According to his personal and political autobiography Lazarus Rising (published in 2010), it took John Howard (Prime Minister of Australia from March 1996 to November 2007) until June 2007 to actualise his preferred approach to Indigenous affairs. Howard recalled this as ‘a paradigm change. It was as if the dam had finally burst and much of the approach which had held sway for a generation or more was swept away.’ Howard is referring to his government’s taking over of Indigenous affairs in the Northern Territory—known as the Northern Territory Emergency Response (NTER)—a program whose controversial elements included un-negotiated amendments to the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 and restrictions on welfare recipients’ choices about spending money.... Read more
