If the current government really wants to make a difference, it should be going into the community and building on existing success.

It's hard to explain in words how the policies of removal and dispersion are still being felt amongst by Aboriginal people. It's hard to explain to people who weren't part of the stolen generation the intergenerational effects it's had and is still having amongst Aboriginal people today.

It's frustrating when you see decisions about native title built on a continued connection to the land, when then connection was forcibly broken in most cases. It's crazy to see the way non-Aboriginal people, who are ignorant of Aboriginal history, language and culture, make policy decisions that just don't make any sense in the real world.

But there's also another story I want to tell. Aboriginal culture isn't just about dancing and art. It isn't about the stereotypes that non-Aboriginal people so often refer to, it's about what's happening now within our communities.

We need Government to understand that Aboriginal stories aren't all of crisis and despair, but also of growth and renewal.  

In February this year the Western Australian Coroner Mr Alistair Hope, handed down his findings into tragedy caused by the abuse of drugs and alcohol in the Kimberly region, and again the focus of mainstream media and many of our politicians was narrowed.

The problem being, when their vision narrows they lose sight of all the other stories that are going on, stories of hope and rebirth and opportunity.

We are facing a crisis of drugs and despair which is decades old, but we are also experiencing a renaissance that is decades old. If you look at the mainstream media you'd be forgiven for thinking what the entire indigenous nation is in a state of complete collapse, when in fact through out the country indigenous people are standing up and using the power of education to retell their past and take control of their future.

The level of spending committed to Indigenous disadvantage in the budget barely sets the Government on the right road to delivering on the Government's election promise to actually ‘close the gap'. Despite the rhetoric from the Government on closing the gap and their signing on to the pledge to deliver equality of access to services within a decade, the commitment of resources in the 2008 budget does not boost funding nearly enough to achieve this target.

The Government commitment amounts to additional expenditure of around $250 million per year across the entire Indigenous budget (that is, $1.2 Billion in new money over 5 years). But the biggest chunk of that ($666 Million) will be eaten up feeding the NT intervention juggernaut. This is a small percentage of the $450 million needed each year to simply catch up on Indigenous health alone, and a far cry from what is really needed to fix the problem.

By Greg Eatock

Little children ARE sacred, which is why the NT intervention has to stop.