A guest post by Nathan Evans* The Northern Territory Homelands Movement began in the 1970s and was a visible demonstration of Aboriginal people across the Northern Territory asserting their rights to determine their lives on their traditional lands. When first established, these homelands received almost no government services. The construction of physical infrastructure was left [...]
Dr Bush-Blanasi 19-11-1961—12-11-2023 NT News, 14 November 2023 Long-time Northern Land Council chairman and 2023 NT Australian of theYear Dr Bush-Blanasi has passed away aged 61 following a short illness.He was surrounded by members of his extended family when he passedaway at Royal Darwin Hospital on Sunday. Dr Bush-Blanasi was a Yolngu man with country [...]
Keep Australia Clean (Kill a Coon); If Abos want land they should buy the bastard the same as the whites do. They have no rights to any land whatever. If they don’t want to work under our system – let ‘em starve; People with black legs won’t be served; and Buy some Coon cheese today for catching black mice:Noticeboard, Daly Waters Hotel, 1978.
Not a lot has changed since I last looked at Elliott/Kulumindini six years ago—it is still stuck in an administrative worm hole. Services from all levels of government fall between the jurisdictional cracks often because Elliott is equidistant from the major Northern Territory service and administrative centres of Darwin and Alice Springs.
What is required is a regional structure with culturally appropriate boundaries which oversees all programs and consultations in the region. The directors would be elected to salaried positions and there would be staff to support and advise the elected members. Local Government bodies could not fill this role because they are ultimately controlled by the Minister, and they have roles that conflict with a body such as I propose. This would eliminate the random and uncoordinated “consultation“ burden and replace it with something much more effective and productive.
On the 8th of June 2018 the Northern Territory Government and the NT’s four Aboriginal Land Councils signed an historic Memorandum of Understanding paving the way for consultations to begin with Aboriginal people about a Treaty. The MoU was signed on the first day of the Barunga Sport and Cultural Festival and the 30th anniversary [...]
When the next incident of water contamination surfaces, it is important that there are clear public standards for testing, reporting, and remediation with direct lines of legal accountability to residents. Such legislated standards are necessary to reduce the likelihood of such incidences and to protect drinking water for all residents of the NT.
The recently-developed Darwin suburb of Muirhead is the model of an obesogenic suburb. It is designed around the car. There is little or no provision of public transport. Streets are meandering and there’s nowhere to go. There are no retail, commercial or social facilities or amenity. There’s no milk bar, there’s not even a pub!
The mistake the politicians made (although Clare Martin was an honourable exception) was to conclude that this very long-standing “emergency” demanded that the white politicians and bureaucrats urgently devise and impose their own “expert” punitive, paternalistic policy solutions on those recalcitrant, irresponsible black fellas who wouldn’t even protect their own children from the thugs and paedophiles in their midst.
The Territory government and land councils each have significant real world authority over the same land mass, and therefore real roles in important decisions made about land use, tenure and development on half of the Territory’s land, which in turn comprises twenty percent of Australia’s land mass.
