An Aboriginal leader has taken the fight against the federal government's continuation of the Northern Territory intervention to the United Nations.
The chairman of the National Congress of Australia's First People, Les Malezer, spoke at the UN permanent forum on indigenous issues in New York this week, where he criticised the proposed 10-year extension of the intervention.
He said a "major disappointment" was the decision to extend the laws "without the consent of the peoples concerned".
The legislation, which has been rebranded as Stronger Futures, is before the Senate and is expected to pass parliament in June.
The draft laws include alcohol restrictions and a controversial program that cuts the welfare payments of parents whose children skip school, known as the student enrolment and attendance measure (SEAM).
The laws have been opposed as racist by Aboriginal communities in the NT.
Mr Malezer told the UN the Gillard government had refused to subject the Stronger Futures draft laws to scrutiny against Australia's human rights obligations.
"Aboriginal people are being subjected to blanket prohibition of alcohol, blanket income management regimes and government takeover of their lands, while the non-indigenous people around them are free from these very same laws," Mr Malezer said.
"However, the government is refusing to respond to calls for scrutiny of the bills or to be accountable for introducing these race-based laws."
He said the government was operating in a "framework of dominance" over Australia's first people.
The Howard coalition government launched the NT intervention in 2007 to address violence and alcohol abuse in remote Aboriginal communities.
In 2009 the UN special rapporteur on indigenous rights, James Anaya, described the NT intervention program under the Howard and Rudd governments as "overtly discriminatory".
Mr Malezer has asked the UN rapporteur to follow up on his 2009 report recommendations.
Comments
Devastated at how governments are treaing our original people
Overtly discriminatory, as are a few other things happening in Australia.
There's more, it's all unconscionably shameful, I wonder, don't the government know the emotion shame.
Don't thy feel shame, for doing this and thinking this way?
They need to learn it and before this accelerates and causes more demoralised, and suicidal original people's lives.
I'm one of too many I know who are devastated at how governments are treaing our original people, and all disadvantaged, here under the Australian flag no less.
I. Nielson