An Australian government plan to combat child abuse in indigenous communities by curbing Aborigines' rights will fail because it is racist, a territory government leader said yesterday.
Prime Minister John Howard announced plans on Thursday to stop rampant sexual abuse of children on Aboriginal-owned land in the Northern Territory by banning alcohol and pornography in those Outback communities as well as restricting the amount of welfare spending on gambling and substance abuse.
While the government's move to halt child abuse was widely welcomed, critics said the government had sidelined Aborigines from any say over policies affecting their lives, and said alcohol bans should apply to everybody, not just Aborigines.
"The Howard plan is selective, cynical and racist," Australian Greens leader Bob Brown said yesterday, saying the Howard government had neglected Aboriginal health and is only acting now in the lead-up to a national election.
Many Aboriginal communities already ban alcohol on their lands, but many overcome the restrictions by visiting bigger local towns to buy and drink alcohol before returning home.
Fed up with inaction at the local level, Howard said on Thursday that Aboriginal child sex abuse and violence was a national emergency, and said the federal government would override local authorities to impose new restrictions on Northern Territory communities.
Howard's intervention came a week after a report found child sexual abuse was widespread in Aboriginal communities, which were being destroyed by "a river of grog" or alcohol. Alcohol was also used as a bartering tool to procure children for sex, it said.
Howard defended the measures yesterday, saying the old approach of leaving problems to local authorities had "demonstrably failed" and governments had been too timid to intervene because of accusations of paternalism.
"Frankly, the care and protection of children is more important to me than slavishly following some philosophy or doctrine," Howard told Australian radio.
"In the end, if you can't protect children, you've failed," he said.
Jon Stanhope, chief minister of the Australian Capital Territory, emerged yesterday as the most damning critic of the radical strategy among Australia's eight state and territory leaders.
"I think by any definition of racism, this is racist," Stanhope told Australian Broadcasting Corp radio of the plan.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS