How often have we heard about how the NT intervention was racist and the Income Management scheme is discriminatory. City academics and Government-paid activists decry the income management scheme while the women who have to raise children in an environemnt of poverty, drunkenness and abuse welcome it.

From the ABC:

The senior women of some of Australia's most remote Aboriginal communities say their children are suffering because they have been left out of the Federal Government's income management schemes.

Community leaders in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) lands in South Australia say income management, which has divided opinion in the Northern Territory, would help stop domestic violence, child abuse and neglect.

Just as now happens in the NT under the Stronger Futures legislation – a partial extension of the Howard government's intervention – families in need would be identified and would have half their social security payments quarantined for spending on essentials like food, clothes and rent.

Yanyi Bandicha, who chairs the powerful local women's council, sat down with the ABC and a group of grandmothers on the council to discuss the issue.

She said she would like to see the community involved in choosing families in need.
Audio: Aboriginal elders ask for income management (PM)

"We want this income management to be done. This will help a lot, I think," she said.

"We need help. This place – it's not the kids are skinny, but the communities are skinny, with nothing. It's empty."