Marcia Langton | October 16, 2008 THE rancorous debate about the Northern Territory emergency response emanates from two broad camps: those who claim that several measures, particularly compulsory welfare quarantining and five-year leases to the commonwealth over Aboriginal township areas are ineffective and racially discriminatory, and those who are not persuaded by this critique and are concerned that drastic measures are necessary to close the gap in the differential life expectancy of indigenous Australians as against the national average. The former includes the human rights advocates entangled in the 50-year-old abstractions and ideology of the sanctity of the individual versus the collective rights of groups. Peter Yu, chairman of the board reviewing the Northern Territory intervention, is in this camp and this is...
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