On June 18th we will protest the 3rd year of the Northern Territory Intervention. Kevin Rudd has continued and extended the Intervention policy towards Aboriginal people pushed through in the final days of the Howard era.
The Intervention was based upon the suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act (RDA), indicating the racist basis of the Intervention. Aboriginal Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin claims her new Intervention legislation is ‘reinstating the RDA’. This is a lie.
Under the new laws all of the racist Intervention policies introduced by Howard in 2007 will remain in place. Government measures to control Aboriginal communities include:
• Government Business Managers on Aboriginal communities
• Signing over Aboriginal land for 5-40 years before housing or services are offered
• Racist alcohol and pornography bans
People will not have access to the Racial Discrimination Act to challenge these measures.
Welfare quarantines will also remain compulsory for the vast majority of Aboriginal people currently on the system. This manages income spending from welfare payments through a ‘Basics Card’. A recent detailed research report by the Menzies School of Health found income management had no beneficial effect on tobacco and cigarette sales, soft drink or fruit and vegetable sales. Rather, income management has caused racially segregated queues in stores, forced movement of Aboriginal people into urban centres to access money on the Basics Card, and forced work for Basics Card money, harking back to the ‘rations days’.
Send a message at Fahcsia, government department responsible for administering the intervention, that this racist intervention must go!