Northern Territory intervention "Unintended consequences" or deliberate destruction

Over the last two months a number of newspaper commentators have begun describing the exodus of Aboriginal people out of remote communities and into town camps and urban centres as an unintended consequence of the federal governments intervention into the Northern Territory. Their descriptions are entirely cynicalthe break up of remote communities is not an accident but a key aim of the government measures.

Former indigenous affairs minister Mal Brough spelt this out when he told the Australian on August 9 last year: Some communities are going to be very challenged to remain as they are and we are going to have to have honest conversations with people.... If you want to live there thats OK but dont expect the government to somehow build a clinic and put a school in for kids or whatever it may be ...

Here it was in black and white. The future of remote settlements would be measured according to market requirements. Those communities that failed the test would be left to wither and die, precipitating population relocations even more socially destructive than those that followed the mass sackings of Aboriginal stockmen in the late 1960s.