AustLII Home | Databases | WorldLII | Search | Feedback

Indigenous Law Bulletin

Indigenous Law Bulletin
You are here:  AustLII >> Databases >> Indigenous Law Bulletin >> 2007 >> [2007] IndigLawB 60

Database Search | Name Search | Recent Articles | Noteup | LawCite | Author Info | Download | Help

Nancarrow, Heather --- "The Emergency Response to Family Violence in the Northern Territory: Where's the Evidence?" [2007] IndigLawB 60; (2007) 7(1) Indigenous Law Bulletin 14

The Emergency Response to Family Violence in the Northern Territory: Where’s the evidence?

by Heather Nancarrow

Introduction

Urgent action is required to address the abuse of women and children in Indigenous communities and, of course, all genuine efforts to address Indigenous family violence should be encouraged and supported. The level of resources now available to Northern Territory communities through the Commonwealth Government’s ‘national emergency’ plan presents an opportunity to make real progress in addressing these issues. However, many Indigenous and non-Indigenous people hold grave concerns that the Government’s intervention is a missed opportunity because of the lack of genuine partnership with community members, especially the many women who have been doing this work, without adequate resources, for many years.

Although governments have, for several years now, demanded that government-funded, community-based services demonstrate that their practice is evidence-based, it seems this principle has not applied to the Commonwealth Government itself in its intervention in Aboriginal communities of the Northern Territory. The primary purpose of this article is to review the Commonwealth Government’s ‘national emergency response to protect Aboriginal children in the Northern Territory’ against the researched evidence on effective interventions in Indigenous family violence. First, to develop the context, a brief discussion about Indigenous family violence is necessary.

Indigenous Family Violence

For Indigenous Australians, the term ‘family violence’ describes a phenomenon that intersects with, but is broader than, spousal domestic violence. It includes:

the beating of a wife or other family members, homicide, suicide and other self-inflected injury, rape, child abuse, child sexual abuse, incest and the sale of younger family members for misuse by others as a way of obtaining funds for drink or gambling.[1]

The appalling extent of such violence and abuse in Indigenous communities is well documented in various research reports, which also provide an ample evidence-base for strategies to end the violence. This includes research conducted through the national Partnerships Against Domestic Violence initiative (‘PADV’), established at the instigation of the Commonwealth Government itself.

Partnerships Against Domestic Violence

PADV was the outcome of a Domestic Violence Summit convened by Prime Minister Howard in November 1997. It was established to:

identify opportunities for strategic collaboration between and within governments, to enhance knowledge, develop good practice and find better ways of preventing and responding to this serious social issue.[2]

In the 1999-2000 Budget, the Commonwealth Government committed a further $25 million for PADV to ‘focus on the priority areas of children at risk, indigenous family violence, work with perpetrators and community education.’[3] By June 2000, PADV had funded 12 projects and initiatives related to Indigenous family violence prevention.[4] These were the subject of a meta-evaluation published by PADV in 2003.[5]

What the research has found

The PADV Phase 1 meta-evaluation recommended ten ‘priorities for future action’ to address Indigenous family violence.[6] The priorities emphasise the importance of involving ‘Indigenous communities in all aspects of policy, planning and service delivery’; the development of ‘a shared vision and agreed priorities for action within the government and community sectors’; the need for holistic and sustainable responses that cut across government agencies, service providers and communities; and the need to ‘[g]round any action in evidence’.

These priorities for action, published by the Commonwealth Government four years before its emergency response to family violence in the Northern Territory, are highly consistent with recommendations made even earlier by several other key research projects. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Women’s Taskforce on Violence Report of 1999,[7] conducted entirely by Indigenous women, was the result of a taskforce investigation established by the Queensland Government. It came after a series of shocking mainstream media reports[8] on the extent of violence, including sexual abuse of children resulting in permanent injuries, in Aboriginal communities in Queensland. This was followed by the Cape York Justice Study[9], also commissioned by the Queensland Government, which emphasises the importance of Government re-building or establishing trust for successful partnerships to end violence; the Violence in Indigenous Communities Report,[10] commissioned and published by National Crime Prevention; and Putting the Picture Together,[11] commissioned and published by the Western Australian Government.

All of these reports conclude that ending Indigenous family violence is dependent upon holistic responses that place the violence within a context of dispossession and alienation. Collectively, they recommend strategies that address the need for economic development, education, improved housing, and mental health facilities, for example, as well as programs aimed at dealing specifically with alcohol and substance abuse, and violence prevention. They also all challenge the effectiveness and appropriateness of relying on the criminal justice system to address Indigenous family violence – with many seeing that it escalates, rather than reduces violence – and call for alternative justice responses.

Putting the Picture Together was the result of a Commission of Inquiry headed by Sue Gordon, who now chairs the Prime Minister’s National Indigenous Council (‘NIC’) and the Taskforce overseeing the implementation of the Government's emergency response in the Northern Territory. Putting the Picture Together states that its:

recommendations are about building a service system from the ground up … starting with the community ... [I]t is clear from the research ... that Aboriginal people and Aboriginal communities must be involved in shaping solutions to the epidemic of family violence and child abuse.[12]

In keeping with the concept of building a service system from the ground up, the report includes a section that discusses the need for local action groups with representatives from

ATSIC, Health, Community Council, Housing, Education, Community Development, Aboriginal Affairs, local shire council and any other agencies involved in service provision.[13]

The outcomes of all of these reports are also highly consistent with the report Ampe Akelyernemane Meke Mekarle: “Little Children are Sacred”[14] (‘Little Children are Sacred’), the result of the most recent inquiry into Indigenous family violence in Australia. It is this report that triggered the Commonwealth Government’s emergency response to Aboriginal family violence, specifically child sexual abuse, in the Northern Territory.

The Commonwealth Government’s ‘Emergency Response’

The Commonwealth Government’s ‘national emergency response to protect Aboriginal children in the NT’[15] was announced on 21 June 2007, just eight weeks after the release of Little Children are Sacred. Several days later, the Taskforce to oversee the implementation of the plan was announced, and on 30 June Major-General Dave Chalmers was appointed to Operational Commander of the Northern Territory Emergency Taskforce Operational Group.[16]

Explaining the apparent haste with which the emergency response was conceived and announced, Minister Brough’s initial media release stated:

The immediate nature of the Australian Government’s response reflects the very first recommendation of the Little Children are Sacred report into the protection of Aboriginal children from child abuse in the Northern Territory which said: “That Aboriginal child sexual abuse in the Northern Territory be designated as an issue of urgent national significance by both the Australian and Northern Territory Governments… ”[17]

The media release omits the second half of the recommendation, which calls for

both governments [to] immediately establish a collaborative partnership with a Memorandum of Understanding…

and which highlights that it is

critical that both governments commit to genuine consultation with Aboriginal people in designing initiatives for Aboriginal communities.[18]

The Minister’s media release then reassures us that

all action at the national level is designed to ensure the protection of Aboriginal children from harm

seemingly anticipating disbelief at the strategies to follow.

The Commonwealth Government’s emergency response utilises the resources of the armed services and increases the number of police in designated communities. It bans alcohol and pornography in those communities and enforces school attendance by withholding a proportion of welfare payments for absenteeism. All Aboriginal children less than 16 years of age are to have their health status (including sexual victimisation) checked. Initially, these health checks were to be compulsory but, under protest from child health and sexual assault experts, this was amended to parents being ‘strongly encouraged’ to consent to health checks. More controversially, the plan also includes scrapping the permit system that enables Aboriginal people to control access to their lands. The Commonwealth Government also included in its plan the acquisition of Aboriginal townships through five-year leases.

While the banning of pornography and alcohol is to be expected in the plan, several other strategies are obviously built upon a non-Indigenous perspective of the problem, rather than being ‘about building a service system from the ground up’.[19] For example, bringing the resources of the armed services and increasing police numbers without any process of engagement and trust-building with those communities was always going to create fear and tension in the relevant communities. Recalling the way in which agents of the criminal justice system were used to forcibly remove Aboriginal children from their mothers under integration and assimilation policies, it is no wonder that women and children fled to the desert for refuge.[20] Furthermore, withdrawing welfare funds to enforce school attendance suggests that the problem of truancy is entirely with Aboriginal people, and has nothing to do with the education system. Despite Chris Sarra[21] being named Australian of the Year in 2003 and Queenslander of the Year in 2004, the Commonwealth Government seems oblivious to his success in dramatically reducing truancy in the Cherbourg Aboriginal community. His success was the result of engaging the community and addressing the negative school culture to instead promote pride and motivation in the children and their parents. Finally, there is no evidence, or even discussion, in the research that addressing Indigenous family violence requires the permit system to be scrapped, or for Aboriginal townships to be acquired and run by governments. The Government has not adequately explained the perceived relationship between these strategies and the reduction of family violence.

Conclusion

Since the late 1990s the Commonwealth Government has had ready access to information on evidenced-based interventions for Indigenous family violence. Indeed, it had commissioned much of the research for this evidence-base through its own national Partnerships Against Domestic Violence initiative, with the collective results being conveniently presented in the report of a meta-evaluation of relevant projects. Further, the Prime Minister’s National Indigenous Council, through its Chair, also had ready access to very similar information on evidenced-based interventions. Nevertheless, the Commonwealth Government’s national emergency response to protect Aboriginal children in the Northern Territory demonstrates an astonishing lack of consistency with that evidence-base.

In spite of the evidence, the Government’s emergency plan is patently a ‘top-down’ approach, imposed on communities rather than being ‘built from the ground up’. Apart from failing to draw on the available research, it seems that the Government did not even consult, or at least take a lead from its own Indigenous council. The result is an emergency plan that ignores identified good practice in Indigenous family violence intervention and reinforces the power of the state over Indigenous communities.

Heather Nancarrow is the Director of the Queensland Centre for Domestic and Family Violence Research at Central Queensland University.


[1] K E Mow, Tjunparni: Family Violence In Indigenous Australia (1992) 10.

[2] Partnerships Against Domestic Violence, First Report of the Taskforce 1998-1999 (1999) 1.

[3] Minister for Family and Community Services and Minister Assisting the Prime Minister on the Status of Women (Jocelyn Newman) cited in Partnerships Against Domestic Violence (‘PADV’), Indigenous Family Violence: Phase 1 Meta-evaluation Report (2003) I, <http://ofw.facsia.gov.au/downloads/pdfs/d_v/padv_phase_one_ifv.pdf> at 23 November 2007.

[4] PADV, Second Report of the Taskforce 1999–2000 (2000), <http://ofw.facs.gov.au/downloads/pdfs/d_v/second_report_taskforce.pdf> at 23 November 2007.

[5] PADV Indigenous Family Violence: Phase 1 Meta-evaluation Report (2003).

[6] Ibid 95.

[7] Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Women’s Task Force on Violence, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Women’s Task Force on Violence Report (1999).

[8] T Koch, series of newspaper articles and associated responses on Indigenous violence in Queensland published in The Courier Mail (Brisbane, 31 October 1998, 2 November 1998, 3 November 1998, 7 November 1998).

[9] T Fitzgerald, Cape York Justice Study (1998).

[10] Paul Memmott, Rachael Stacy, Catherine Chambers and Catherine Keys, Violence in Indigenous Communities: Full Report (2001).

[11] Sue Gordon, Kay Hallahan, and Darrell Henry, Putting the Picture Together: Inquiry into Response by Government Agencies to Complaints of Family Violence and Child Abuse in Aboriginal Communities (2001).

[12] Ibid 427.

[13] Ibid 429.

[14] Rex Wild and Pat Anderson, Ampe Akelyernemane Meke Mekarle: “Little Children are Sacred”: Report of the Northern Territory Board of Inquiry into the Protection of Aboriginal Children from Sexual Abuse (2007).

[15] Mal Brough MP, ‘National Emergency Response to Protect Aboriginal Children in the NT’ (Press Release, 21 June 2007) <http://www.atsia.gov.au/Media/media07/210607.aspx> at 19 October 2007.

[16] Mal Brough MP, ‘NT Taskforce Operational Commander’ (Press Release, 30 June 2007) <http://www.atsia.gov.au/Media/media07/300607_operational_commander.aspx> at 19 October 2007.

[17] Mal Brough MP above n 15, 1.

[18] Wild and Anderson, above n 14, 7.

[19] Gordon et al, above n 11, 429.

[20] Lindsay Murdoch & Stephanie Peatling, ‘Terrified Families Flee in Panic’Sydney Morning Herald (Sydney), 27 June 2007, <http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/terrified-families-flee-in-panic/2007/06/26/1182623909275.html> at 22 October 2007.

[21] See Michael Winkler, Strong & Smart: Chris Sarra and Cherbourg <http://www.daretolead.edu.au/cache14/RA_NSW_CHERBOURG.html> at 20 October 2007.


AustLII: Copyright Policy | Disclaimers | Privacy Policy | Feedback
URL: http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/IndigLawB/2007/60.html