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Details of indigenous plan
26.6.2007. 08:38:38
Source - SBS - World News Australian Federal Police officers have been detailed to the Northern Territory in a radical plan to stop child abuse in indigenous communities.
And more police, backed up by Australian Defence Force (ADF) troops, are joining them as part of the federal government's sweeping plan to restore law and order.
This plan has been developed in response to recommendations of the Little Children are Sacred report resulting from an inquiry into the protection of Aboriginal children from child abuse in the Northern Territory.
Read the report: Little Children are Sacred
Prime Minister John Howard and Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough, who developed the strategy to take control of about 60 troubled NT communities, said making the communities safe and law-abiding places to live was the first priority.
The communities, each with over 100 residents, will be controlled through five-year leases to improve property and public housing.
Asked when the 60 communities would come under the Federal Government's control, Mr Brough replied: “immediately”.
“We will lease them under just terms,” he said.
Details of the plan
• Introducing widespread alcohol restrictions on Northern Territory Aboriginal land.
• Welfare reforms to stem the flow of cash going toward substance abuse
• Enforcing school attendance by linking income support and family assistance payments to school attendance for all people living on Aboriginal land
• Once violence is under control, compulsory health checks for all Aboriginal children under 16 to identify and treat health problems and any effects of abuse
• Increasing police levels in prescribed communities, including requesting secondments from other jurisdictions to supplement NT resources
• Clean up and repair of communities to make them safer and healthier by marshalling local workforces through work-for-the-dole
• Improving housing and reforming community living arrangements, including the introduction of market-based rents and normal tenancy arrangements
• Banning the possession of X-rated pornography and introducing audits of all publicly funded computers to identify illegal material
• Scrapping the permit system for common areas, road corridors and airstrips for prescribed communities on Aboriginal land
• Improving governance by appointing managers of all government business in prescribed communities
• Taskforce set up of eminent Australians, including logistics and other specialists as well as child protection experts, led by Magistrate Sue Gordon, chair of the National Indigenous Council and author of the 2002 Gordon Report into Aboriginal child abuse in Western Australia.
Mr Brough said the scrapping of the permit system – which restricts non-Aboriginal access to indigenous land – applied to town centres and not homelands or sacred sites, with communities able to apply to the Government for exceptions under special circumstance like funerals.
Meanwhile, people in the territory buying large quantities of alcohol will now be forced to explain their actions.
“Anyone who buys more than three cases of full-strength beer across the territory has to explain exactly where they are taking the alcohol – driver's licence details will be taken down – and for what reason,” Mr Brough said.
Security is top priority
"The biggest single problem in these communities is that the women and the children are scared to death of complaining about the violence and the molestation," Mr Howard told the Ten Network.
"And unless you get police on the ground, unless you establish the atmosphere of physical security, or a greater atmosphere of physical security, nothing is going to change and that is the first and most important requirement."
Mr Brough said a crackdown on pornography and alcohol, now banned in indigenous communities across the Territory, would be also be monitored and enforced by police officers, the army and the Australian Federal Police.
Former AFP assistant commissioner Shane Castles and former Australian Medical Association (AMA) national president Bill Glasson have agreed to join a task group which will help organise the plan.
SOURCE: AAP/Govt
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