Accountable to the people?

So the biggest news in Australia at the moment is the Federal Government's response to the "Little Children are Sacred" (that link is a big pdf) report by the NT government. Essentially this report sets out the level of child sexual abuse that is present in Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory- and its HIGH. Out of 45 communities surveyed, in quite a lot of detail, 45 had incidences of child abuse. Clearly, there's a problem there, and one that we as a nation need to take responsibility for.

This post is about the response that the Australian Federal Government has taken. There have been a number of opinions about the response, as there are always going to be. In the context of my vision of citizens having a voice there is one aspect I want to discuss and that is the consultation with the people living in these communities.

The measures set out in response to this report are extreme, however that's not really my issue- the Government has framed this as a "national emergency" and extreme measures are often necessary in emergencies. The issue is that these measures are being proposed and as I write, they are being enacted, without consultation with the people of the communities, and seeing what would work for them. What is missing is that the people who are making decisions, are not looking at the issues that have lead to these issues being so prevalent in these communities. Some of the measures that are being proposed are simply, predictably, not going to work without the community owning it as something that will produce the results for them. The main example of this is the Prohibition of alcohol part of this response. It is very predictable that if people in the community have not taken on for themselves that banning alcohol is going to make a difference, then they are going to try very hard to get around it, just as we've seen everytime one group of people has tried to make another group give up a right. What we have also seen in other Aboriginal communities is that those communities who have taken on the alcohol ban from their OWN will, is that it is very successful. You see, the point is that it is not the rule, or law that is important, it is whether there is support and ownership from within the community for that rule or law.

I guess this is getting into a lot of what I see as missing in Australian politics- ownership of the reponsibility of being a leader, and ownership of the reponsibility we have to our leaders to give them the support they need to be great leaders- that includes calling them to account when they aren't. The government is accountable to the people, not the other way around.