Journalist slams Macklin for intervention

April 2, 2011
Issue 

Former ABC journalist Jeff McMullen attacked the federal government’s intervention into Northern Territory Aboriginal communities as racist and harmful in a March 21 letter to indigenous affairs minister Jenny Macklin.

McMullen said Macklin had “not responded to the calls by an overwhelming majority of the Aboriginal leaders in … occupied communities to end the Intervention now”.

McMullen wrote in response to a letter Macklin sent him on March 2 that defended the intervention.

“Much of your letter is a defensive and dubious argument about the good you claim to have delivered through this Intervention,” he said.

“You show no willingness to acknowledge that by the Northern Territory government’s reckoning the number of Aboriginal children at risk of neglect has more than doubled during the years of the [intervention]. The intervention has caused a sharp and painful increase in stress on Aboriginal people.

“School attendance in many of these communities targeted by the intervention has worsened. Most disturbingly, suicides have increased.”

McMullen said “the intervention is social engineering at its worst and the most damaging policy inflicted on Indigenous people since the Stolen Generation”.

The full text of McMullen’s letter can be read here.

Seven Aboriginal elders from the Northern Territory released a statement on February 7 addressed to “the people of Australia” that called for community support to end the intervention.

The statement said: “We are the people of the land. The land is our mother. For more than 40,000 years we have been caring for this land. We are its natural farmers.

“Now, after so many years of dispossession, we find once again we are being thrust towards a new dispossession. Our pain and our fear are real. Our people are being shamed.

“Under the intervention we lost our rights as human beings, as Australian citizens, as the First People of the Land. We feel very deeply the threat to our languages, our culture and our heritage.

“Through harsh changes we have had removed from us all control over our communities and our lives. Our lands have been compulsorily taken from us. We have been left with nothing.

“The legislation under which we now live does not comply with international law. It is discriminatory. We are no longer equal to other Australians. We are no longer equal to you.

“As people in our own land, we are shocked by the failure of democratic processes, of the failure to consult with us and of the total disregard for us as human beings. We demand the return of our rights, our freedom to live our traditional lives, support to develop our economic enterprises to develop jobs and to work towards a better future for all our peoples.

“So extreme have been the actions against our people that we must appeal to all people of Australia to walk with us in true equality. Speak out and help to put an end to the nightmare that Northern Territory Aboriginal people are experiencing on a daily basis.”

[McMullen will introduce a Sydney screening of the groundbreaking film on the intervention Our Generation on April 8, organised by Amnesty International NSW Demand Dignity Action Group. The screening will take place at6.30pm in the Amnesty International Action Centre, Level 1, 79 Myrtle St, Chippendale.]

Comments

I say good on u Jeff keep speeking up for aboriginal peoples rights.Our goverment ought to be ashamed of what they are doing.what else can we all do to stop this decrimination,put our name on petitions.how else can we help?

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