Restoring Social Order through Tackling ‘Passive Welfare’: The Statutory Intent of the Northern Territory National Emergency Response Act 2007 (Cth) and Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Welfare Payment Reform) Act 2007 (Cth)

Abstract

The findings and recommendations of a body of Indigenous scholarship dating back to the 1980s, which indicated that violence and child sexual abuse had long existed as prevailing problems within Indigenous communities, was reinforced through the release of AmpeAkelyernemaneMekeMekarle ‘Little Children are Sacred’—the Report of the Inquiry into the Protection of Aboriginal Children from Sexual Abuse in the Northern Territory in June 2007. The scholarship identified the multi-faceted factors contributing to violence and child sexual abuse in Indigenous communities, such as inter-generational transmission of trauma; community dysfunction; socio-economic disadvantage; and substance abuse. It also identified a range of community-based measures for overcoming violence and child sexual abuse within Indigenous communities, such as community restorative justice, counselling and offender rehabilitation programs, education programs, and boosting funding to child protection services already existent within the communities. Yet the former Howard Government's emergency response to violence and child sexual abuse has ignored this scholarship and the 97 recommendations set out in AmpeAkelyernemane-MekeMekarle ‘Little Children are Sacred’, choosing instead to treat violence and child sexual abuse as symptomatic of the breakdown of social order associated with past government policies of welfare and autonomy initiated in the early 1970s. This comment argues that the former Howard Government's legislation, largely aimed at addressing passive welfare and creating viable economies within Indigenous communities, fails to address the problems and effects of violence and child sexual abuse.