Veteran investigator John Pilger has an extraordinary story to tell about white Australia and its deeply dysfunctional relationship with the Indigenous Australian community. Pilger sees it as unrepentant apartheid, and cites a bizarre act of taxpayer-funded official hysteria: the 2007 "intervention" in the Northern Territory organised by the John Howard government on the pretext that paedophile gangs were operating in Indigenous settlements. Troops were sent in; townships were compulsorily acquired and native title legislation ignored. Yet no prosecution for child abuse resulted, and studies appeared to conclude that the situation was no better or worse than in white areas.
The awful truth is that Indigenous communities are on mineral-rich lands that cause mouths to water in mining corporation boardrooms. Even if the "intervention" wasn't a straightforward land grab, then it suited powerful people who have a vested interest in keeping Indigenous Australians second-class, itinerant and stateless citizens in their own state, without anything like the consideration that Native Americans have achieved in the US. They are still living in desperately poor conditions, and can expect more insidious harassment. Pilger's film argues that the history of abuse and bullying, so far from being a closed chapter, is merely a prelude: it is set to get worse. This is a grim and powerful film.