Will our Kevin '07 deflate in '08?

The Christmas dinner dishes have long been cleared away, so that whiff of turkey in the air may well be emanating from the ALP's Indigenous affairs policy.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has been careful to heed the eleventh commandment of Australian life and refrained from talking politics during the summer stupor.

But the beach cricket is finished now, and another year in the salt mines is upon us.

Kevin from Queensland has lobbed at The Lodge and installed a Cabinet whose initial responsibility appears to be one of hosing down expectations of any kind, and making sure that the horses don't get frightened.

These dictates would seem to apply particularly to the troubled terrain of Indigenous justice.

Mind you, Rudd has clocked up a few points for his skilfully orchestrated roundtable with Indigenous leaders in Darwin a couple of weeks before Santa hit town. Though no specific promises were made, he listened to people, acknowledged their concerns and undertook to come back and listen again.

The talk in Darwin's lefty Roma Bar on the day of the meeting was of how the invitation-only guest list had been assembled. Who was in, who was out, and how had the decisions been made? The Larrakia traditional owners were understandably unhappy about not getting a guernsey.

But in the wash-up, the Prime Minister's willingness to travel to Darwin for discussions with Indigenous leaders provided a sharp contrast to the style of the previous incumbent, and he left the Top End smelling like roses. It's his new Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Jenny Macklin, who has a harder road to hoe. It will be her job to say “no”.

Macklin recently poured cold water on the possibility of a compensation fund accompanying the government's long-awaited apology to the Stolen Generations. The disingenuous government line - that the money could be better spent on improving health outcomes for Indigenous Australians - is hard to swallow. People are entitled to reasonable health care as well as to compensation for wrongs done to them by the state. These things are not mutually exclusive.

In any case, a less curmudgeonly government may find that the demand for a symbolic apology is much greater than the demand for financial compensation.

On the upside, Macklin has acted to euthanise the late and unlamented National Indigenous Council. The NIC was surely one of the least effective and most divisive bodies in the history of Indigenous affairs in this country. But now that the NIC is knackered, Labor must move swiftly towards replacing it with a truly representative body.

On the ground around Alice Springs, Aboriginal people are worried for the future of the CDEP program.

Minister Macklin issued a media release on December 10 advising that a “moratorium” would be placed on the dismantling of the CDEP in the NT. It seems she's quite a fan of CDEP too, describing the program as "providing important infrastructure and human capacity in remote communities".

But media releases aside, there is an increasing number of people in the Centre who are beginning to wonder if Labor's undertaking to revitalise CDEP was a non-core promise. They will look forward to Minister Macklin directing her bureaucrats to end the dismantling of the desert CDEPs, and to begin undoing the damage that has already been done.

Of course, Labor have only been in government for two minutes and they are entitled to a bit of slack. We can't expect them to cure the common cold - or more importantly, the hangover - immediately. But on the issues where they have made specific promises - the national representative body, the CDEP and the permit system - the punters are entitled to expect some early progress.

Meanwhile, the suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act for the purposes of the intervention is a human rights disaster that will continue to haunt the ALP. In the leafy suburbs of the cities of the south, it's likely that many will find the notion that human rights can be “suspended” as deeply offensive - even if it is only for Aboriginal people.

Labor must drop the gauntlet at the feet of a hostile Senate and challenge them to restore the fundamental rights of Indigenous Territorians - or to “please explain”.

The nation's economy is booming and we have wall-to-wall Labor governments. But managerialism must not be allowed to triumph over vision.

Governments must summon up all of their political courage and take the opportunity to make great strides forward in the journey towards Indigenous justice.