Too Many Captain Cooks

On the pretext of a paedophile 'crisis' in the Northern Territory, Australia, the government have prepared a land invasion of police, doctors and army. One press release from the government and a response from locals below

National emergency response to protect Aboriginal children in the NT

21/06/2007

In response to the national emergency confronting the welfare of Aboriginal children in the Northern Territory, the Australian Government today announced immediate, broad ranging measures to stabilise and protect communities in the crisis area.

The immediate nature of the Australian Government's response reflects the very first recommendation of the Little Children are Sacred report into the protection of Aboriginal children from child abuse in the Northern Territory which said: "That Aboriginal child sexual abuse in the Northern territory be designated as an issue of urgent national significance by both the Australian and Northern Territory Governments…."

http://www.facsia.gov.au/internet/Minister3.nsf/content/emergency_21june07.htm

The Solemn Promise of the New Captain Cooks.

"When the old Captain Cook died, other people started thinking they could make Captain Cook another way. New people. Maybe all his sons ... Too many Captain Cooks. They started shooting people then. New Captain Cook people. That was new. New people did that. .... they didn't care, they didn't know, ... They are the ones who have been stealing all the women and killing people. They have made war. War makers, those New Captain Cooks."

Paddy Wainburranga, 1987

Bob Gosford and Martin Hardie ....

If Howard and Brough can follow through on their Solemn Promise to the Australian People they will go down in history as either heroes, or as the instigators of our age's most cynical government-mandated abuse of children. From what we could gather from Aboriginal families in the days following the making of the Promise, these families were not in any way inclined to allow their children to be subjected to any Canberra Mandated Compulsory Corporal Examination.

Whether Howard & Brough can follow through on their Promise might depend on whether they can find enough doctors to do their dirty work? Doctors who will be willing to perform Compulsory Corporal Examinations which, as they and every first year law student knows, will constitute assaults on the very sovereignty of each and every Aboriginal child in the Northern Territory. Compulsory Corporal Examinations mandated from Canberra, that nevertheless amount to criminal assault.

Whether Howard & Brough can follow through on their Promise might well depend upon obtaining parental consent to these assaults? . From what we saw parents are drawing their own lines in the sand – and that line is firmly set at their front gates. To a man and woman they say that if Howard, Brough or anyone else mandated by Canberra turn up at their houses to take their children away for a Compulsory Corporal Examination they will resist to protect their children. And, if Howard and Brough think they are just dumb blackfellas they've got another think comin' - as they say around Katherine way, we've seen too many of these Captain Cooks before .

In last weekend's Northern Territory News, Associate Professor Helen Milroy commented on the nature of the checks that Howard & Brough propose to subject upon each and every Aboriginal child in the NT. Milroy is a child psychiatrist with the Australian Indigenous Doctors' Association and told the NT News: "Forcing children to submit to an intrusive examination without good evidence or parental consent is akin to abuse."

Is there any "good evidence" sufficient to warrant the serial assault of several generations of Aboriginal children? Manifestly not - there is no material in the Wild/Anderson report (link) that warrants the outrageous extremes in the Howard/Brough plan and, even taking Howard & Brough's oft-repeated anecdotal evidence (which has not been released for closer scrutiny) at its worst it cannot justify the serial assaults they are planning.

These parents don't mind their kids having general health check-ups – they think it's a great idea and this could be done at their local Aboriginal-run & owned clinics and health centres staffed by people that they and their children know and respect. But they point out what these cenre's need is real and sustainable resources and a plan which includes them as part of the solution - and not a part of some greater game. But they are firm in saying NO to Compulsory Corporal Examinations by doctors that don't know their kids, that they and their kids don't know, have never seen before, and in four months time they might never see again. They worry what will happen to their kid's medical reports and most of all, they worry about their kids being subjected to these unnecessary and intrusive examinations by strangers.

Whether Howard and Brough can follow through on the Solemn Promise might also depend not only on how they meet the resistance of Australian families at their front gates? Aand maybe on the fact of whether there is anyone home at all. Mutitjulu's Vince Forrester has already today suggested that, in the face of these new Captain Cooks, Aboriginal people might just take off into the bush. Or, heathen's forbid, flee across the border to the safe havens of the Unoccupied Aboriginal Lands of South Australia, Queensland and Western Australia.

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