A MAJOR investment program in Aboriginal housing in the NT is being used as a weapon to further break up community control, push people out of remote areas and entrench the NT intervention.
The $647 million Strategic Indigenous Housing and Infrastructure Program (SIHIP) is a joint venture between the Federal and NT governments.
Under SIHIP, communities are being denied new housing until they sign control of township land over to the government for between 40 and 90 years. 
And despite overcrowding being a serious problem in virtually all 73 communities “prescribed” under the NT intervention, only 16 have been offered any new housing, along with the town camps in major population centres like Alice Springs and Darwin.
Even many larger communities of more than 500 people are excluded, such as Papunya and Ali Curung, with on average 12 people living to a house.
SIHIP is a further step in the government strategy of assimilation and “population concentration”.
The Northern Territory Emergency Response task force, in their June report, recommended precisely such a restriction of resource provision to communities deemed “economically viable” in order to force Aboriginal people off remote communities on their traditional lands.
Aboriginal control
Community control of township land was won through decades of struggle for Land Rights. It signaled a break with the days when Aboriginal lives were controlled by paternalistic welfare boards and mission managers. It ensures that local people have input into what developments take place on their land and play a central role in service delivery.
As a result of the NT intervention, compulsory five-year leases have already been imposed by the federal government over “prescribed” communities.
Even the government’s official review into the intervention found that the subsequent denial of community control has caused enormous damage and left hundreds of millions of dollars wasted on ineffective projects.
The five-year leases have allowed control over current housing arrangements in some areas to be taken away from community-based committees and given to the “mainstream” NT Government public housing agency. This means higher rents, more restrictive tenancy conditions and easier eviction. SIHIP would write these intervention powers into stone.
Contracts for construction under SIHIP have already been signed with multi-national construction and infrastructure consortiums.
For example, Parsons-Brinkerhoff, who have made millions from reconstruction contracts in Iraq, are now following the troops into NT Aboriginal communities. They have a guaranteed place on the SIHIP operational steering committee.
Many of the communities being pressured to sign leases have said they will not be held to ransom for basic entitlements.
Aboriginal resistance
When Aboriginal Affairs Minster Jenny Macklin visited the Central Australian community of Yuendumu, she was presented with a petition signed by 236 residents denouncing the intervention and stating, “We want the Government to stop blackmailing us. We want houses, but we will not sign any leases over our land, because we want to keep control of our country, our houses, and our property”.
David Ross, Director of the Central Land Council has said, “Aboriginal people are being delivered ultimatums—sign a lease with Canberra before Christmas or forget about any further funding… of course people are resisting.”
It is becoming increasingly clear that, along with the $1 billion already spent on the Intervention, much of the money allocated to “close the gap” will be used to further disempower and dispossess Aboriginal people unless there is a serious fight-back.
On November 7, the Prescribed Area People’s Alliance, whose meetings have been attended by over 130 people, condemned the SIHIP leases and stated:
“We call on other communities to take action, in their communities. We call for rallies here in Alice Springs and around the country to mark Human Rights Day on December 13, 60 years since the UN human rights charter was signed. We call for everyone who supports Aboriginal rights to converge on Canberra for the opening of Parliament in 2009”.
By Paddy Gibson
The device being used to deny Commonwealth funding for most NT discrete Aboriginal communities (about 500 hundred communities) is the MOU signed between the Commonwealth and the Northern Territory in September 2007. Its title is “Memorandum of Understanding Between the Australian Government and the Northern Territory Government Indigenous Housing, Accommodation and Related Services”. This the key document in the concerted attempt to destroy outstations and similar small communities. This documant is more important than any document coming out of the NTER. Papragraph 17 in particular makes clear that outstations are to be excluded from Commonwealth funding. Anyone interested in what is going on with outstaions and housing in the NT should obtain this document. It is disgraceful that it is being honoured by the Rudd Government. It needs to be renounced and a proper partnership developed between the NT and the Commonwealth in respect of all remote Indigenous communities including adequate and aoppropriate housing. Aboriginal people should not be required to leave their country to obtain government services.
it is important that the MOU be renounced and arrangments be renegotiated.
We can see the way this cold bureaucratic, yet deeply approach to Aboriginal people is solidifying in the new Rudd government by looking at the recent announcement around funding for Indigenous housing at COAG.
I suspect the $800 million allocated to SIHIP in the NT is included in the $2 billion Rudd is congratulating himself on allocating to Indigenous housing at COAG. A government media release stipulates that the housing investment will come with reforms to tenancy management, rent collection and “a requirement that new and existing housing assets be held under secure tenure, including long-term leases”.
COAG also announced that 26 remote communities across Australia (including those in the NT mentioned above) have been earmarked to be built up as population centres run by government.
Is it possible for you to send me a copy of the MOU you mention George? I don’t believe they have this document up on the Internet. The NT government is currently using the MOU to defer responsibility facing incredible anger about the outstations announcements et al. My email is [email protected]
In case anybody else is interested in the MOU between the Commonwealth and NT in Sept 07, you can find it on:
http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/committee/indig_ctte/submissions/sub28_attachment_8.pdf