After the release of the new figures on indigenous disadvantage, the merits of the Rudd Government's continuation of the Howard government's Northern Territory intervention must come into question.
The intervention, being in response to the Little Children are Sacred report but only implementing two of the recommendations, has been somewhat questionable from the start, but has always been justified on the twin grounds of we must do something and this will get results.
It is now clear that we are not getting results, and that to continue would prove, once and for all, that the entire intervention rests on the old fallacy of we must do something, this is something, therefore we must do this.
A new approach is clearly needed, recognising that every time we have attempted a top-down, patronising program in the past, it has failed, and that the success in the long term of any initiative relies upon its acceptance by those in remote indigenous communities.
Whether through sending children to missions or sending in the military, the policies of the past have generally failed to take into account the wishes and concerns of the people in these communities, or the opinions of experts in the field.
Instead of bureaucratic and centralised Federal Government intervention, perhaps we should try localised construction and reform, involving the local people and combating the view of some indigenous people that they are being dictated to by the white fellas.
Most of all, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Minister for Indigenous Affairs Jenny Macklin need to make sure that indigenous affairs policy is designed after it is based on the wishes and needs of those in remote communities, not those in marginal electorates.
Joshua Smith, Gordon
It is depressing to think that the only positive to come out of the Council of Australian Governments meeting in Darwin was an up-to-date statistical analysis showing how far behind governments have slipped in their commitment to improve the plight of Aboriginal people in this country.
It is most ironic that a bureaucratic survey now highlights the failure of the bureaucratic solutions and limitless buckets of money that have been thrown at the problems by successive governments since the 1967 referendum.
State governments have failed in their obligations, and the Federal Government has failed in its promise to take over the responsibility from the states.
The past 40 years have been a political football which the major parties have kicked backwards and forwards in an endless game of one-upmanship.
The Northern Territory intervention of 2007 is only the latest manifestation of a game in which no one has kicked any real goals, at the expense of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
As Noel Pearson so rightly says, it is enough to make every fair-minded Australian scream. It is time to get fair dinkum, put aside party politics in favour of a truly bipartisan solution. It is the only way forward.
John Bell, Lyneham
Bushfire lessons
Michael Ruffles (''Put people first and foremost'', July 5, p19), draws timely attention to some of the failures of the bushfire administration on ''Black Saturday'' in Victoria.
The Victorian fires and the aftermath that is being frighteningly exposed in the royal commission should be sending shock waves through the ACT Government and the ACT community as we stumble into another bushfire danger season with a dysfunctional bushfire management organisation, having learnt absolutely nothing from our own bushfire disaster six years ago.
Faced with a single fire service by default as the Government persists in a failed structure experiment that continues along the path of denying the ACT Rural Fire Service its own chief officer. Rather by persisting with a one chief officer position embracing the four key jobs of chief officer of the Fire Brigade, RFS and SES as well as deputy commissioner, the ACT is exposed to a bushfire threat even greater than 2003.
The failed Victorian experiment in fractured bushfire management by multiple layers of bureaucracy divorced from reality and experience should be ringing warning bells in the ACT Government.
Firefighter morale and confidence sinks to even greater lows than the March 2007 rebellion when volunteer bushfire brigade officers withdrew their services in protest at dangers to the ACT community from the imposition of the unworkable RFS structure.
Despite assurances at that time that the Government would reassess the situation in October 2008, announcements were made only on Friday that the failed bushfire leadership structure is to remain. The ACT Government has ignored and lost sight of the fact that the main purpose of the RFS is to suppress bushfires and foremost the ''principle of protection of human life''.
Val Jeffery, Tharwa
Email a friend