But perhaps I am being too charitable?

They just don’t see why they have to give up their basic human rights in the process.

Somebody needs to remind Mr. Graham that Australia is not a society based on that empty trope “human rights.” It is a society based on the Australian Constitution, the State Constitutions, and the parliaments. With this basic education in civics perhaps more nuanced articles might flow from mr. Graham’s keyboard for future issues of the National Indigenous Times.

The country is too raw just now for Rudd to be the mover and shaker here. This is about groundwork. Politics and selling of same can take a back seat now, surely?

Let’s hope we can see this move away from the politics focus, and see and hear from those affected heartwarming results over the months ahead.

Hopefully we’ll get a minister less interesting in creating headlines and more concerned with creating partnerships to address the all too obvious problems.

The NTG should re-send their letter of June 2006 to the PM asking for a co-operative Territory-Commonwealth “significant and sustained” focus on remote communities.

With any luck there will be good advice flowing forward about how the process can be changed and, with any luck, there wont be any more simplistic solutions offered up. Change in this area requires flexibility, commitment, courage and the capacity to show respect where it is due.

Peter Garret as a new Minister would be a choice that could demonstrate that there is a new approach. He has sky high credibility with people living in remote areas and could get support for tough action where others will struggle.

However, I often despair at the capacity of some people to only see evil and malign intent on the other side of politics (and, it goes without saying, the opposite on their own). While I hope that the Rudd government does knock some of the rougher edges off the NT intervention, I hope they won’t walk away from the issues for another generation. I agree with Ken that many of Noel Pearson’s ideas have a lot of merit, especially if implemented in such a way as to genuinely build people’s capacity to take care of themselves in the longer term.

I would like to think that the incoming government was more into capacity-building than the previous one, but I’m not sure that is the case.

But questioning his good faith in this is deeply unfair - the military has also imbued him with a lot of personal integrity. Plotting all this for political gain just would not occur to him.

But questioning the former PM’s good faith in this is another kettle of fish …

The people of Wadeye were subjected to the full force of Mal Brough and, on the weekend, they made their views clear.

The intervention is clearly not all bad. Whether it was a cynical political move or a real attempt to make a change is not terribly relevant at this time. The money needs to keep coming and some of the programs can be made to work. On the other hand, destroying CDEP just so a person’s money can be taken is blind stupidity. Much of the money being spent is being wasted and that, in a situation where every dollar is valuable, is a crime.

Whitlam and Fraser visited Maningrida as PM and are fondly remembered by elders. If Howard and Brough had treated people with respect, things might have been different for them.

Who has got it right?”

That will be the the bloke who says sorry so we can all move on.

I’m glad you have such high opinions of Mal B. Perhaps you’re right.

If your comments were addressed to me, please address yourself to the words I used, not to something written by someone else who said some things that I found of interest and thought would be of interest here.

For the record, though I know far less about the issues, I can’t find any difference between my own views on this and the views Ken Parish has expressed above.

Chris Graham’s article is simplistic and silly, as is most of what he writes in the Indigenous Times.

How silly of him not to wait for Ken’s post, which will doubtless reveal the one true way to solve through a difficult problem, before going off half-cocked with his simplistic “facts” and so-called “figures”.