Background Briefing

Intervention consequences
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While remote Aboriginal communities are safer, everyday living is more complicated. There's a 600 dollar cab fare to town, and then Centrelink has to approve toys for your kids. Lorena Allam reports from Katherine in the Northern Territory.

'Signs we should have', artwork by Chips Mackinolty.

THEME

Lorena Allam: Seventeen months ago, a huge, federally-funded convoy rolled into the Northern Territory. There were soldiers and doctors, police and journalists, bureaucrats and more than a few politicians, all part of an unprecedented and urgent government plan to improve health and safety in Aboriginal communities.

Since then, the Northern Territory Emergency Response, known as the intervention, has cost $700-million, been passed from the Howard government to the Rudd government, had had a major review.

That review said some big things had to change if the intervention was going to make a difference. But the government has just announced it will stay as it is, for another year at least.

The intervention's had mixed success in tackling all the problems it said were a national emergency: improving law and order and health and protecting children.

There are benefits in some communities, but those benefits, like the communities themselves, vary greatly and are difficult to measure.

In some communities the intervention has made life easier, through a greater police presence, or better food in the stores, where there is a store, or the promise of more housing.

But in other ways the intervention has made simple activities a lot more complicated, like shopping. Compulsory income management has forced people to seek government approval, through Centrelink, for everyday household purchases.

Andrea MacDonald: I had to go and get quotes from different stores, like furniture shops, toys for my childrens, you know, a really big hassle just, you know we were walking, kind of walked through a brick wall to try and get some shopping done, even paying for school photos and things like that there, we had to go there, get the quotes from the school, and then go to Centrelink. So before, it was just like you know, I'd have my cash and go and do my business and school for my children.

Lorena Allam: That's mother of three, Andrea MacDonald from the community of Kalano, on the northern outskirts of Katherine. And later in the program we'll go on a shopping trip to see the effects of income management.

Hello and welcome to Background Briefing. I'm Lorena Allam.

In the Aboriginal communities around Katherine at least, the more contentious aspects of the intervention - child health checks, sexual abuse investigations, and income management, may be having serious side effects, unintended consequences.

Income management is the most controversial. The Commonwealth Ombudsman says of all the complaints made to his office about the intervention, income management tops the list.

People receive half their income in cash and the other half on a thing called the Basics Card, which can be used to buy food, medicine and clothing. This blanket quarantining of welfare income applies to everyone from a so-called prescribed community', even if they move interstate through choice or necessity.

As you'll hear, the government had to make changes to the system but income management remains a major inconvenience for a lot of people, especially women. And there are other unexpected problems emerging with medical aspects of the intervention that were designed to improve general health.

Irene Fisher: You get anecdotal evidence that there's more food around; however we have increased anaemia rates that have shown over the last 12 months, we've had now some youth suicides, but also another one that's really disturbing is young teenage pregnancies, the girls aren't presenting until the third trimester, whereas before you know, we were getting our rates up really high of first presentations in the first trimester.

Lorena Allam: Why aren't they coming in?

Irene Fisher: Fear, because they think there'll be an investigation and their partners will be charged with paedophilia.

Lorena Allam: That's Irene Fisher, head of the Sunrise Health Service in Katherine.

John Howard: Well ladies and gentlemen, Mr Brough and I have called this news conference to announce a number of major measures ...

Lorena Allam: From the moment the Howard government announced the intervention, there has been an important and vigorous debate about the merits of such a sweeping approach - whether health and safety justify what is a discriminatory policy, because it only applied to Aboriginal communities.

Around the Katherine region, the announcement came as a shock. Many people told Background Briefing of their anger, shame and horror, and fear that the government was coming once again to take their children.

Man: Everyone was initially quite frightened. I mean, you know, like -

Lorena Allam: At Beswick, an hour and a half's drive east of Katherine, I spoke to Phil Harness, the community nurse. He's lived here for five years. His first child was born here, and his second is on the way.

Phil Harness describes the reaction when the intervention was announced.

Phil Harness: Yes, it was a bit of a shock really, we didn't get a great deal of notice that they were coming out and we weren't too sure what they were going to be doing out here. A lot of the information that was fed down in the media frightened a lot of people here.

Lorena Allam: The idea that the government was bringing in the army to examine all their children put people in mind of past policies. But the community had a plan, including Phil, whose own daughter would have had to undergo the medical check.

Phil Harness: There was initially the notion that there would be compulsory child health checks, and my daughter's Aboriginal, so you know, she's three years old, that wouldn't be sort of really something I'd be looking forward to, or even want to participate in for that matter. And at one stage here in the community when we thought this was going to occur, there was actually a plan to get all the kids that were sort of you know the younger, under-10 kids, and just taken them out bush and hide them while the intervention team was here. So probably I would have included my child in that, if everything had been as compulsory as what we were initially given, the information we were initially given.

Lorena Allam: Two weeks into the intervention, the former Aboriginal Affairs Minister, Mal Brough, was forced to back down, after advice from the Federal Health Department about the legal and ethical problems with conducting compulsory health checks.

The checks became voluntary. Hundreds of doctors, nurses and the army rolled into Aboriginal communities to conduct detailed medicals that took about 40 minutes per child.

By May this year the teams had done about 11,000 checks. But a month later, the AMA which had been supplying doctors, pulled out of the intervention, saying it was too hard to work with a government that treated indigenous health problems as a 'third world humanitarian initiative'.

The current medical director of the Sunrise Health Service in Katherine is Associate Professor, Fred McConnel. He's been a district medical officer and GP in the top end of Australia for decades, and his area of expertise is ear disease.

Dr Fred McConnel explains the child health check.

Fred McConnel: Well the child health check which was prescribed by the Department initially, by the Commonwealth government initially, was quite a long process, many pages of explanatory notes and things that had to be done and so forth. And it was quite a daunting procedure to look at; unfortunately it was also somewhat less than accurate in some of the things it asked for. For example, we know that there is a high prevalence of ear disease in Aboriginal children, there was no question about history of ear disease, and there was no question about hearing difficulties for those children. The parameters for examination of ears were inadequate for making an appropriate diagnosis for the type of ear disease that we have.

Lorena Allam: From experience, Fred McConnel knows ear disease is rampant in remote Aboriginal communities.

Intervention doctors identified 29% of children they checked as having ear disease, yet existing statistics collected for years in the Territory show it's actually three times that, 91% of children have chronic ear disease.

There's such a big discrepancy between these figures because intervention health teams asked the wrong questions. Fred McConnel.

Fred McConnel: There was a large emphasis on social history and on previous medical history, very difficult things to obtain in an indigenous setting in a community. You don't get that sort of history from people with ease, particularly if you're a stranger. So it's a fraught area and to ask outsiders to come in and get information of value in a relatively short period of time, displays a total lack of understanding of working in indigenous health.

Lorena Allam: Because the child health checks were an emergency response, rapidly assembled, Fred McConnel says they ended up duplicating existing services, re-diagnosing problems that were already well known.

Fred McConnel: What was previously known was disastrous enough. We all had a very good idea of where the problems were in communities. We all had a very good idea of who the children with problems were. Our major problem was enough resources to do something about it. If the resources had been made available to do something about those 98% that we knew about, then there may have been a much better outcome for the dollars that were spent on the intervention.

Lorena Allam: How long have you been a doctor in the Territory? How many years?

Fred McConnel: In the Territory since '83 and the Kimberley since '68.

Lorena Allam: So was your expertise of 40 years of working in indigenous health in this area called upon at any stage?

Fred McConnel: No. Brief answer.

Lorena Allam: At the Sunrise Health Service in Katherine, Dr Fred McConnel.

Sitting in the late afternoon, looking out over the bushland at Beswick, Sunrise's nurse, Phil Harness says bringing in lots of doctors sounds like a good idea, but those doctors may not have been ready for the types and severity of diseases they found.

Phil Harness: Really, a lot of the health conditions that we treat so numerously up here, are things that aren't seen down south, so it's all well and good to have a really good doctor and nurse team, or really fantastic health professionals, if they come up here and haven't been exposed to things like trachoma, quite common up here, if they haven't been exposed to scabies, if they haven't been exposed to other skin conditions, ear conditions and that sort of stuff. Because you're not exposed to it, it can be a little bit more difficult to diagnose. And because we're dealing with it all the time, a lot of the treatments and that are pretty well standard protocol for us.

Lorena Allam: Sunrise Health covers a huge part of the Territory. It runs nine clinics across 14 communities, in an area about the size of the UK. Sunrise does child health checks as part of its core business.

The intervention medicals began in Central Australia in July last year, and worked their way up to Katherine by November.

By then, Sunrise was well underway with its own child health checks. At Beswick, community nurse Phil Harness had done nearly all the examinations by the time the intervention doctors arrived.

Phil Harness: We were actually kind of well-placed to conduct the health checks on our own and that was sort of repeated throughout all Sunrise communities.

Lorena Allam: So what did the intervention team do then?

Phil Harness: As far as health goes, not a great deal. They told us we were doing a good job so we were happy for that.

Lorena Allam: Across the Territory the intervention managed to do health checks on 63% of children. In the Katherine region, Sunrise succeeded in doing 93%.

Beswick has seen a tiny fraction of the $700-million spent on the intervention so far.

They've had a one-off visit from an orthopaedic surgeon, a bit of dental work, and secured enough money to recruit an extra nurse full-time for three months. The urgent and outstanding need, says Phil Harness, is to keep the clinic afloat, quite literally: both the nurses' houses are in flood zones, and each year during the wet season the clinic can flood and the staff have to run it ankle-deep in flood water.

Back in Katherine, Irene Fisher is sitting outside her home, getting ready to go to the funeral of a young man at Bulman, three hours' drive east.

In August, a 22-year-old man shot himself after running from police, who charged him with carnal knowledge, and then arrested him a second time for continuing to maintain a relationship with his 15 year old girlfriend.

The police who chased him were federal officers, new recruits under the intervention, unfamiliar with the community they were policing.

The young man's family and community say they had acknowledged the relationship as a traditional marriage, along skin lines.

Irene Fisher.

Irene Fisher: Yes, it's been a particularly tragic funeral that in some ways personifies the way that things can go wrong with the intervention, because it's a combination of probably inexperienced mental health staff, newly-recruited police that weren't familiar with indigenous problems and community, and who reacted like it was Miami Vice or something. That's been our second suicide in the last 12 months. Look, it's not that suicide hasn't happened before in our region, but we put a lot of effort into strategies to try and look after the kids and engage better and you know, all the boredom and things that happen in substance abuse in communities. So we'd had a clean slate for a number of years, so I think it's very distressing that it's starting to re-emerge.

Lorena Allam: Young people are feeling the pressure of the intervention in lots of ways.

As we heard earlier from Irene Fisher, teenage pregnancies are common, but these days the girls aren't coming in for essential tests, often until it's too late in their pregnancies.

The combination of high anaemia rates and late trimester presentations has Irene Fischer very worried.

Irene Fisher: Oh, I have grave concerns, and another prediction I don't want to make is that we will get an increase in underweight babies, and probably more premature deliveries.

Lorena Allam: Irene Fisher says low birthweight and premature babies are more likely to suffer other complications.

Irene Fisher: I wanted to make the connection with underweight babies with the onset of renal disease and how it compromised kidney development in children, and we know that there are already high rates of renal disease in communities, and that is another exacerbating factor.

Lorena Allam: Irene Fisher says one big unforseen consequence for the medical service is having to confront the moral grey area of reporting underage pregnancies.

In the past, Sunrise has left the decision to report these cases, and possible signs of abuse, to their doctors' discretion, aware that doctors are already subject to mandatory reporting requirements.

But it's not a grey area for the Australian Crime Commission, the ACC, which has significant coercive powers and an extra $9-million from the intervention, to investigate child sexual assault in the Northern Territory. The ACC can compel people to give evidence, attend interviews or hand over documents.

In June, the ACC gave some details of its investigations to the Bennelong Society. These are national findings, not just for the Northern Territory. Here's a reading:

Reader: There are a high number of Sexual Transmitted Infections, sexual assault and pregnancies reported for children under the age of consent. There is widespread use of contraceptive implants and injections among girls with a high representation of 12 year olds, making them a target for sexual attention.

Lorena Allam: The high representation of 12 year olds is a national finding, not specific to the Northern Territory. In the Sunrise region, the concern is about the 14 to 16 year old age group.

The Crime Commission says records of teenage pregnancies or prescriptions for contraceptive implants, may indicate girls are engaged in unlawful activities, which may constitute a crime. They've asked medical services in the Northern Territory to hand over such records.

At Sunrise Health this has frightened girls away from seeking treatment, and put their doctors in a difficult position. Irene Fisher.

Irene Fisher: The fear is spreading to our medical doctors, who are getting really uncomfortable. They've always had that practice and it's recognised that that area particularly between 14 and 16 is grey, and is up to the doctor - if he doesn't see there's any evidence of abuse, that it's up to the doctor's discretion to make that decision.

Lorena Allam: So they're feeling the pressure of the intervention in terms of dealing with teenage pregnancies?

Irene Fisher: Absolutely. There's no doubt about that. And this grey area of under-age sex that happens in all layers of society, but at the moment, in indigenous remote communities, our young men are actually being labelled as paedophiles engaging in - and I'm talking teenage sex here.

Lorena Allam: One Katherine health service was reluctant to hand over medical records to the Crime Commission, and it led to a case in the Federal Court. The ACC wanted the records of eight young Aboriginal girls, seven of whom had been fitted with the Implanon contraceptive device.

Last month, the ACC lost the case.

The Katherine health service, which we can only refer to as NTD8, argued that giving the ACC details of their young patients would cause them to lose faith in the service, and stop coming in for treatment.

Justice John Reeves found in favour of the health service. He said the ACC, and its investigator, Jeffrey Anderson, failed to take into account the best interests of the children concerned when making the demand for their medical records. This is a reading from the Federal Court judgment.

Reader: Nowhere in his affidavit or its annexures does Mr Anderson embark upon an assessment of what the best interests of this particular group of children are, let alone make an assessment of what their best interests may call for in the circumstances.

Lorena Allam: A second very similar case is still before the court. This time, the ACC is seeking the records of another Aboriginal medical service, one of the biggest in the Northern Territory.

Detecting sexual abuse is acknowledged as being a very difficult, time-consuming process of working with victims and families.

The detection process itself is invasive, says Irene Fisher.

Irene Fisher: It requires specialists forensic training to do, so it's not just your regular examination of course, and not only about what you have to examine and the way you do it, but also the way you do it in terms of managing the mental health of that child whilst you're doing it, because it's a form of assault in itself.

Lorena Allam: Irene Fisher, of Sunrise Health in Katherine.

The Menzies School of Health Research in Darwin has been researching Indigenous health for 25 years. Its Director is Professor John Carapetis. He's a paediatrician, a specialist in infectious diseases and a World Health Organisation consultant on child health.

When the Federal government announced it would conduct checks on children to detect sexual abuse, the Northern Territory government sought advice on whether this was a good approach. And this is what Professor John Carapetis told them.

John Carapetis: Examining a child is a hopeless way to pick up sexual abuse. It does more harm than good and almost never does it detect sexual abuse when it's occurring. But I think the big issue is that this is an incredibly complex problem, and absolutely we need to protect the children who are being abused. But to be able to find those children and to set in place the mechanisms to protect them clearly takes time, it takes development of t rust, it takes understanding of the dynamics of Aboriginal communities. And it's not something we can just do with a heavy-handed approach.

Lorena Allam: John Carapetis has been closely monitoring all the health data coming from the intervention. He says the recent review lacked detail.

The Review Board itself admitted it didn't have much to go on, because such data was not collected. In its report to the government last month it said:

Reader: Apart from some initial scoping data, there was little evidence of baseline data being gathered in any formal or organised format which would permit an assessment of the impact and progress of the intervention upon communities. The lack of empirical data has proved to be a major problem for this review, and is an area that requires urgent attention.

Lorena Allam: From the beginning, Professor John Carapetis offered to help develop ways to measure the success, or otherwise, of the intervention.

John Carapetis: Right at the start when we were talking to people, particular at the Commonwealth, about evaluation, what their plans were, how we could potentially help, there was very little interest, certainly from the highest levels, that the word 'evaluation' was never really going to be built into it right at the start, and that's the problem we'll be faced with yet again, that we'll have rolled out intervention and really not have a good idea whether it's worked or not. And the decisions that have been made right now, are being made based on very little true, reliable information.

Lorena Allam: John Carapetis says time and effort needs to be spent, developing a more detailed, evidence-based policy, if the intervention is going to have the desired effect.

John Carapetis: This is something that is nothing new to people who've been working up here, and slugging their guts out for decades to try and solve the problem. So yes, it's an emergency, it needs an emergency response, it needs high-calibre, well-funded, well-resourced and supported response. But it must be carefully planned. Another year or two of careful planning if it actually means a difference in the long term, will be a year or two well spent.

Lorena Allam: John Carapetis of the Menzies School of Health Research, on the phone from Darwin.

Today's program is about the experiences of Aboriginal communities around Katherine, living with the intervention.

People's everyday lives have changed since the intervention was announced 17 months ago.

The biggest single change is compulsory income management. All Aboriginal people living in prescribed communities, who are receiving Centrelink payments, have half their income 'quarantined' to be spent only on essentials, like food, medicine and clothing.

This blanket quarantining is designed to direct money into a healthier lifestyle and stop people buying grog, pornography, cigarettes and drugs. It was supposed to stop humbug, where relatives harass each other for money. Less cash around, less humbug. That's the idea.

And there are some places which report income management has helped reduce the pressure people feel to hand over cash to their relatives. It also seems to work where the community stores are well stocked and well run.

But for the communities around Katherine, income management created a new set of problems.

Initially their quarantined income was given out as gift vouchers, which people could only spend at Woolworths and Target in Katherine. They couldn't use the cards in their community stores, so they had to find a way into Katherine.

Of course they could use cash at their own stores, but some communities, like Manyallaluk or Eva Valley, didn't have a shop at all. And in other communities, stores were expensive and the range of food was limited. One community store was regularly supplied with food that was up to, or past its use-by date.

Irene Fisher explains the problem with this new system.

Irene Fisher: The state of stores was pretty appalling anyway in communities. There's also no public transport out there, so in order to get access to more affordable and a broader range of food, people have to travel into Katherine by taxi. But the welfare quarantining has actually reduced their disposable incomes, and we're talking taxi fares up to $600 from out Bulman way, just to get into town, one way., And we've got our close-up communities like Eva Valley, but that's still $220, and they don't even have a store, so they have to get into town, it costs that much.

Lorena Allam: Katherine Taxis told Background Briefing that in fact the one-way trip from Bulman to Katherine costs $640 in a sedan, and that goes up to $710 one way, if people want to hire a seven-seater minivan. That's still $100 a person to travel into town, one way.

So how does income management work? To find out, Background Briefing went shopping with Miliwanga Sandy.

Miliwanga Sandy lives as Beswick. She's also an important woman in the Territory. She's the first woman to chair the Aboriginal Areas Protection Authority, which manages sacred and significant sites across the N.T.

Milliwanga Sandy: Yeo! I'll be back before tea!

Lorena Allam: At her home community of Beswick, food supplies at the local shop are very limited and very expensive. A pack of six nappies can cost $24. So Miliwanga has to make the trek into Katherine.

This is not just any old run to the supermarket for milk and bread. It's Miliwanga's big chance to stock up on decent, affordable food and essentials. In the car on the way to Woolworths, Milliwanga Sandy is telling me a story from the early days of income management.

Milliwanga Sandy: I swiped the card, put my pin number, and found that there wasn't any money in there. And I thought, Oh, this is odd. So they told me, 'You have to go back to Centrelink'.

Lorena Allam: On more than one occasion, she got to the checkout to discover there wasn't enough money on her card to buy the things she needed. Milliwanga then had to walk back to Centrelink, a few blocks away, confirm that her bank balance could cover her purchases, and then go back to the supermarket and try again.

Milliwanga Sandy: Then I go back to the shopping centre and found that half of my food was taken back, put back. And I was so frustrated. When I asked 'where is my food?' The lady told me 'Oh, you were taking so long and we had to put back half of your food, but there's still some in the trolley.' And I said, 'Do you think I have a car, that I've travelled down here with a car, you know, and that I have to drive myself over to Centrelink?' and I was so angry. So with all the frustration in me, I thought of breaking that card in front of the staff of Woollies, to show them that that thing doesn't work at all with us people, you know. And here I have to travel all the way from my community into Katherine to do this shopping, and that's what they did to me.

Lorena Allam: As we pull up at the Woolworth's supermarket in Katherine, Milliwanga Sandy's giving us a running commentary.

Milliwanga Sandy: Yes, this is what I do now, I walk down here into this shopping complex, there are always family around waiting. I'm sure they'll be waiting for what's left of my basic card.

Lorena Allam: The basics card Milliwanga is talking about replaced the voucher system. It's issued by Centrelink to every Aboriginal person on income management.

Milliwanga has a 16-digit number to enter each time she wants to check the balance of funds on her card. And a four-digit pin number to keep the card secure.

Half her fortnightly entitlement is kept on the card, but other Centrelink payments she may be entitled to are fully quarantined. For example, the upcoming Christmas bonus of $1,000 a child, announced by the Rudd government will all go on her Basics card.

But Milliwanga can only ever store $1500 on her card at any one time, regardless of how much money she may be entitled to. Centrelink keeps the rest in a 'backup account' and transfers money across as necessary.

From the other half of Milliwanga's income, deductions are made for school, rent and utilities. The rest is hers to spend as she chooses, although there's not much left, especially after taxi fares.

Woman: Welcome to the Income Management Line. To hear how much money is on your Basic card, press 1, or if you'd like to talk to a Customer Service adviser, just stay on the line.

Lorena Allam: For Milliwanga, accessing the money that's on her Basics Card involves a trip from Beswick into Katherine and a phone call to the basics card hotline to find out how much money she has in her account.

Woman: OK. To help me find the right information, I just need to get some details from you about your Basics card. Using the numbers on your telephone, please enter the 16-digit number from your Basics card.

ENTERS 16 DIGITS

Woman: Thanks. Now enter your 4-digit pin number for this card.

Lorena Allam: All the while Milliwanga runs the gauntlet of her homeless relatives, commonly called the 'long grass mob', who are waiting and hassling her for money.

Boy: Oh, one auntie!

Milliwanga Sandy: OK.

Boy: Auntie, son right here.

Milliwanga Sandy: This is one of my nephew.

Lorena Allam: So your nephew here is waiting for you to give him some money?

Milliwanga Sandy: Yes, he's one of the long grass people as well. He comes and goes from Wugularr to this place, Katherine. Yes.

And as you're walking now going through this entrance, I'm going to get a trolley.

Lorena Allam: We grab a trolley, and go into Woollies. Milliwanga's told her nephew she doesn't have any cash, but he grabs a trolley and comes too.

Milliwanga Sandy: I have this nephew still hassling me for this money. I told him that I've only got my Basic card so I can't help him.

Lorena Allam: So will he just follow you around the shop now, till you - ?

Milliwanga Sandy: Yes.

Lorena Allam: So you're still getting humbug even though you've got this card?

Milliwanga Sandy: Yes. So it doesn't matter.

Lorena Allam: Milliwanga says people have found lots of ways to get around the restrictions of income management. There's a black market where people sell their card for cash, or they give their card and its pin number to a relative who needs to buy food.

Milliwanga Sandy: With the Basic cards, they said we weren't allowed to give out our Basic card to another person, but unfortunately it's not like that with our families and relatives. So what we do is, whatever they want we are able to buy things for them as well, and if a niece or one of my sisters who will be shopping, I'm able to give her my card and my pin number of course, because we were told not to give anyone our pin number. But we have to give our pin number if we don't have access to come into Katherine to do that shopping.

Lorena Allam: So if you get sick but you still need things, you have to give the pin number to somebody else to do your shopping for you?

Milliwanga Sandy: Oh yes, of course. And especially with the elderlies, the old people, they have to give their Basic card to their daughters or sons to do their shopping. I mean they don't know that the Basic card is really, like to them.

Lorena Allam: Milliwanga says elderly people, for whom English is a second or third language, have mistakenly thrown their cards away after one use. Or the cards have been lost or stolen.

Milliwanga Sandy: This is the checkout, we're just about through with my groceries, and this is the Basic card which I'm going to use, it's a green card. Yes that's all thank you. And it's approved, so I'm OK, I had enough money in my account today, thank God. Thank you.

Lorena Allam: Not every shop in Katherine accepts the Basics card. We go across to the newsagent, where Milliwanga would like to buy a newspaper on her basics card, but is not allowed.

Milliwanga Sandy: Now while I'm in town I normally buy a newspaper to see what's happening in the outside world from where I am, from where we live. I was knocked the first time I received by basic card when I went across from Woolies here to a newsagent shop. I collected books that I wanted to read, and newspaper as well, and went over to the counter and wanted to pay for it with the basic card, and unfortunately I was told that I wasn't allowed to buy any of the books.

Lorena Allam: The newsagent also sells pornography, gambling materials and cigarettes, so Milliwanga's now allowed to use her card to buy anything there, in case it's misused.

But she says she needs stationery for her children to use at school, and for her own studies: she's training to become a language teacher.

Milliwanga Sandy: I'm not allowed to buy any of these magazines.

Lorena Allam: Why not?

Milliwanga Sandy: I don't know, because people fear that we might use it for pornography, the magazines instead, I don't know.

Lorena Allam: But what it means is that you can't read the newspaper?

Milliwanga Sandy: Yes, and I can't get the stationary that I need. I'm not allowed to buy it from my basic card. So that's my shopping for the day, that's what I normally do. Right, bye bye.

Lorena Allam: Of course Milliwanga can buy some stationary at Woolworths, or pay cash if she has any left.

On the Stuart Highway north to Darwin is the Aboriginal community of Kalano. It's the start of the build up to the wet season and at 9 am it's already very hot.

We're sitting inside the old health clinic, with the fans going at full strength, as Andrea MacDonald arrives.

Andrea MacDonald is a mother of three who's grown up at Kalano. She worked on CDEP, the community employment program, until November last year, when it was axed.

In order to manage the incomes of Aboriginal people living in prescribed communities like Kalano, the Federal government had to 'unemploy' everyone on CDEP and shift them onto welfare. That's what happened to Andrea.

The changeover to the new system left Andrea MacDonald with no money at all for a few weeks.

Andrea MacDonald: When it first came out it was just like really hard, and that was during school time too, for about four, five weeks.

Lorena Allam: So you mean there was four or five weeks where you weren't getting any income at all?

Andrea MacDonald: Yes, because CDEP was gone then when our income came back, it was just like all them store cards.

Lorena Allam: How did that make you feel?

Andrea MacDonald: I felt sort of all angry and shame. Shame that I had to line up outside Centrelink on a Saturday morning for my money, and I felt shame about lining up inside Woollies, because I wasn't a drinker, I'm a good mum.

Lorena Allam: Income management is complicated for Andrea, if she wants to buy something other than a bag of groceries. For something that isn't included on the basic card list of acceptable purchases, there's a whole other system.

Last month, Andrea wanted to buy some furniture and toys for her children. And she wanted to order school photos. To use her basics card for these things, she had to get written quotes for each item and walk back to Centrelink to have them approved.

Andrea MacDonald: I had to go and get quotes from different stores like furniture shops, two different furniture shops, toys for my children, just walking around too sometime because I didn't have a car at that time, and had you just walking around through the heat, and sometimes all this walking around, you still never got those things which you went to the stores for, so you've got to wait for about two days after, then you'll go back and get it. So it was just like really big hassle. You know, we were walking, trying to walk through a brick wall to try and get some shopping done. Even paying for school photos and things like that there, you had to go there, get the quotes from the school and then go to Centrelink. So before, it was just like you know, I'd have my cash and go and do my business and school for my children.

Lorena Allam: Andrea MacDonald.

Centrelink confirmed the quote system exists for big or unusual purchases, like a fridge, or even fishing gear.

Its Darwin office told Background Briefing when a purchase is approved, Centrelink pays the provider, the whitegoods shop, or the school, directly. People don't handle the money at any stage of the transaction; the amount is automatically taken from their account.

This can benefit some people who haven't the capacity to manage their own finances, but it's added another layer of red tape to the lives of people who were already trying hard to keep their families going. Andrea MacDonald.

Andrea MacDonald: When this first came like you seen the people who was all lining up in Centrelink and they were all the sober mums, you know, mums and grandmas, elderly people, they're the ones lining up there first. It wasn't the ones that were misusing their money, it was all the good people, all lined up.

Lorena Allam: Sitting next to Andrea MacDonald: is Noeleen Andrews. Noeleen lives at the community of Rockhole, with her husband and four children, about 28 kilometres west of Katherine.

She is a Jawoyn traditional owner and she sits on the board of two prominent community organisations. Noeleen Andrews says she doesn't need income management.

Noeleen Andrews: Because there's a lot of Aboriginal people know how to budget, it's just that government is thinking the wrong way what Aboriginal people do with their money. And they think it's Aboriginal people spending their money the wrong way, that's going down the drain but there are smart Aboriginal people too, and it's been shame job standing in line with these kind of card, while white people behind us are going to pay cash, I mean that's shame job, that. There's a lot of Aboriginal people here that were brought up the right way. We can budget our own money.

Lorena Allam: Noeleen Andrews says there are capable people in her community who have views on what can be done to make things better, and they'd like to be asked.

Noeleen Andrews: Come to us, come to our community, come and visit us, sit down and listen to what each community will bring up, and that's how it really hurts about this intervention. White people don't know what's going on in our community, it's only the community people. The one that government mob got to come and see us, sit down and talk with us, go and make a big meeting there, sit down under the shady tree, we can sit down have a yarn. And bring those people and let them come and talk to us, and to our kids, because look at these kids, they are happy kids.

Lorena Allam: An hour or so south of Katherine on the Stuart Highway is Mataranka.

Lily Bennet, Lorraine Bennet and Jenny Kennedy are from Beswick. Today they're in Mataranka on health business and a bit of fishing. It's a really windy day and dead palm fronds keep falling around us. But the river itself is still and hot. Lily Bennett describes where we're sitting.

Lily Bennett: This river is called Waterhouse River near Mataranka homestead, where we're sitting now, big shady tree and everyone fishing, lovely palm shady tree, and paperbark as well. When we catch something we'll cook it here and have lunch.

Lorena Allam: That's Lily Bennet..

Like the mothers from Kalano and Rockhole, Lily says she went without money for a few weeks when income management was first introduced in November.

In the lead-up to Christmas, life got more difficult. The Beswick store went broke. The community was cut off from Katherine during the wet season and essential supplies had to be brought in by boat. Their community employment program, the CDEP, had been axed.

By the end of December, things were pretty lean.

Lily Bennett: Last year we didn't have any Christmas in our homes, it was so sad. Everybody else has Christmas in their homes and stuff like that, like normal people you know, but that day we never had Christmas.

Lorena Allam: And why not? Why didn't it happen?

Jenny Kennedy: No money to spend.

Lorena Allam: Because of income management?

Jenny Kennedy: Yes, because of that income management.

Lily Bennett: Yes, the same like me, I had no money, I had to go back and check again, go back and check again, they would say, wait till two weeks, waited, waited, waited, go back and do another form again. I got sick of it then I just forgot about it.

Lorena Allam: Eventually, Lily says, Centrelink helped sort out her income.

Sitting next to Lily, Jenny Kennedy says she might be sick of the card system, but she cannot afford to get sick.

Jenny Kennedy: Like for instance me, I've got to have insulin three times a day. I've got to have that food and that insulin. If I don't I'll be in coma in Katherine Hospital. People on medication, like diabetics, all that kidney failure mob, and you get heart disease, you got everything at Beswick, all the chronic disease at Beswick. And that person have to have all that good food to have them medication in the morning, whatever they've got to take, three times a day like that, you got nothing there to feed them, and they've got to have the medicine, some medicine, you've got to have it with food.

Lorena Allam: Jenny Kennedy.

Lily Bennett has diabetes too. Her daughter Lorraine is worried for her.

Lorraine Bennett: With having this intervention thing now, it's very hard for the very, very sick people. They need money to get their feed, whatever they're eating and they're going to be on special diets, so where are they going to get that from?

Lorena Allam: What about medicine, can you buy medicine on your cards?

Jenny Kennedy: They take it out of your pay and put it aside, and they just send it to the pharmacy or whatever, well my insulin I do that.

Lily Bennett: Yes, mine too.

Lorena Allam: So you get half your income on the card, the other half is in your bank account, but then they take other money out of your bank account to pay for medicine, rent, school, is that right?

Lily Bennett: Yes.

Lorena Allam: So how much do you get left in your bank after they've taken all that money?

Jenny Kennedy: Hardly anything.

Lorena Allam: You have to budget really carefully I guess.

Lily Bennett: Yes, but then again, you have a crowded house, too many families, and then if this sick old person wants to get enough food for himself or this husband and wife with their two kids wants to get enough feed, when they've got a crowded house and the rest of the house there sitting hungry, so the money's gone because it's been shared around, just a little food for a whole day's meal. That's it.

Lorraine Bennett: We're like a third class citizen, we're like third world people. They're giving us back the time of welfare, and we feel that the Basic card is like a ration.

Lorena Allam: Sitting on the bank of the Waterhouse River at Mataranka, Lily Bennett is trying to find a way to describe the consequences of the intervention.

Lily Bennett: Maybe for them it was a good idea, but just for us mob, we're just nothing. We're just like a little sheep, you know, and some big bosses muster us in the yard, just like a sheep. When they put us in the yard or something like that you know, like in one mob, we've got to sit down there, wait for them to come up and talk to us and stuff like that you know. We're still in that pen. Just like all the sheep.

THEME

Lorena Allam: Background Briefing's Co-ordinating Producer is Linda McGinness. Technical producer is Louis Mitchell. The Researcher is Anna Whitfeld. Executive Producer is Chris Bullock, and I'm Lorena Allam.

THEME

Presenter

Lorena Allam

Producer

Lorena Allam