Build trust and move ahead

• Only 44% of the overall population believe that Indigenous people are open to sharing their culture with other Australians.
• But 89% of Indigenous people say they are open to sharing their culture.

Reconciliation has a long way to go. The goodwill is there – but there's still an important problem. There's still too much misunderstanding and distrust between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians.

• Only about 1 in 10 people feel there is a high level of trust in the relationship, with Indigenous people feeling this way about other Australians and other Australians about Indigenous people.
  

However, a survey released today shows many Australians would like more contact with Indigenous people. While just over half (58%) of Australians currently report contact with Indigenous people, more than three quarters (76%) say they would like contact in the future.

There is also a level of interest in helping disadvantaged Indigenous people, with more than a third of people (37%) expressing a wish to do so.

A critical finding is that only 20% of Australians say they know what they can do to help disadvantaged Indigenous people.

Overall, however, those of us who seek greater progress in reconcilation will be encouraged by the initial Australian Reconciliation Barometer, released today in time for Friday's first anniversary of the national apology to the stolen generations. Reconciliation Australia plans to repeat the survey every two years to measure progress.

Despite the misunderstandings and distrust indicated by the excerpts above (taken from the survey's Executive Summary), Indigenous and other Australians have much in common when they see themselves as family oriented, proud, good at sport, easy going, friendly, good humoured and welcoming.

Attitudes to one another differ more on values like co-operative, disciplined, hard working and respectful.

The Sydney Morning Herald's report this morning can be found here. As well as the executive summary, other sections of the Barometer report can be accessed through the Reconciliation Australia link above.

Of interest: The Australian's media section today says the National Indigenous Television Network has commissioned well-known human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC to run a new Hypothetical show. Closing the Gap. His panel will include Tony Abbott, Germaine Greer, Marcia Langton and "indigenous rapper Wire M.C." (perhaps one of you young fellas could tell me who he or she is).

It should be a lively show, to be broadcast on NITV this Friday, Feb 13 (anniversary of the Apology, remember!), at 8pm AESDT. as well as on some subscription and specialist channels. This report on the NITV website calls its broadcast an "exclusive premiere", so we city types without pay TV may get to see it later.

Let's have many "conversations" about our national day

Back on Australia Day two years ago, Grumpy Old Journo posted this suggestion that we celebrate our national day a week later:

Sometimes, when I'm feeling mischievous, I suggest European settlement of Australia really began with a drunken orgy on February 6. Perhaps we should observe that date as Australia Day.

After all, it's the day white women joined the settlement.

On that day in 1788, after the male convicts had laboured for more than a week setting up rudimentary buildings at Sydney Cove, it was time to land the women convicts. The disembarkation took all day.

Then the sailors asked for rum “to make merry with upon the women quitting the ships.” From contemporary accounts, all that night there were scenes of debauchery and riot which beggared description. Even a sudden Sydney thunderstorm could not drown the revelry.

Nobody putting their hands up for February 6? What a lot of wowsers we've become!

More seriously, how about January 1? In 1901, that was the day on which Australia became a nation, rather than an assortment of British colonies. It would be a day for all Australians – it's not for nothing that many Aboriginal activists refer to January 26 as Invasion Day.

On Australia Day this year, when Aboriginal leader Mick Dodson – co-author of the Bringing Them Home report which told Australians about the Stolen Generations – received the honour of Australian of the Year, he pushed the issue back into public debate.

After first saying he had considered rejecting the honour because January 26 represented a “day of mourning” for his people, Professor Dodson moderated his words and asked for a “conversation” about the date on which we celebrate Australia Day.

Your grumpy old blogger trembled. Surely the appeal would see every ratbag crawl out from under a rock to sneer at the idea of accommodating the feelings of Aboriginal Australians. It's true that a few did – the same old predictable names. Grumpy Old Journo didn't post a comment at the time, preferring to sit back and think it over.

But overall, we had a mature debate. A worthwhile conversation. Most of those who blogged or wrote to newspapers understood the view of many Aboriginal Australians. But at the same time, most agreed with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd – “respectfully, no” – to any change.

With some misgivings, and with a plea to indigenous friends to understand my views, I agree with the Prime Minister. But my reasons may differ.

Today, it's not easy to select an alternative date. Some have been suggested, but few really commend themselves.

The landing of the First Fleet convicts, guards and officers in 1788 (and the claiming of Aboriginal land as British territory) did represent a milestone in the development of the Australian nation – although it also introduced the disease, dispossession and exploitation that did untold damage to the original Australians. Most reasonable people today accept that interpretation.

But the arrival of the Brits would, over time, also bring some of the benefits of the European Enlightenment, along with a robust legal system and the foundations of political structures essential to the development of a nation in the modern world.

Today, we are well along the path of reconciliation between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians. We will have many more “conversations” before we get to our destination. Perhaps some date symbolic of that arrival would serve as Australia day.

But I would like to see Australia reach another milestone which could mark our national day of celebration. It would be the day on which Australian became a republic. A republic which acknowledged its debt to Britain, along with that to its indigenous people, and indeed, to all those, Australian-born or immigrant, who have come together to make up our nation.

That would be the day it became possible for an Australian to be our head of state – not a British hereditary monarch who must, by 18th century English law, be a member of the Church of England.

But that's another conversation, isn't it?

I think it's English, but what does it say?

My day brightens when Google Blogger emails me: "[Someone] has left a new comment on your post [whatever it was]". It doesn't happen all that often.

So I snapped to attention this morning when I saw this in my Inbox:

smithsan has left a new comment on your post "Indigenous care for indigenous people":

A critical multicultural approach situates cultural differences within the wider nexus of power relations, and helps overcome the negative stereotyping that often prevents inclusive, self-determined care. Recommendations are suggested for change at the societal, professional and individual level.
-------------
smithsan
exposure marketing

I think it's English, but what does it say? It looks like the gibberish one has to regurgitate to score a PhD in, say, gender studies or Eng. Lit. or journalism.

Is someone having a go at me? In my post on indigenous care, I turned away from the term "cultural sensitivity" because I don't think abstractions win arguments, and there's one argument I do want to win.

I believe some white Australians still believe indigenous people are racially inferior. They'd deny it, or rationalise it away, if asked. But they still believe in paternalism, and in an intervention which fails to consult the indigenous people they believe they are helping.

In the previous post, I chose to use a number of concrete examples, brutally expressed, to explain why too many indigenous people now find themselves in an underclass. Not all Aboriginal people experienced every type of discrimination, of course, but many encountered some of those listed. That's too many.

And that's a major reason Aboriginal people are over-represented in poorer socio-economic groups.

I'm still puzzled by "smithsan" and the comment. Clicking on the name brings up a Google Blogger profile page, but it contains no profile. Unusual.

Clicking on the link provided suggests an answer. "Exposure marketing" takes you to http://www.drivenwide.com/. And what do we find? It's an internet marketing service, and clicking "what we do" in the navigation bar takes you to a page which says Driven Wide offers social media optimisation and marketing, search engine marketing and optimisation, and social marketing.

Sadly, this grumpy old blogger must concede it's unlikely his arguments have won the heart and mind of "smithsan", whoever or whatever that is.

It more likely "smithsan's" comment was computer-generated after a search engine picked up some key words in my post's labels, and its purpose was to publicise an internet marketing service.

It's interesting the program was able to find a passage like "critical multicultural approach" to post as a comment, but it just shows what computers can do these days.

For a long time, I've though of studying Search Engine Optimisation. Grumpy Old Journo sure could use it, and if ever I tried to return to the paid workforce, I could try for one of those high salaries SEO experts can obtain.

--ooOOoo--

I did appreciate some praise "Woy Woy Steve" attached to my October 27 post about the Putt Putt regatta. From his profile, it seems Steve may have attended Woy Woy High School (now the Brisbane Water Secondary College senior campus) at the same time as some of my offspring.

A self-taught web designer, Steve has put up a first-class website, http://www.woy-woy.com/. I found its local history pages well-researched and interesting.

And while you're looking at all things Woy, you may also be interested in a site offered by Spike. Here's one of his blogs .

Indigenous care for indigenous people

It's been around our region for 21 years, but I'd never heard of Daramulen Home Care until the other day when Kirsty Bissaker came to our monthly Central Coast Reconciliation Group meeting to tell us about this specialist service for Aboriginal people.

Ms Bissaker, the acting service co-ordinator, explained that Daramulen's clients are mostly elderly, some are children with disabilities, and about 20 per cent are adults aged 25 to 40.

Staffed by indigenous people, Daramulen operates alongside the government organisation which provides home care in the wider community. But it offers more for its indigenous clients – help with housework, social get-togethers called “yarn-ups”, and the extra benefits which come from the carers' cultural sensitivity.

Impressive. So I asked Ms Bissaker: “If Kevin Rudd gave you some of this money he's splashing around, what would you spend it on? What's your biggest need?”

She didn't hesitate. “Medical transport.” With low incomes, without cars, and often living in areas poorly served by public transport, her clients face real hardship if, for example, they must get from their homes to a medical centre three times a week. Adding to the problems of disabilities and infirmity, some clients are illiterate and find it hard to access those services which do exist.

The following are my comments, not those of Ms Bissaker (although I hope she'd agree). Sometimes people ask me why we should provide special social services for indigenous people. Surely we're all Australians, and if we're in need there should be no discrimination.

You might assume the whitefellas who ask this question are rednecks, but often they are not, and they deserve a considered reply.

Cultural sensitivity? Well, that's true – but we're not going to win hearts and minds if we argue in abstractions. Here are the answers I give:

• If you're fifty or over, and you went to the flicks in many country towns, you'll remember when indigenous customers sat up front on wooden benches.


• Even if some of your playmates were Aboriginal kids from down the road, they'd often be barred from joining you in the swimming pool. That exclusion generally held firm until after the 1965 Freedom Ride through outback New South Wales.


• In country towns in NSW, and probably elsewhere in Australia, whites had a “local option” to exclude indigenous pupils from government schools. For example, when European settlers in the Manning Valley finally pushed the indigenous owners off their land and resettled many of them on a mission, the good people of Taree asked the government to bar the children from their schools, and the government set up the Purfleet Aboriginal Provisional School. Up and down the coast, in towns like Kempsey, or inland, in towns like Walgett, the story was the same.


• What would you say if your Dad came home from the war in 1945 and tried to put his name down for a soldier settler block, only to be told “abos” weren't eligible?


• And try to imagine this. You're playing with your friends, when Mum starts shouting, “Git! Git! Git outta here fast.” As rehearsed, you run for the bush or down into the creek bed. You peek through the scrub, see a couple of cars pull up, and some whitefellas stride into your homes. When you creep back, your sister is gone. Your Mum and your aunties are inconsolable in their grief.

All of these things happened within my lifetime, and therefore within the lifetimes of some of Daramulen's clients.

It's no reflection on indigenous people to say such experiences turned too many into an underclass – people who cannot assert themselves at school interviews, or know how to dispute local council rulings, or negotiate their way through our complex and overstressed health system. People who may be functionally illiterate after rudimentary education in mission schools.

Today, one can see rapid improvement in the pride and achievement of Aboriginal Australians. And while most do appeciate the goodwill and efforts of whitefella friends, it's clear much of the credit should go to indigenous workers and organisations who understand the special needs of their people.

Australians begin to understand

A symbolic gesture perhaps, but when Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said sorry it did begin a healing process. And the first sign of that healing is a sharp rise in the number of Australians who now believe the apology was the right thing to do.

As reported in an earlier post, a Galaxy poll commissioned by the online activist group GetUp! just a fortnight before the apology showed that only 55 per cent of Australians supported an apology.

Only days after its delivery, another Galaxy poll showed the percentage of Australians approving had jumped to 68 per cent. What a great result!

Later, The Australian's Newspoll (the one which showed a leap in the public's rating of Kevin Rudd as preferred prime minister, along with Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson's slump) agreed with the second Galaxy figure.

The rise in public support for the apology may have come partly from a "getting on the bandwagon" effect.

But most of all, I believe, it came from the opportunity all Australians had to listen to the stories of ordinary Aboriginal people.

As they moved through the crowds in Canberra's parliamentary precinct, television and newspaper crews invited many people to tell their stories. Most of those who agreed were emotional -- some were in tears -- but they told their stories without rancour. Some of those stories were heart-breaking. Only a Quadrant "intellectual" would remain unmoved.

It was a time of true reconciliation. Not between politicians and Aboriginal leaders, self-appointed or otherwise, but between ordinary decent Australians. The only reconciliation that counts.

However, the fight has yet to be won. Two big battles remain. First, should our nation pay compensation, and if so, how should it be done?

Despite their growing support for the apology, a majority of Australians do not support automatic compensation for the stolen generations. Too vigorous a campaign for compensation (or reparation, to use the Bringing Them Home report's word) may set back the broad reconciliation movement.

From the anti-apology side, we're hearing a lot of claptrap about compensation -- including Quadrant editor Keith Windschuttle's ridiculous claim (examined a little further down in this blog) that the Trevorrow case in South Australia had set a compensation figure of $500,000 for every member of the Stolen Generations.

Many on the Aboriginal side also claim that the apology, the acknowledgement of the wrongs of the past, has created a right to compensation. And that's firing up redneck Australians who foresee Aboriginals rushing at a bucket of money (as if a whitefella wouldn't do that).

But I am convinced -- and I could quote The Australian's legal affairs editor, Chris Merritt, in support -- that our nation's apology did not open any further legal rights to compensation.

Nearly all Stolen Generations removals were carried out by State governments under State laws. There appears to be a general move among those governments to set up funds to pay compensation to Aboriginal people who can show they were harmed by the separation from their families and by their subsequent treatment in institutions or foster homes.

At the Federal government level, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has promised a big increase in spending to close the disgraceful gap between white and Aboriginal Australians in health, education and mortality.

Perhaps this is the most worthwhile compensation our nation could pay, healing the damage of not just the Stolen Generations removals but also of several hundred years of colonial and national policies.

Of course, compensation may be seen as a moral rather than a legal issue. But that could become a minefield, too.

After all, the Opposition's shadow minister for indigenous affairs, Tony Abbott, wrote that we should not say sorry because it would lead to claims for compensation. I find it hard to believe the Mad Monk's words could represent Catholic moral teaching, but he did, after all, spend some time in a seminary.

However, the mixture of State-based compensation funds and Federal "closing the gap" spending should meet both legal and reasonable moral standards.

The other big battle to win is establishing the truth of our past, and how our nation-building often excluded and damaged the original Australians.

Other nations which have undergone a reconciliation process have also seen the need to marry an acknowledgement of truth to the healing process -- such as in South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation inquiries. I'll come back to this idea, but first I need to take a walk in the garden.

There! Was it so hard to say sorry?

It all went so well. A moving speech by new Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. The Apology. Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson's endorsement, marred somewhat by an ill-timed attempt to mix in another side of the story. The acceptance by Aboriginal leaders.

But most moving were the responses of the Aboriginal people who crowded Canberra's parliamentary precinct, or who gathered in front of big screens around the nation. Some wept, some hugged, some seemed to have trouble accepting that our nation had finally said sorry.

The media did a splendid job. So many people were allowed to tell, in their own words, of the pain they had suffered with the separation from their mothers and their wider families, it must have helped white Australia understand a little better.

We need that better understanding. Just a week before the Apology, the left-leaning online activist group GetUp! reported the results of a Galaxy poll it had commissioned.

Only 55 per cent of Australians supported the Apology. Some 36 per cent did not. In Western Australia, and presumably in the north of Queensland, the numbers were the other way round.

We can sneer about rednecks. We can jeer at the "group-think" of the Quadrant mob, as I often do. We can talk about the Deep West, or the Deep North of Queensland.

We can march down streets, waving identically printed placards and chanting "Wadda we want?" till the cows come home, but we won't lift that figure much above 55 per cent unless we engage in rational, polite conversation with the people who hold other opinions.

We're unlikely to gain much ground with the 36 per cent who opposed an apology, but thoughtful discussion with the the 9 per cent in the middle, the people who hadn't made up their minds, should be fruitful.

To that end, GetUp! has launched one of its campaigns. Called Mythbusters, it provides a fact sheet to counter the major arguments against saying "sorry", in the hope that members will use them when they write to newspapers or call talkback radio (good luck with Alan Jones!).

GetUp! offers the factsheet on this web page, which also gives links to the full Bringing Them Home report about the Stolen Generations, and also to the Galaxy poll and to Reconciliation Australia factsheets.

Facts can be in short supply, or badly misused, in debate about the Stolen Generations. Some of the nastiest examples of this came last weekend when the Weekend Australian ran this feature by Keith Windschuttle, the new editor of Quadrant. So here's my own abbreviated factsheet.

"If the Rudd Government apologises to the Stolen Generations," Windschuttle began, "it should not stop at mere words. It should pay a substantial sum in compensation. This was the central recommendation of the Human Rights Commission's Bringing Them Home report in 1997."

Fact: The Rudd Government is not blindly implementing the recommendations of the inquiry, although it would have given weight to its findings. It has ruled out paying across-the-board compensation, and will instead spend the money on a focused program to close the appalling gap between the health, education and mortality rates of white and Aboriginal Australians.

"The charge that justified this, the report said, was genocide."

Fact: The report did say the policies amounted to genocide, but Windschuttle must know that one of the report's authors, Sir Ronald Wilson, recanted and regretted the use of the term. It was in all the papers after the Bulletin splashed it on its cover. [Since this original post, I've revisited the Bringing Them Home report about the issue of compensation, and have added further comment in a footnote below. -- Ian Skinner]

"The Bruce Trevorrow case in South Australia provided a benchmark for what that sum [to be paid to "virtually every person in Australia who claimed to be an Aborigine"] should be, a minimum of $500,000."

Fact: Trevorrow won this case under existing law because he convinced the court his removal was illegal, and that he'd suffered a lifetime of mental problems and alcoholism because of it. Few of those removed from their families could satisfy both criteria. Most removals took place under lawful authority. Even if the Rudd government changes its mind and sets up a compensation scheme, it would not be at this scale.

"Those who are serious about an apology should back it with a lump sum payment of $500,000 to each [Aboriginal] family, a total of $50 billion."

Fact: See above.

It's a pity Windschuttle wrote such tripe. Some of the other points he made, evidence he quoted, deserve to be put into the debate. In the past, he has played a valuable, if unwelcome, role in exposing the sloppiness of some historians on the other side of the culture wars. Forcing them to re-check their sources and revise their stories was no bad thing.

Windschuttle will publish the second volume of his Fabrication of Aboriginal History some time this year, and it's sure to damage some other historians' accounts. He'll find some major errors, and probably many you'd call nit-picking.

You and I, people of commonsense, may ask whether exposing these errors justifies a claim that all such accounts are false.

The Quadrant mob will have no such quibbles. I expect Miranda Devine to take no more than a fortnight to pronounce again that Windschuttle had refuted the "black armband" view of our history (as she did with volume one, in a Sydney Morning Herald comment on December 12, 2002). Dear old Frank Devine probably will hail Vol 2 with even more unseemly haste.

Footnote added February 17: A rereading of Chapter 13 of Bringing Them Home makes it clear the Human Rights Commission made out its case for reparation [its word] on wider grounds than its genocide claim.

These grounds, separately analysed for Australia's colonial era and for more recent times, broadly cover failures to meet proper legal standards in parliamentary acts authorising the removals, failure to provide for judicial review of removals, the states' failures in duty of care when they became the children's guardians, and breaches of international human rights in both racial discrimination terms and in what many Australians were to see as a rather too technical definition of genocide.

The following link will take you to Chapter 13 of the report.
http://www.humanrights.gov.au/social_justice/bth_report/report/ch13_part4.html

National emergency response: Concern for Aboriginal kids, or a clever political ploy?

“National emergency response to protect Aboriginal children in the NT” That was the heading on the June 21 media release from Mal Brough, the Federal Minister for Indigenous Affairs. June 21 was Federal Parliament's last sitting day before the politicians fled Canberra's cold for a six-week break.


At 12.54pm – according to the Sydney Morning Herald's acerbic commentator Alan Ramsey – Prime Minister John Howard's office called journalists to a joint press conference by Howard and Brough at 1.15pm. It was only 45 minutes before the House of Reps resumed for its last question time until August 7. Not much time for thoughtful questioning.

[This comment has been modified since its original posting.]

July 1, and Grumpy Old Journo finally comments. The delay may have surprised those who know that I'm a member of a local reconciliation group – and, by now, that I'm not an admirer of John Howard. Why not speak out earlier?

One risk was that a quick response would be ill-considered. It would have joined those who said Howard had found himself another Tampa or a “black children overboard”, a gut-wrenching issue – in this case, the sexual abuse of children in dysfunctional, remote Aboriginal communities – which he could exploit to get re-elected.

Could not have Howard's action been honourable, a statesmanlike response to a genuine national emergency?

But the day after these comments first went up, the Murdoch tabloid papers reported a Galaxy poll result that just 25 per cent of voters thought Howard acted because of concern for the problem, while 58 per cent said his action was to boost his support in the looming election.

What if the truth is somewhere in the middle? The Galaxy question didn't offer the chance to reply, "Well, a bit of each, actually", so its result may have been unfair. No-one doubts Brough's sincerity, and it's possible he did persuade Howard that urgent action was needed to impose troops, police, doctors and “managers of all government business” on prescribed Aboriginal communities, and to ban alcohol and porn. All without consultation, it seemed initially.

But Howard is a consummate politician and it's difficult to believe he failed to see electoral advantage in his stance.

As it happens, Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd didn't take any risks. He offered Howard full support.


But surely it was possible to applaud the Federal Government for taking decisive action -- even if one still had reservations about the way in which Howard said he would go about it.

Largely, it was left to non-politicians to express misgivings. Fortunately, there were many voices doing so – including many with expertise in Aboriginal communities and in child abuse cases.

Medical experts pointed out that compulsory mass screening of children for sexual abuse, involving physical examinations , would almost certainly be illegal as well as a breach of medical ethics.

Of course, one could call the Howard-Brough move paternalistic They were going to tell the Aboriginal people what would happen to them, and initially they implied there would be no consultation. As Howard said, the time for talk was over.

Some could argue paternalism was justified in the circumstances. But there was always an alternative – sit down and talk to the Aboriginal people.

And of course, the Howard-Brough move, as initially stated, was racist. There was little suggestion of a crackdown on booze and porn in the wider, white community, nor of compulsory mass screening of white children for sexual abuse. But perhaps there too, one could argue the need for this "profiling".

A better-thought-out approach could have avoided the Sydney Morning Herald's big front-page headline on June 27, “Families Flee in Panic”, and under it, “Brough blames liars for spreading hysteria”. Under it, the intro read:

Panic about the Howard Government's crackdown on child sexual abuse has spread widely throughout remote Aboriginal communities, where parents fear their children will be taken away in a repeat of the stolen generation.

But even the most reasonable people with misgivings about the Howard-Brough approach could draw abuse like this extraordinarily vituperative piece by Miranda Devine in the SMH. (By the third par, Ms Devine has also quoted approvingly from a new book by Helen Hughes of the right-wing “think tank”, the Centre for Independent Studies, attacking land rights as apartheid.)

After a week, Howard and Brough appear to have softened their rhetoric and to have accepted they need the co-operation of Aboriginal communities to ensure the success of their “national emergency response”.

But for Howard, at least, credibility would be improved if he had previously shown concern about the well-documented problems of Aboriginal communities, including child sexual abuse, detailed by Alan Ramsey in a piece as vituperative as Ms Devine's. For other evidence that Howard shrugged off these problems for the past decade or so, The Australian has provided many examples, including this.

If only Howard had been prepared, all those years ago, to say sorry. If he had not shut down the stolen generation inquiry when it was set to substantiate its findings. If he had confronted the racial bigotry of Pauline Hanson's supporters. If he had offered more support for land rights and for the Mabo and Wik judgments, his credibility would have been strong.

Without that credibility, it's understandable that many of us remain wary.

After first posting these thoughts on Sunday, I walked down to the waterfront at Woy Woy, where Aboriginal people had a major function. In a big marquee, I watched children performing traditional dances, seemingly oblivious to the icy wind, heard some heart-breaking personal stories of the stolen generation (and yes, I believe them to be true), and tried some bush tucker.

The growing pride and determination of Aboriginal people can be seen clearly at such an event. The activism of decent whitefellas has helped, but the big advances have come from the dedicated work of many respected Aboriginal leaders and mentors.

Howard and Brough appear to be modifying their initial, hard-line approach. It appears the medical checks on children will be carried out more sensitively, and will address wider health issues, rather than just probe for signs of sexual abuse. After days of prevarication, the Federal Government seems to be promising it not plan an assault on land rights.

But issues remain. Is a move to private home ownership sought by Aboriginal people in the remote communities?

There is a good chance Howard and Brough will make a worthwhile difference -- if they go beyond a short-term "shock and awe" attack, and provide more resources for the longer term. Brough has conceded the NT needs more help with providing police and police stations, but he has refused help with teachers and schools.

But most of all, nothing will work if Aboriginal people are denied a say in their own future.

Meanwhile, read this with anger

The SMH's P1 lead shows another broken promise by the NSW Labor government, or more accurately, its failure to provide funding so that its promise to combat sexual abuse of Aboriginal children can become more than empty words. The SMH story begins:

OUTBACK NSW is plagued by a shocking lack of resources to tackle indigenous child abuse which has led to a permanent queue of 40 cases needing investigation and another 30 waiting to be heard by the courts.

More than a year after a State Government report revealed Aboriginal children in NSW are four times more likely to be abused than non-indigenous children, a senior child sexual assault specialist has painted a devastating picture of dwindling funding and shortages of expert counsellors and
investigators in NSW's west . . .

In some communities, child sex had become so normalised that children as young as six had been observed performing oral sex on each other. "They say they're just playing, without having any sense that it's wrong."

When the Federal Government announced its crackdown on indigenous child abuse last week – to be focused on the Northern Territory – it accused NSW of sitting on its own report, revealing
a similar crisis, for nine months.

NSW's Breaking the Silence report followed interviews with more than 300 Aborigines in 29 communities and found that not one could name a family unaffected by the scourge of child sexual assault.

You'll find these claims backed up on the website of Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation. And if you want to raise your voice in protest at the Federal or State government failures, ANTaR's site provides links where you can sign online petitions.