Those of you without incentive to keep half-an-eye on events in Australia may not know about the release of a report on the sexual abuse of children in Aboriginal communities in Australia's Northern Territory, and the controversial government response to the report.  The report describes the problem of child sexual abuse as "serious, widespread and often unreported", and speaks of this abuse as a symptom of the severe breakdown of Aboriginal culture and society in the Northern Territory.  It calls for "urgent, dedicated and collective action from the entire community. The Inquiry’s recommendations are intended to offer advice to the Government on how it can best support and empower communities to prevent child sexual abuse now and in the future" (emphasis added).

The federal government quickly announced a plan and moved into action.  The extent to which Aboriginal communities feel that this response is supportive and empowering?  Well, the community of Santa Teresa is asking the Minister for Indigenous Affairs and his "stormtroopers" to "Please leave jackboots here".  Perhaps because the Howard government's plan pretty much entirely ignores the recommendations proposed in the report, opting instead for a response that Hoyden About Town has fittingly categorized under "authoritarianism" (see that link for an excellent series of round-ups of commentary, primarily from Australian media and blogs).  With little to no consultation with communities, the government proposed increased policing, changes to welfare payments, compulsory medical examinations for Aboriginal children, and a variety of measures that reduce Aboriginal communities' ability to control their own land.

The Hoydens have done a thorough job of documenting critiques of the government's actions that express skepticism about why the government has chosen to recognize the urgency of the problem now (upcoming federal election) and why they have chosen to undertake certain actions (undermining Aboriginal control over land that industry wants access to).  And Blogger on the Cast Iron Balcony described how the public debate would go: 

1. The Howard government and their supporters have offered a set of measures as a matter of emergency. This is undoubtedly a Good Thing.
2. Many people will examine the detail of the messages and suggest that many of them are half-baked, insuffiently funded, likely to cause further trauma, or likely to punish an entire population and maybe even make things worse.
3. The right-wing noise machine will say that this is proof positive that the pomo multi-culti leftist luvvies are Soft on Child Abuse (if not positively in favour of it.)

It's a bit difficult to know how the debate in the media has proceeded - I haven't seen much on the internet in terms of commentary from the government, aside from Prime Minister Howard's denial that the response is an election stunt.  And I suspect a lot of the "noise machine" commentary would be taking place on radio and TV, rather than the internet.  Although, Elsewhere notes that:

it was interesting to see that once the Prime Minister had declared his national emergency, suddenly everyone in the Australian blogosphere was an expert on Indigenous affairs.  Which made me think two things: (I) political blogging really is parasitical -- i.e. dependent on mainstream journalism and (2) people were reacting to the Prime Minister, not to the Indigenous situation.

She goes on to provide this on-the-ground look at local discussions in Alice Springs, NT:

When I've asked anyone black or white, in Darwin or Alice, during the last week what they think about the National Emergency, they've usually paused and said something like, 'Well, something had to be done.'

People are generally wary, generally skeptical about the Prime Minister's political motivations, suspicious that it's all about land, curious and doubtful about the level of detail in the proposed agenda. But there is tacit acknowledgement that the situation couldn't (or maybe shouldn't) continue as it was -- and that the women had been asking for more policing on the Lands for years.  There are also some concessions that much of the social justice culture here is moribund and ineffectual.

And she raises a point that I haven't seen another Australian blogger address in such explicit terms (although perhaps I haven't read widely enough - I do know that BfP tore into it when the government's plan was announced) - the role that the government has had, and continues to have, in creating the problem of community disintegration by the way it has portrayed and treated Aboriginal people:

There was an interesting comment from an aboriginal Canadian on the Law Report this morning. Direct intervention, armies of social workers and police, hadn't worked in Canada, she said, as those involved had tended to act as if nothing was there, instead of recognising and building on the existing culture.

One of the effects of the culture wars waged by the Coalition over the past ten years has been to paint a wholly negative and depraved picture of Aboriginal people and communities.  Much of the Coalition's platform on Indigenous issues has been couched in terms of a litany of vices in need of address: grog, violence, child abuse, welfare dependency, itinerancy, etc.  These issues are in need of address, but if you start from such a ground zero approach, if you refuse to find anything of value about these people and their culture, how can you work with them to restore a sense of autonomy and control over their lives?  It's potentially a further form of cultural ravishment.

Nothing that the government has yet proposed would recognize anything of value in existing Aboriginal cultures and build on that to address the problem of communities disintegrating and being unable to effectively address issues of neglect and abuse.

When I started writing about this, it was more to provide a summary of what I've read so far for myself, but Elsewhere's observation about the devastating effects of the negative portrayals of Aboriginal people and communities resonates with a lot of the posts below about the portrayal of the countries and people of the Global South, particularly Africa, and how they pose impediments to addressing social, economic, and political problems.  I'm not sure why I feel the need to highlight this over and over again.  I think it has something to do with the last paragraph here, although I'd need more time to unpack it than I have at the moment (sorry).