“Chloe Hooper in conversation with Sally Warhaft about The Tall Man
Chloe Hooper discusses the writing of her new non-fiction book The Tall Man with Monthly editor Sally Warhaft. Exploring the events surrounding the death of Cameron Doomadgee in police custody on Palm Island, the book expands on the story originally told in her Walkley Award-winning essay in The Monthly in November 2006.”
Readings Carlton, Melbourne. July 2008
Book details:
ABC website – Scrymgour denies police targeting Aborigines
Ms Scrymgour says Northern Territory laws do not discriminate.
The Northern Territory Government has denied reports its policies are causing an increase in the number of Aboriginal people going to prison.
Indigenous people make up more than 80 per cent of the Northern Territory prison population but only 30 per cent of the general population.(emphasis added)
…
But Deputy Chief Minister Marion Scrymgour says Northern Territory laws do not discriminate.
“This is not about targeting Aboriginal people, it is offensive for anyone to say that,” she said.
“Unfortunately, we do have high levels of violence amongst our Aboriginal people. We need to reduce that. We need to work with them, and hopefully we can reduce that cycle.”
The Sydney Morning Herald – Date: December 27 2008
‘Sausage factory’ NT courts cited in crime squeeze
Lindsay Murdoch in Darwin
THEY call the offence “driving whilst black”.
“If you are white you can drive around Northern Territory towns like Katherine, Tennant Creek and Alice Springs and rarely get pulled up by the police,” said a lawyer, Glen Dooley. “But if you are black you can be pulled up regularly, given the police focus on Aboriginal people.”
Mr Dooley described as a “disgrace” the largely unnoticed statistic that 83 per cent of prisoners in the NT’s overcrowded jails are Aborigines.
He warned the rate of imprisonment – almost four times higher per capita than elsewhere in Australia – is set to increase because of “blinkered” government policies that focus on the perceived “barbarism” of Aborigines.
Mr Dooley cited the building of 18 police stations in remote communities under the federal indigenous intervention, plans for a $320 million, 1000-bed jail near Darwin and Australia’s toughest mandatory sentencing for violent crimes as measures hastening the criminalisation of Aborigines.
“The Government here is adopting policies that are politically popular but they are doing nothing to stop the spiralling rate of crime,” said the principal lawyer for the North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency.
…
http://www.smh.com.au/text/articles/2008/12/26/1229998733256.html
see also
North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency http://www.naaja.org.au/
MutaBuruka – Dis Poem
http://au.youtube.com/greeting_view?s=HpX8_vTe5Xc&p=89EBD5187C4A2C3D
(Thanks to the ABC RN radio program “The Book Show” with Romona Koval for providing us with the feast of “Rotten English:writing in the vernacular”
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/bookshow/stories/2008/2451608.htm
Strengthening Indigenous employment opportunities
19/12/2008
Joint Media Release with The Hon. Brendan O’Connor MP, Minister for Employment Participation
The Australian Government today announced significant reforms to employment services to ensure more Indigenous Australians have the skills needed to get and keep a job.
The reforms to the Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) Program and the Indigenous Employment Program (IEP) will begin on 1 July 2009 and build on recent reforms of universal employment services.
The reforms are key to making progress on the Government’s aim of halving the employment gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians within a decade.
Meeting our target means that an additional 100,000 Indigenous Australians will need to find and keep jobs over the next 10 years, requiring major reforms to Indigenous and mainstream employment services.
Human Rights Commission – Wednesday, 17 December 2008
Social Justice Commissioner, Tom Calma, today welcomed the request from Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin, for him to convene an independent Indigenous Steering Committee to develop a model for a new National Indigenous Representative Body.
Mr Calma said he welcomed the role and the enormous challenge of heading the group charged with running the consultations and ultimately presenting a proposed model to government in July 2009.
“Given the importance of a national representative body for Indigenous Australians, I consider this role crucial and I do not take this responsibility lightly,” Commissioner Calma said.
Dear Songlines Elisters,
The new issue of Songlines (Jan/Feb #57) will be with UK subscribers later this week and is on its way to overseas subscribers. For a taster of what’s in the issue, including excerpts from the Top of the World CD (featuring Alexei Sayle’s playlist) and our Best Albums of 2008, check out the free interactive sampler at: http://songlines.co.uk/interactive/057
The issue also include full details of the Songlines Music Awards for which voting is now open at http://songlines.co.uk/awards2009 – all voters will be entered into a prize draw to win one of three pairs of tickets to next year’s WOMAD festival in Charlton Park.
And if you’re running short on Christmas present ideas, there’s still time to order a Songlines gift subscription and claim a free CD for yourself. All UK subscriptions will be delivered before Christmas, and we can also include a personal message with the first issue. For more details please visit http://songlines.co.uk/xmas or call the Songlines office on +44 (0)20 7371 2777.
Festive greetings,
The Songlines team
PS) The podcast of the issue is also available to download through iTunes, featuring music by Amadou & Mariam, Miriam Makeba, Jim Moray and Baaba Maal: http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=185744588
ABC Radio National
Commissioner explores options for new Indigenous body
AM – Wednesday, 17 December , 2008 08:20:00
Reporter: Sara Everingham
TONY EASTLEY: The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, Tom Calma, has dismissed his critics who say he’s not the right man to set up Australia’s next Indigenous representative body.
The Federal Government has appointed Mr Calma to oversee the establishment of the body that will advise it on Indigenous affairs. He’ll chair the committee of around 100 people that will shape the new body. He is speaking here with Sara Everingham about how the body will work.
TOM CALMA: One of the options is some form of a statutory authority, with some legislative powers. It could be a committee of the Parliament; it could be quite an independent body. So, there’s a whole range of options and we’ll explore those and at the end of the day produce a report to Parliament.
SARA EVERINGHAM: What do you think is the best option?
TOM CALMA: Look, I’ve got a very open mind, I think it needs to be a body that has, you know, credibility, that’s able to develop an enduring relationship with government, and also with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people across the nation. So that we can be party to all the processes that have an impact on our lives.
So, there’s a lot of merit, I believe, in having an organisation that is part of the Parliamentary structure through one of the committees that reports to Parliament or to the Government at a very senior level.
SARA EVERINGHAM: Some of your critics say ….
Full story
http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2008/s2448435.htm
Nicolas Rothwell | December 13, 2008
Article from: The Australian
End of detente marks a fight for relevance
THE Northern Territory Government’s appetite for consultation with the victims of its policies succeeded in triggering a startling shift in indigenous politics this week: the much-honoured father of reconciliation, Patrick Dodson, currently doing duty as an adviser to the Darwin authorities, hit out in uncompromising fashion at the three chief architects of radical reform in Aboriginal affairs, Marcia Langton, Warren Mundine and Noel Pearson.
Dodson’s attack marks the end of a brief, uneasy, hard-brokered detente at the summits of the indigenous world.
A vast and now unbridgeable ideological and personal divide stretches between Dodson and his camp, the diehard believers in the rights agenda, and Langton, Pearson and their allies, who regard broad-scale intervention in remote communities as a fundamental imperative if Aboriginal society in the bush is to besaved.
The gauntlet has been thrown down: the battle lines are at lastclear.
Patricia Karvelas and Natasha Robinson | December 13, 2008
Article from: The Australian
War erupts over Dodson’s ‘grenade’
INDIGENOUS leader Warren Mundine has accused father of reconciliation Patrick Dodson of using a review of Aboriginal outstations to “throw a grenade” in a bid to spark a political war between adherents of self-determination and backers of economic self-reliance.
The former Labor national president’s response to Mr Dodson’s attack came as a former World Bank economist called for an end to the system of funding Northern Territory outstations, saying it benefited whites at the expense of dirt-poor Aborigines.
