The Northern Territory Intervention and Closing the Gap Initiative: A Comparative Review

Introduction
The Northern Territory Intervention and the Closing the Gap Initiative are two Federal Government policies that are designed to end the disparity between the health of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. There are limited similarities between these two policies, however many differences, including the involvement of the Indigenous community in the creation and management of the policies and the aims of the policies; the effectiveness of these policies has been attributed to the level of involvement within the Indigenous community.

The Northern Territory Emergency Response
The Northern Territory Intervention was implemented in June 2007 in order to protect Aboriginal children from sexual abuse; this involved heavy regulation of the community member’s lives, and many people did not approve. The Intervention program was initiated in response to allegations of sexual abuse in Aboriginal communities during August 2006; this prompted an enquiry into methods to protect children, and on the 15th of June 2007, the “Little Children are Sacred” report was released (Calma, 2008). Following this, the federal government created a policy in the Northern Territory on the 23rd June 2007 called the Northern Territory Emergency Response, also labelled as “The Intervention” (Calma, 2008).

The changes that were implemented in this Intervention policy include the removal of the permit system for access to Indigenous land, 50% of welfare payments were confined, the abolishment of government-funded Community Development Employment Projects, Aboriginal children were subjected to language changes in schools, the government expected Indigenous people to lease their property in return for governmental services, and finally, Aboriginal children were required to have mandatory