MIPH Newsletter

MIPH Newsletter

31st March 2009

In This Issue

Take Action

Impacts of the Intervention

Letter from CERD

ABS Schools report

AIHW report Indigenous Health

Australian Reconcilation Barometer

MIPH is an initiative of the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Ecumenical Commission (NATSIEC) which is a commission of the National Council of Churches in Australia (NCCA).

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Dear supporter,

This week it is expected that the Government will formally support the United Nation's Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. NATSIEC congratulates the Government on this welcome, and long over due action. We believe that this Declaration will be one more step in the right direction to ensure that Indigenous rights are not only recognized but also protected in this country. The next hurdle will be to identify and rectify discrepancies between the principles of the Declaration, domestic law and Government polices and practice.

Meanwhile, The Government continues to press forward with the Northern Territory Intervention, but NATSIEC still has serious concerns about its impact and effectiveness. Last week the Government also released the NT intervention "report card". The report certainly lists some impressive achievements: 1696 jobs, 76 community stores, 63 additional police, police station upgrades, night patrol services, school nutrition programs, safe houses, new crèches, and more Government Business Managers. The report leaves no doubt that there is still a commitment to, and concerted effort by, the Federal Government in the NT.

However, the report fails to "report" on the beneficial outcomes of this concerted effort. Is the situation improving? The Government has consistently failed to provide meaningful comparison data - there are no benchmarks and there are no comprehensive goals against which to measure progress. How many children have been saved from abuse? How many women have been saved from violence? How many people have had measurable improvements in their health, wealth or social well being?

The problem with not providing these measurable outcomes is that we just don't know how it is going. There is enough anecdotal evidence to suggest massive failures; we receive daily reports from all quarters about the failures of the Intervention and its negative impact on people's life. But we also hear stories from those who have benefited and who think the intervention is great. Hearing about these personal experiences is important and highlights the fact that a "one size fits all approach" will not work, that people and communities have particular needs which must be addressed at that individual level. However, we also need to know more than the lived experience; we also need to know what the measurable outcomes are? Without these facts it is impossible to know what is working, what should be continued or expanded and what should be consigned to the scrap heap.

There is a framework already in existence to guide the Government in providing appropriate goals and benchmarks; it's called the Millennium Development Goals. These are seen largely as a foreign policy issue for Australia. Something we should push other "poorer" countries to take on. Not so, these MDGs are about poverty reduction, Aborigines live in poverty; therefore the MDGs are as relevant to Indigenous Australians as they are to impoverished Africans.

In fact, the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues call on "developed countries to adopt national processes to implement the Goals with the full and effective participation of indigenous peoples within those countries" (E/2006/43). The intention of the MDGs was always that they should be taken and adapted to the country situation. For all its faults and exclusions the MDG framework is a valuable tool that can be used by the Australian Government to put meat on their data bones and to ensure that the resources being directed to the Northern Territory, and elsewhere, are having the expected and much needed results.

Take Action

Action: Write to The Hon. Jenny Macklin
Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs

Parliament House:
Suite MG 51
Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600
Tel: 02 6277 7560
Fax: 02 6277 4122
Email: Jmacklin.MP@aph.gov.au

Congratulate the Government on their support for the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Congratulate the Government on their continued effort towards closing the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, particularly in the Northern Territory.

Ask the Government to improve their performance reports by:

Including benchmarks when they report on activities undertaken in the NT emergency response - what was the starting point?
Identifying what is needed to bring the situation up to an acceptable level - ie how many houses are required to reduce overcrowding. How many safe houses are needed to ensure women have a place to turn to? How many Real jobs are required?
Identifying what has been the outcome from the intervention activities. I.e. how have the safe houses impacted on the violence women and children experience. How many people have moved from CDEP or welfare to real jobs? What are the real impacts of income quarantining? How many children are in school, and staying in school?

Impacts of the Intervention

Intervention is hurting health - Sydney Morning Herald, March 31, 2009

The Sunrise Health Service covers 112,000 square kilometres of the Northern Territory east of Katherine and is at the frontline in dealing with the health parts of the intervention. All but one community within its area are subject to the intervention's measures, including welfare quarantining.
Sunrise has compared data collected before and since the intervention and the results are dispiriting.

Anaemia is an iron deficiency that leads to poor growth and development, and as such is an indicator for the general health of children. Since the intervention, anaemia rates in the area have jumped significantly.

In the six months to December 2006, 20 per cent of children were anaemic. A year later the figure had increased to 36 per cent, and by June last year it had reached 55 per cent, where it stayed in the last six months of 2008.

Now, more than half the area's children face big threats to their physical and mental development. In two years, 18 months of which was under the intervention, the anaemia rate nearly trebled.

There is also a worrying rise in low birth weight among babies. In the six months leading up to the intervention, 9 per cent of children had low birth weights. This rose to 12 per cent in December 2007, and to 18 per cent six months later. By the end of last year, it was 19 per cent, double the figure at the start of the intervention.

Since compulsory income management of welfare payments began in the region in late 2007, there have been documented instances when it affected people's capacity to buy food. This included diabetics, who with no local store access were unable to access food for weeks at a time. Their response to this situation was to sleep until food became available.
Income management has not reduced alcohol or drug consumption - indeed, alcohol restrictions on prescribed communities has merely shifted the problems to larger towns or bush camps. And it has not stopped "humbug" or the conversion of Basic Card purchases into cash for grog. There is also no evidence that it has increased the consumption of fresh food among Aboriginal families, which is vital to fighting anaemia.

There was strong agreement about the need to protect women and children from violence and to improve the socioeconomic position of Aboriginal families between those who designed and welcomed the intervention and those who questioned its methods.

The key criticism from those of us asking questions was why all the evidence of what is known to work to make communities safer and to improve education and health was ignored in favour of expensive, untried, top-down, heavy-handed policy approaches.

On Friday, the Government is expected to endorse the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, along with the national apology to the stolen generations, another symbolic shift from the Howard government's indigenous policy. But there are still striking similarities between the practical approaches of the former government and the present.
Nowhere is that clearer than the continuation of the suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act, the right to appeal to the Social Security Appeals Tribunal and the right to seek redress under the Northern Territory anti-discrimination legislation.

The suspension of the right to seek redress have left those people subject to welfare quarantining with no avenues of complaint if they feel unfairly treated. And there are more reasons to be concerned about continuation of the intervention without reflection on what is working and what is not.

While the Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Jenny Macklin, has said she is relying on conversations with some people about the need to continue without reviewing the policy, the evidence on the ground - like that from Sunrise - suggests it is time for the Government to seriously rethink the mechanisms it is using in the Northern Territory, especially around welfare quarantining.