The Intervention: Katherine, NT

Synopsis

The Intervention: Katherine, NT traces over one year the impact of the emergency intervention which the federal government started in the Northern Territory in 2007 in response to a report about widespread child abuse.

The movie adopts a ground-level perspective and covers the region of Katherine and surrounding communities of Beswick, Barunga, Eva Valley and Binjari.

The Intervention was shot over a an 8-month period and features the lives of ordinary community residents as they experience the intervention first hand, as well as the various government and business workers who all come together to implement it.

The Norther Territory intervention started in June 2007 when politicians in Canberra tried to deal with sexual abuse in remote Aboriginal communities. The gulf between the two worlds could not have been wider. The Government sent in the army, the Federal Police and doctors to begin ‘stabilising’ virtually every single Aboriginal community in the Territory.

Contrary to what the film-makers expected they found mainly relaxed communities, burdened by poverty and a lack of inspiring opportunities; children smiling and playing.

The Intervention puts a human face to the kinds of communities that have been rendered by the media as shadowy breeding grounds for criminal activity.

One year after the Intervention, the filmmakers posed the questions: what new evidence of sexual abuse has been uncovered? Is life better for children and their parents? What did the Intervention deliver?

Aboriginal communities around Katherine where the film crew interviewed Aboriginal people directly and adversely affected by changes to their income and employment.