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THE BIG READ: The circus is back in town
ISSUE 173 - 20 Mar 2009
By Chris Graham
ISSUE 173, March 19, 2009: Working in Indigenous affairs - particularly reporting on it - is like being stuck in a bad version of the Bill Murray movie Groundhog Day.
A few years ago, Misha Ketchell, a former editor of online magazine crikey.com.au dubbed it 'fishbowl journalism'.
A story crops up, the media jumps on it, and it's reported as though it's an exclusive, a shocking new expose on the latest dysfunctional black community or organisation.
But the same story cropped up only a year earlier. The same media jumped on the story then. And they reported it in much the same way, without ever looking at the cause.
I think Ketchell was pretty much on the money. Fishbowl journalism goes a long way to describing the mainstream media coverage of Indigenous affairs.
But the description is missing one big component - ego.
That's where a close friend of mine, Jacqui McArthur, a talented reporter with Fairfax in the 1990s, comes in.
Despite enormous talent and a burgeoning career, McArthur walked away from the media, disappointed and dismayed.
In her words, journalists were more concerned with being "arch entertainers" than reporters.
I think McArthur was also right.
Just look at ABC Lateline's coverage of Aboriginal people in Central Australia a few years ago, with headlines about 'sex slaves', stories featuring the blacked out faces of fake youth workers, and yarns where 'grateful' Aboriginal women appeared on camera to thank Lateline for its 'outstanding coverage'.
It was all smoke and mirrors, entertainment paraded as journalism. It had sensationalism and was driven by short memories. And ego.
It was a sort of 'three-ringed fishbowl journalism circus'. Not as catchy a phrase as that invented by Ketchell, but slightly more accurate.
Which brings me to the latest performance, a yarn which began early this month with a series of stories courtesy of reporter Russell Skelton from The Age, including a scoop entitled 'NT taskforce closure threat confirmed' published on March 2.
The Australian Crime Commission has confirmed its key taskforce investigating Indigenous child abuse, drug trafficking and alcohol-related crime was likely to be wound up in June.
Opposition spokesman on Indigenous affairs Tony Abbott described the decision as "reprehensible" and blamed the Rudd Government for failing to provide the ACC with sufficient funding.
Mr Abbott said it was hard to take seriously Government claims of being tough on violence in remote communities when the responsible minister was closing down the agency set up to deal with it.
"You would think that in a budget of $42 billion, much of which is being spent on low-grade infrastructure, including pink batts, funds could be found to keep the taskforce operating. It's a weird decision," he said.
In a statement to The Age the commission said a "lapse in tied funding" meant the ACC would be forced to reduce its presence in the Northern Territory.
Without fresh funding the 30-strong taskforce, which has spearheaded nationwide investigations into child prostitution and the trucking industry, and systemic failures in reporting child sex abuse, faces closure.
The Age reported exclusively on Saturday that the decision to terminate the taskforce had been taken by the Home Affairs Minister Bob Debus as a cost-saving measure. Mr Debus is responsible for the Australian Crime Commission. The taskforce operates on an annual budget of about $4 million. Both Mr Debus and Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin have declined to comment."
The 'taskforce' is the National Indigenous Violence and Child Abuse Intelligence Task Force (NIITF), the body set-up by the former federal government as part of a suite of packages, which included the NT intervention, aimed at winning itself a fifth term in office by wedging the ALP on the issue of Aboriginal poverty, dysfunction and abuse. Vulgar, I know, but we'll come back to that.
The NIITF was actually established a year before the intervention, after Mal Brough's no infamous violence summit, in which he invited no Aboriginal people.
It was the summit from which Brough falsely claimed that a million in cash had been found in a remote Aboriginal community, the proceeds of drug sales (a claim Brough eventually abandoned after it transpired the case he was referring to involved several hundred thousand dollars, a house in Darwin, a white man, and no links whatsoever to Aboriginal people or communities).
The NIITF was borne from Brough's summit, and was tasked with investigating Aboriginal crime not just in the Territory, but around Australia.
It has 'star chamber powers', and can force people to testify or jail them if they refuse. People dragged in by the taskforce commit an offence if they even tell anyone they've been interviewed by the ACC.
In short, it has some hard-core investigative muscle.
But back to the performance. The Australian newspaper must have been ropable at the story. The intervention is their policy. How dare The Age scoop Holt Street.
So, not to be outdone, the following day The Oz wheeled out Mal Brough, the architect of the taskforce and the NT intervention, and a man who is apparently unaware of the phrase 'self praise is no recommendation'.
Former Indigenous affairs minister Mal Brough has accused Kevin Rudd of abandoning the radical Northern Territory intervention in Aboriginal communities and destroying it step by step.
Mr Brough, who spearheaded the intervention when he was the minister in 2007, said the Rudd government's refusal to commit to funding the Australian Crime Commission's specialist taskforce investigating Indigenous child abuse, drug trafficking and alcohol crime was one example of a systematic downgrading of the intervention.
As you might expect, editor-in-chief and renowned communist hunter, Chris Mitchell weighed in from his bunker deep in the bowels of Holt Street... and promptly made a goose of himself: "Home Affairs Minister Bob Debus has refused to guarantee funding for the Australian Crime Commission's taskforce investigating indigenous child abuse, drug trafficking and alcohol."
Investigating alcohol? As someone with quite a bit of experience in this field, I can save the taxpayers' millions by reporting that if you drink enough of it, you get p**sed.
In any case, over the next few days The Oz rallied the troops and recaptured the intervention story by inviting all the usual suspects to weigh in. Most notable was a front page offering from Professor Marcia Langton, a Melbourne-based academic who ironically seems to loathe urban-based 'elites' in Indigenous affairs.
Indigenous academic Marcia Langton has accused the Rudd government of putting 'a price tag on Aboriginal children's heads' by failing to commit to funding a specialist Australian Crime Commission taskforce into child abuse and listening to Aboriginal lobbyists who deny the existence of child abuse in communities.
In comments that will intensify pressure on Kevin Rudd to articulate a clearer line on indigenous affairs and the future of the Northern Territory intervention, Professor Langton said she was fed up with the Government playing both sides of the indigenous policy debate and having no clear policy direction.
Professor Langton is concerned the Government is trying to appease both the anti-interventionist lobby and those, like herself, who are arguing for radical reforms to end dysfunction.
"There's quite a deal of behind-the-scenes lobbying of government ministers to relinquish aspects of the intervention and the Government is feeling under pressure and unable to manage one set of views as against another," she said.
"Clearly, there is no particular view in government; it's almost government by spin.
"They give an accolade to this Aborigine and then they give an accolade to an Aborigine who has precisely the opposite point of view."
She said the Government was taking advice from lobbyists who believed child abuse in the NT was a "fantasy" and a "conspiracy".
"I'm tremendously disappointed that the Government isn't making it very clear that they will continue with the special taskforce," said Professor Langton, the chairwoman of Australian indigenous studies at Melbourne University.
"This attitude puts a very cheap price on the head of an Aboriginal child."
In the spirit of right-wing loony Andrew Bolt - who denied the existence of the Stolen Generations - my challenge to Marcia Langton is this: Name one. Name a single 'Aboriginal lobbyist' who has 'denied the existence of child abuse in Aboriginal communities'.
And if you can't, Marcia, then shut up and go away.
Inevitably, by week's end Prime Minister Kevin Rudd caved in. According to Skelton, who continued to push his scoop, Rudd had intervened to force Justice Minister Bob Debus to allocate sufficient funding to the ACC.
By Saturday, it descended into a 'crow-athon' about who had saved the day. The Weekend Australian waxed lyrical about its intervention saving the intervention; Skelton continued to lecture the Prime Minister about, of all things, politics, plus how to win friends and influence people in Indigenous affairs.
"Memo Mr Rudd: This is a policy area that's working, so don't try to 'fix' it," Skelton wrote.
Memo Russell Skelton: In the 1800s, a man called Alexander Graham Bell invented a thing called a 'telephone'. If you pick it up and put it to your ear, you can hear other people saying things. You can even use it to, for example, ask stuff... like checking whether the 'policy area that's working' includes the ACC taskforce.
That's precisely what Chris Munro, an Aboriginal journalist from National Indigenous Television (and, I should declare, until recently a former NIT journalist) did in response to Skelton's story.
Munro phoned the Northern Territory police with a simple question: How many arrests have been made as a result of the work of the ACC taskforce?
Guess what he found out?
"The NIITF has passed some information on to the Northern Territory Police, however this information alone has not resulted in any arrests," a spokesperson for NT police responded.
So for almost two years, the Australian taxpayer has handed over millions of dollars to the ACC to investigate child sexual abuse in Aboriginal communities not just in the Territory, but around the nation.
And despite claims by almost every media outlet this side of Bangkok that Aboriginal Australia is populated by deviant males who live to rape children; and despite the ACC's massive coercive powers; its 20 month investigation hasn't led, directly or indirectly, to a single arrest.
Not one.
I'm not suggesting the ACC didn't put the work in - doubtless its investigators did their best. But their best apparently wasn't good enough.
It didn't work. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out that maybe we should be trying something else.
That, or we could just not ask difficult questions, quote the ACC saying what a good job it's done, and then blindly campaign for continued funding.
This rubbish sucked in quite a few journalists and commentators. Unaware they were falling into a big black hole, some of them, such as Paul Toohey from The Australian, kept digging.
"In a further sign of a weakening of the intervention, the federal Government has abandoned support of the Australian Crime Commission's Indigenous intelligence desk out of Alice Springs. While not strictly a part of the intervention, it was a strong ally. It was trying to crack child-sex abuse, with mixed results."
Mixed results? I'd hate to see Toohey's idea of failure. Because his notion of research is terrifying: "But one of [the taskforce's] most successful areas was tracking drug movements into communities."
Really? Here we go again. Another call to the Northern Territory police reveals:
"The NIITF has passed information on to the Northern Territory Police in relation to drug trafficking in communities, however this information alone has not resulted in any arrests."
Honestly, how long is this garbage going to continue?
These journalists are just making this sh*t up. It took Munro one phone call and an email to debunk the 'successful child abuse taskforce' myth.
It took one phone call and an email for me to debunk Toohey's claims about successful drug trafficking investigations.
By week's end, and amid a growing political storm, NT police media was adding a rider to their statements - intelligence gathering, such as that done by the ACC, was difficult work, and thus it was hard to quantify results. But no matter how much spin you try to put on this, you can't escape the fact that the ACC taskforce has got no arrests. Zero. In two years.
Just imagine if an Aboriginal body had been similarly unsuccessful. It would have been hung out to dry long ago. The Australian would have called for a Royal Commission. Tony Koch would have taken six months off to write a book about it. Chris Mitchell's head would have exploded.
Can you imagine if the NSW Police - or God help us the Queensland Police - were able to operate with this sort of low-level scrutiny by media? Half of the Sunshine State would be dead or in prison. Or at the very least bashed.
Eventually, some sanity prevailed, first through Tara Ravens, an AAP reporter based in Darwin. She reported comments from Northern Land Council CEO, Kim Hill. To say he 'unleashed' is an understatement.
"I cannot see any factual evidence base supporting the work that the ACC has done," Hill told Ravens. "Where are the arrests? Where are the outcomes? Can the ACC or anyone else produce proof of these claims?
"We have the national apology to the Stolen Generations, Mick Dodson as Australian of the Year and high levels of goodwill from all corners of the community - and yet we continue to be dogged by these hysterical, baseless accusations."
It's one thing for a male to comment on child sexual abuse in such frank terms. It's another thing altogether for a black man to do it. And in the Northern Territory, no less.
It's also worth noting that Hill's comments were published before Munro broke news of the ACC's 'zero outcomes'. This guy was flying solo. He's officially the bravest man in the southern hemisphere, although Hill can expect a gruesome death by a thousand media cuts any time soon.
Ravens' story ran almost two weeks ago, but it took until late last week for the issue to finally receive some balance down in Melbourne, ironically in the newspaper that started this circus.
Lindsay Murdoch - an Age journalist who unlike Skelton is based in the Northern Territory and has more than a passing knowledge of issues on the ground - gave the 'other side' an airing last Thursday, in an interview with Vince Kelly, head of the Northern Territory police association.
I also interviewed Kelly last week. He made some salient points:
"I can only say to you that operational police on the ground aren't reporting that the ACC involvement has resulted in an increase in arrests for sexual assaults or other assaults in remote Indigenous Australia," Kelly said.
"The Australian Crime Commission was established to deal with serious and organised crime. It simply wasn't established to deal with sexual and others assaults in remote Indigenous communities. The most appropriate people to deal with it are [NT] police."
But thanks to blind media campaigning and editorial one-upmanship, the NT police will have to do it with a few million less in funding than might otherwise have been available.
Kelly notes that the damage done isn't just limited to the NT.
"The Australian Crime Commission has a specific reference to develop intelligence and provide a report to the ministerial council on the extent of sexual assaults in Indigenous communities around Australia, not just in the Northern Territory.
"They were to be called to a meeting in June of the ministerial council and the federal government should have waited until that phase was concluded before committing another $5.5 million to the Australian Crime Commission based in Alice Springs.
"We also think because of the rushed announcement during the week, the federal government has missed opportunity to work cooperatively with the Northern Territory government to phase out federal police from the Northern Territory altogether."
In other words, a media campaign with half the facts has harmed the cause. Nice work.
Rudd and his Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Jenny Macklin could have come out and played a straight bat on this issue - there's nothing wrong, of course, with admitting that parts of the Northern Territory intervention are failing.
They could have pointed out the failure of the ACC to secure information that led to any arrests. They could have reminded media that not only were the lives of the nation's most vulnerable citizens at stake, but that it was pure folly to pretend the government had got everything right first try. It's never happened before, why would it happen now? Change was needed, so change would follow, they could have said.
But to take that approach risks provoking the 'Won't somebody plleeease think of the children' brigade. Macklin and Rudd simply cannot do the 'right thing' on this issue. It's political suicide.
Any hint of a 'watering down' of the intervention - in other words, change, even if it's needed - and the synapses of the 'save the children nutters' start misfiring at a rate that would kill a horse.
Part of the problem is also that many of these journalists and commentators - and in particular The Australian newspaper - have staked their reputations on the NT intervention.
There are big egos involved. The stakes are high. They've backed the intervention in sickness and in health, and they're going to support it come what may.
The really scary part about it is that these are the people now also driving Indigenous affairs policy. Macklin and Rudd have surrendered the power to make rational funding decisions to journalists and editors who are accountable to no-one. The lunatics are in charge of the asylum. It is 'policy by populism' in an area that can least afford it.
This is a media that rolls out half-baked stories, doesn't check its facts, grabs quotes from failed politicians with axes to grind and prints bizarre claims from 'Aboriginal leaders' without challenge. Amid the media storm, the government caves in to the pressure simply to make the story go away, and then we all pat ourselves on the back and call it progress.
Everyone wins. Except of course the Aboriginal men, women and children who have to live in these third world conditions while millions of dollars in public funding gets p**sed up the wall in their name, before they will inevitably be blamed for the massive wastage the next time there's a quiet news day.
This latest hysteria is not new, but it was begun by the shoddy reporting of ABC Lateline in 2006. It's been exploited ever since by journalists hunting Walkleys, editors looking for circulation boosts, and politicians who would rather we don't mention the 'A' word.
Of course, there has been good, even excellent mainstream media reporting on this issue as well. Ravens and Murdoch spring to mind. Murray McLaughlin from ABC Darwin. I'll even concede Nicolas Rothwell from The Oz has written the odd good piece, particularly on housing issues.
But the nett result is undeniably disastrous. An issue which should be lit up in the public spotlight for all to see and debate - child sexual abuse - can't be rationally discussed in an open forum because there are simply too many people waiting to bang their fists on tables at public meetings (and in the press) and accuse anyone who questions them of 'supporting the paedophiles' and 'denying child abuse'.
The process is obscene. It's insane. It's pointless. It's puerile. It's media wankery on a grand scale. And it's harmful.
We need an intervention.
editor@nit.com.au
*Chris Graham is the founding editor of the National Indigenous Times, and a Walkley Award winning journalist. His last feature for NIT, entitled 'The Betrayal', revealed the federal government was planning to tie land tenure reform to the provision of public housing on Aboriginal land.
 
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