Credit: Manniac

By Rich Bowden

A visit by a United Nations envoy to Australia has erupted in controversy as the official accused the country’s government of “racist” Indigenous policies.

Professor Professor James Anaya, the UN’s special rapporteur on indigenous rights and freedoms, told Canberra its policy on intervention in Aboriginal lands – a policy first instigated in 2007 under the previous Howard Government – was in breach of international laws.

He called on Australian Government representatives to reinstate race discrimination laws which had been suspended to allow the intervention in Commonwealth controlled regions in the Northern Territory. The 2007 takeover was justified on the grounds of health and the alleged widespread sexual abuse of children in Aboriginal settlements and included bans on alcohol and pornography.

Prof Anaya told Radio Australia earlier today that the policies enacted under the conservative Howard Government and continued under the present Labor administration, had done little to resolve what he called “entrenched problems” in the Aboriginal communities.

“The policies of the last decade or so apparently have done little or nothing to address the entrenched problems that existed before and they continue or in some instances apparently have been exacerbated,” he said in an interview.

He added that the draconian policy, which included compulsory management of people’s income and direct control by the Government of Indigenous land housing, had failed partly through the exclusion of the Aboriginal people in fundamental policy decisions affecting their futures.

“As a philosophical matter it is important that indigenous people genuinely be in control of their own destinies as all other peoples want to be, to be able to make the choices that determine the important issues in their lives…I think that experience shows across the world unless people are actually in control of the solutions for their problems, it is very difficult for those problems to be resolved,” he said.

However former Howard Government frontbencher Tony Abbott rejected the UN envoy’s assertions saying that such an intervention was warranted and necessary.

“I don’t think anyone who is deeply familiar with conditions in these remote places could seriously say that drastic action wasn’t necessary. In fact it was long overdue,” he stated.

Mal Brough, the former Indigenous affairs minister who led the intervention under former Prime Minister John Howard agreed with Abbott.

“Let’s get real, look these people in the eye, instead of coming in and telling us that we’ve offended some law rather than offending the right of a child to be healthy and happy and to have a future,” he was quoted as saying by the ABC.

“I get very annoyed when I hear people pontificating about human rights when today there will be children sitting out there in abject squalor with diseases they don’t have to have, with inadequate education, poor nutrition and poor access to health and we have some nicety about human rights legislation,” he added.

Prof Anaya is visiting the country as part of a 12-day fact-finding tour.

Tags: Australia, Indigenous, Intervention, Kevin Rudd, Mal Brough, Professor James Anaya, Tony Abbott, UN, United Nations