Sorry

Today was an important day for Australia. In Parliament House Canberra, the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition expressed their apologies to the stolen generations of indigenous people.

The media, eg the ABC website, have covered today's events in great detail.

Of all the comment and analysis about the event one remains in the forefront of my mind: Noel Pearson's in yesterday's Australian. The title, "When words aren't enough" says a lot, but if you care at all about the next steps which must be taken to follow up on today's statements, I recommend that you read , and ponder, it.

Comments on indigenous matters

The Weekend Australian has two good pieces on indigenous matters. The first "A symbol of intent" by Mike Steketee discusses the views of Ian Tuxworth, a former CLP (conservative) Chief Minister of the NT and resident of Tennant Creek,and Richard Court, former Liberal WA Premier, about the proposal to say sorry to Aboriginal people".

An apology is not the most important issue facing the Rudd Government. But nor should the power of symbolism be dismissed. The policies of child removal adopted throughout Australia treated indigenous people not just as bad parents but as racial inferiors. Acknowledging how mistaken this was matters. Going further through what [former WA Premier Richard]Court called a national change of heart and incorporating the oldest civilisation on earth into the Australian consciousness would be something of which we could all be proud.

Tuxworth wrote last year: "It is easy for us to see Aborigines as members of dysfunctional communities, remote skin groups or disruptive mobs hanging around in public places, with little to do but be a nuisance which offends the sensibilities of the wider community.

"In fact, they are also individuals whose beliefs, confidence and self-esteem are at such a low ebb it is going to take at least a generation to rekindle in the Aboriginal community the inner spirit that drives other Australians."

An apology can help light that flame.

The second "Standing on secret ground" by Paul Toohey asks "Is the national emergency response still an emergency?" Although Major-General Chalmers, the head of the Federal government's emergency response taskforce, says it is because the government has said it is, Toohey's response is more nuanced in places and forthright in others:

The intervention is in three stages: the current stabilisation period, which will nominally last a year and seeks to establish order through increased police presence, changes to alcohol and pornography laws, the quarantining of welfare, the gathering of population data, and explaining the intervention to residents of 73 communities and 45 town camps; part two is the longer normalisation stage, in which communities will - they hope - be provided with the services they need for good health, education and infrastructure; the final stage is the exit strategy.

The emergency response legislation will be dismantled after five years. If all goes well, not just Aborigines will know their responsibilities by that time, but the Territory and federal governments, which have long neglected Aboriginal communities, will know theirs as well.

Fears that the legislation, which allows the federal Government to control communities for the five-year period, was a disguised land grab have not been justified.

If some of the shriller opponents of the intervention were now to look more closely at what is happening, they would find the intervention is less invasive than they imagine. The Northern Territory Government, initially shocked by the emergency, then humiliated, has seen the benefits: it knows that over the five-year period will come an enormous injection of commonwealth funding to the bush. The quarantining of welfare money, or income management, is being rolled out in stages, with a sweep of central Australian communities the first to experience the regime. As of a few weeks ago, it was being introduced in one of the Territory's biggest northern communities, Wadeye. So far, Katherine, Tennant Creek and the whole of Arnhem Land are yet to be affected by the intervention at all, except for health checks. People can choose to have their welfare quarantined to their local store, which electronically manages the money for food or essentials (but not cigarettes), or, if a person wishes to spend in, say, Alice Springs, they can get a Centrelink card that works at Woolies or Kmart, but not at the bottle shop.

"There are problems with it and these are very complex things to introduce," says Chalmers. "When a problem crops up it aggravates people but people who often don't have voice (women): they know this is making a difference and money is available to be spent on children. Stores where we've introduced income management have had an increased turnover of 20-30 per cent. To me, that money that was potentially being spent on gambling or grog is now being spent on food and essentials."

If income management is implicitly discriminatory, Mavis Malbunka, 63, an emerging spokeswoman for Aboriginal women from Hermannsburg, in the centre, is prepared to overlook the fact. She has now lived with income management for close to six months. "We see the benefits," she says. "There's no money running out. Income management is a great help for Aboriginal people; in Hermannsburg I hear no complaint about income management." She says it is too early to say whether gambling has been stamped out, because there is still cash money available in the un-quarantined welfare payment.

"But I do know people are buying more food," Malbunka says. "We see income management as more safe." She witnessed the initial visit by the army and medical teams. She says an infrastructure crew is in the area talking about renovations and building improvements but, as a grandmother, she says what she really wants from the intervention is practical assistance with disciplining kids.

"Old people and family feel there's a threat coming from the children. If we hurt them, they go to police and we are charged. We are not looking to hit kids, but we want support to work with the kids. They're going over us." Her point is valid: how can you help kids, and protect them from harm, if they won't listen? Therein may be Dave Chalmers' toughest intervention challenge.

.....

Chalmers won't comment on Macklin's decision to reinstate the permit system for townships. So I will. It is a disaster. She has said keeping the permit system will keep out the pedophiles and the grog and the ganja. But aren't the pedophiles supposedly already in the communities? Wasn't that the basis of the emergency response? As for drug and ganja runners, they are not outsiders: they are Aboriginal locals, looking to make some extra money or taking in their own supply.

In its intention to reinstate the permit system, Labor is not acting in the interests of Aborigines but reaffirming Labor's strong political base in the bush. Journalists will be allowed in without permits, but so what? It isn't about journalists, it is about allowing normality to return - or begin - in the bush.

Labor's position will undermine every successful step the intervention has taken and will see, in five years' time, communities return to their rotten isolation. It should be very clear: permits will, and should, still be required for the vast Aboriginal land holdings that surround the towns. If people want cultural privacy, all that land is theirs to use. But Aborigines and whites who don't like the intervention should be able to see, by now, that it was the permit system that created the intervention. A secret world is not necessarily a sacred one.

I've quoted lengthy extracts from them, but both articles are worth reading in full.

Varieties of Australian justice

#1 Queensland District Court (Cairns)

• The Australian editorials 10 December 2007 and 11 December 2007

• Sentencing submissions(edited).

• Judge Bradley's views on sentencing (January 2007).

• Comment by anthropologist Peter Sutton on Unleashed (ABC online) 11 December 2007

#2 Downing Centre Local Court (Sydney)

The life and travails of former Federal Court judge Marcus Einfeld aged 69 as reported by

• The Daily Telegraph

• The Age

• The Australian

• The ABC

#3 Federal Magistrates Court (Adelaide: expected soon)

The Advertiser/ Adelaide Now and The Age report that federal Attorney-General McLelland, at the request of the Australian Federal Police, will seek a control order on David Hicks , who will be released from Yatala prison later this month.

From The Age:

"David is in a mentally fragile state and unlikely to have the strength to challenge an application for a control order," [Hicks's solicitor David McLeod] told AAP today.

Mr McLeod said the public, most of whom supported the return of Hicks to Australia after more than five years in the US military's Guantanamo Bay jail, would be confused by the government's move.

"There will be a large number of the Australian people who voted for this government because of the Hicks case and they will be puzzled at why the attorney has made a decision such as this," he said."David Hicks has been treated as a political prisoner here in Australia and the United States for the last six years.The attorney had a chance to close the chapter on David Hicks but instead he has chosen the pathway of the previous government in its treatment of this man by continuing to demonise him."

Asked about the issue in October, while still opposition leader, Kevin Rudd said a Labor government would take advice from the AFP about any control order.

#4 Victorian Court of Appeal (Melbourne)

Mr Geoff Clark has, as The Age reports, lost his appeal against a damages award.

# 5 Central Australia

Over the last three weeks ABC RN's The Law Report has broadcast three programs about Central Australia: the intervention , regulating grog and , broadcast today, bush courts.

At the moment you can still listen to all three programs and read transcripts of the first two (I expect today's transcript will follow shortly).

Forty years on

It is now 40 years since the passing, by what many at the time considered a surprisingly large majority, of the 1967 referendum amending the Constitution to empower the commonwealth government to make laws with respect to aboriginal people. It also for the first time authorised counting aboriginal people in national censuses.

The anniversary has occasioned much media comment. The general tone of the comments, not surprisingly given facts such as a 17 year difference between white and aboriginal life expectancy, is one of disillusion.

The current issues, at least as they impact upon aboriginal people, are aptly summed up by Nicholson's cartoon in today's Australian. It shows a remote aboriginal community with vignettes of drunkenness, domestic violence, aspiring AFL players (a positive note), and poverty. In the foreground a signpost points in different directions:

Hope 2000k
Education 1375k
Jobs 1650k
Longevity 1700k
Career 2500k
Government 4000k
Wet canteen 50 metres.

Another piece which IMO is well worth reading is Noel Pearson's "White guilt, victimhood and the quest for a radical centre" in the current Griffith Review.