JEFF MCMULLEN

February 15, 2010

The Northern Territory intervention has been an abject failure that ''has created another tidal wave of sadness across this land'', journalist and humanitarian Jeff McMullen says.

The Northern Territory intervention has been an abject failure that ''has created another tidal wave of sadness across this land'', journalist and humanitarian Jeff McMullen says. Photo: Steven Siewert

In all of Australia's modern history, the crime of silence accompanies the death, destruction and denial that obliterates the rights of indigenous people.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's national apology two years ago was a long overdue admission that when a nation lives with officially sanctioned racial discrimination we are all diminished as human beings.

It is hypocritical to apologise to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and say that the "injustices of the past must never, never happen again" and then to persist for more than two years with the humiliation and the discrimination of the Northern Territory intervention. No matter how hard this rain falls here on the streets of Redfern, it will not wash away the great stain on our history.

The pain of the stolen generations and the Northern Territory intervention are, without doubt, the two most destructive policies inflicted on Aboriginal people in my lifetime. The removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, the breaking up of families, the rupturing of whole communities and the upheaval of people from their traditional lands, along with that insane brand of assimilation that attempted to breed out the blackness and culture of indigenous people arose in our parents' generation but persisted into ours.

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