Forty years ago, Aboriginal Australians were recognised (by Anglo-Australians) as Australian citizens. Many Australians, including Aboriginal Australians, thought the days of racism and dispossession in Australia were numbered. They were wrong. Aboriginal Australians remain a marginalised community, unprotected from colonial ideology and laws that violate basic human rights.

On 17 August 2007, the Australian Senate passed the Howard’s Government’s The Northern Territory National Emergency Response Bill, which aimed to address child abuse and dysfunction in Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory. The legislation allowing for welfare changes, alcohol bans, the takeover of communities under five-year leases, restriction of pornography, the revision of the permit system, and other measures. In short, the legislation gives the Government’s agencies and the police the power to enter Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory.

The Government alleged that a new report, Little Children Are Sacred, has forced it to adopt urgent policies to deal with ‘child abuse’ that exists in Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory. However, the report’s authors, Rex Wild and Pat Anderson, have condemned the Government’s disregard for the recommendations in their report. They note that: “There is nothing new or extraordinary in the allegations of sexual abuse of Aboriginal children in the Northern Territory.

What is new, perhaps, is the publicity” and the Government’s political and ideological motives.

Colonial Ideology And Aboriginal Australians