By Robert Morgan
23 February 2010
On February 1, the Rudd government acquired freehold ownership of the Aboriginal town camp of Ilpeye Ilpeye, located on the outskirts of Alice Springs, in Australia’s Northern Territory.
The Australian newspaper hailed the acquisition as a “landmark deal” between the residents of the Ilpeye Ilpeye community and the Commonwealth, in which the former “agreed to pass the title of their land” to the latter in return for access to federally-funded infrastructure and the opportunity to own their homes.
In reality, there was no “deal”. Instead, the Labor government compulsorily acquired the Ilpeye Ilpeye land, establishing a new benchmark in its aggressive agenda of opening up areas presently owned and controlled by Aboriginal communities for unrestrained capitalist exploitation—particularly by the resource and tourism industries—under the auspices of the Northern Territory “emergency intervention”.
The “intervention” was launched in June 2007. Under the pretext of protecting Aboriginal children in the Northern Territory from child abuse, the former Howard government despatched troops and federal police to enforce “emergency” federal legislative measures contained in the Northern Territory National Emergency Response Act 2007 (Cth) (“NTNER”). These included bans on alcohol and pornography, “welfare quarantining” for Aboriginal communities—and the compulsory acquisition of land. The legislation was so openly discriminatory against indigenous people that its operation required the suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (Cth).
