Howard, Rudd and Gillard Government Policy
The Northern Territory Intervention was originally drafted by the Howard Government, with Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough being the chief architect. The Rudd Government took office in 2007 and pledged to continue the policy, though Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin ended the suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act in 2010. The Labor Party replaced Kevin Rudd with Julia Gillard in 2010 and the Gillard Government also pledged to continue the Intervention.
By February 2011, the original architect of the policy, former minister Mal Brough was arguing that the Intervention Policy had become stagnant and wasn't going to work unless it was revitalised. In April 2011, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott proposed consultation with Indigenous people over a bipartisan Federal Government intervention in Northern Territory towns like Alice Springs, Katherine and Tennant Creek which would cover such areas as police numbers and school attendance in an effort to address what he described as a "failed state" situation developing in areas of the Northern Territory.
Prime Minister Gillard toured Northern Territory Communities in June 2011 and told the media "I believe the intervention has made a difference", citing the provision of meals to children, and better child health and welfare outcomes and a reduction in aggravated assaults.
Read more about this topic: Northern Territory National Emergency Response
Famous quotes containing the words government and/or policy:
“... the happiness of a people is the only rational object of government, and the only object for which a people, free to choose, can have a government at all.”
—Frances Wright (1795–1852)
“U.S. international and security policy ... has as its primary goal the preservation of what we might call “the Fifth Freedom,” understood crudely but with a fair degree of accuracy as the freedom to rob, to exploit and to dominate, to undertake any course of action to ensure that existing privilege is protected and advanced.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)