A lot of Territorians side with the coercive Brough “intervention” policies because they’ve watched decades of non-Brough non-interventions fail badly.

The question of forcing leases is because the bizarro title system introduced by the Aboriginal Land Rights Act is a flat out obstacle to development. It prevents economic development, simple as that.

Treating aboriginals as though they belonged in an anthropological zoo — a policy that seems most popular amongst inner-suburbanites elsewhere in Australia — is an objective failure. It has caused poverty, disease, squalor and human suffering. It’s not racism or Hansonism to point this out or find it horrible.

Majority of the current lack of economic reality, of our current economic, educational, and social failures, directly result from Commonwealth’s 30 years failure to require such basic terms and conditions to be satisfied.

The Commonwealth at last is fixing basic problems visible since draft ALR(NT) was first tabled in Commonwealth Parliament and provided to the communities.

Current negotiations are protracted, largely because many involved came to believe Canberra’s bottomless pit of Commonwealth money would never end, indeed some believe it shall continue to flow – giving them their trickles of improvement, without any pre-conditions if only they can perform the correct wailing dance…

References to these extensive consultations at times are farcical.

Those with noses in the trough and doing well are wailing, the majority know and understand little of what is happening, largely result of land trusts leaderships turning developing what should be developing communities into zoo cages.

For far to long the ongoing refusals by Land Trusts to provide draft leases to hundreds of residents already housed using public monies have been ignored.

Residents can not obtain an Apprehended Violence Order to prevent others coming into their home whilst they are without valid leases from the landowner – these land owners are corporate Land Trusts, not individuals.

Individuals are just shareholders in these corporate Land Trusts, shareholders without the protections they otherwise would have…

Whilst residing in a home and purportedly paying rent a “Traditional Owner” still lacks their right to have their family or friends or tradespeople visit them whilst these “Traditional Owners” lack a valid lease from “their” landowning corporate Land Trust.

Land councils refuse to provide valid leases as doing so may give leasees some rights and responsibilities, the same rights and responsibilities as tenants elsewhere already have.

SIHIP isn’t much over a year old. Renovations started a few months ago and urgent safety work (eg electrical) was done late last year.

It ain’t fast, but given the usual pace for such things, it’s not particualrly slow.

That said, the requirement for consultation flows from the Commonwealth’s requirement that it be undertaken, and that requirement in turn flows in part from the fact that the commonwealth is insisting on 40 year leases as a condition of constructing houses. Negotiations over 40 year leases have been protracted, and despite extensive consultations, dissident groups connected with Alice Springs town camps (Barbara Shaw etc) managed to persuade a judge last week to grnat an injunction on the basis that the seemingly endless consultation might nevertheless not be sufficient to satisfy the requirements of natural justice!!! The delays and expense flowing from those factors is clearly the reponsibility of the federal government not the NT mob. Moreover, Alison Anderson is (or should be if she was competent) well aware of that. IMO the Commonwealth should legislate to abolish natural justice in respect of acquisitions of 40 year leases necessary to proceed with the housing programme.

Any expectation of a housing panacea from SIHIP is bound to result in bitter disappointment. SIHIP will not be the solution to all the housing woes in remote communities. Some communities will nothing from SIHIP in terms of new houses and some won’t see much at all for quite a while yet.

Below the fold: “Meanwhile, in other news, Govt enters its dying days”.

I guess there weren’t any crocodiles to trump a constitutional crisis.

Or are the UFOs carrying Damian Hale (per Wicking) back to solve the crisis?

The Commonwealth could certainly intervene if it so chose (cf euthanasia, nuclear waste dump legislation). It’s unlikely to do so given the Rudd government’s political complexion and the fact that at least some of the maladministration of the SIHIP programme which provoked Alison Anderson’s ire can be sheeted home directly to decisions and actions of Jenny Macklin and the federal government (viz endless expensive consultations instead of getting on with the job).

I wouldn’t personally object to Commonwealth intervention to force an election in current circumstances. It’s completely unworkable to limp on for the next 3 years with an unstable minority government (whether CLP or ALP) which will necessarily be hostage to the whims of a single excitable indigenous MLA with dubious judgment and a yen for the limelight. The NT is an immature polity with a population smaller than many local government areas in other states, and 30% of the population is functionally illiterate and hardly speaks English. I don’t think self-government should be abolished (the feds did an even worse job when they ran the joint) but I do think there’s a compelling case for corrective intervention where the emergent political system runs off the rails. IMO that is what is currently occurring.

Stick to Tintin Steve (which I picked here first on Troppo Armadillo).