(What? Me? Disorganised? Never!)

Just a few of the reports about indigenous child abuse in the last few years.

The first thought that came to me when hearing about John Howard’s “national emergency” response to indigenous child sexual abuse was that in the event that this actually works, it’ll probably be his greatest achievement in office. Indeed, the way Mal Brough was talking about getting experts on the ground and listening to them on the 7.30 Report last Wednesday actually did sound like he was intent on a long-term fix.

That said, the firestorm of comment on Aussie blogs has been mostly negative, and from what’s been said so far I agree this is more of a knee-jerk reaction than anything else. Out of the 97 recommendations in the report by Rex Wild and Patricia Anderson that started it all (and which is much more readable than your typical bureaucratic sentence-munging), Team Howard’s response addresses only the simplest and most obvious, missing the real meat about strengthening health clinics and establishing drop-in centres and hiring more Aboriginal police and liason officers.

In fairness, Howard has done a much better job than the NT government at delivering on the report’s call for “prompt and firm” action. But the report also says that a full and proper fix will take at least 15 to 20 years and will require long-term, whole-of-government commitments with sustained funding. Although details of Howard’s plan are still sketchy, I see little to suggest it’ll keep going beyond the election.