Treatment of Aborigines is abusive - UN

CANBERRA: The continuing federal intervention in the Northern Territory's Aboriginal communities has been criticised by the United Nations' special rapporteur on indigenous human rights and freedoms.

Professor James Anaya said the intervention breached basic human rights and was incompatible with international treaties ratified by Australia.

The intervention, launched by former conservative Prime Minister John Howard to combat appalling child abuse in remote settlements, suspended racial discrimination laws and placed wide powers in the hands of police and other agencies.

Now expanded to include such measures as control of family finances through conditions on welfare payments, the intervention has been continued by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's Labor Government.

Last week, as Anaya toured Outback communities, representatives of the Alyawarre people in central Australia sought UN recognition as internally displaced refugees.

More than 300 people had earlier left the isolated Alyawarre community of Ampilatwatja, north of Alice Springs, in protest at the intervention and squalid living conditions.

"We have no say at all [in our own affairs]," spokesman Richard Downs told ABC radio after the request was handed to Anaya during his tour of Outback settlements. "We feel like an outcast in our community, refugees in our own country."

In a preliminary statement at the end of his 11-day visit this week, Anaya commended Canberra for efforts to close the chasm dividing living standards between Aborigines and the rest of the nation.

But he attacked the intervention and the imposition of measures such as income management and community-wide bans on alcohol and pornography, which he said overtly discriminated against Aborigines, infringed their right of self-determination, and "stigmatise already-stigmatised communities".

"Any special measures that infringe on the basic rights of indigenous peoples must be narrowly tailored, proportional and necessary to achieve the legitimate objectives being pursued," Anaya said.

"In my view, the Northern Territory emergency response is not."

Anaya said the intervention was incompatible with Australia's obligations under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. It was also incompatible with the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Anaya urged the Government to reinstate the suspended protections of the Racial Discrimination Act.

He also said he hoped proposed reforms to the intervention would diminish or remove its discriminatory aspects and take into account the rights of aboriginal people to self-determination and cultural integrity.

The former elected indigenous body, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, was scrapped in 2005 after a series of personal and funding scandals.

The Government has promised a replacement before the end of the year and has welcomed a plan proposed this week by a steering committee led by Social Justice Commissioner Tom Calma.

The plan envisages a federally-funded private company operating as an independent indigenous representative body headed by a national executive with fulltime male and female co-chairs.

The body, which would have advocacy and advisory roles but no legislative powers, would include a national congress charged with setting policies and priorities, and a council to ensure ethical standards.