The Northern Territory Intervention Laws and the Howard Government's Latest Land Grab.

The legislation that makes up the Federal government's 'intervention' into Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory, and which has been passed into law with both bewildering speed and almost unilateral political support, has ramifications for the future that can be viewed in the past. Northern Territory MP, and Indigenous leader, John Ah Kit, has described the legislation as genocidal, while Galarrwuy Yunupingu, Chairman of the Northern Land Council, recently described it as 'bigger, bigger than anything else that happened in the past'. Indeed, the legislation represents the most radical yet of the Howard government's reversal of the limited progress this country has made in the area of race relations for the last fifty years.

The passage of this legislation has been significantly aided yb the understandable and appropriate concern of Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples over the findings of the 'Little Children are Sacred' inquiry. But it has also been eased by an atmosphere of claims such as the Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Mal Brough's, that Indigenous communities are living in 'a fog of substance abuse'; or those by John Howard that Australia faces a national emergency in Indigenous communities equal in scale and devastation to that of Hurricane Katrina.

John Howard, who is notorious for his stone-like refusal to acknowledge any national responsibility for the aftermath of abuse of Indigenous children in State hands, has suddenly acknowledged national responsibility for the futures and conditions of the communities that Indigenous children are to grow up in. While this turnaround could be applauded, it is also the first clue that all is not well. A signal that was reflected in the initially tentative and wary, but nevertheless supportive response of Indigenous leaders.

Their wariness seems to have been well placed. The government has since shown clear indications that the fate of Indigenous children is not their prime motivation in acting. The Senate Committee drafting the legislation never called on the authors of the Sacred Children report, Pat Anderson and Rex Wild QC, to offer evidence despite the report being the catalyst for radical intervention. Moreover no use was made of their 97 recommendations, and the parliament had to vote so quickly on the 500 pages of legislation that few, including Mal Brough himself, were even able to read them in their entirity.

It is hard to see at face value how the main elements of this legislation, such as gutting the achievements of the 1975 Land Rights Act; forcing traditional owners to accept either five year leases or compensation for altered land title; and exemptions from the Racial Discrimination Act to do so, are in the long or short term interests of Indigenous children. So too, it's difficult to see how legislation based on minimal consultation with experts in the field, and no consultation with the leaders and members of the communities to be intervened upon; or the ludicrously heavy-handed use of military personnel to take over remote communities, could have any real impact on the systemic causes of abuse outlined either in the Sacred Children report, or in the countless reports that preceded it.

It is worth adding too, that an atmosphere where national leaders freely, and dishonestly, conflate hundreds of Indigenous communities into the one-brand-fits-all representation of chronic dysfunctionality; universal acceptance, acquiescence or promotion of child abuse; and constant and ubiquitous substance abuse, doesn't seem to create a very safe nation for the futures of Indigenous children.

It doesn't take a sharp political wit to come to the conclusion that the federal government's national emergency and sudden attention to Indigenous affairs serves other agendas. In election years, wedge-issues involving the hip pocket or race have had proven mileage, and when economic booms are busting, interest rates are rising, and terror is more readily recognised as being caused by 'us', the Coalition of the Willing, rather than 'them'; the race card, mixed with protecting the 'innocence of children', as Howard put it, must seem like a backable winner.

The agendas being met by this intervention legislation seem many, but the ideological undercurrent is probably more sinister. Land held under the Land Rights Act is freehold title. Like any owner of freehold title the owners of this land are able to control who gains entry to, or trespasses on, their property, a right manifested in the permit system. This right of veto, which both Indigenous community leaders and the Northern Territory police have said actually assists in the control of sexual offenders, and drug, alcohol and porn runners, is inexplicably abolished under this legislation. Interestingly, with it goes Indigenous communities' ability to veto mining exploration on their land.

In addition, traditional owners of towns and towncamps will now be forced into leasing their land to the government for five years, ostensibly to build houses, in an enactment that Howard promises is not a land grab. Any 'disturbance of title', as he so inoccuously puts it, will be justly compensated. It's difficult not to notice the coincidental twin headlines of the last week. Amidst reports of the Howard government rushing this legislation through the parliament, there was also news of the poorly safeguarded deals to sell uranium to India. In another coincidence pointed out by environmental engineer, Gavin Mudd in June this year, much of the ground covered in this legislation is either loaded up with minerals - such as uranium - or else is considered 'empty' enough to dump nuclear waste that no-one else in the world will take.

Indigenous leaders around the country have been quick to point out that snatching control over Aboriginal freehold land without the checks and balances potentially offered by the Racial Discrimination Act will be historically repetitive in limiting the extent to which communities are able to be functionally self-determining. The flow-on effect of this for cultural and social self-determination can be predicted if the past is any indication. Moreover, the increased 'micro-management' of communities and the mainstreaming of programs such as the CDEP without any apparent concern to safeguard those that have been successful (such as those supporting many artists and art centres), also seems potentially destructive and badly thought out at best.

In light of the potential that accompanies this legislative return to the heavy-handed paternalism and management of the Assimilation programs of 1930s-50s, which fit snugly into the legal definition of genocide, John Ah Kitt's description of this legislation as genocidal seems more solidly grounded in historical precedent. The waves of crocodile tears promoting protection mirrors past good-intent in ways that might have made the hardest ideologues and architects of Australia's Assimilation and child removal programs proud.

I don't think there'd be many who would dispute that the protection of children -indigenous or non-indigenous - from predatory sexual and physical assault should be a national priority. But this legislation is likely to do little to alleviate the pressures faced by remote communities, and even less to generate the kind of determined, informed, and considered response needed to raise the awareness or capacity necessary for change. Moreover, its removal of safeguards against the kind of disastrous 'management' of Indigenous peoples that plagues the past, will instead serve to intensify and perpetuate wider pressures on remote communities, only to weaken them further.

Amidst all of this, the fact that this legislation has the capacity to free up valuable land from the burden of Indigenous ownership, while enforcing the economic and social mainstreaming of remote communities shouldn't go amiss. That Howard and Brough seem to have used the most unspeakable suffering of children as a veil for pushing other agendas is cynical and morally vacuous, but historically unoriginal.

Tracey Banivanua-Mar