Colonial Turbulence in the North single work   essay  
Issue Details: First known date: 2017... 2017 Colonial Turbulence in the North
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'A turbulent decade has gone by since the coming of the Northern Territory 'Emergency Response' (NTER), a policy revolution in the grand style, unveiled in Canberra on 21 June 2007 with high dramatic accents by the prime minister of the day, John Howard, and his keen-eyed aide-de-camp, Indigenous affairs minister Mal Brough. It became known at once as the 'Intervention' - a project to transform the remote communities of the North. It was designed to be at once rescue mission and remedy for a raft of troubles: the cure for alcoholism, child neglect and passive welfare dependency, a scheme for restoring bush Indigenous men and women to their better selves. High ambitions; heroicseeming dreams. In retrospect, it is plain enough that the Intervention failed; it failed absolutely, and it failed on its own terms, although, like most failures in Aboriginal policy, it lingers on, diluted, rebadged and refashioned, its key measures still obdurately in place. The reasons for this failure are multiple, and only some of them are well characterised in the debates still ticking over amidst the bureaucratic and academic circles that make remote Indigenous Australia and its well-being the focus of their professional lives. It is clear that the NTER brought chaos, upset and vastly increased levels of administrative surveillance and control in its wake, but much about the project's long-term impact, during the course of its various incarnations under three successive Commonwealth governments, remains mysterious to its architects. The NTER has gradually taken on the aspect of a colonial endeavour, achieving the precise opposite of its stated aims, for the very reason that colonial endeavours often go astray: they aim to co-opt, and persuade, but the overseers of these efforts at social engineering cannot sense the way they seem to those they aim to change.'  (Publication abstract)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Arena Magazine no. 148 June 2017 12009386 2017 periodical issue

    'Once a month the Murdoch-owned Australian newspaper publishes a business-affairs supplement called The Deal. The May issue was dedicated to what it called ‘The New Agenda: Celebrating Indigenous Success’. Across forty-eight pages a series of short, upbeat, public relations–style reports spruiked Indigenous business ventures, start-ups and individual entrepreneurs. Sponsored by the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and the Business Council of Australia, the magazine included some heavy promotion of the federal government’s Indigenous Procurement Policy as well as giving Andrew Forrest space to advance his own review of Indigenous jobs and training and the credentials of his Fortescue Metals Group. The Deal’s vision of a newly staked trajectory for Indigenous persons via individualised, capital-led transformation coincides with significant media attention given to the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Mabo decision, the fiftieth anniversary of the 1967 referendum and the culmination of Indigenous people’s caucusing on constitutional recognition at Uluru in May 2017. The passing of another anniversary has however been strikingly absent from these liberal progressive media celebrations of policy success and Aboriginal ‘advancement’: the tenth anniversary of the Northern Territory Emergency Response (NTER; the Intervention).' (Editorial introduction)

    2017
    pg. 11-17
Last amended 12 Oct 2017 06:12:09
11-17 Colonial Turbulence in the Northsmall AustLit logo Arena Magazine
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