not the motorcycle diaries

“A national framework for child protection is necessary, we can do better and must do better for the protection of our little children.” - Kevin Rudd.

Having worked with the child protection system I am much less excited about this comment than I should be were I to take the above comment at face value. A national framework has been advocated for years as a very basic policy intervention, and always seems to end up being hijacked for other violently paternalistic ends (if it’s not how such Interventions start off in the first place).

“Little children” really are the ultimate signifier into which to empty out all sorts of misdirected rubbish.

Is this for real? I’m sure I’ve got a drunkenly written film script sitting around somewhere that involves Mal Brough being presented, via Keith Windschuttle, with a medal from a society of the same name.

I couldn’t have scripted for this, though, so it must be true.  See you all outside COAG next month.

I received the email below today which is funny for all sorts of reasons, not least that I had intended to go here today to protest the Mexican Government’s recent attacks on Zapatista territory; this also being the day that these protests were held.

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 16:49:52 -0600
From: Australian_Embassy_Mexico_City@dfat.gov.au
To: Undisclosed Recipients
Reply-to: embaustmex@yahoo.com.mx
Subject: AUSTRALIAN FEDERAL ELECTION - 24 NOVEMBER 2007 [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED] (more…)

This man is the architect of the Intervention.

It just writes itself sometimes.

Some current containers for unfocussed loathing that has very focussed results.

1. Little Children are Sacred, the report which justified the Intervention.

2. “Sexualised” teenagers in a series of images by Bill Henson; seized by the police in the war on child pornography.

3. Islamic school children; apparently intended for taking over the town of Camden (“My kids can’t read Islamic … how are they going to go to that school?”)

* Kevin Rudd.

“… whatever happens, the kids have got to go to school, the adults have got to turn up to work, there’ve got to be police and we’ve got to have measures that stop the booze and the drugs and everything else which leads to the horrible things that we now know was happening.”

- Former Minister for Health, Tony Abbott, here.

From the Aboriginal Rights Coalition:

Protest March 13 - Stop the Racist Quarantines! End the Intervention!

Support Aboriginal communities in the NT & demand an end to Howard’s racist Intervention legislation.

At the last federal election Aboriginal communities overwhelming voted Labor in a bid to end the racist, punitive and paternalistic intervention legislation, implemented by the Howard Government in a desperate attempt to hold onto Government.

Eileen Hoosan, resident of Mt Nancy town camp has argued, “These laws are like apartheid South Africa”, referring to the race based ‘welfare quarantine’ and dubbed these measures another ‘invasion’ that attacks fundamental human rights of Aboriginal people. “It’s reintroducing the ration system from forty years ago”.

Despite claims that the intervention was a response to rampant child sexual abuse no new services have received funding. Instead $88 million has been spent administering the welfare quarantining with 50% of all Centrelink payments to residents of ‘prescribed Aboriginal communities’ being withheld.

The race based intervention has required the suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act and has overridden the Northern Territory Land Rights Act.

Many women from ‘prescribed communities’ speak of the intense shame they feel and the difficulty people have had queuing with hundreds of others for hours for ration cards with many then missing out. Aboriginal community members must spend the exact amount of quarantined money which can only be spent at a limited range of stores, Woolworths, Kmart or Coles, with any unspent store voucher money returning to the Government.

Community members also complain that the welfare quarantines have caused problems getting food and many people are moving away from their communities to population centres as a result.

While the Federal Labor Government has reinstated some aspects of the permit system it has just announced the extension of welfare quarantining into many more Aboriginal communities, including the urban areas Darwin, Palmerston and Adelaide River, now impacting on some 6,500 people.

Aboriginal communities are calling for an end to this racist military intervention and for the Labor Government to honour its recent commitment stated in the Labor Government’s historic apology and at the ALP National Platform adopted in 2007, to work with Aboriginal communities and to adequately fund services and infra-structure in these communities.

Protest against the NT Intervention! Stop Racist Welfare Quarantines!
Rally 12:30 Thursday 13 March @ Redfern Centrelink, 140 Redfern St

The Aboriginal Rights Coalition (ARC) meets on Mondays 6pm on the bottom floor of the Redfern Community Centre, on The Block. Contact Greg Eatock on 0432050240 for more details.

More here. See also here.

1. The Lajamanu Walpiri community responds to police violation of a ceremonial area.

2. Steve Jampijinpa explains the five pillars of Warlpiri culture.

Particularly since the NT intervention lurched onto the public scene last year, I feel the urge to keep up the critique of government and non-government ‘helping’ regimes. I’ve quoted it before, and I’ll quote it now: “the judgement ‘good’ was not invented by those to whom goodness was shown!” (Nietzsche, On The Genealogy of Morality).

So. On this. Whilst flicking through the notes I had made whilst I was overseas, I was reminded to share this little gem with the critiquitariat: Arzu Rugs. It was advertised in an aeroplane magazine, I forget which one. At first glance it seemed to be the usual marketing package of decorative non-western crafts attached to a charity venture: ‘conscious’ consumption with an ‘ethnic’ feel. Arzu brokers the sale of rugs crafted by Afghan women, “creating opportunities for women to obtain a consistent income”. But their trade has an even sharper twist than similar ‘fair trade’ products: it’s not just money, its empowerment, too, apparently:

“Core to the Arzu approach is our social contract with weaver families where we agree to pay the weavers market rate for their weaving, plus an additional 50% bonus on top-quality carpets.

In return for this higher wage, families must agree to send all of their children under age 15 to school full-time and to have at least one woman from each household attend literacy classes. Where children cannot attend a government school, Arzu partners with education providers and pays for classes to be set up in villages. Since most girls are well behind the education standards for their age group, Arzu funds “Fast Track” classes so they can catch up and join their peers at a government school wherever possible.”

This is a remarkably explicit ‘contract’ imposed on ‘third world women’ by ‘first world women’ in the name of salvation from the consequences of imperialist wars brought to the former by the kinsmen of the latter. I mean, those girls and women should sure be grateful. I wonder what they did before Western intervention in their lives?

Did somebody hear something? It was coming from the Opposition frontbench.

Before anyone thinks about heeding this call for John Howard style intervention, watch this.