Northern Territory: Australian Government Asked To Leave Aboriginal Community - Indigenous Peoples Issues and Resources

The Act and its asso­ci­ated amend­ing legis­la­tion, which quickly became known as ‘the inter­ven­tion’, intro­duced a range of racist and highly pater­nal­istic meas­ures to ‘pre­scribed areas’ of the North­ern Ter­rit­ory, all of which were abori­ginal com­munit­ies. Those meas­ures included a total ban on the pos­ses­sion and con­sump­tion of alco­hol,[1] com­puls­ory income man­age­ment for all wel­fare recip­i­ents (ration cards),[2] com­puls­ory install­a­tion of anti-​​pornography fil­ters on all pub­lic com­puters as well as oblig­at­ory record-​​keeping of all com­puter users,[3] the cut­ting back of the per­mit sys­tem for entry onto abori­ginal land,[4] the fed­eral gov­ern­ment takeover of local ser­vices and com­munity stores as well as a min­is­terial power to sus­pend all elec­ted coun­cil­lors,[5] the ban on North­ern Ter­rit­ory courts from tak­ing cus­tom­ary law into account when deal­ing with bail applic­a­tions and sen­ten­cing,[6] and com­puls­ory rent-​​free five year leases of abori­ginal land to the fed­eral gov­ern­ment.[7] As an emer­gency piece of legis­la­tion the Act had a sun­set clause of five years.

via Northern Territory: Australian Government Asked To Leave Aboriginal Community – Indigenous Peoples Issues and Resources.

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