In June 2007 the federal Coalition Government initiated a policy program which aimed to transform Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory. The 'emergency
response plan' was characterised by the Prime Minister as 'radical, comprehensive and highly interventionist'. It represented, according to Prime Minister Howard, a 'sweeping
assumption of power and a necessary assumption of responsibility'.56 In this section I
describe the development of the Intervention during the last months of the Howard Coalition Government and a summary of its main provisions. I emphasise the rushed and apparently haphazard development of the NTI policy in its initial incarnation and describe the most politically controversial features of the NTI legislation. The next section of this chapter continues my overview of the Intervention policy. In the second section I outline the implementation of the Intervention – or, in its bureaucratic
nomenclature, the Northern Territory Emergency Response (NTER) – under the
supervision of the Labor Government of Prime Ministers Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard. The Northern Territory Emergency Response encompassed a large variety of issues including welfare policy, access to pornography, land ownership and use, consumption and possession of liquor, the schooling and health of children and the tidiness of Aboriginal towns. The wide ranging policy response was arguably designed to encompass most aspects of daily life in Aboriginal townships and communities. This panoply of policy measures was developed with great speed and very little consultation as part of a tumultuous emergency response to the problem of child sexual abuse in Aboriginal communities. The incident that ignited the Northern Territory Emergency was a report written for the Northern Territory Government and presented to the Chief Minister of the Northern Territory in April 2007. This report, developed by the Board of Inquiry into the Protection of Aboriginal Children from Sexual Abuse was titled Ampe Akelyernemane Meke Mekarle or Little Children Are Sacred. It urged that child sexual abuse in the Northern Territory should be made an issue of urgent national significance by the NT and Australian governments 57. In June 2007 the Australian Government
announced, in response to this report, that Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory were facing a 'crisis' and that the situation in the Northern Territory was a 'national emergency'. Whereas the Little Children report had stated that any government 56 John Howard, "John Howard's Address to the Sydney Institute," Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation (ANTAR), http://www.antar.org.au/node/86. 57 NT Board of Inquiry Northern Territory Board of Inquiry into the Protection of Aboriginal Children from Sexual Abuse (NT Board of Inquiry), "Ampe Akelyernemane Meke Mekarle "Little Children Are Sacred"," 7.
action would require extensive consultation with the people affected, Prime Minister John Howard argued that it would be necessary to 'take control of [Aboriginal] townships' in order to protect Aboriginal children from abuse.58
The announcement of the emergency intervention caught many people involved in Indigenous Affairs policy by surprise. For example, Noel Pearson, a North Queensland Aboriginal leader with strong political ties to the Australian Government, admitted that he first heard about the Intervention only fifteen minutes before the government's announcement.59 While the issues raised by the Report were hardly new or unknown,
there had been no sign prior to the June announcement that the government would be pursuing any major reforms in the field of Aboriginal Affairs. Furthermore, the
intervention was highly unusual for two reasons. First, for its assertion of authority over a policy area that typically fell into the jurisdiction of the Northern Territory
Government. The Australian Government admitted that it had not consulted with the Northern Territory Government before its announcement of the Intervention. Moreover, one of the chief justifications for the Intervention, other than the dire conditions in Aboriginal communities, was Prime Minister Howard's unhappiness with the response of the Northern Territory Government to problems in Northern Territory communities.60
Second, the policy was unusual in that it characterised a problem of long standing social policy concern as a national emergency. Indeed, the Prime Minister compared the situation in the Northern Territory with major natural disasters such as that of Hurricane Katrina in the United States of America. 'We have our Katrina, here and now,' he argued in his speech to the Sydney Institute in late June 2007.61
The idea that the Intervention was an emergency meant that the legislation for the NTER was developed quickly and pushed through parliament in almost record time. The impending federal election increased the urgency of the government on this issue.
58 Howard and Brough, "Joint Press Conference with the Hon Mal Brough."
59 Noel Pearson, "Politics Aside, an End to the Tears Is Our Priority," The Australian, 23 June 2007.
60 Howard and Brough, "Joint Press Conference with the Hon Mal Brough." 61 Howard, "Address to the Sydney Institute."
The NTER Acts authorised the expenditure needed for the emergency response and made important changes to welfare, land rights and other areas of legislation which dealt with the administration of Aboriginal people's lives. The package of legislation – including a number of appropriation acts, the Northern Territory National Emergency Response Act, the Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Welfare Payment Reform) Act and the Families, Community Services, and Indigenous Affairs and Other Legislation (Northern Territory National Emergency Response and Other Measures) Act – was approved by the House of Representatives in a single sitting day on the seventh of August 2007.62 The consideration of these bills in the Senate took slightly
longer and involved a single day consideration of the legislation by the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs. The bills were approved by the Senate on the 16 August only nine days after first being read in the lower house. The framing of the situation in Northern Territory communities as an 'emergency' was clearly an
effective strategy. Labor party parliamentarians such as Shadow Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin expressed some concerns about the NTER legislation but the Labor party was convinced of the important and urgent nature of the Intervention and voted in favour of the legislation.63 I explore four main themes of this legislation –
namely changes to welfare arrangements, to community management, to land rights and law and order measures – in the remainder of this section.
The Northern Territory Intervention was framed as a matter of considerable urgency and as an important shift in Aboriginal Affairs policy. Nonetheless, there were important continuities between the NTER and the earlier policies of the federal Coalition Government. For example, the establishment of five year leases and the reform of the permit system for access to Aboriginal land were in accordance with the earlier policies of the Coalition Government. As early as 1998 the Howard Government had
commissioned a review of the Aboriginal Land Rights Act. The author of that report, John Reeves, had concluded that the Land Rights Act had been unable to deliver 62 Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee, "Inquiry into the Northern Territory National Emergency Response Bill 2007 & Related Bills."
63 Parliament of Australia, "Parliamentary Debates. House of Representatives Official Hansard. No. 11 2007. Tuesday, 7 August," (Canberra2007), 26.
economic development to Aboriginal communities and should be the subject of significant (and controversial) reforms.64 As part of a long term agenda to dismantle
land rights, the Australian Government amended the Land Rights Act in 2006 to allow for voluntary 99 year leases of Aboriginal land to the Australian or Northern Territory governments and initiated a review into the permit system.65 The legislative package
associated with the Intervention was the culmination, in some ways, of the longer term policy agenda of the Howard Government.
The Emergency Response encompassed a wide range of policy measures and laid the foundation for considerable changes to the lives of Aboriginal people living in the Northern Territory. These measures included the compulsory acquisition of Aboriginal townships by the government through five year leases; the dismantling of the permit system for townships on Aboriginal land; restrictions to alcohol and pornography; the removal of customary law and cultural background as considerations during bail and sentencing; an increased police presence in Aboriginal communities; reforms to housing and health services; and welfare reforms that prescribed the way that Aboriginal people spent their incomes and which linked welfare payments to children's school attendance. The costs associated with the Intervention—including $587 million in the initial
legislative package alone—demonstrate that this was a significant policy development in Australian politics.66 Howard's Coalition Government presided, however, over only
the first three months of the Intervention's administration. In December 2007 the Labor party formed government under Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. The next section of this chapter describes the implementation of the NTI policies by the federal Labor
64 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC), "Building on Land Rights for the Next Generation : A Guide to the Report of the Review of the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976," (Canberra: Australian Government
Publishing Service, 1999), 23-24.
65 Jon Altman, "The 'National Emergency' and Land Rights Reform: Separating Fact from Fiction. An Assessment of the Proposed Amendments to the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976," (Canberra: Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research (CAEPR), 2007), 5-6; Office for Indigenous Policy Coordination, "Access to Aboriginal Land under the Northern Territory Aboriginal Land Rights Act - Time for Change? Discussion Paper," http://nla.gov.au/nla.arc-64388.
Government of Prime Minister Rudd and, following the leadership change in 2010, Prime Minister Julia Gillard.