Soon I'll write a positive story...

But possibly never about what the CLP government, or for that matter the federal Labor government, is doing to Aboriginal people...

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A recent Deloitte Access Economics report recommended state and territory governments focus on treatment and rehabilitation, rather than imprisonment, of Aboriginal people facing drug and alcohol-related charges. The report found governments would save up to $110,000 per year for every person kept out of prison.

These findings are not new, and in fact – cost considerations aside – there are significant social justice reasons to keep minor Aboriginal offenders out of prison, as outlined in the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, which reported in 1991.

In the Northern Territory, Aboriginal people face increasing imprisonment rates. Since the NT intervention (now called Stronger Futures) was introduced almost six years ago, alcohol-related police “incidents” have risen from 3239 incidents in 2007-’08 to 4870 in 2011(NTER Monitoring report January 31). At June 2011, the overall imprisonment rates of Aboriginal people in the NT had risen 40%.

The Northern Territory now jails Aboriginal adults and children at rates higher than anywhere else in Australia.

But the Deloitte report has been dismissed by NT attorney general John Elferink, who said on February 4 it wouldn’t influence the NT Country Liberal government’s policies. “ This Government is not going to make excuses for people who commit violent offences while they're drunk”, he said.http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2013/02/04/3682533.htm

Earlier this year, in response to Warren Mundine’s call for a national summit to address soaring imprisonment rates, Elferink had said: “"Well, no, it isn't the government's role to fix these problems, the role starts with the parents." http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-01-11/elferink-on-mundine-indigenous-youth-summit-call/4461082/?site=indigenous

But a glance at changes the CLP has made, or promises to make, since coming to power in August, suggests that government policy can and will impact greatly on the number of Aboriginal people behind bars. And the government is heading in the wrong direction.

On February 6, during the annual Closing the Gap statement to parliament, Prime Minister Julia Gillard attacked the CLP for “retrograde steps” being taken by NT and QLD governments, which she said meant “rivers of grog” were once again wreaking havoc in Aboriginal communities. She said: “We're hearing worrying reports about the rise in admissions in the emergency department at Alice Springs Hospital due to alcohol-related accidents and abuse."

She attributed this to the CLP’s scrapping of the controversial Banned Drinkers’ Registry last year. The BDR, introduced by the previous Labor government, required photo ID to be displayed when purchasing alcohol, so banned “problem drinkers” could be refused service.

But Gillard didn’t acknowledge that alcohol-related police incidents, domestic violence rates, suicide attempts and aggravated assaults have steadily increased over the entire period of the intervention and Stronger Futures.

Nor did she criticize the CLP for scrapping other programs, run by Aboriginal organisations, which were known to be effective in supporting Aboriginal people and minimizing their contact with police.

Aboriginal organisation Larrakia Nation runs a widely respected Night Patrol program, which gives Aboriginal patrollers a central role in protecting their people from the harmful effects of drugs, alcohol, and violence – and dramatically reduces their contact with the police.

Late last year, the territory government announced it would cut funding to the Night Patrol in June. Larrakia Nation and police representatives have slammed the decision alike. Vince Kelly, president of the NT Police Association, said in December that the decision might mean “an increase of people in police custody who are intoxicated and drunk, or at the very lowest place in their health … We have seen exactly what tragic outcomes can happen when that occurs."

Larrakia Nation’s return-to-country program, which lends Aboriginal people money to return home to remote communities, will also be scrapped. About 4600 people benefit from this program.

Defending the decision to cease funding, corrections minister John Elferink described the program as a taxpayer-funded service for people to “get on the turps … If you come to Darwin we have an expectation you will behave in a certain way...or you'll be charged with appropriate criminal offences or alternatively you'll be taken into custody”, he said in December.

The Nation’s CEO Ilana Elderidge responded to Elferink, telling ABC local radio on December 6: “For the Minister to suggest that everyone who comes to Darwin is only coming here to get drunk, I'm just appalled anyone could make such a disgusting suggestion … The impact will be people will still come to Darwin, because they have to [for medical care and other important services], and then they will be stranded here."

Meanwhile, hospital-based domestic violence services will be cut, as will the SMART court and Alcohol and Other Drugs Tribunals – two initiatives meant to help keep people arrested for drug and alcohol-related crimes out of prison.

The North Australia Aboriginal Justice Agency has slammed the cutting of SMART court and the night patrol as “short sighted” and having “serious long-term consequences”.

NAAJA Principal legal officer Jonathon Hunyor said on December 4: “The cut to night patrol funding flies in the face of the recommendations on the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, which emphasised the need to minimise contact between Aboriginal people and police. This decision … is a recipe for disaster.”

Survival Day: White Australia has a Black history

White Australia has a Black history

As often happens at this time of year, in the lead-up to January 26, commentators and activists raised the suggestion that Australia’s national day be moved to a different date.

Writing in the January 21 Sydney Morning Herald, Aboriginal MLA in the ACT legislative assembly Chris Bourke said: “Which nation celebrates its national day on the date it was invaded by a foreign power? … The answer, of course, is Australia.”

January 26 marks the day that Europeans arrived in Sydney Cove in 1788 . Aboriginal people around  the continent – especially in the North - had been receiving visitors from abroad and engaging in trade long before then. But there was something different about Captain Cook and his mob. They weren’t here to trade, they were here to stay, to build a colony on behalf of the British Empire. Aboriginal people were in the way.

Each year on January 26, there is an outpouring of national pride and nationalism. Mainstream politicians  spruik everything that is “great” about Australia.

But, while some may ignore or downplay the ugly side of Australia’s history, there is no escaping the facts: January 26 is the day Aboriginal dispossession began. It marks the beginning of a process of genocide, of land-grabbing, unpaid wages, and the smashing of traditional cultures to replace them with what we now know as Australia. 

Is that worth celebrating? If so, it reveals something of the racism deeply imbedded in Australia’s history.

In Darwin, the Aboriginal Rights Coalition will mark January 26 with a screening of Murundak: Songs of Freedom. In Australia’s north, where colonisation happened much later, many Aboriginal clan groups have been able to hold onto some, if not all, of their land, languages and cultures – although these languages face the serious threat of extinction due to lack of government investment. 

It is perhaps appropriate that in Darwin, January 26 is known as Survival Day, and will be marked with a  celebration of Aboriginal resistance through music. For, indeed, much has survived. Despite all explicit and implicit government attempts to the contrary, Aboriginal Australia remains proud and strong.

In Sydney, where the invasion began, it’s known as Invasion Day, and is commemorated with the annual Yabun festival.

In Hobart this year, the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre is organising a rally to call for a new date for Australia Day.

But whether survival or invasion is the theme, if January 26 is to remain a significant date, it should be the day we formally acknowledge that this country was – and is - built on racism.

Australia is a wealthy country because resource-rich Aboriginal land was stolen ; Aboriginal people were forced to work for little or no wages to establish a booming pastoral industry; rent was never paid and the Stolen Generations never compensated. No wonder the federal government can afford the hundreds of millions of dollars the racist Northern Territory intervention (now insultingly called “Stronger Futures”) is costing.

Bourke pointed out: “We cannot change our history, as much as we might desire it. We cannot ignore our history, because it has made us. But we can change our future.”

Changing the date of the national celebration is an easy, important first step, but there is no indication either of the mainstream parties wants to change Australia’s future, build something we could genuinely be proud of and celebrate.

Dispossession didn’t ever end – January 26 is not simply an historical anniversary, it is a painful and sobering reminder of the racism entrenched in mainstream Australian politics today. 

Aboriginal people are imprisoned at some of the highest rates in the world- rates that are rising as a result of federal and territory government policies in the NT. 

The health burden carried by Aboriginal Australians is shameful: in some communities, Aboriginal people are dying from diseases otherwise eradicated in this First World nation.

Aboriginal men and women die, respectively, 11.5 or 9.7 years younger than their non-Aboriginal  counterparts.

These appalling statistics, and many others like them, are deeply entwined with white Australia’s history: they are the result of what started in 1788 and continues today.

There is an alternative future, one that sees genuine engagement with Aboriginal communities – on their terms: treaties negotiated, reparations paid, original languages and cultures celebrated and protected. It is possible to imagine a future that brings true justice to Aboriginal people. 

But it won’t come from a society that celebrates invasion and dispossession as its national day - and that won’t change unless we, the people with the alternative vision, make it happen.

Indian women say it's time for change

When I was in India 3 months ago, I was quite confronted by the utter male domination of public space. I would often look around a busy street and think "I am the only woman in sight!". When checking into hotels, ordering food etc, I noticed that men (it's always men!) would completely ignore me, talking just to my father, even when I was the one paying, ordering etc.

People tried to assure me it was a sign of respect.

Well, it turns out, a reason Indian women may stay off the streets is because of the alarmingly high risk they face of being raped, murdered, set on fire etc etc. 

According to the all India Progressive Women's Association, while only 50% of rapes are reported, rates of rape have increased 791% since 1971. Meanwhile, conviction rapes for rape have dropped from 41% to 27%.

They have this outrageously demeaning and unscientific procedure called the "two finger test" , which defence teams use in rape cases to argue the survivor was "habituated to sex" - apparently it therefore goes without saying that she consented to the assault.

If that's not enough to dissuade someone from making a report, I don't know what is.

The recent unspeakably horrific gang rape and torture of a  young woman in Delhi, who later died as a result of her injuries, has brought women - and their male suppporters- out onto the streets in their thousands.

Kavita Krishnan, from the All India Progressive Women's Association (AIPWA) and the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), recently posted on Facebook:

"What will be the touchstone for women's rights in this country? In the vocabulary of some of the media, those for death penalty/castration for rape are pro-women, and those against death penalty/castration for rape are anti-women! That makes the vast majority of women's movement organisations in the country, working amongst thousands of affected women, 'anti-women' by definition, while the BJP which nurtures goon gangs to police the morality of women wearing jeans or celebrating Valentine's Day become 'pro-women'! 
Gender justice needs to be brought and kept in the centre stage of the debate - not 'death penalty vs no death penalty.' To begin with, as Pratiksha Baxi suggests, let us demand that the govt pass an order to get rid of the obnoxious 'two-finger test' that is common in medical examination of a rape survivor, to establish whether or not she is 'habituated to sex'! Get the institutionalised gender bias out of the laws and the investigation mechanisms, and expand the laws to recognise the wide variety of crimes and sexual violence that women face, and usher in stringent punishment for each of those crimes - these will go a much longer way to ensuring justice in every case of rape and sexual assault."

The AIPWA blog has some incredibly beautiful and inspiring photos, posters, placards and poems from the string of protests and vigils that continue to take place across the country.

To all the Indian sisters, thank you for your bravery, strength and fighting spirit. Your struggle is our struggle.

So much is wrong with this world...

... For example, a dentist in Iowa, US, fired his assistant on the basis she was a threat to his marriage.

The woman took him to court on the basis of sex discrimination. The basic question in the case was: ""whether an employee who has not engaged in flirtatious conduct may be lawfully terminated simply because the boss views the employee as an irresistible attraction".

The all-male panel of judges found that bosses can legally fire employees they find "too attractive".

This in the country that has also had 62 mass shootings since 1982. While so much media is focused on tightening restrictions on gun ownership, there is almost no discussion about the links between these killings (always portrayed as "random acts of senseless killing") and the culture in which they happen, the government that tortures innocent people (such as whistle blower Bradley Manning) in Guantanamo and elsewhere, illegally invades other countries and carries out systematic killings of civilians ...

Hypocrisy much,  Obama?

Language, society, disability: thought-provoking article

Today is International Day of People with Disability, and to mark it I wanted to share this article I read a while back which I think might just have swayed my opinion on the issue of "disabled people" vs "people with disability".

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-11-15/young-reporting-it-right/4371912

Well, no, actually, I just cringed when I wrote "disabled people", so possibly I am still equivocating, but Stella young makes a compelling case for the social model of disability - society disables us, we are disabled by a society so focused on physical perfection.

"To say that a person "has a disability" is to say that these barriers are our responsibility. My disability exists not because I use a wheelchair, but because the broader environment isn't accessible.

In my own home, where I've been able to create an environment that works for me, I'm hardly disabled at all. I still have an impairment, and there are obviously some very restrictive things about that, but the impact of disability is less."

I must give it more thought...

Happy reading!

Islamophobia: alive and well in the Top End

Earlier this year, I went to a fancy dress party dressed as a ninja. 

I drove us there, so I guess through the window all people would've seen was a head veiled in black with a slot for the eyes. In the 15-minute drive through Darwin suburb

s, I had a carload of young white men swear at me and give me the finger, another man in another car yell "go home", and third car speed past us while throwing a beer can out the window, which came flying back in our direction. 

Anyone who thinks Australia is not a racist country need only try out this experiment (at the time I wasn't even consciously undertaking an "experiment" but it sure was a wake-up call).

I was pretty shaken by the time I got to the party. This is the daily reality for women who wear the veil in Australia.

Bundi, Rajasthan

The whole point of  going to India was for the 60th birthday of our friend/second godfather Brad, who spends many months each year in India and  wanted to bring his Australian and Indian friends together. The actual party, a completely over the top affair with Maharaja-esque shades, will have to be another post.

Brad suggested we stay at  the Elephant Stables in Bundi, run by a really lovely family. So my dad and I, and Penny and Philip (First godfather), spent a week at this  incredibly ancient, beautiful establishment that felt like a farm oasis in the middle of a town- set just below the palace walls, it indeed was the Maharaja's elephant stable. Whenever this  was mentioned I assumed people were talking about centuries ago (it certainly is an old building), until our host Raj talked about coming there as a boy when his father was the elephant keeper.

The yard was  filled with monkeys, squirrels and birds. It  was beautiful to get up at dawn and watch all the monkeys heading down the hill into town, for a day of whatever it is monkeys do, then practise yoga while my dad went out for his morning chai.

Here are some photos from the Elephant Stables.