or illegally is nothing less than genocide.

This means that Aboriginal people, as a generality, are highly motivated to do something about alcohol usage and access. Tennant Creek, arguably, has been the place of the most creative attempts to combat grog and its effects. The Aboriginal community in Tennant Creek established the very first Night Patrol in Australia. The Night Patrol - largely staffed by women - drives around at night and picks up alcohol affected people. The violent, obstreperous ones are left for the police who take them to the local watch-house. The others are either taken home or to the shelter/drying out place.

Night Patrols have been established in numerous Aboriginal communities. They are a success story of Aboriginal Australia. For more information on the Night Patrol experience in Tennant Creek please read here and here.

But the Tennant Creek story does not begin and end with the Night Patrol. With the idea that was to become known as Thirsty Thursday, Julalikari Council - the energetic, creative, and involved Aboriginal organisation in Tennant Creek - suggested closing down the liquor outlets for one day to make the significant point of the impact no grog could have on Aboriginal communities. Read this description of Julalikari's radical proposal and its implementation by a former resident of Tennant Creek, Paul Cockrem.

Julalikari Council commissioned Miles Franklin Award winner, Alexis Wright, to document the history of the closure of the Tennant Creek pub's and the changes to licensing laws in Tennant published in Grog War.

It was good to hear Peter Dabbs on The World To-day this afternoon. Peter used to be in the Northern Territory with the Menzies School of Health. He was part of the team from Menzies who surveyed the residents of Tennant Creek as we tried one set of liquor laws for three months and another set of laws for another three months. Go here for a number of publications by Menzies relating to alcohol and Aboriginal communities. Peter Dabbs co-authored a report on the Tennant experience - d’Abbs P, Togni S, Crundall I. The Tennant Creek Liquor Licensing Trial, August 1995 – February 1996 : An Evaluation. Darwin: Menzies School of Health Research, 1996. Purchase price: AU$16:50 - which can be purchased from Menzies.

Life at Mutitjulu

There is a beautiful slide show by Jason South of life at Mutitjulu here. Find out more about life at Mutitjulu here.

Does Howard want the children or Uluru and Kakadu?

Why us? Why now? the people of Mutitjulu are asking.

The answer is not difficult and it comes in four parts:

1. Mutitjulu is accessible. It is close to an international airport.
2. Mutitjulu is visible. Visibile to tourists - particularly international visitors.
3. The people at Mutitjulu have the land on which Uluru is situated and a say in its management.
4. It is happening now because Howard has an excuse put in his hands.

Just as the Iraq War was planned by the neo-cons before George W Bush ever came to power but could be implemented with the excuse of 9/11, so Aboriginal control of land and, above all, Aboriginal control of Uluru and Katajuta, has been a sore point with conservative forces in this nation.

The former CLP Government in the Northern Territory resented Aboriginal ownership and control greatly. And it is not only Uluru/Katajuta that is at stake. Kakadu is as well. Whitefellas want to open Jabiluka. The Mirrar people fight against it - successfully, to date. The people at Mutitjula stop planes flying over Uluru. If they thought it possible without too much angst, they would stop people walking on it. At the moment, they just make do with advisory notices which large numbers of ignorant and arrogant whitefellas ignore.

If the Federal Government can regain control of Aboriginal land in the Northern Territory - and it can wedge its way in by taking hold of community land without compensation - it can take back control of Kakadu and Uluru/Katajuta National Parks. All in the name of child abuse. Then - after the nuclear waste dump issue is settled - the land councils will be razed. Whitefellas rule, OK!

Aboriginal insecurity: thinking on vines and fig trees. Part 4. Reality on a road trip.

Miss Eagle is publishing the following from Crikey. The Howard-Brough Shock and Awe Campaign of the past week astounds people because it bears no relation to the reality of their experience. "People" who have - unlike John Howard - acknowledged the reality of Aboriginal disadvantage, the child abuse in Aboriginal communities and have lived in the NT working side by side with Aboriginal people to get on with things and build a better life. Bob Gosford, who writes below, seems to get it. So please take a dose of reality from his road trip. Please note: The links related to the names of Aboriginal organisations mentioned were added by Miss Eagle to facilitate access to knowledge on the part of the reader.

11. Fear and loathing in the Northern Territory

Bob Gosford writing on the road from from Ti Tree, Tennant Creek, Katherine, and Darwin:

Over three days this week I drove from the deep south to the tropical north of the Northern Territory and visited families along the way to gauge early reaction to Howard and Brough's promise to their children. From what I saw parents are drawing their own lines in the sand – and that line is firmly set at their front gates.

They say that if Howard, Brough or anyone else mandated by Canberra turn up at their houses to take their children away for a compulsory examinations for signs of s-xual abuse they will resist to protect their children.

I was driving from Alice Springs to Darwin when John Howard's coup of last Thursday was announced. I spent the night in a roadhouse there and all the talk was of Howard's move. Comment varied from "well-overdue and a good thing" to "we'll be rooned". Things were little clearer the next day and I went to the local council to see if they'd heard any more.

The Anmatjere Community Government Council offices are in the centre of the five square mile special-purpose lease excised from the Aboriginal land trust that surrounds the town. Ti Tree is a small, quiet town that provides the usual services to tourists and the people living and working on the surrounding cattle stations and small Aboriginal communities.

Many of the more essential services are provided by the council. Crikey asks the council staff if they have any comment about Howard's plans but they have nothing to say -- all they know is what they have seen in Brough's four-page press release and on Sky News the night before. A few hours and 350 kilometres up the road, I pulled into the Julalikari Aboriginal Corporation's offices in Tennant Creek. Julalikari provides 'cradle-to-grave' services to town camps and small Aboriginal communities scattered across the Tennant Creek area and the Barkly Tablelands. The staff can't say much about Howard's plans and they're loath to speak until after council meets this week. Elliott is another 'open' town another 250 kilometres closer to Darwin. The local 'white' council administers part of the town, but the Aboriginal town camps and some outstations are serviced by the small and chaotic offices of the Gurungu Aboriginal Corporation.
What do these organisations have in common? They are all squarely in the sights of Howard's coup. Why does this matter? Because they all stand to have the land they and their people have fought so hard for stripped from them -- again.

There are many organisations like Anmatjere, Julalikari and Gurungu in the NT -- they are run by good people who do the hardest of jobs with little thanks or government support.
These parents don't mind their kids having general health check-ups – they think it's a great idea and this could be done at their local Aboriginal-run and owned clinics and health centres staffed by people that they and their children know and respect.

But they point out what these centres need is real and sustainable resources and a plan which includes them as part of the solution -- and not a part of some greater game.
But they are firm in saying NO to compulsory examinations by doctors that don't know their kids, that they and their kids don't know, have never seen before, and in four months time they might never see again. They worry what will happen to their kid's medical reports and most of all, they worry about their kids being subjected to these unnecessary and intrusive examinations by strangers.

Aboriginal insecurity: thinking on vines and fig trees. Part 3. Muck to Muckaty

A national speaking tour, From the Heart - For the Heartland, by Traditional Owners of the four proposed nuclear dump sites in the Northern Territory has just concluded.

The Traditional Owners represented Fishers Ridge (near Katherine), Muckaty (near Tennant Creek), Mt Everard and Harts Range (near Alice Springs)
This document comes from the Warlmanpa people, Traditional Owners of Muckaty Station. Muckaty has only recently been added to the list of proposed sites at the request of the Northern Land Council. Only one family group at Muckaty is supportive of placing a nuclear waste dump there. The majority are against the proposal and are not supported in this by the Northern Land Council. This contrasts to the support given by Central Land Council to the Traditional Owners at Mt Everard and Harts Range.

Prior to the inclusion of Muckaty, Fishers Ridge was the only proposed site within the area covered by Northern Land Council. However, heavy rainfall and floodwaters which resulted in the proposed dump site being inundated mean that, in all likelihood, Fishers Ridge is a clear non-starter. This would have left no proposed dump site in the Northern Land Council area. That would have meant that the two remaining proposed sites were both in the Central Land Council area and CLC is supporting the opposition of the Traditional Owners.

So, Miss Eagle's nose tells her that something is fishy about the Muckaty proposal.

There is an old saying which Miss Eagle (a Napanangka) is in the habit of applying to everything.

Cui Bono? Who benefits?

Who benefits, indeed?

Aside for the long-term interests of the nuclear industry, there are two beneficiaries in the short-term. Clearly the Howard Government who is doing the bidding of its constituency. But it is clear that the Northern Land Council wants to be seen as a clear player in the search for a dump. Why?

Why - when the majority of the Traditional Owners at Muckaty are against the proposal? Could it possibly be that the Northern Land Council itself would be a beneficiary of some kind if a site was chose within Northern Land Council boundaries? Would it receive brokerage fees from a proposal which could bring in to the community - so its supporters say - about $12 million? Northern Land Council has never been overwhelmingly effective in the area immediately north of Tennant Creek. The best indicator of future behaviour is past behaviour.

Miss Eagle thinks that the Muckaty proposal has not a thing to do with the views or the welfare of the Traditional Owners and the community at Muckaty. It has more to do with Northern Land Council and the King of Yirrkala, Galarrwuy Yunupingu, whose personal fiefdom the NLC has been.

The Howard Government is looking for a dump site for nuclear waste. As Dave Sweeney of the Australian Conservation Foundation has put it: the policy of the Howard Government is that Australia becomes the world's nuclear quarry and the world's nuclear waste dump. The Northern Territory Government does not support the nuclear waste dump proposal. The Port of Darwin is significant is the quarry-dump scenario since it is believed that Darwin will become the key port, the key transport hub in Australia's servicing of the world nuclear industry.

John Howard - the recovering climate change septic - is telling us ad infinitum, ad nauseam that nuclear power stations dotted the length of Australia's eastern seaboard will be the solution to carbon emissions and climate change. It will be a clean fuel. A clean fuel, eh? Compare to what? Coal. True - when thinking of air pollution, nuclear power might be preferable. But just as there is waste from coal, there is waste from the nuclear industry. The government intends to put this in drums in the ground.

The waste that will go into the dump concludes:

• approx. 50 cubic metres of highly radioactive waste produced from reprocessing more than a thousand existing and future spent reactor fuel roads from Lucas Heights in Sydney. This will be arriving over the next 40 years and it is expected that it will come through the Port of Darwin.
• approx. 130 drum per year of radioactive, compactible low-level solid waste comprising vials, gloves etc - again from Lucas Heights.
• approx. 20 drums per year of drums of solidified radioactive 'sludge' produced in the treatment of reactor wastewaters courtesy of Lucas Heights.
• Hundreds of tonnes of radioactive non-compactible contaminated items including materials from the decommissioned old Lucas Heights reactor, pipes, and machinery.
• A stockpile of over 5,000 drums of low-level radioactive waste which will be shipped from Lucas Heights.
• Over 800 drums of historical wastes including radioactive thorium, beryllium and uranium from Lucas Heights.
• Over 2000 litres of radioactive contaminated charcoal ex Lucas Heights.
• Around ten cubic metres of highly dangerous solidified molybdenum long-lived intermediate level waste produced by Lucas Heights.
• Over 2000 cubic metres of radio active contaminated soil currently stored at Woomera.
• Other Commonwealth Defence Department and CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) historic radioactive waste.

So Miss Eagle smiles a wry smile. When needs must, strange bedfellows arise. The Howard Government has wanted to eliminate the land councils. Now, it may need a Land Council to get what it wants. Mmm.....

The Traditional Owners have come up with their own symbol which they are asking people to wear to protest the use and pollution of their lands.

Dianne Stokes, a Traditional Owner of Muckaty and a Warrumunga/Warlmanpa woman of the Kalumpurlpa community says:

Top to bottom we got bush tucker right through the country. Whoever is taking this waste dump into our country needs to come back and talk to the Traditional Owners. We're not happy to have all of this stuff. We don't want it, it's not our spirit. Our spirit is our country, our country where our ancestors been born. Before towns, before hospitals, before cities. We want our country to be safe.

What do Ministers in the Howard Government have to say?

• Alexander Downer, Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, has said:

I would rather have it in the Northern Territory than in Mount Barker just down the road from my electorate office.

• Brendan Nelson, Minister for Defence and formerly Science Minister, has said:

...why on earth can't people in the middle of nowhere have low level and intermediate level waste?

• Julie Bishop, formerly Science Minister and currently Minister for Education, has said:

...all the sites in the NT are well away from houses...some distance from any form of civilization.

Miss Eagle finds it obscene that we have as Minister for Education someone who cannot even recognise or acknowledge the locale of one of the oldest - if not the oldest - cultures in the world. There are none so blind as they who will not see.

Aboriginal insecurity: thinking on vines and fig trees. Part 2. Mutitjulu and the invasion of 2007.

Bob Randall and his daughter, Dorothea, are bearing witness to the insecurity felt by Aboriginal people in one community, Mutitjulu. Bob is a well-known singer and, just twelve months ago, was touring major cities promoting his movie, Kanyini, as well as the art of his wife Hazel Mackinnon. Miss Eagle posted on their Melbourne visit here. This year, Kanyini was voted the best documentary at the Australian Film Festival in London. Bob outlines, as so many communities do, the requests for assistance which have been made to the Federal Government and how those requests have been met with silence and neglect.

John Howard has now discovered concern for Aborigines and, in particular, the abuse of Aboriginal children. John Howard has been a deny-er of Aboriginal abuse - until, it would seem, now. He denied that any abuse of Aboriginal children or people occurred in our lifetime and that, because it did not occur in our lifetime, there was no need to apologise, to say "Sorry".

Now, unless we have all gone Tardis travelling, hasn't the abuse to which he refers occurred in living memory - in the lifetime of present generations? And hasn't he been on watch (well, asleep at the wheel) for eleven years of that period?

Does John Howard not understand that the people of Australia have watched him, listened to him, and remembered every word and inaction? Now that he has discovered Aborigines (well, we hope he has) it all has to be a state of emergency and frenetic activity - like George Bush and the Coalition of the Willing (including Australia under John Howard) invading Iraq.

You may recall, dear Reader, that in Baghdad the antiquities of humanity were looted. Hospital equipment was looted. All without meaningful intervention by the invaders. Could this possibly be a parable/prophecy/metaphor for what might happen in this speedy and hastily put together invasion of Aboriginal communities - which also includes, once more with feeling, the stealing of Aboriginal land without compensation?

In the weeks ahead, what will be lost in this state of emergency? What will be trampled on and looted in the attempt to achieve an outcome as unrealistic as Bush and his neo-cons?

Howard chose not to listen to hundreds of thousands of Australians taking to the streets to voice their opposition to Australian entry into Iraq. Howard has chosen not to listen to Aboriginal people and people working side by side with them for a better life. Howard turned his back on them - and they reciprocated by turning their backs on him.

Howard is sending in the troops, police, and professionals. Funding is not clear. Delegation is not clear. Enforcement under which set of laws is not clear. Howard is after a fix by fiat. And a short term fix at that. Except for the land grab, there is nothing to indicate that Howard, Brough, et al are there for the long haul; nothing to indicate that they will stand shoulder to shoulder with Aboriginal leadership across Australia to bring lasting and intergenerational change. One Noel Pearson does not an economic revolution make.

Postscript

7.15pm

ABC TV News to-night carried a report that women at Mutitjulu had left the community and gone to the sandhills. The report did not state how many women went or how many women remained at the community. It did not state whether the women had taken their children with them. People at Mutitjulu are a long way from fig trees and vines and it sounds like they are far from security too.

7.30pm

The ABC's 7.30 Report provides a huge dose of reality into Howard's so-called State of Emergency in Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory. It has shown a National Press Club address by Mick Dodson in 2002 spelling out (well, not quite everything - the most horrifying was omitted by a clearly emotional Dodson) child abuse in Aboriginal communities. Don't you listen, John Howard. Don't you read, John Howard. You certainly did not speak out...until now. Have you been deaf, blind, and mute?

A long way from nowhere...

House at Gapuwiyak, NT

Meanwhile, still in the Northern Territory, reports are in The Australian to-day of the whitefella knows best policies of Mal Brough. Isn't this great news for Aboriginal people? Isn't it just what ignorant whitefellas in urban Australia want to hear as they sip their caffe lattes in Degraves Street, Park Road and Darlinghurst Road?

As he surveyed the house he helped to build, the house he will one day own, Barney Narjic was only too aware that he was the first to walk this path. "But when I pass away," the 51-year-old said, "my kids will take this over."
The Federal Govt estimates its value at $270,000. In the better suburbs of Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, where the real estate in the better 'burbs is running full steam ahead, they wouldn't have a clue about relativities in Wadeye and environs.

Just to give you some point of comparison. Tennant Creek, in the middle of the NT, at the cross-roads of the nation has a population of 4,000 - 50% of whom are Aboriginal. Tennant Creek has an economy. It is in the centre of pastoral and mining activity and is a community service centre for the 250,000 square kilometres that is the Barkly Tableland. It is serviced by air, buses, and The Ghan on a very well-maintained Stuart Highway just south of a very well-maintained Barkly Highway. Miss Eagle knows of no one who would spend/invest $270,000 on a home in Tennant Creek. In fact, the biggest driver to home purchasing in TC has always been the scarcity and cost of housing in the rental market - but not to the tune of $270,000. Miss Eagle will admit though that the cost of housing in the NT is expensive because of the cost of bringing in the materials. Its just that outside the high prices of Darwin and Alice you have to have a big hard think about it - and most people do not build but purchase existing housing.


Now let's switch back to Barney and his new home. The idea is supposed to be - as it has been publicised to the Australian polity - that Aboriginal people would be able to own their own homes on freehold land just like other Australians. The idea would be that they would become property owners like most Australians.

Well, it's not happening at either Wudapuli or Wadeye. Barney gets to rent his $270,000 home and we are not told precisely what the rental is. Now, there is a rule of thumb in Sydney and Melbourne which means that, on average, you drop the three noughts off the end and that's your weekly rental. So, as a generality, a $270,000 property would rent for $270. Barney is reported to earn $300 a week on the work for the dole scheme.

Now does Miss Eagle have your attention, dear Reader, for this little lesson in home economics?

Barney is not permanently employed. Don't think the banks would want to lend, do you? Servicing a $270,000 mortgage? How do you manage that in one lifetime, particularly the lifetime of a 51 year old, and particularly the shorter lifespan of an Aboriginal man who, statistically is already on borrowed time? Will Barney still be around in 22 years when he will be 73 - after two years of rental and twenty years of mortgage repayments.

And this mortgage - unlike yours and mine, dear Reader - has strings attached. Barney will only be eligible to purchase his home if .....
.....after two years if his rental record is unblemished and the children are sent regularly to school.

When did your bank manager last check on the attendance record of the kids, Miss Eagle asks?

The federal Government says the four families will take up to 20 years to pay off their homes, with an average weekly rent of $150 for one four-bedroom house to be paid through indigenous home-ownership schemes.
Mr Brough said mortgage payments would be the same cost as rent. "I have no doubt that these families have gone through a very vigorous process of financial assessment to ensure that they have the will, they have the financial capacity (to make the payments)," he said.
"No one is being left out here high and dry."

More home economics:
If Barney earns $300 per week on the work-for-the-dole-scheme and he pays $150 in rent, how does he manage basic food and clothing for six people (himself, his wife and his five children). Now, there may be additional family benefits, but remember that, just as housing is expensive because of the costs of materials, so is food very expensive. The food that is available is basic - not organic niceties, nor health food shop niceties as in urban Australia. Why? Because there is no economy. Not even an economy which might discriminate against Aboriginal people. This means virtually no choice; little, if any, competition; virtually no employment; no diversity.

The Oz reports:

The handover came as The Australian revealed the Howard Government was set to unveil a $1billion-plus plan to encourage private home ownership and lift education and health standards among indigenous people. Tuesday is expected to provide significant backing for private home ownership and economic development in Aboriginal communities.

So, dear Reader, you will have your ear glued to the budgetary details, won't you? And if the comments above have any truth or any semblance of hope in them, Miss Eagle can provide a measure to gauge them by. If the Howard Government is deadly serious, he will fund - for soon completion - a first-class, all-weather road to Wadeye.

You see, without this there will never be an economy at Wadeye. The $270,000 home of Barney's dreams will never be worth two-bob - because there will not be an economy. No local economy means that there will be no housing market in which to create value.

And all Mal Brough and John Howard will have done - out of their utter and complete ignorance - will be to re-arrange funding for Aboriginal communities once more - this time with invective as a lead up.