Truth the first casualty

The chances of two events as rare as a prime ministerial visit to a remote Indigenous community and a lunar eclipse occurring on the same day seemed, well, astronomical.

But last week as the moon turned red, the Prime Minister was returning from a visit to Hermannsburg, 120km west of Alice Springs.

It was a clever choice by the PM's minders: the road out there is bitumen all the way, and the Ntaria Council chair, Gus Williams, is a gracious gentleman who treats all his visitors courteously, regardless of their politics.

The Prime Minister arrived and dispensed paternalistic platitudes to residents about how "their future can only be as part of the mainstream community". Then he got into his official car and drove away. The man has a lot on his mind.

Election hostilities have not yet been formally declared, but a haggard Howard Government has already thrown the switch to “panic”. In an increasingly desperate attempt to reverse plummeting poll numbers, the government is blazing away at anything that appears in its gun-sights. But they are losing the battle.

Major General Dave Chalmers, head of the government's intervention task force, apparently heard from his office the impassioned orations from a recent Alice Springs protest meeting.

A fired-up former ATSIC boss Pat Turner, described the intervention as "the final nail in the coffin of self-determination for Aboriginal people".

Chalmers is a military man and has performed with distinction in Australian peacekeeping efforts on foreign shores. But whether his skills are best suited to improving the life-chances of long-neglected Australian citizens in their own country remains to be seen.

The Northern Territory Emergency Response Taskforce has taken to referring to itself as “NTERT” - in the manner of peacekeeping missions around the globe. From time to time they issue brisk and bloodless “operational updates” on their activities. A blizzard of statistics demonstrates that a great many things are being done “to” Aboriginal people, rather than being done “with” them or “by” them.

It's an election year and Indigenous Territorians are just pawns in a bigger political game.

The “children overboard” affair demonstrated the depths to which the Howard Government will stoop for political advantage. No surprise then, that when Mal Brough addressed the National Press Club, recently, he engaged in a bit of peddling of his own.

Not pornography or petrol, but the equally dangerous commodity of misinformation. The cowboy from Caboolture was shooting from the hip. And the ex-military man sprayed his ammunition recklessly. The minister went gunning for Pat Turner, Northern Territory Chief Minister Clare Martin, and Federal Member for Lingiari Warren Snowdon, over their alleged failure to combat Indigenous child abuse.

The main theme of Brough's address was the terrifying prospect of a red Rudd federal government lacking the ticker to take on the full-house of socialist state premiers. But he took time out for a romp on his permit-system hobby-horse: "You don't lift the fog of drug addiction with a permit system," he fulminated.

"You don't say, ‘No one's going to come in here because I've got a bit of paper. This bit of paper is going to protect you.’ That's a fraud. That is a lie."

Brough made no recommendation to abolish driving licences because some people got behind the wheel without them. Nor did he suggest doing away with passports because bad guys sometimes cross borders without valid travel documents. But - logic notwithstanding - he insists that permits have to go.

No matter that the permit system remains remote Indigenous Australia's first line of defence against not only drug-traffickers, but against those who peddle porn, petrol and grog.

No matter that it stands as a deterrent against those who would prey on children, or disrespect sacred sites.

No matter that the Central Land Council approves more than 3,990 of the 4,000 permit applications it receives in a given year - or that both the Central Land Council and the Northern Land Council actively facilitate the attendance of journalists at “on-country” court-hearings.

No matter that the overwhelming majority of Indigenous Territorians - along with the NT police union - support the retention of the permit system.

If the Minister has found a hole in an otherwise very useful fence, his task should be to repair the hole - not demolish the fence.

But the Howard Government has declared war, and as ever, truth is the first casualty.