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Australia’s strategy to get Aboriginal land for mining and nuclear industry

Through the intervention, the government is weakening land rights. It is clear who [uranium miners] will benefit as Aboriginal people move off their land, settle in larger towns and lose connection with country.

What’s behind the NT intervention? | Green Left Weekly. July 3, 2010 By Peter Robson, The Northern Territory intervention has reached its third year and, despite several government commissioned reports and outside expert analysis claiming that it has failed to achieve its aims, aspects of it look likely to be extended to other parts of the country.

On June 21, the Senate voted to extend one of the aspects of the intervention, welfare quarantining, to more people in the NT and allow the government the option to extend it to other parts of Australia after a year.

Welfare quarantining converts half of a person’s Centrelink payment into a Basics Card that can only be spent on food, clothing and medical supplies at particular shops.

It was first rolled out to all welfare recipients in 73 remote NT Aboriginal communities. Its extension will only be to welfare recipients who are referred by family services or long-term unemployed. Overwhelmingly, these will be Aboriginal people and those caught in the original blanket quarantine will find it hard to get off……………….

Land care, hunting — which reduces feral animal populations — and other traditional activities could all be recognised as real work and be paid for. This would be in addition to the actual work that people do to maintain their own communities, such as childcare and construction.

The Community Development Employment Program (CDEP) performed this task, albeit with problems, but was wound down when NT intervention was introduced…………..

the intervention is also about land. When former PM John Howard launched the intervention in July 2007, he appointed eight people to oversee it. One of these was John Reeves, a former ALP MP who, the July 7, 2007 Sydney Morning Herald reported, wrote a 600-page report on changes to native title for the Coalition government in August 1998.

Among its proposals was a plan to gut native title and break down the control that Aboriginal communities had over their land. The policy was shelved at the time but has emerged again with the intervention.

Much of the NT intervention weakened native title rights. Many of the remote Aboriginal communities targeted in the intervention had their lands compulsorily leased to the government. Other communities were blackmailed into “agreeing” to sign the lease in exchange for desperately needed housing and services — which were never delivered……………….

Through the intervention, the government is weakening land rights. It is clear who will benefit as Aboriginal people move off their land, settle in larger towns and lose connection with country.

Similarly, the “hub towns” policy, announced by the NT government in May 2009, encourages Aboriginal people to leave their traditional lands for 20 designated large communities. It is only these large communities that will receive new public housing grants from the government and will be first in line for health and education investment.

The 20 “hub towns” are all near existing or proposed mining operations.

What’s behind the NT intervention? | Green Left Weekly

July 9, 2010 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA, indigenous issues | antinuclear, AUSTRALIA, nuclear, nuclear weapons, uranium