The Australian Human Rights Commission has condemned income management — a key plank of the Northern Territory intervention — as racist, in a report released on November 13.
The intervention was introduced in August 2007 by the then Coalition government. It was supposedly introduced to combat child abuse and neglect in remote Aboriginal communities.
The policy of "income management" was central: 50% of welfare payments to Aboriginal people were converted into voucher cards that could be spent only on food, clothing and medical supplies.
Income management was applied to all residents in 73 NT Aboriginal communities. The protections of the Racial Discrimination Act (RDA) had to be suspended to implement the legislation.
Australian of the Year Professor Mick Dodson told the NT News on November 17: "[Income management] runs contrary to all things I've seen that do work.
"And none of them involve a distant policymaker making decisions about what Aboriginal people should and shouldn't do with their welfare."
In May, Indigenous affairs minister Jenny Macklin promised to restore the RDA by the end of the October parliamentary sitting. On November 19, ABC Online said Macklin would table legislation to reinstate the act by the end of November, but it wouldn't be voted on until 2010.
The Australian Human Rights Commission's report proposed changes to income management so the NT intervention would comply with the RDA.
It said there was no way that the current system of income management could comply with a restored RDA.
"The income management measures apply to all people receiving welfare payments in the relevant communities", it said. "[T]he measures apply to individuals that are not responsible for the care of children, are not problem gamblers, do not engage in family violence and do not abuse alcohol or other substances. They also apply equally to responsible and irresponsible parents.
"There is accordingly no connection for such people between the operation of the measure and the object of addressing family violence and abuse."
The report called for income management to be made voluntary.
The report condemned the suspension of the RDA in the first place, saying income management could not be regarded as a "special measure" to advance the rights of Indigenous people.
"Special measures" can be made exempt from the RDA if they advance the rights of the group in question. The report said: "Special measures are typically 'affirmative action' measures that give members of a disadvantaged group access to a benefit that is intended to promote substantive equality. For example, Abstudy — a government allowance for Indigenous students — has been held to be a special measure."
But income management was not such a measure, the report said. Any such measures would require prior informed consent before implementation.
Human rights lawyer George Newhouse said on November 13: "I don't think anyone seriously denies the NT intervention laws are inherently racist. If they weren't, the government wouldn't have needed to suspend the operation of the act in the first place."
Newhouse also attacked the leases that were forced on communities as part of the intervention: communities that held native title were forced to sign up to government five-year leases. "No one can explain how taking away Aboriginal land protects children", he said. "There's no way that the government could ever get that measure to comply with the [RDA]."
This is the third report commissioned by the government in two years that has been deeply critical of the NT intervention and its outcomes. The Yu report, released in Octboer 2008, pushed for similar changes to be made to income management.
The second report, a two-year review released in late October of this year, showed that — for all social indicators — people living under the NT intervention had either maintained high levels of disadvantage or they had become worse. Reports of domestic violence in the targeted communities have actually increased.
But Macklin remained unmoved by the evidence and has kept the NT intervention policy. On November 17 she said: "We do understand just how important the Northern Territory emergency response has been and continues to be to Aboriginal people."
Dodson remains firm in his opposition. "I don't know ... why a modern democracy like Australia, a prosperous country, a very rich country, has to resort to racial discrimination to achieve public policy objectives", he said. "That's just outrageous."