The Intervention, Stronger Futures and Racial Discrimination: Placing the Australian Government under Scrutiny

The Northern Territory Emergency Response (NTER/Intervention), instigated in 2007 by Australia’s Federal Government, has led to prolonged human rights abuses for Australia’s First Peoples living in the Northern Territory. Indigenous peoples have frequently been denied three types of rights in Australia: citizenship rights, Indigenous rights such as self-determination and human rights. Although the Intervention infringes all three, the focal point of this publication will be human rights denied in the context of the Intervention, specifically, the right to protection from racial discrimination. The relationship between some Intervention measures and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination is considered, with case studies on two problematic measures that continue under the Intervention’s successor framework of Stronger Futures: income management and criminalising possession and supply of alcohol.