Paddy Gibson is an organiser with Stop the Intervention Collective Sydney (STICS) and has studied the impact on those in the ‘prescribed communities’. Since 2008 he has been a researcher for the UTS Jumbunna House of Learning.

STIC is an open collective of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people committed to the repeal of the NT Intervention and the struggle for Aboriginal self-determination.

The Intervention – or as it is officially known, the Northern Territory National Emergency Response – is a package of changes to welfare provision, law enforcement, land tenure and other measures, introduced by the Australian federal government under John Howard in 2007 to address allegations of child sexual abuse and neglect in Northern Territory Aboriginal communities. It included an invasion by a force of 600 soldiers and detachments from the ADF (including NORFORCE). The military occupation concluded on 21 October 2008.

In the five years since the initiation of the Emergency Response, not one prosecution for child abuse has come from the exercise.

For more information about the Intervention, income management and getting involved, check out the Stop the Intervention Collective.