[Commpsych] FW: [womenforwik] "TRACKING THE INTERVENTION" - 4 CORNERS MONDAY 5 NOVEMBER

[Heather Gridley]

"TRACKING THE INTERVENTION" - 4 CORNERS MONDAY 5 NOVEMBER

Next on Four Corners: How is the national intervention changing the
lives of indigenous people in the Northern Territory? Are children
safer? A tale of two far-flung communities...


After decades of hollow promises, it was time to cut the talk. In
Canberra's eyes the rolling scandal of child sexual abuse in indigenous
communities demanded action, swift and certain.

So the Federal Government grabbed control of 73 Territory bush
communities, dispatching soldiers and police to "stabilise" townships
and squads of doctors and nurses to check the kids. It declared it would
ban grog and porn, quarantine welfare payments and scrap the visitor
permit system.

Four months on from the dramatic announcement, what impact is the
intervention having on the thousands of people it is supposed to help?
Among the majority who are neither diehard opponents nor committed
barrackers for the intervention, is the early confusion and fear giving
way to wary optimism - or to a familiar weary cynicism?

Four Corners has been on the ground in the Territory to prepare the most
comprehensive television report so far assessing the intervention.
Reporter Matthew Carney journeys to two vastly different communities...

At tropical Maningrida, on Arnhem Land's coast, bedevilled with problems
but blessed with energetic leaders and potentially abundant resources,
there is scepticism from the outset. People are fearful about ceding
control over land and assets. When the ex-policeman appointed by the
Government to bring change to Maningrida flies in to introduce himself,
he quickly encounters resistance.

The locals have independently taken their own initiative to deal with
sexual abuse. They wonder about the effectiveness of the child health
checks and worry about what will happen when welfare payments are
overhauled.

At Finke, 2000 kilometres to the south, on the edge of the Simpson
Desert, most residents embraced the intervention as an opportunity to
garner real jobs, funds and facilities.  Here the intervention is much
further advanced than at Maningrida. But, as a simple excursion to the
town store soon makes clear, the process is still bound bizarrely in red
tape. And workers now without jobs are wondering where their money
went...

Join Matthew Carney "Tracking the Intervention" - on Four Corners, 8.30
pm, Monday 5 November on ABC TV.

This program will be repeated about 11.35 pm Tuesday 6 November; also on
ABC2 at 9.30 pm Wednesday and 8 am Thursday. 

Four Corners

http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/

-- 

Claire Smith, Department of Archaeology, Flinders University, GPO Box
2100, Adelaide. SA 5001. Australia

 

President, World Archaeological Congress

http://worldarchaeologicalcongress.org/site/join.php

 

Women for Wik - Monitoring the Federal Action in the Northern Territory

http://www.womenforwik.org

 

Sixth WAC Congress, WAC-6, University College Dublin, Ireland, 29th
June-4 July 2008

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.curtin.edu.au/pipermail/commpsych/attachments/20071105/dc0a91e3/attachment.htm 
-------------- next part --------------
An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed...
Name: ATT2322231.txt
Url: http://lists.curtin.edu.au/pipermail/commpsych/attachments/20071105/dc0a91e3/attachment.txt