Here is a letter written by my wife, Lisa Owen, that she recently wrote to our PM, if you are concerned you should do the same too:

Dear Mr Howard,

I would like to express my concerns about the proposals put before parliament in relation to the 73 communities in the Northern Territory. I do not disagree that there is cause for concern, and that there have been indications that there are amongst other things, sexual abuse of children taking place in some communities (as has been known for the past 5-6 years).

What I cannot understand is how current policy can heal sexual abuse by perpetrating another form of abuse.

These policies require the racial discrimination act to be repealed - this is not only an injustice for Indigenous Australians but for many other Australians as well. This is disgraceful as Australia prides itself on being a multicultural community.

Current proposal also requires the land act be repealed - opening opportunities for further exploitation (particularly by mining companies) of people who have already suffered so much at the hands of their colonisers.

That 50% of Centrelink payments be required to be set aside irrespective of whether a family has misused money in the past is purely racist - this is not happening to non-Indigenous Centrelink recipients.

To have a government appointed observer sounds an awful lot like returning to the days of the mission manager and places and unhealthy amount of power in the hands of one person.

I believe the issues of housing, education, health and government neglect need to be addressed. There is no point in identifying that aboriginal people are not sending their children to school, and punishing them for this when there are 1000 children of school age in a community and only 300 school places.

Please consider that there must be alternatives that are not racist, land grabbing and reminiscent of the stolen generation days.

Yours faithfully,

Lisa Owen

Wow, what a woman!