Wadeye: a case study of the Australian government’s Aboriginal agenda

After the ABC program, Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough announced an audit of indigenous communities, with “small, unviable communities ... encouraged to pack up and leave”. The government intends to strip thousands of Aborigines of welfare entitlements so as to push them out of remote communities and into the “real economy” in towns and cities. The Australian estimated that the audit would include 1,000 settlements with fewer than 100 people.

Two Labor governments—those of Western Australia (WA) and the Northern Territory (NT)—are collaborating closely with the federal Liberal-National Party government. The NT government is to study 547 indigenous communities with a view to targeting “specific communities ... for resettlement or service reduction”. The WA government announced an audit of 300 indigenous communities.

These “audits” have nothing to do with gathering information about the appalling conditions in remote communities, let alone attempting to address their underlying causes. Brough’s spokesman rejected a call by the Australian Medical Association, the doctor’s organisation, for a royal commission into the “health, land and social justice issues in remote Aboriginal communities”. Such an inquiry was not needed “because we know the magnitude of the problem” and “clear objectives and practical initiatives” had already been worked out.

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http://wsws.org/articles/2006/aug2006/wade-a24.shtml