Commentary in The Age, Melbourne

In this commentary Michelle Grattan and Jo Chandler explain what they see as a change of direction in Aboriginal policies.

"The Northern Territory decision is part of a wider transformation of indigenous policy. Last year Health Minister Tony Abbott put a label on a shift in policy and thinking about Aboriginal issues. He called it, for want of a better term, "the new paternalism".

Historian Dr Tim Rowse has seen it brewing for three years.

"The essence of it is to regard Aboriginal self-determination as a project that has failed because indigenous elites have proved to be not up to the job," says Rowse. It argues that the discourse of indigenous rights, which is what has empowered indigenous elites, has not provided a fix for the poverty and problems afflicting remote Aboriginal communities. That those far-flung communities are hugely expensive to service and maintain. That the social pathology within some communities has become poisonous. That they "carry the remnants of a culture which is self-destructive and badly adapted to modern times — I think that is the view that the Government has acquired," he says."
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