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Vol. 72/No. 28      July 14, 2008

 
Australia protests back Aboriginal rights
 
BY RON POULSEN
AND MANUELE LASALO  
SYDNEY, Australia—About a thousand people joined in national protests June 21 to oppose the ongoing federal government takeover of 73 Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory. Some 350 people marched in Sydney while hundreds more rallied in other cities around the country, including Darwin and Alice Springs.

Protesters demanded an end to intervention in the often remote indigenous settlements. In June 2007 then-prime minister John Howard announced it would intervene in Aboriginal communities, including taking control over township leases, appointing administrators, and negating powers of the Aboriginal land councils. The new Labor government is reviewing the first year of the “emergency” measures initiated by the former conservative government.

In a report to current prime minister Kevin Rudd, the Northern Territory Emergency Response task force recommended increased policing and determining whether “outstations” are “viable” before providing services like health care or education.

Referring to one of the latest measures by Canberra, Vince Forrester, an Aboriginal leader from Mutitjulu in central Australia, told the Sydney rally, “If we don’t send our kids to school, they [the federal government] will stop the welfare checks.” Commenting on the abysmal neglect of services in remote areas, he noted, “They will have to provide us with school facilities first!”

He said that there is “not one Aboriginal person employed” by supermarkets in towns like Alice Springs where Aboriginal people are forced to travel to in order to shop. The government measures are pushing people out of their remote encampments toward urban centers, which amounts to “ethnic cleansing of the land,” Forrester said.

Canberra’s intervention follows a long campaign by capitalist politicians and the big business media to introduce private property in the name of “home ownership” in settlements on clan land. This would weaken legal recognition of native title over traditional areas won by Aboriginal land rights struggles.

Forrester noted that the “government is spending a lot of money, but it’s not getting to the grassroots people, it’s going to bureaucrats.” Other speakers at the Sydney rally included Warren Roberts, an Aboriginal member of Young Labor, as well as representatives of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union and the Fire Brigades Employees Union. Aboriginal Rights Coalition coordinator Greg Eatok chaired.  
 
 
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