Northern Territory Intervention, Media Analysis..

The Northern Territory Intervention or National Emergency Response was introduced by the Australian Federal Government as a response to a written report that was released by the Northern Territory Government. The report released controversial information outlining the sexual assault of indigenous children within remote Aboriginal communities of the Northern Territory. “The media were awash with claims of paedophile rings and that all Aboriginal men are perpetrators, all Aboriginal children are abused and that these abuses are compounded by social dysfunction that is largely the consequence of a primitive and barbaric culture.” The Little Children are Sacred report, which was the basis for the “Emergency Response” makes 97 recommendations focusing on education, family support, building community trust and empowerment of Aboriginal communities all of which were largely ignored. In some cases the Howard Government went against the recommendations that were given. The measures that were enacted “do not have any coherent logic or consistency but can be clustered into the following three groupings 1) Those that seek to discipline Indigenous subject/labour/future labour 2) Those that seek to dilute land rights or expand there potential for commercial development or as Pat Turner has termed “A Trojan horse to resume total control of their lands” 3) Those that seek to depoliticise democratic Indigenous organisations and to impose external control over townships.”

In the following essay the writer will compare and contrast, two different media sources. The first article is from The Australian and was published in February of 2010. The article that is analysed here is indicative of what was and is portrayed in the rest of the mainstream media outlets before and after the Intervention. This article will be compared and contrasted to an article that was on the Socialist Alternative website. Socialist Alternative is an Independent radical left wing organisation and the... [continues]

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