THE federal intervention in the Northern Territory has led to a decline in new notifications of sexually transmitted infections among children.Come on supporters of’ doing nothing’ think of a good alternative explanation for this good news. Perhaps: The data was collected by Liberal Party flunkies, adults grew smarter at hiding sexually abused children. These stories and many others are a useful way of continuing to live in a world of illusion and denial.
The Northern Territory Government's latest surveillance update on sexual health and blood-borne viruses revealed that 62 children aged under 14 were diagnosed with sexually transmitted infections in the Territory in the first six months of the intervention. Three of the children diagnosed with chlamydia between July and December last year were under the age of 10. The figures also showed that total diagnoses of chlamydia, gonorrhoea, syphilis and trichomoniasis declined in the second half of last year, compared with the first half, following the intervention.
Of course the general STD problem remains massive:
The rate of notification of gonorrhoea among Aboriginal people in the Territory was 51.7 times the national rate.But Mal Brough and John Howard were on the right track and the brainless apologists for inept NT policies are shown to have put their political biases ahead of real concern for the welfare of indigenous kids.
Posts
8 comments:
Mr Clarke,
those of us who opposed the intervention did so because the Report on which it was based stated that the number of substantiated cases of sexual abuse was consistently BELOW 50 cases since 1997/8. ( this was on p242)
It gave a variety of excuses why anecdotal evidence and hearsay should be preferred to lead people to believe chils abuse was well above levls experienced anywhere else.
Indeed in p 27 of the report it noted it would concentrate on the real task- prevention of sexual abuse, rather than a historical cataloguing and statistical analysis of precise incidents.
A short look at the 'evidence' you provide does not compare apples with apples either.
This is rather dissapointing for an Economics Professor.
I suspect your original support was due to your unwavering support for John Howard as you do not appear to have read the report.
Harry, you want to give John Howard a clap?
harry - the only info I have looked at is in the Oz report you linked to - comparing the first 6 months of the year to the second 6 months is pretty weak as a longitudinal study.
I would have expected that throwing huge amounts of $ and military medicos and health workers at communities would have had some improvement at least in the short term.
I was never a supporter of "do nothing"
My objections were to the long term forward planning and sustainable interventions of which, at the time there were precisely SFA.
Yep, that bit about "supporters of doing nothing" reeks of an excluded middle. It's of a piece with accusing opponents of the Iraq war of wanting Saddam to be still in power.
Harry maybe you should try criticising people for positions they actually hold, not positions you wish they held.
Mr Anonymous, How can you assess the effectiverness of a program without looking at how things change? Answer: you can't.
BTW this is my blog and the rules on commenting are clear. You need to use an identifiable pseudonymn. the only thing anyone knows about you is that you cannot spell.
Derrida, OK I exaggerated. But my view is that this group are so bound up in anti-Howard attitudes that they refuse to endorse real attempts to reduce what is an appalling problem.
Think about these unfortunate children for a moment and tell me the best thing to do is not to intervene. It just does not make sense.
"Think about these unfortunate children for a moment and tell me the best thing to do is not to intervene"
The best thing to do is not to intervene, at least not with only authoritarian force. Crime goes down in most police states, but it never solves the problems. You need to do all the things that are too hard to do, like increase educational and health standards, and work out what to do with all the people with various degrees of permanent brain damage due to drug abuse -- for a lifetime.
The other problem with the figures is that we don't know what they mean. Perhaps crime really has gone down. Alternatively, perhaps the people likely to commit it have simply moved elsewhere (which we know happened from the grog ban), so all it may have done is shifted to somewhere else.
MR Clarke,
you intervene if there is a problem.
The report on which the intervention you support showed that child abuse is no different in the N/T than anywhere else in Australia.
It is up to you to show evidence to the contrary.
As I said it is pretty clear you didn't/haven't read the report.
Your present 'evidence' is nothing of the sort.
35 years ago in introductory statistics at Macquarie University we were taught you had to compare apples with apples.
your 'evidence' is not as has beenshown.
It is not showing you in a good light for you to insist there is evidence there.
This is probably more to do with your support for john Howard than anything else!
Ive read this topic for some blogs. But I think this is more informative.
Post a Comment