Labor MP Linda Burney says the abuses at the Don Dale detention centre could have come to light sooner if key Indigenous advocacy organisations had not been defunded by the Coalition government.
In a speech in Darwin on Friday evening Burney said the Indigenous media had reported the problems in Don Dale “months before any mainstream news agency did and members of the local community will tell you – they had raised these issues before”.
“But the story received scant political attention,” Burney said. “Key advocacy organisations which could have raised the issues more loudly either didn’t have the resources or didn’t exist any more.”
The abuses at the centre, brought to national attention by the ABC’s Four Corners program, triggered the royal commission into abuses in Northern Territory juvenile detention system.
Burney said in the speech while progress had been made on a range of fronts, conservative forces remained intent on driving Australia back in the direction of paternalism.
She said it was clear a retrograde trend existed, from the 10-point plan on native title and the destruction of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission in the late 1990s, through to more recent cuts to legal services, defunding of advocacy organisations and a denial of support for the National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples.
Burney said half a billion dollars had been cut from the Indigenous affairs budget.
She said there was “a concerted effort to silence the voices of Aboriginal leaders and a refusal to accept what we already know to be true – solutions to our problems need to be found with communities, not imposed upon them”.
“Paternalism isn’t just a failed policy approach because it pacifies communities and because it deprives individuals of their rights to self-determination. It necessarily makes communication one way, from top to bottom.
“Inflicting policy decisions on Aboriginal communities and then arriving later for a photo op and Twitter post is not a substitute for consultation.”
Burney’s intervention on Friday night follows strong criticism at the national Press Club on Thursday from a member of the prime minister’s Indigenous advisory council, Josephine Cashman.
Cashman accused the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, and his office, of not listening to key Indigenous voices.
“I have on a number of occasions put up recommendations and I don’t think there’s an appetite to truly listen,” Cashman said.
She accused the prime minster of displaying “complete silence” on an initiative for the federal parliament to stage a No More campaign event.
Cashman said the opposition leader, Bill Shorten, and the former prime minister Tony Abbott had both agreed to it, in Shorten’s case within a matter of hours.
Cashman and the prominent Indigenous academic Marcia Langton were also strongly critical of the prime minister’s third action plan to reduce violence against women and children.
“Forcing victims to resolve crimes perpetrated against them without going to the police will do nothing but feed the destructive culture of silence that allows criminals to gain power over communities through fear,” Cashman told the press club.
A report from the Productivity Commission this week found that Australia’s efforts to combat Indigenous disadvantage were continuing to result in declining outcomes in mental health, family violence, and incarceration.
