STATEMENT FROM EMINENT AUSTRALIANS …
One of Australia’s leading authorities on remote Indigenous communities says ten years of federal government Intervention have seen the Northern Territory descend into the most entrenched poverty in the nation.
Professor Jon Altman of Deakin University in Melbourne says overcrowded housing, child removal, faltering school attendance, punitive income management and suffocating control of community governance combine to produce an escalating sense of hopelessness.
In testimony to a Senate inquiry on Monday 28th August Professor Altman will argue that the income management and work-for-the-dole regulations of the Community Development Program (CDP) are akin to human slavery, an issue now being examined by another parliamentary inquiry.
Professor Altman, who has worked with and analysed the policies on remote communities for some three decades, is one of over 200 eminent Australians across the fields of law, health, academia and the arts calling on the Federal Government to heed the pleas by Indigenous Elders for an immediate end to the discriminatory policies of the 2007 NT Intervention and legislation that followed.
Their statement, to be launched at Melbourne Law School on Monday 28th August 2017, says the decade of Federal Government Intervention in the Northern Territory illustrates the continuing discrimination, racism and lack of justice towards Indigenous people.
Many of Australia’s strongest voices in the field of human rights have endorsed the statement including Professor Gillian Triggs, immediate past President of the Australian Human Rights Commission; former jurists Elizabeth Evatt, Alastair Nicholson, Frank Vincent, Robyn Layton and Paul Guest; as well as many leading barristers, lawyers and law professors including Julian Burnside, George Newhouse, Greg Barnes, Larissa Behrendt, Thalia Anthony, Chris Cunneen, Kate Galloway, Stewart Levitt, Greg McIntyre, Rex Wild and Nicole Watson.
The statement and list of supporters is now displayed on the website www.concernedaustralians.com.au
Among prominent Indigenous voices supporting the statement are former NT Australian of the Year, Rosalie Kunoth-Monks OAM, Dr. D. Gondarra OAM- spokesperson for the Yolgnu Nations Assembly, Stephen Page AO, Artistic Director of Bangarra Dance Company, Professor Chris Sarra, a member of the Prime Minister’s Indigenous Advisory Council, musician Archie Roach, actors David Gulpilil, Tom Lewis and Ursula Yovich, Olympic Gold Medallist Cathie Freeman and AFL Hall-of-Fame footballer, Michael O’Loughlin.
Rosalie Kunoth-Monks and Dr Gondarra will be among Elders travelling to Melbourne from the Northern Territory to address the launch event.
The statement will be launched with remarks by Professor Gillian Triggs and Professor Jon Altman.
Georgina Gartland
