All events · The Long Emergencies

Australia's Northern Territory Emergency Response

2007–2022 · Oceania

Displacement Territory Seized

What happened

In June 2007, following the Little Children are Sacred report on child sexual abuse in Northern Territory Aboriginal communities, the Australian government announced an emergency response that went well beyond the report's recommendations. Legislation passed in August 2007 imposed alcohol and pornography bans, compulsory income management of welfare payments, compulsory five-year leases over 64-65 community townships, changes to the permit system and the deployment of additional police and, initially, army logistics to 73 prescribed communities of about 45,500 people. The measures were made possible by suspending the Racial Discrimination Act 1975, restored in 2010 when the scheme was redesigned in ostensibly non-discriminatory terms. In 2010 the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, James Anaya, reported that the intervention was incompatible with Australia's human rights obligations, discriminated on racial grounds and undermined self-determination, while accepting the seriousness of the problems it addressed. The framework continued as Stronger Futures until 2022. The intervention divided Aboriginal opinion in the Territory and remains contested in Australia.

Parties

The Australian government imposed emergency measures on prescribed Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory, taking compulsory leases over their townships and controlling residents' welfare income

Disputed

Whether the response was a justified emergency child-protection measure, as the Australian government maintained, or a racially discriminatory imposition, as the UN Special Rapporteur and many Aboriginal organisations argued; the suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act is the central point of dispute, and Aboriginal opinion in affected communities was itself divided.

The denominator

The intervention applied initially to 73 prescribed communities together with town camps and Aboriginal land, and the figure usually cited by the NTER Review Board and human rights bodies for the population directly covered is about 45,000-46,000 people. The Northern Territory's total Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population at the 2006 census was 66,582, and by 2011 measures such as compulsory income management had been extended beyond the original communities.

The measures were extended and altered over fifteen years, including the 2012 Stronger Futures legislation, so the population subject to them was not fixed at the 2007 figure.

Where the baseline comes from

On the death toll

There was no death toll. The intervention operated through land leases, welfare quarantining, alcohol restrictions and increased policing; its documented harms are legal, economic and social rather than lethal.

Documented forms of violence

Denationalization

The UN Special Rapporteur documented the suspension of racial discrimination protections and the removal of decision-making powers from Aboriginal communities and land-holding bodies.

Formal findings

UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous people (James Anaya) (2010) — 2010 report finding that the Northern Territory Emergency Response, including the suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act, was incompatible with Australia's international obligations, discriminated on racial grounds and limited indigenous self-determination — source

Countries touched, on present-day borders

Australia