Arrangements allowing commercial and recreational fishing to continue in tidal waters near Aboriginal land in the Northern Territory have been extended.
A High Court ruling in July in relation to Blue Mud Bay in Arnhem Land returned control of coastal waters between the high and low tide mark to the Aboriginal people who own adjoining land.
The Northern Territory Opposition says relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians are "degrading" throughout the Northern Territory.
Opposition members from Alice Springs and Katherine told parliament last night there is a rise of violent crime, and that’s resulting in a corrosion of race relations because people are blaming other races for the problems.
he Mayor of Palm Island, off north Queensland, says it is unacceptable that the local community’s tavern will be unable to open its doors next week because of delays within the State Government’s liquor licensing division.
From December 1, the Palm Island Council must revoke its licence for the canteen because of new Queensland liquor legislation for Indigenous communities which prohibits councils from managing alcohol outlets.
A group of Pacific islander males charged with bashing rugby league star Johnathan Thurston’s uncle to death was taking revenge for an earlier attack, a court has been told.
The Supreme Court in Brisbane heard the group of islanders armed themselves with hammers, spanners and fence palings before arriving at a park at Woodridge, south of Brisbane, early on October 25.
Aboriginal leader Bernard Singer is facing a new assault charge with just a week before the APY Lands Board election.
It is alleged the board chairman assaulted another Aboriginal man, Andrew John Dingaman, at Coober Pedy in outback South Australia in April.
The Federal Government is yet to announce who will take over as head of the intervention into Northern Territory Indigenous communities after the departure of Major General David Chalmers.
Major General Chalmers was expected to complete his duties as the operational chief of the emergency response measures in Aboriginal communities in December but will now stay on until February.
Western Australia’s Indigenous Affairs Minister says he is appalled that emergency air drops of food are having to be conducted in some remote Indigenous communities.
Two planes have delivered half a tonne of food to the Burringurrah community, east of Carnarvon.
POLICE wiped out petrol sniffing in a remote Aboriginal community with a "carrot and stick" approach that cracked down on hardcore users and rewarded younger abusers for giving up the habit.
Children at Yalata check out what’s on Senior Sergeant Tom Rieniets’s belt. Picture: Kelly Barnes
A South Australian coronial inquiry heard yesterday that illegal petrol dealers and serious users in Yalata, almost 1000km west of Adelaide, had been arrested for committing petty crimes, while teenage substance abusers were given warnings and incentives to give up.
State coroner Mark Johns toured Yalata yesterday after hearing from South Australian police Sergeant Chris Kummerow how the number of sniffers in the community had dropped from 30 to zero in the first seven months after he was posted to the community of about 200 people.
Sergeant Kummerow told the inquest, convened to investigate the circumstances surrounding the death of Yalata man Kunmanara Gibson, 29, who died from sniffing petrol in July 2005, that he noticed sniffing in the community was "the most prominent problem" when he arrived in December 2006.
"People would sniff petrol openly in the community without trying to hide," he said. "(They’d) walk around the community with tins of petrol to their mouth. There was no real worry among these people petrol sniffing when they saw police. That’s what most concerned me; that it was such an overt problem."
Sergeant Kummerow said Aboriginal Lands Trust Yalata Reserve regulations made it illegal to have alcohol and other regulated substances, including petrol.
With two local community constables, Sergeant Kummerow said he consulted elders, teachers, and health workers and built up an intelligence profile on a core group of sniffers who were distributing petrol and encouraging others.
He did not think there was a sentencing option of jail for sniffing petrol and magistrates would usually dismiss any charge without conviction.
Sergeant Kummerow said core sniffers who were regularly breaking into houses, stealing and siphoning petrol were "pursued actively through the courts" and were sent to jail and removed from the community.
Others, such as juvenile users, received warnings from police and had their petrol confiscated, he said.
The areas where they sniffed were also targeted and they were pushed further and further out of town until they could not be bothered to travel.
"A lot of petrol sniffing comes down to boredom, especially among the juveniles," Sergeant Kummerow said.
Youth in the community enjoyed music and he would try to organise a Blue Light Disco at least once a month.
The community also tackled petrol sniffing, considering it a "shameful thing" to be labelled a "sniffer community", with elders taking problem children into the homelands where they would live traditionally before returning, Sergeant Kummerow said.
Cross-examined by Dimitra Droulias, for the Aboriginal Legal Rights Movement, Sergeant Kummerow said there were no facilities at Yalata for treating chronic petrol sniffers.
‘The health clinic had a nurse that specialised in drug and alcohol counselling but there was no ability to place them in any facility," he said.
The inquest continues.
ABORIGINAL children who have been removed from the care of their parents should be accommodated in boarding houses to protect them from abuse and neglect.
The Wood report into child welfare, released yesterday, says Aboriginal children would be "cared for and educated" in homes of a "boarding nature type" with staff on call around the clock. The homes would differ from the Aboriginal missions of last century in that they would be smaller, and managed by Aboriginal people.
An Indigenous man is making a land rights claim on two suburban areas of Canberra.
Ngambrie man Shane Mortimer has lodged the claim, for Crace and Lawson, directly with the Prime Minister’s office.