Psychology

One of Prime Minister Kevin Rudds earliest promises to the Australian people upon taking office was that his administration would issue an official apology to indigenous Australians for the grave abuse that the federal government had made against them since the second half of the 1800s until 1960s.  He was referring to the infamous so-called Stolen Generations, a label that is used to describe the event in which indigenous Australian children as well as those from the Torres Strait islands were separated from their families upon orders from the federal and state governments.  In many cases, the separation was made without the consent of the parents and the children.  The forced removal occurred in the years between 1869 and 1969 although several areas in the country continued the practice even during the seventies (Read 1981).  During the term of Prime Minister John Howard, there was pressure from certain lobby groups that the federal government should issue an apology.  However, the Howard administration never did.  On the other hand, Rudd made good his promise to release an official apology in front of the Parliament in February 13, 2008 (Peatling 2007). 

The concepts behind the Stolen Generation can be reduced into two contrasting points.  One is supposedly out of humanitarian concern to provide a better future for the indigenous Australian children.  In this regard, the postmodernist approach towards the issue is obvious.  A postmodernist theory negates the existence social classes and conflicts but rather dwells on the necessity of humaneness. The other is to reduce considerably the population of the indigenous Australians. The removal of the children from their families and their natural environment was a means of eliminating the original Australian race, leaving the subcontinent with a majority of whites who are of European, mainly British, origins. This is essentially a postcolonialist approach.  Postcolonial theory is used in analyzing the manner that the Australian government treats the indigenous people.   Both contrasting concepts, however, have shades of racism.  It is not only the elimination of the black indigenous population that is racist.  The so-called effort to provide the children with a different future than what they would get with their respective tribes also reeks with racism.  The notion behind this is that only the white race can bring about development and progress that only they can ensure the education and well-being of the indigenous children. 

It is in this light that the continuing federal intervention of the indigenous Australian communities in the Northern Territory is to be evaluated.  Currently, the Rudd administration is in an all-out implementation of the Northern Territory Emergency Response Act.  The NTER is essentially an intrusion into the political, economic, and cultural freedoms enjoyed by the indigenous Australians.  However, similar to the case of the Stolen Generations, it is being presented as a measure driven by egalitarian ideals.  In fact, it is racist in nature and is redolent of the postcolonial attitude by the white-dominated federal government.

Indigenous Australians and the Northern Territory Emergency Response
The interventionist policies of the federal government are reminiscent of the inequalities and injustices that the indigenous people suffered in the past when the country was still a colony directly under British rule.  The Rudd administration may have expressed apology over the Stolen Generation issue, something which the previous Howard government failed to do.  However, it also extended the implementation of its predecessors Northern Territory Emergency Response.  Therefore, despite the so-called shift in the attitude of the government towards the indigenous communities, it is still essentially interventionist in nature.  On the other hand, the Rudd administration is supported by both the Labor and the Liberal Parties in arguing that the NTER is a solution to the problems that beset indigenous Australian communities.

The NTER, which also called as the intervention, is a set of amendments to certain provisions in welfare, land tenure, and law enforcement policies already existing before the John Howard administration came into power.  In 2007, ostensibly to remedy the widespread cases of parental negligence and child molestation in the indigenous communities in the Northern Territory, the federal government under Howard, launched Operation Outreach.  This operation was mainly carried out by troops and units from the Australian Defense Force.  The entire operation ended in October 21, 2008 (Ashby-Cliffe 2008).  The NTER was prompted by the release of a report entitled Little Children are Sacred which concluded that the cases of sexual molestation of indigenous Australians have become very rampant, unchecked, and serious.  Although this was introduced during Howards conservative administration, Rudds Labor Party, which now dominates the federal government, continues to implement the intervention (de Tarczynski 2010). 

When the intervention was first implemented, the federal government released a funding worth 587 million. This fund is currently being used in realizing the key measures included in the NTER.  Such measures involve the employment and deployment of more police personnel in the affected indigenous communities.  This police force is primarily responsible for the restrictions on alcoholic beverages and liquor including the native kava and on pornographic materials.  At the same time, public funded computers have been installed with pornography filters (NTNER Act 2007).  The restriction on alcoholic drinks and pornographic materials may seem noble and harmless. The federal government considers these two measures as child sexual molestation prevention.  However, aside from these, the NTER also has key policies that directly affect the indigenous peoples land tenure as well as their distinct way of life and culture.  The NTER includes the mandatory acquisition of townships which was granted to the indigenous Australians more than a decade before through the Native Title Act of 1993.  The acquired townships are leased for five years with compensation based solely on the federal governments discretion.  A measure that affects the cultural distinctness and identity of the indigenous Australians is the elimination of considerations based on culture and customary law in terms of bail applications and criminal justice processes.  The measure that gained the strongest objection from different sectors of Australian society is the exemption of the NTER from the Racial Discrimination Act of 1975.  This exemption along with the limitation of the permit system and the mandatory acquisition of indefinite number of indigenous community areas weaken the fundamental tenets already achieved in the previous years that legally recognize the rights of indigenous Australians to their lands (HREOC 2007).  Aside from this, critics have pointed out to the fact that the intervention and the implementing law behind it were created with inadequate consultation with the leaders of the affected communities.  The critics also claim that the most of the proposals stated in the Little Children are Sacred report were not given attention.  Instead, both the Howard and the Rudd administrations went against one of the recommendations in the report that insists that the actions to be taken against the child sexual abuse must be local and that all these should be done only after a thorough process of consultation with the indigenous communities (Wild  Anderson 2007). Nevertheless, the Rudd administration continues to implement the NTER, driven by what it considers as a noble mission to protect the indigenous children.

As a result of the NTERs implementation, indigenous Australians in the Northern Territory have been driven away from their customary and long-established lands.  As this happens, town camps such those in Alice Springs and Tennant Creek have become overcrowded.  Even as complaints about the poor conditions in the town camps rise, the government and its appointed community leaders insist that the indigenous people are satisfied living in it (Owen 2009). The NTER measures are being implemented in all lands that are covered by the Aboriginal Land Rights Act (Northern Territory) of 1976.  This approximately affects the communities of 70 percent of the indigenous population in the entire Northern Territory.  Considering this large coverage on the land and the setting aside of the more tenable solutions to the child sexual abuse problem as recommended by the Little Children are Sacred report, it is clear that the real objective of the NTER is solely the acquisition of the traditional lands of the indigenous Australians.  In order for this to be realized, this may involve procedures that would result to the destruction of Aboriginal culture and links to land where it is strongest (Chitts 2008).  The reasons why these indigenous peoples lands are being acquired have begun to unfold.  In March 2010, Federal Resources Minister Martin Ferguson said that the government is planning to set-up a nuclear waste dump site at Muckaty Station, 120km north of Tennant Creek, in the Northern Territory (Statham 2010). 

Analysis of the Issue
The federal governments intervention in the affairs of the indigenous Australian communities have been justified with the premise that the child sexual abuse problem can no longer be solved by the built-in systems of such communities.  With the indigenous community leadership in the Northern Territories helpless in protecting the children, the Howard government saw enough reason to mobilize the state machinery to intervene.  Such line of thinking does not bear any significant difference to the reason behind the policies that shaped the Stolen Generations.  Barbara Stringer explained that this policy is essentially composed of an underlying economic agenda geared to assimilatory neoliberation, and a moral cover geared to converting the issues of violence, abuse and neglect into bottomless sources of official legitimacy for that agenda (A Nightmare of the Neocolonial Kind). Without delving further into the real objectives of  the NTER, postmodernist philosophy would seem to have influenced policy-makers. This is because they seem to set aside racial or cultural differences but recognize to achieve social and economic equality among Australians.  While certain sectors among the citizenry may see such differences, the postmodernist philosophy makes the policy-makers wish to revive the early romantic version of a unified world (McGowan 1991).  However, it is obvious that even if indeed human compassion is the motivation for introducing such intrusive policies, the fact remains that human societies have basic cultural differences that cannot be ignored.  Granting that the NTER is indeed the solution to curb the grave cases of child sexual abuse and neglect, it may never work effectively if it does not take into consideration the unique cultural characteristics of the indigenous Australians.  A postmodernist perspective on racial and cultural difference is based on the concept that these should not be recognized. The NTER bears the hallmark of the marginalized sectors interest being championed by a government with a Western liberal pluralist nature (Kramer 1997). 

Postmodernism does not prompt the federal government to implement the NTER, or in its general attitude towards the indigenous people of Australia.  This is mentioned only when the bases for the NTER or similar policies by the federal government concerning the indigenous Australians are sought for.  Behind the NTER is still the vestige of colonialist attitudes towards countrys original inhabitants.  Australia has been able to erase traces of postcolonial relations with Britain but it has been able to retain postcolonial treatment of the indigenous people (Huggan 2007).  It did provide concessions to the indigenous Australians in terms of political autonomy, cultural freedoms, and land rights in the previous decades.  However, its increasing need for resources to fuel its own economy has led to measures, such as those in the NTER that would denigrate whatever rights and privileges that indigenous Australians have been enjoying for a long time. As the federal government wishes to project an image of a responsible nuclear power producer, it decides on creating dumpsite on areas in the Northern Territory, threatening the lives of the indigenous.

Conclusion
Modern Australia began as a country established by settlers and was a colony for many years.  Unlike many countries that were able to establish nationhood by severing ties from foreign colonizers, Australia merely cut ties from its motherland but the colonizers never actually left it.  As the country decolonizes itself in relation to Britain, the process of colonizing the indigenous peoples continued for a time.  Now, when decolonization is mentioned, it refers to the moving away from policies of control of indigenous peoples developed in the interests of the nation state, towards policies of self-determination (Docker  Fischer 2000).  However, such process is certainly taking long as the federal government continues to retain policies that stall it.  Within the country, the NTER brings back memories of the Stolen Generations and of the colonial times when the indigenous people barely had political and economic rights.  In the community of nations, it gives the impression that racial inequality in all spheres of social life still exist and that Australia has not yet fully rid itself of remnant practices of its colonial.