Transcript

CHRIS UHLMANN, PRESENTER: Australia's one of the richest countries in the world, Sydney the 7th most expensive city, yet just hours away from such privilege and wealth lies a community in turmoil and decay. The scale of the dysfunction locked inside the tiny Aboriginal mission of Toomelah is breathtaking. In recent week there's have been rumours of a government-led intervention, or of a complete relocation. Those rumours have amounted to nothing. But the people of Toomelah and the children living amidst the turmoil desperately need help. How has it come to this? Caro Meldrum-Hanna has this special report.

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA, REPORTER: It's 11pm on a Thursday night, and on the streets of this small Aboriginal community it's unusually quiet. It's bitterly cold, but a group of indigenous children is roaming the streets. They've just lit a bonfire to stay warm.

(speaking to children) So you will be up until midnight, 1am?

ADOLESCENT: About 3, 3:30.

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: 3:30 in the morning? And then you go to school?

ADOLESCENT: Yeah.

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: Does everyone go to school here?

CHILD: We got expelled.

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: What happened?

CHILD: Took the teacher's car.

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: You took the teacher's car?

CHILD: Yeah.

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: A few streets away, inside one house the sounds of another long drinking session begin. They will be at it 'til dawn.

Behind me is the Aboriginal mission of Toomelah, located just inside the NSW/Queensland border and surrounded by the muddy waters of the Macintyre River. It sprang to life in 1937 - originally a Pentecostal mission. But today the religious influence is long gone, and the passage of time has not been kind to Toomelah.

This is the local primary school. Considering some of the 52 children enrolled here have been up all night, surprisingly most of them are here today. It's lunchtime but the school canteen isn't open. In fact, it hasn't been open for months. Instead, there's a mobile food truck driven in and out every day.

KAREN STEWART, CATERER: With the canteen it was run by the school but they closed it down because of the number of break-ins, and it was just constant.

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: It's certainly been put to me that for many kids here this would be actually be maybe their first meal, but possibly their only meal for the day?

KAREN STEWART: That's probably a fair comment, yeah, I would say, yeah.

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: Children and parents are drifting in from outside the school gates. That's because there's nowhere else to buy food. The local shop is vandalised and boarded up.

RENE ADAMS, TOOMELAH CO-OP: You know, they go home crying to mum and dad if there's nothing in the house for them to eat. You know, they look at our community and say, "Well they're all alcoholics out there. Why are they drinking? What else is there to do? There's no access to employment out here, there's no access to programs. You go and blame that Federal Government down there, they made the decisions. They put us here to start with."

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: For decades the mission and its people went unnoticed and ignored until Marcus Einfeld, then-president of the Human Rights Commission, crossed the divide in 1987, and launched an investigation into the living conditions and the state of housing inside Toomelah. What he found shamed the nation, and forced the Government into action.

MARCUS EINFELD, PRESIDENT, HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION (1988): Well, it should have been drawn to the attention more loudly and more often and you should have stood on the steps of the buildings until they provided the services.

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: After that, the dirt roads were paved, housing was built, a sewage system was put in place. But despite the tens of millions of dollars worth of government funding that has poured in over two decades, and the involvement of dozens of government agencies, the problems that plague the Toomelah of yesteryear are somehow still present. Children are still exposed to raw sewage.

(to Sharon Duncan) So Sharon, we're at the back of your property here, and I can see it right in front of us here, that would be the raw sewage?

SHARON DUNCAN, TOOMELAH RESIDENT: Yep, there's been there for two and a half months now.

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: Just starting to pick up the smell of it too now.

SHARON DUNCAN: Yeah. My baby got sick from it, my one year old.

GLYNIS MCGRADY, TOOMELAH ELDER: It's simple basic stuff to other people in this country but to the people in Toomelah, you know, it's... there's a huge difference in the stories about living in the so-called "lucky country".

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: And the chronic levels of unemployment that existed decades ago have gone from bad to worse. Since four years ago, when the Federal Government wound up the work for the dole program, the CDEP.

RENE ADAMS: So what did they do? They turned to drugs and alcohol. These are men, proud men that were working in their community for their own community; they were seen as a role model for their children because Mum and Dad got up and went to work.

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: On the other side of town, Toomelah resident Norman McGrady took us to the community hall. It used to look like this. Once the heart of Toomelah, today it's broken.

NORMAN MCGRADY, TOOMELAH RESIDENT: We used to have discos in this hall and I just don't know what happened, how it come to be like this here.

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: We went to the local oval, only to discover that the community's champion football team, the Toomelah Tigers, stopped playing years ago. We found the team's former captain, Michael McGrady, at the nearby pub. He recently returned to Toomelah after nine months in prison.

MICHAEL MCGRADY, TOOMELAH RESIDENT: A bit of a shock when I went out there see Toomelah like that. Breaks your heart.

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: What did you see?

MICHAEL MCGRADY: I see a mission like no one cares.

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: Since Michael McGrady left, the Toomelah gym has also been destroyed. Tens of thousands of dollars worth of equipment torn out, dumped and left to rot.

NORMAN MCGRADY: We had over millions and millions and millions of dollars put in this community, and we've got jack shit... sorry, we've got jack... sorry, nothing to show for it, you know, nothing to show for it! Nothing.

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: Where's the money gone?

NORMAN MCGRADY: That's a good question.

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: There are now allegations of rorting and mispropation of government funding, and revelations that the local Aboriginal Land Council hasn't filed financial reports or audits for three years.

(to Glynis McGrady) So has it ever been as bad as this?

GLYNIS MCGRADY: Not that I recall, but this is the worst that I've seen it, you know, in my time. Very unsafe.

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: Local elder and resident, Glynis McGrady, has witnessed the ongoing trauma of Toomelah. Today, the rate of self harm and suicide is on the rise.

GLYNIS MCGRADY: Yeah, present in a huge way. We used... you know, our organisation used to work with support people who were sort of trying to commit suicide, and on average probably... you know, on average, there's sometimes up to three a week.

SHARON DUNCAN: And we do need help, a lot of help. But mainly I reckon the main concern is, like, the young ones. They need help big time, because they are the ones that hasn't got nothing to do, they get that bored, and once they get bored, look what happens.

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: This is what happens. Street brawls and fights, fueled by drugs and alcohol.

Sharon Wittwer is a former drug and alcohol worker at Toomelah.

(to Sharon Wittwer) What did the alcohol and drug abuse lead to, what sort of breakdown and dysfunction?

SHARON WITTWER, FORMER DRUG AND ALCOHOL WORKER: Domestic violence, children being abused, women being abused, youth suicide... terrible stuff.

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: It would have been very distressing working at the front line?

SHARON WITTWER: It was.

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: It's clearly stayed with you.

After two years working at the coalface, Sharon Wittwer left Toomelah. She said child sexual abuse was rife, and the abusers were tolerated.

SHARON WITTWER: I don't understand why people who are paedophiles are allowed to live in the community, I don't. If it was a community and people worked together the way they used to in communities, in Aboriginal communities, that wouldn't have been allowed. They would have been turfed out.

MICHAEL MCGRADY: Kids being abused? Yep. In my time there was a lot, but can't say who. Yeah, that's what happened. Too hard to explain it, you know. Yeah... but it did.

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: That happened?

MICHAEL MCGRADY: Yeah, that happened.

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: And that has stayed with you?

MICHAEL MCGRADY: Yeah. It happened.

GLYNIS MCGRADY: Young children... how would I put it... below the ages of, you know, five, that have actually been raped, I mean, physically raped. The victims, you know, the young kids can actually see their perpetrators coming and walking, and they start trembling and shaking and all that sort of stuff and having nightmares - that stuff continues, yeah.

MAUREEN KNIEPP, FORMER TOOMELAH NURSE: There would not be a family at Toomelah or Boggabilla that is not affected in some way by child abuse and neglect.

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: For 18 years Maureen Kniepp was the community nurse alternate Toomelah health clinic. Over that time she says she was exposed to the most extreme cases of child sexual abuse imaginable.

MAUREEN KNIEPP: Things that happen at night, sometimes the children are not capable of going to school because of their physical appearance after having been abused during the night.

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: The abuse is to such an extent that they physically cannot get themselves to school?

MAUREEN KNIEPP: Yes.

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: At one point, the abuse travelled outside the Indigenous community and began to trade at the nearby Boggabilla truck stop.

MAUREEN KNIEPP: The girls were going to truckies, and they were performing sexual favours for cigarettes and money.

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: How old were the girls?

MAUREEN KNIEPP: Between, I think, nine and 12 at the time.

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: Maureen Kniepp reported the incident, and the authorities intervened. But many more reports and pleas for help went unanswered. And the trauma of Toomelah has changed her forever.

MAUREEN KNIEPP: I wasn't sleeping, I was drinking a lot of alcohol, I was very depressed, a lot of crying, a lot of soul-searching - yeah, it took a lot out of me.

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: What were you searching for?

MAUREEN KNIEPP: Just to come to terms with how things are; that these things are really happening and there's nothing we can do to change things, it has to come from within.

CHRIS UHLMANN: Caro Meldrum-Hanna reporting. And we'll be following up that story tomorrow night.

Transcript

CHRIS UHLMANN, PRESENTER: Last night we brought you the story of Toomelah, an Indigenous community in northern NSW shattered by unemployment, alcohol, drugs and violence. Some residents feel abandoned and that their children's future is under threat.

GLYNNIS MCGRADY, TOOMELAH ELDER: Young children - how would I put it? - below the ages of five that have actually been raped. I mean physically raped. The victims, the young kids could actually see their perpetrators coming or walking and they start trembling or shaking and all that sort of stuff and having nightmares. That stuff continues, yeah.

RENE ADAMS, TOOMELAH CO-OP: So they wanna talk about our sad community. They needed to listen to us back in the day when we were tellin' them what was workin' here. And they took it all away.

CHRIS UHLMANN: The former minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Mal Brough, was one of the architects of the Northern Territory Intervention. He says governments both state and federal are washing their hands of responsibility to communities like Toomelah. He's now seeking pre-selection in a Queensland seat for a tilt at the next federal election and Mal Brough joins us now from Maroochydore on the Sunshine Coast.

Welcome.

MAL BROUGH, FORMER ABORIGINAL AFFAIRS MINISTER: Thanks, Chris, Good to be with you.

CHRIS UHLMANN: How did you feel when you saw that story last night?

MAL BROUGH: Mixed emotions. On Saturday I think The Australian ran a similar story about a community that I know well in the APY lands with about 50 per cent of the children there being allegedly sexually abused. All of the allegations that your story raised again were dealt in 2006 when I was a minister, and, you know, sadly, years move on, ministers come and go, but the outcomes aren't change. And I think that it was more despair, despondency, and I guess the other emotion, Chris, is one of anger, anger that there hasn't been an outrage in the public today, and I mean the mainstream media, talkback radio, the blogs going off as they did when ABC ran the story last year about cattle being mistreated in Indonesia. These are Australian kids that have been mistreated and yet we're not having the same outrage. In fact it's almost gone without comment.

CHRIS UHLMANN: But do you think that Australians are inured to this or do they just think that it's such a hopeless situation that there's no point in commenting on it?

MAL BROUGH: I wish I had an answer. I think a lotta people are desensitised, and I think the other thing - and jaded. I also feel that - I was speaking to a friend not long ago this evening and he said, "Oh, I turned it off." Sometimes these things are just too tough for us to deal with, and I think if we can strip away the fact that they're Aboriginal children and just call them children, just take away the colour, take away the race altogether, maybe we'd re-engage again as a public and we would say, "No, we can't allow this to happen." We need to show leadership as a society. We need to show leadership as politicians and political leaders and as community leaders. And if we do that, it's not beyond our wit to be able to address these issues.

CHRIS UHLMANN: But what we saw in Toomelah, as you say, it's replicated around the country. It's not in the Northern Territory or Queensland or NSW; it's replicated everywhere. Is this a complete failure by the political class both state and federal?

MAL BROUGH: Yes, it is. And I think that what you'll get is - we will have pretty much a different gameset, we'll involve Aboriginal people, we'll do more consultation. Go back to Marcus Einfeld, 1988. I think your story said that the government of the day was shocked into action or shamed into action, but we fixed the physical being, we didn't actually fix the underlying problems and that's what's breaking society. When you have five-year-olds that are being raped. And, I mean, I guess, sadly, it brings up memories for me of seeing children who had been raped by other children. And you think, "How sick is the society?," and yet we turn and say, "Well can't they fix themselves?" I think we've gotta deal with the reality that these individuals are so badly broken, they're now adults, they're perpetrating similar crimes of neglect and abuse on children, they are Australian children and it takes our political class, our human rights lawyers, our human rights activists, our young people, everybody to say, "Enough is enough. We must change from the ways that we've been going 'cause that has failed miserably. We must put them as children first and foremost, culture second and deal with the atrocities that are happening to Australian children today."

CHRIS UHLMANN: Alright. Well you had a go at trying to do this obviously with the Intervention in the Northern Territory, which is an area the Commonwealth did have control over, yet there are a lot of questions about the way that that was implemented, that it was hasty and that it hasn't been as successful as you would have hoped.

MAL BROUGH: No, it hasn't been as successful as I would have hoped and it hasn't gone down - hasn't continued the way in which I had hoped to be able to run it either. So others have taken it and taken it in a direction of their own choosing. What I don't think helps here, Chris, at all, is laying blame at Liberal, Labor, state, federal, Aboriginal, white. We've all stuffed it up. We've got it wrong. And what we need to do is admit those failings and say that we dedicate ourselves to protecting Australian children. And once we do that and we set that threshold, we'll start to get somewhere.

Your story last night: the nurse, 18 years a nurse, as credible as you can get, said there isn't a family in Toomelah that hasn't been touched by that abuse. That is a society almost beyond repair by just another program, another intervention. We need to look at root and cause why we have Aboriginal people living in isolation almost on top of the rest of society, but on their own in almost what you'd call an apartheid fashion, and say, "What message is that sending to those children? Why are they being so isolated? And how much better can we do this?"

CHRIS UHLMANN: And one of the problems that they have is they're economically isolated, they can't be connected to the real economy. One of the programs that was used there was a community development employment program, and again, your government was opposed to those sorts of measures. They're removed now; there's no work at all.

MAL BROUGH: See, that's just a misnomer. The pride that, you know - and understand that when people have only known one way for three or four decades and that is two days a week work, six hours a day for some of the workers, and we talk about the pride that that can deliver, that isn't working for yourself, that is not working for anything other than the Government cleaning up around your own community. What about the real jobs? We're talking about here on one of the busiest highways in this nation. This is the New England Highway. This is only about three hours out of Brisbane. This is not far down the road to the mining boom in NSW and up the road to Queensland. People are only isolated because we have isolated them. These people are not geographically isolated, they're socially isolated, and we are causing that by allowing - forcing them, if you like, if you will, to live in a place with no governance, with little law and order and virtually no self-respect or community respect and then we expect it somehow to work. It hasn't worked for four or five decades.

What I'm suggesting, Chris, is tonight we as an Australian community, not just politicians - as an Australian community say, "Enough is enough." We acknowledge the mistakes of the past and we don't look to lay blame but we look to say, "Where will we go that will be better in the future and if they were my children, how quickly would I act to try and protect them?" Would it be tomorrow or would it be after a series of reports in another 12 months? And if we answer that honestly, then maybe it'll cause us to act far more rapidly than we have.

CHRIS UHLMANN: Extremely tough question to answer, though, isn't it, Mal Brough?

MAL BROUGH: Of course it is, otherwise it would be done - would've been done. And, Chris, I think every minister, state and federal, Liberal and Labor - I make one exception, one exception, the man that was the Labor minister who's now in prison, that was my counterpart at the time, for crimes against children, but he's the exception. The majority of people, they want to do the right thing, but I sometimes feel that it's because of the cringe, the cultural cringe, the worry and the fear of being called a racist that we don't deal with these people. As children, as Australian children, we somehow deal with them differently and we expect a different outcome and we are getting that different outcome.

CHRIS UHLMANN: Alright, Well, Mal Brough, we'll have to leave it there. Thank you.

MAL BROUGH: Thanks very much, Chris.