Indigenous doctors have delivered a scathing assessment of the NT intervention, warning that its impact on the health and wellbeing of communities, families and individuals has been negative.
In its submission to the Federal review of the Northern Territory Emergency Response (NTER), the Australian Indigenous Doctors Association says that poor communication and lack of consultation have engendered fear, mistrust, anger, despair, and a sense of powerlessness:
… our research shows that the NTER has caused immediate and lasting harm to Indigenous people.
AIDA says interim results from its Health Impact Assessment show the intervention has been disempowering because of its discriminatory nature, disregard for the principles of self-determination and the negative impact on culture and social structures:
Furthermore, our interviews with communities and stakeholders very powerfully evoked a sense of regressing to the ‘old days’: many people referred to the feelings of shame, humiliation and loss of dignity that particularly characterised an earlier ‘protectionist’ period in history when the Government controlled every aspect of Indigenous people’s lives.
Nor does AIDA support the compulsory quarantining of welfare payments:
As medical professionals, we believe that this is akin to medically treating patients without their consent ‘for their own good’; this breaches medical ethics as well as international human-rights principles.
The submission also questions the NTER Taskforce Report claim that communities’ initial suspicion and distrust has lifted.
In contrast, AIDA’s findings have indicated a hardening of mistrust towards the Australian Government and dominant Western culture in Australia, due in large part to inadequate consultation and communication with communities.
AIDA does, however, find some positives in the intervention, including increased political and public awareness of the poor status of Indigenous health and increased awareness within Indigenous communities of the problem of child abuse.
As of last Friday, the NTER Review had received 179 submissions. But it’s not at all clear whether we will find out who else is saying what, despite the initial promise of “an independent and transparent review”.
It’s taken Crikey some days of circuitous phone calls — in which questions about whether the submissions and the review’s report will be made public were flicked from the review secretariat to the review board’s chair, back to the secretariat, to the Minister’s office, and then back to Jenny Macklin’s Department.
Finally, the Department offered this:
We do plan to release submissions once the Board has had a chance to consider them. The Government is likely to take advice from the Board regarding timing of release. As with all submission processes to government reviews and inquiries, before public release we will also need to ensure that there are no privacy issues related to individuals or organisations who might be named in submissions.
And, as to whether the review’s report will be made public in its entirety? “This is a decision for Government.”
If this is an independent and transparent process, then I’m a monkey’s uncle. If the promise for transparency and independence was sincere, then the publication process would have been decided at the outset and there would have been no wriggle room to allow the Federal or NT Governments to avoid releasing information they do not want in the public domain.
Transparency is not an impossible ask. The National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission managed it — advising those making submissions upfront that these would be published unless this was otherwise requested. As of this week, we can now read more than 200 submissions to the Commission, so we will be able to see whose suggestions and concerns have been taken on board and whose haven’t.
Given the murky history of the NT intervention, it’s unlikely that there will be a push for greater transparency from the various agencies and interests involved. We haven’t heard much at all, for example, about the Department of Health and Ageing’s review of the child health checks program, of which many experts have been critical.
Without greater transparency, it’s hard to see how there will be the opportunity for us all to learn from what has happened to date.
Hasn’t this always been about a veiled attempt to grab mineral resources in the NT, especially uranium rights, as a last desperate act of a govt doing one last favour for its mates in big business, uncertain of whether it would be returned in the next election? The state of indigenous health has been known about for decades — funny how they had to swoop in all at once, just prior to an election,and just after uranium futures were going through the roof and various countries were announcing ramping up their plans for nuclear power generation. Just another manifestation of the British colonial settlement in Australia at work, overriding native title, traditional uses of the land and violating family and tribal social structures, in the interests of spreading good health, the 1/4 acre feudal housing title, north-western European nuclear families and buccaneering access rights to resources to make the proverbial fortune.
What the AIDA submission is talking about is the execution of the NTER and, in this, the former government is bereft of excuses. It has stated that it embarked on a multi-million dollar mobilisation of resources to address the most intractable chronic public health issue in the country on the basis of 48 hours planning. I’d call it a knee jerk reaction, but spinal reflexes probably involve more neurones that the planning of this intervention. From this follows suspicion of their motivies because it defies belief that a competent goverment could act in this manner if its eye was fixed on a positive health outcome. The usual excuse is ‘it was an emergency’. However, if you are wanting to fix an emergency you always plan the response because, especially in an emergency, doing the wrong thing is likely to be damaging.
The main problems with the AIDA submission (apart from its pre-judgements, evident bias, occasional emotiveness, banality and utter predictability) are that it provides no data, only anecdote and opinion, and approaches the issues (by its own admission) from an ultra-sceptical position, which AIDA has adopted from the beginning of the Intervention. It provides little information about its methodology, other than that some doctors visited some communities and organisations “in July 2007” and talked to some unnamed individuals about the rollout of the Intervention. Hardly scientific or objective.
The most telling paragraph in the submission is s. 17 (on Social and Emotional Wellbeing). It asserts the dominance of ‘a feeling of “collective existential despair” … a widespread sense of helplessness, hopelessness & worthlessness, … experienced throughout entire community(s). It is a sense that has been felt by the majority of Indigenous stakeholders that we have consulted with – people who are not directly affected but who have family (or even non-family acquaintances) who are. It is a silent but far-reaching impact of the NTER, with profound implications for resilience, social and emotional wellbeing and mental health of Indigenous people in the Northern Territory, and throughout the country.’
In other words, the majority of stakeholders whose opinions were sought were not people subject to the Intervention’s measures, but rather people who purport to know what people thus affected think and feel.
It could be possible, even likely, that at least some of these people may have forms of vested interests in this debate. These interests could include ideological & political beliefs & philosophical assumptions which are challenged by the Intervention’s premises. It could also include people whose careers are based on certain arrangements which may not have benefitted from the Intervention, or whose organisatmay even have lost out in the scramble for resources.
Sean
I realise that this is probably a totally pointless suggestion to put to somebody with your type of beliefs, but if you could find a shred of actual evidence for your thesis (and I don’t mean the usual paranoid dogmas about mining companies, or fantasies based on circumstantial details) maybe you could produce it?
Avoc.
I think you’ll find, in the final historical analysis, that the so-called ‘NTER’ has a lot more to do with the BHP Billiton share price and future dividends, on all the stock exchanges on which it is traded, and the inexorable rush to create more and more wealth for fewer and fewer people in the West, as witnessed by record CEO salaries. ‘Avocado’ talks about vested interests — there’s quite a few colonial interests still operating out there. The ‘NTER’ has been like a slightly more civilised version of the recent Guinea coup plot by several British interests, not to mention other governments and parties that served to gain from it. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article3534842.ece