Communist Party of Australia

Hundreds of people marched on Parliament House in Canberra the week before last to protest against the ongoing Northern Territory intervention into “prescribed” Aboriginal communities.

They rallied from all over Australia to call for the scrapping of the emergency intervention and the re-instatement of those parts of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (RDA) which Howard removed to circumvent legal obstacles to the intervention, such as appeals against compulsory welfare quarantining and leases over Aboriginal land, to proceed.

Although Labor had promised to reinstate the RDA if elected, it remains set aside, 12 months after the Apology to Australia’s Indigenous peoples.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd had been expected to deliver his “report card” on the first sitting of Parliament, but that was delayed until the day before the first anniversary of the Apology.

Instead, the first sitting day was dominated by the government’s $42 billion stimulus package in response to the meltdown of the global economy, although a protest by Indigenous people and their supporters briefly interrupted question time.

That disruption followed an attempt by Federal Police officers to question a person at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy next to Old Parliament House down the hill. The police quickly retreated after being told in no uncertain terms by numerous Aboriginal people that they were unwelcome.

The previous day, protesters had stormed the High Court after the court rejected a challenge against government-imposed leases on Aboriginal land.

Meanwhile, Professor Gordon Briscoe told the gathering before the march on Parliament House that Australian politicians had “raped our people” when they took away human rights.

Professor Briscoe said the removal of protections offered by the RDA meant Aboriginal people had no other option but to challenge the government’s actions in the United Nations “because here we have no protection”.

“We have not yet got to the point of putting solar energy on our roof because many of us don’t even have a roof,” he said.

“We want change ... and we also want a dialogue about the way they initiated this intervention.”

Intervention campaigner Barbara Shaw, of Mt Nancy Camp near Alice Springs, met with Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin the morning after the protest and delivered a copy of the UN complaint.

Sydney-based human rights lawyer George Newhouse said the Australian government’s treatment of his Aboriginal clients was akin to that of a despotic third world ruler.

Former Federal Court judge Ron Merkel, QC, is also working on the case, which will be taken to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

“The complaint will be that the intervention laws are racially discriminatory and they breach Australia’s international obligations, in particular under the race convention,” Mr Newhouse said.

Meanwhile, speakers at the protest included Maurie Japarta Ryan, who described the apology last year as shallow, and questioned the validity of the Australian Constitution.

“The Constitution is invalid because we have never given away our sovereign rights,” he said, before announcing he was forming a political party called the First Nations Ethnic and Multicultural Political Party.

He also said the government was only listening to a chosen elite – Warren Mundine, who lived in the suburbs of Sydney, Noel Pearson from Cape York, and Melbourne academic Marcia Langton.

Irene Fisher, the CEO of the Sunrise Health Service at Katherine in the NT, which oversees ten remote communities, said Aboriginal people felt isolated.

“The people of remote communities came out in force to support Labor but nothing has changed,” she said.

“There were 220 submissions to the review of the intervention, but Jenny Macklin has ignored them. The health of our people is getting worse.”

Ms Fisher told the crowd that rates of anaemia were rising and many young pregnant women were missing out on important pre-natal care because they were frightened of the intervention.

She said young males especially, were feeling shamed by the intervention, and there had been a rise in youth suicides.

“This blanket approach doesn’t work in remote communities ... millions are being spent but it’s all going in the pockets of the bureaucrats,” she said.

Harry Nelson, of the Warlpiri tribe at Yuendumu, said he had been asked to perform a ceremony in his community but had chosen to travel to Canberra because “this is more important”.

Valerie Martin said Aboriginal people were being blackmailed by the government into giving up their land.

“Now they want 60-year leases over our land. Without our land we’re nothing. If we give up our land we are nothing,” she said.

Ms Martin rejected the reasons given for the intervention.

“Our kids are happy and healthy. They’ve been well cared for long before this invasion came,” she said.

The Koori Mail

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