Davis, Megan --- "Aboriginal or Institutional Silence? A Brief Comment on the National Emergency Response to the Anderson Wild Report" [2007] IndigLawB 41; (2007) 6(29) Indigenous Law Bulletin 2
Aboriginal or Institutional Silence? A Brief Comment on the National Emergency Response to the Anderson Wild Report
by Megan Davis
On 17 August, the Commonwealth Parliament passed the full package of Bills[1] implementing the Federal Government’s ‘National Emergency’ response to the Report of the Northern Territory Board of Inquiry into the Protection of Aboriginal Children from Sexual Abuse 2007 (‘the Anderson Wild report’).[2] The legislation includes alcohol restrictions, radical welfare changes, changes to the permit system[3] and compulsory acquisition through five-year leases over prescribed Aboriginal townships.[4] Yet despite the complexity of these Bills and legitimate questions about the paucity of evidence-based policy underpinning them, there was very limited time provided to review the proposed legislation and comment.
To be concerned about the process of the review of these Bills is not willing the prolonged suffering of Aboriginal children. It is an offensive and insidious suggestion to equate scrutiny of legislative reform with wanting children to suffer.[5] To exercise the freedom to speak out and to be vigilant about how Australian democracy diminishes Indigenous rights and freedoms is as much about the right to self-determination as is taking responsibility for protecting Aboriginal children. Being vigilant in a democracy of one’s rights and freedoms is not inimical to the best interests of the Aboriginal child.
For over three decades Indigenous people, most notably Aboriginal women, have raised the issue of child abuse and family violence in Aboriginal communities.[6] In fact the Indigenous Law Bulletin (formerly the Aboriginal Law Bulletin) has a 25-year archive of over 60 articles, mostly written by Aboriginal women, detailing the problems of child abuse, family violence, and alcoholism in Aboriginal communities, and highlighting the inaction of state and federal parliaments and the detrimental impact and inflexibility of our adversarial legal system upon Aboriginal communities. How is it that a single television appearance by a white female prosecutor recounting in a cool and precise manner the life stories of Aboriginal abuse victims can instigate a national crisis? Yet Aboriginal women’s own, persistent voices have elicited no emergency response from Australian public institutions.[7] This represents the historical pattern of institutional silence toward the serious human rights issues experienced in Aboriginal communities and is compounded by an underlying failure to understand the complex trauma that exists in Aboriginal communities.[8]
Evidence-based research shows that Aboriginal communities must be included in formulating solutions to their problems and that very few initiatives succeed if Aboriginal people are not consulted from the outset.[9] Consultation fosters a sense of ownership which has proven to be incontrovertible in the success of Aboriginal economic development. An evidence-based response by the Federal Government would have emphasised the salutary influence of consultation, with the imperative being that fostering a sense of ownership over solutions will result in real and beneficial outcomes for Aboriginal communities. Yet the haste with which the legislation was passed, its discriminatory content; its violation of the International Convention for the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination and the preemptory norm of the prohibition on racial discrimination herald an inauspicious beginning to an ostensibly concerted effort to arrest the problems of child sexual abuse raised by the Anderson Wild report.
The day after the legislation was passed, Nicholas Rothwell in The Australian described critics of the intervention as ‘mourning for an old paradigm that is now dismantled: the model that advanced the three-fold agenda of land rights, self-determination and reconciliation’.[10] It is false to assert that these aspirations have been dismantled and to say so is to utterly misrepresent the aspirations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. The right to self-determination is an inherent right that can’t be dismantled or taken away. In willing the unexpected, radical intervention in the Northern Territory to work and improve the life outcomes of the Aboriginal child, much of the Aboriginal community has been imbued with a renewed spirit for the continued emphasis upon land rights, self-determination and reconciliation as non-negotiable.
Megan Davis is Director of the Indigenous Law Centre and Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Law, UNSW. In 2007 Megan was awarded Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Indigenous Researchers Development Scheme funding to conduct a study of how Aboriginal women fare in liberal democracies.
[1] Northern Territory National Emergency Response Bill 2007 (Cth) (‘NTNER Bill’); Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs and Other Legislation Amendment (Northern Territory National Emergency Response and Other Measures) Bill 2007 (Cth) (‘FaCSIA Bill’); Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Welfare Reform) Bill 2007 (Cth) (‘WR Bill’).
[2] Rex Wild and Pat Anderson, ‘Ampe Akelyernemane Meke Mekarle “Little Children are Sacred”: Report of the Northern Territory Board of Inquiry into the Protection of Aboriginal Children from Sexual Abuse’ (2007).
[3] FaCSIA Bill, Schedule 4.
[4] NTNER Bill, Part 4.
[5] For comments censuring those who question aspects of the Federal Government intervention, see generally, ABC television, ‘Noel Pearson discusses the issues faced by Indigenous communities’ Lateline, 26 June 2007; ‘NT intervention cost blow-out’ The Age (Melbourne) 6 August 2007.
[6] See, for eg, Boni Robertson, The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Women’s Task Force on Violence Report (State of Queensland) 2000; Judy Atkinson, Trauma Trails (2002); Judy Atkinson, ‘Stinkin’ Thinkin’ – Alcohol, Violence and Government Responses’ (1991) 2 (51) Aboriginal Law Bulletin 4; Larissa Behrendt, ‘Law Stories and Life Stories: Aboriginal women, the law and Australian society’ (2005) 20 Australian Feminist Studies 245; Hannah McGlade, ‘Our Own Backyards’ [2003] IndigLawB 13; (2003) 5 (23) Indigenous Law Bulletin 6.
[7] Ibid.
[8] See generally, Mick Dodson and Lisa Strelein, ‘Australia’s Nation-Building: Renegotiating the Relationship between Indigenous Peoples and the State’ (2001) 68 University of New South Wales Law Journal; Megan Davis, ‘A Culture of Disrespect: Indigenous Peoples and Australian Public Institutions’ (2006) 8 University of Technology Sydney Law Review 137.
[9] See generally, Mario Blaser, Harvey A Feit, and Glen McRae (eds), In the Way of Development: Indigenous Peoples, Life Projects and Globalization (2004); Jerry Mander and Victoria Tauli-Corpuz (eds), Paradigm Wars: Indigenous Peoples’ Resistance to Economic Globalization (2006).
[10] Nicholas Rothwell, ‘Desert sweep’, The Australian (Sydney) 11 August 2007.