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 THE federal intervention into the Northern Territory indigenous communities has spread in part to Queensland, with an Australian Crime Commission taskforce taking over the investigation of alleged child abuse and neglect.

A preliminary, unannounced visit to 17 communities on Cape York last month by members of the National Indigenous Violence and Child Abuse Intelligence Taskforce resulted in 130 reports being compiled and 15 referrals to state police for possible prosecution.

The NIITF was established last year under the auspices of the ACC to run the policing and criminal investigation arm of thefederal government’s intervention into 73 Northern Territory communities.

Serious physical and sexual abuse of children has been rife in many Cape York communities for decades, and neglect of the basic health needs of youngsters has become a paramount issue.

The Australian has been told of concerns about young teenage girls in communities who "just go missing", with government agencies and police now conducting checks to establish if they are being encouraged or forced to go to cities to work as prostitutes.

Queensland Child Safety Minister Margaret Keech yesterday confirmed she had met in May with ACC officers at Aurukun in western Cape York.

"We had a valuable discussion about the types of issues facing the people of Aurukun and other cape communities and how we could work together to address them," Ms Keech said.

"Last year, the Cape Torres child safety service centre received more notifications about neglect than any other type of abuse.

"These children deserve better. Their parents need to send them to school, they need to take them to health clinics and ensure that any illnesses are properly treated."

ACC chief executive officer Alastair Milroy yesterday said the NIITF was helping to build a national, state and territory picture of violence and child abuse issues affecting the communities.

"The NIITF team stayed in Cape communities in May and was well received, and invited to return," Mr Milroy said.

"The findings were consistent with other NIITF deployments where violence and/or child abuse has been identified.

"The deployment also encountered issues such as child neglect, child sexual abuse, alcohol and other drug misuse, and the abuse of power.

"Neglect was the most common form of abuse.

"It was found within the communities that alcohol was a key contributor towards violence. Statistics for alcohol-related assaults may be inaccurate due to under-reporting for fear of prosecution.

"There was no indication to suggest organised criminal enterprise within these communities."

A major problem in the communities is the lack of appropriate carers for abused or neglected children, and Ms Keech yesterday said her department could not fix the problem alone.

"Addressing the issues which cause neglect — alcohol and drug addiction, overcrowding, poor parenting skills, mental illness, lack of healthcare and education — requires a whole-of-government response," she said. "We are working closely with the mayors of indigenous communities and with non-government organisations on the ground to establish the types of services needed to help make communities safer places for children and young people."

The Queensland Government has previously said it does not want the Northern Territory intervention to extend into Queensland, although blanket health checks and follow-up specialist treatment of children would be welcomed by medical practitioners, who are just too few and too stretched to provide an adequate service in the region.

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 THE federal intervention into the Northern Territory indigenous communities has spread in part to Queensland, with an Australian Crime Commission taskforce taking over the investigation of alleged child abuse and neglect.

A preliminary, unannounced visit to 17 communities on Cape York last month by members of the National Indigenous Violence and Child Abuse Intelligence Taskforce resulted in 130 reports being compiled and 15 referrals to state police for possible prosecution.

The NIITF was established last year under the auspices of the ACC to run the policing and criminal investigation arm of thefederal government’s intervention into 73 Northern Territory communities.

Serious physical and sexual abuse of children has been rife in many Cape York communities for decades, and neglect of the basic health needs of youngsters has become a paramount issue.

The Australian has been told of concerns about young teenage girls in communities who "just go missing", with government agencies and police now conducting checks to establish if they are being encouraged or forced to go to cities to work as prostitutes.

Queensland Child Safety Minister Margaret Keech yesterday confirmed she had met in May with ACC officers at Aurukun in western Cape York.

"We had a valuable discussion about the types of issues facing the people of Aurukun and other cape communities and how we could work together to address them," Ms Keech said.

"Last year, the Cape Torres child safety service centre received more notifications about neglect than any other type of abuse.

"These children deserve better. Their parents need to send them to school, they need to take them to health clinics and ensure that any illnesses are properly treated."

ACC chief executive officer Alastair Milroy yesterday said the NIITF was helping to build a national, state and territory picture of violence and child abuse issues affecting the communities.

"The NIITF team stayed in Cape communities in May and was well received, and invited to return," Mr Milroy said.

"The findings were consistent with other NIITF deployments where violence and/or child abuse has been identified.

"The deployment also encountered issues such as child neglect, child sexual abuse, alcohol and other drug misuse, and the abuse of power.

"Neglect was the most common form of abuse.

"It was found within the communities that alcohol was a key contributor towards violence. Statistics for alcohol-related assaults may be inaccurate due to under-reporting for fear of prosecution.

"There was no indication to suggest organised criminal enterprise within these communities."

A major problem in the communities is the lack of appropriate carers for abused or neglected children, and Ms Keech yesterday said her department could not fix the problem alone.

"Addressing the issues which cause neglect — alcohol and drug addiction, overcrowding, poor parenting skills, mental illness, lack of healthcare and education — requires a whole-of-government response," she said. "We are working closely with the mayors of indigenous communities and with non-government organisations on the ground to establish the types of services needed to help make communities safer places for children and young people."

The Queensland Government has previously said it does not want the Northern Territory intervention to extend into Queensland, although blanket health checks and follow-up specialist treatment of children would be welcomed by medical practitioners, who are just too few and too stretched to provide an adequate service in the region.

THE federal intervention into the Northern Territory indigenous communities has spread in part to Queensland, with an Australian Crime Commission taskforce taking over the investigation of alleged child abuse and neglect.

A preliminary, unannounced visit to 17 communities on Cape York last month by members of the National Indigenous Violence and Child Abuse Intelligence Taskforce resulted in 130 reports being compiled and 15 referrals to state police for possible prosecution.

The NIITF was established last year under the auspices of the ACC to run the policing and criminal investigation arm of thefederal government’s intervention into 73 Northern Territory communities.

Serious physical and sexual abuse of children has been rife in many Cape York communities for decades, and neglect of the basic health needs of youngsters has become a paramount issue.

The Australian has been told of concerns about young teenage girls in communities who "just go missing", with government agencies and police now conducting checks to establish if they are being encouraged or forced to go to cities to work as prostitutes.

Queensland Child Safety Minister Margaret Keech yesterday confirmed she had met in May with ACC officers at Aurukun in western Cape York.

"We had a valuable discussion about the types of issues facing the people of Aurukun and other cape communities and how we could work together to address them," Ms Keech said.

"Last year, the Cape Torres child safety service centre received more notifications about neglect than any other type of abuse.

"These children deserve better. Their parents need to send them to school, they need to take them to health clinics and ensure that any illnesses are properly treated."

ACC chief executive officer Alastair Milroy yesterday said the NIITF was helping to build a national, state and territory picture of violence and child abuse issues affecting the communities.

"The NIITF team stayed in Cape communities in May and was well received, and invited to return," Mr Milroy said.

"The findings were consistent with other NIITF deployments where violence and/or child abuse has been identified.

"The deployment also encountered issues such as child neglect, child sexual abuse, alcohol and other drug misuse, and the abuse of power.

"Neglect was the most common form of abuse.

"It was found within the communities that alcohol was a key contributor towards violence. Statistics for alcohol-related assaults may be inaccurate due to under-reporting for fear of prosecution.

"There was no indication to suggest organised criminal enterprise within these communities."

A major problem in the communities is the lack of appropriate carers for abused or neglected children, and Ms Keech yesterday said her department could not fix the problem alone.

"Addressing the issues which cause neglect — alcohol and drug addiction, overcrowding, poor parenting skills, mental illness, lack of healthcare and education — requires a whole-of-government response," she said. "We are working closely with the mayors of indigenous communities and with non-government organisations on the ground to establish the types of services needed to help make communities safer places for children and young people."

The Queensland Government has previously said it does not want the Northern Territory intervention to extend into Queensland, although blanket health checks and follow-up specialist treatment of children would be welcomed by medical practitioners, who are just too few and too stretched to provide an adequate service in the region.

(more…)

 The Federal Government is running into problems finding doctors to fill positions in its intervention program in remote Aboriginal communities. Other bush and regional communities are all missing out on basic health care because they can not find enough doctors.

Dr David Ashbridge, the chief executive of the Northern Territory Department of Health and Families, says there has been a real difficulty in attracting doctors to work in central Australia.

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A new Family Responsibilities Commission officially starts operating tomorrow to try to tackle problems in Indigenous communities.

It is one of a raft of changes taking place from July 1.

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An inquiry has recommended major reforms to help close the life expectancy gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.

The Standing Committee on Social Issues has tabled its interim report on overcoming Aboriginal disadvantage in New South Wales.

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 Dr Peter Beaumont says health officials and department staff are using the title "Enhanced Health Services Delivery Initiative" when referring to programs associated with the intervention into Indigenous affairs.

He says not using the word ‘intervention’ would be beneficial for long-term outcomes in Aboriginal communities.

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 BUSH medicine will be used in Alice Springs to treat people with chronic kidney disease.

A special garden created by the Alice Springs Desert Park will supply bush medicine to people relocated from remote communities to undergo lifesaving dialysis.

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A DAY before John Howard and Mal Brough announced their plans for the Northern Territory intervention last year, a different shock wave hit Aboriginal Australia.

On June 22, a Townsville jury found Queensland police officer Chris Hurley not guilty of unlawfully killing Cameron Doomadgee at the Palm Island police station in 2004.

The case had come to epitomise the worst version of race relations: Hurley arrested Doomadgee for swearing at him, and 40 minutes later the Aboriginal man lay dead on a cell floor with injuries that the pathologists said were consistent with a fatal car or plane crash. Hurley walked free, then we watched as more police were sent into remote Aboriginal communities.

The Palm Island case and the intervention have become the two defining events in recent indigenous affairs. Was there a connection?

It is fitting that Hurley and Doomadgee, marionettes in the ongoing reconciliation saga, were born within a year of the constitutional referendum on Aboriginal rights. The referendum in 1967 - which allowed the commonwealth to legislate specifically for Aborigines and count them statistically as part of the Australian population - is widely regarded as the birth of the reconciliation movement.

The 90 per cent of Australians who supported this legislation might have felt optimistic about the country in which the two men would reach adulthood.

Doomadgee’s grandparents were survivors of frontier violence in the lands around the Gulf of Carpentaria. His grandmother, Lizzy Daylight, told researchers in the early 1980s: "My father bin born in the wild time. White men bin scatter ‘em, chase ‘em. They ran away, they might get shot … my father bin shot in the shoulder."

His parents were members of the Stolen Generations, reared in dormitories in the Gulf community of Doomadgee, a place where in 1950 a government official found that life was "indistinguishable from slavery", where children did construction, gardening and domestic work and had their mouths washed out with soap for speaking their tribal languages.

Doomadgee’s stepfather, Arthur Doomadgee, was sent to Palm Island in leg-cuffs, having punched out a missionary who had flogged his uncle. His wife Doris, Cameron’s mother, was sent, too. His elder siblings grew up in the Palm Island dormitory. Arthur became an alcoholic.

Cameron was born in Townsville from a relationship outside Doris’s marriage. He lived with his birth father until, age six, he found him dead and returned to his mother and Arthur on Palm Island.

Hurley, on the other hand, grew up by all accounts in a stable, close-knit Brisbane family. His parents attended all his school functions - his father was president of the school’s parents association - and they were well liked within their local parish.

Hurley joined the Queensland Police Force in 1987 and was posted to Thursday Island, where he set up a sports club for local children. He continued to work in other remote indigenous communities, along the way doing more volunteer work.

Hurley was a kind of model police officer, claiming: "Reconciliation is a two-way street: it’s going to take a lot of effort by all Australians. At the end of the day there are more similarities than differences between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians."

Hurley’s work was stressful, but he quickly moved up the police hierarchy, putting his earnings into well-chosen investment properties. As he climbed the career ladder, Doomadgee was like his shadow.

There was a degree of inevitability in what happened next. Hurley and Doomadgee were actors for the bigger drama: Hurley playing the successful cop who was going places; Doomadgee the happy-go-lucky, unemployed alcoholic.

The morning of his arrest, Doomadgee was on a bender of beer, moselle and methylated spirits mixed with water. He and Hurley were both 36, but the odds were that Hurley had more than half his life ahead of him; Doomadgee typically would have had about a decade.

The tragic fact is that something was going to kill Doomadgee, it was just a matter of what it was. But perhaps it is also true to say that Hurley was a likely candidate for involvement in what his defence called a "complicated fall".

For Palm Islanders, that Hurley’s case was even brought to trial - making him the first officer charged over a death in custody - was seen as unprecedented progress. But how had a man who had been a poster boy for reconciliation become such a polarising figure?

Two metres tall and with stony features, Hurley looked like a man from another generation. He cut a figure from before voting rights, before land rights, before reconciliation. And in looking so retro he was also utterly contemporary. The complete Howard-era man who would certainly not say sorry, far less go on a guilt trip over it.

The Little Children are Sacred report was released the week of Hurley’s trial. It described endemic child abuse, violence and "rivers of grog" drowning out life in NT communities. It might have been describing Palm Island.

These places are corrosive. The damage radiates out, and it is not just black children who are affected but also black adults. And then white adults: the teachers and nurses and police in these communities, the ones who bang their heads against brick walls and the ones who turn away, the burned-out cases who are hardened, cynical and ready to snap.

(George Orwell, after his time as a policeman for the British Raj in Burma, recalled being caught between feeling contempt for his countrymen, who didn’t know the realities of life in the colonies, and a feeling that it would be the "greatest joy in the world" to do violence to those who made his job a misery.)

The devastation in these communities is contagious. It reaches all the way to those of us who turn the page of the newspaper not wanting to know any more, not realising this still connects them to us.

Of course, the jury acquitted Hurley, and 12 months later it seems a pipedream to imagine another ending. Hurley embodied white authority; Doomadgee, Aboriginal dysfunction.

There was never a question of who would be the statistic. Doomadgee lost. But so did the man who had once believed in trying to make a difference. The bitter joke of reconciliation in Australia is to assume the lives of these two men could be weighed equally.

Chloe Hooper is the author of The Tall Man: Death and Life on Palm Island (Penguin, $32.95), to be released next week.

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Intervention … ‘if men are the problem then they are also the solution’ 

A peak national Indigenous health group is calling on the Commonwealth and Territory governments to sit down and discuss the issues affecting Aboriginal men in remote communities.

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The Northern Territory Government says the shift of 13 local parks and reserves to Indigenous ownership will boost employment in the bush.

An amendment to Indigenous affairs legislation in Federal Parliament this week has seen the parks handed back to traditional owners.

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