Coles and Woolies the winners in Alice Springs

Mitch addresses February Council.

You can't lay-by a fridge under the conditions of the Northern Territory intervention legislation.

By Kerri Carr

Stories of people living in communities directly impacted by the Northern Territory intervention legislation were shared by Mitch, an Aboriginal woman, when she addressed Council on February 9.

"The quarantining of our money means we can no longer chuck in for funerals," Mitch, from the Luritja and Eastern Arrernte clans around Alice Springs, said.

"We can no longer chuck in to support family to travel to Adelaide or to Darwin to attend a funeral that they are obligated to attend, so those things have really attacked us. We are talking basic things like corroboree, sorry camps, women's business, men's business ceremonies, that we've held onto very dearly?to uphold our responsibility to culture, to land and to family."

Mitch said in order to get Centrelink payments you must let Centrelink know in which of three nominated stores (Woolworths, Coles or K-Mart) you want to spend your money in.

"The little corner shops, we can't spend our money in those because we can't support local businesses - people we've grown up with, families that we've known for many, many years, who we've played football with, who we played softball with," she said.

"In getting your [spending] card, you must tell Centrelink exactly what you're going to spend it on, how much you're going to spend and you cannot pay off lay-bys. So, if you aspire to a fridge or a washing machine from K-Mart, you cannot have it."

Mitch explained you must spend "every cent that's on that card or at the end of the month it's returned back to the government as unspent money".

She said the restrictions on the way you could spend the money was "really stabbing".

"What we've had in the Northern Territory along with the intervention is non-funding of stuff that we've fought for," Mitch added.

This has included a women's centre that was "paid for from people's pensions many years ago", a program to dry out petrol sniffers that had been funded by a family's dole cheques, and an Aboriginal youth centre.

She said basic services that they've fought for such as health, water, housing and clinics were now being closed on communities.

"Under the intervention we were going to get housing - one of the things we've cried out for," Mitch said.

"My grandmother still lives in a humpy," she added.

"The third-world conditions that are talked about overseas are what our families are living in."

"In the communities at the moment there has been a big housing boom?to facilitate and house the new business managers that are coming in," Mitch said.

"Not one Aboriginal house has been built yet."

Mitch said they'd hoped that "after many, many years of struggle and begging and crying for education standards to be raised in the Northern Territory for our children" they would get Australian standards.

She explained that Northern Territory Aboriginal communities only have primary schools - they don't have pre-schools, childcare or high schools.

"We thought that under the intervention that maybe we might have access to those things but there are no plans for a high school to be built on an Aboriginal community," Mitch said.

"What we've been told by the Rudd Government is they will build three boarding schools and we will come from the bush and attend those boarding schools in Alice Springs, Katherine or Darwin.

"We want to educate our children on our lands and give them a good, high quality education, which is our basic right in Australia," she said.

Mitch said: "I can understand the saving of the children.

"I don't understand the discrimination of saving black children over white children," she added.

"And now that we're into this intervention that's happening into the Northern Territory there hasn't been a black child saved yet."

©2000-2002 NSWTF Online is a resource for teachers
provided by the NSW Teachers Federation.
[Authorisation of election comment] [Privacy]

http://www.nswtf.org.au/journal_extras/alice.html
Last Modified: 07 Mar 2008