Declaring the widespread sexual abuse of Aboriginal children to be a national emergency, the Australian Government today moved to seize control of hundreds of Aboriginal settlements and ban alcohol and porn across an area the size of Afghanistan.

In what amounts to the ending of Australia’s decades-long and largely failed path of self-determination for Aboriginal people, scores of extra police will be moved into the Northern Territory to enforce bans on alcohol and pornography and to ensure that all public computers are checked for evidence of the downloading of porn.

Aboriginal parents will have their welfare payments cut if their children fail to go to school and all will be required to spend at least half of their fortnightly welfare money on food and essentials. The moved is designed to ensure that alcohol-dependent Aboriginal parents stop spending the bulk of their income on alcohol in areas where the ban on sales cannot be enforced - such as the northern city of Darwin.

The Prime Minister, John Howard, announced the take-over of the Northern Territory's Aboriginal settlements in Parliament, saying that the levels of abuse of young Aboriginal children in their remote desert communities was so widespread that it amounted to a national emergency.

In an emotional statement, he said: “We are dealing with children of the tenderest age who have been exposed to the most terrible abuse from the time of their birth, virtually.

“Any semblance of maintaining the innocence of childhood is a myth in so many of these communities and we feel very strongly that this kind of action is needed.”

The Government’s sudden move was prompted by the findings of an inquiry released last week that showed alarming levels of sexual abuse of Aboriginal children. The inquiry - by a leading QC and an Aboriginal child expert - found that children were being abused in all of the 50 Aboriginal settlements that they visited in northern Australia.

There are hundreds of such settlements, many with less than 100 people. The children were being sexually abused by both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal adults.

The inquiry - established by the government of the Northern Territory - found that “rivers of grog” and a lack of education were great contributors to the levels of sexual abuse of children.

It also found that very young Aboriginal girls had been taken into Darwin by non-Aboriginal men who traded sex with the girls for drugs. It was also found that Aboriginal girls aged between 12 and 15 years were being provided with cash and gifts for having sex with white mine workers.

Video and other forms of pornography were widely used by men in Aboriginal communities and over-crowed housing conditions meant that children were exposed to sexual activity from a very young age, the inquiry reported.

Mr Howard said that he was concerned over what he considered to be the Northern Territory’s sluggish response to the findings and it was for that reason that Australia’s national Government was using its powers to seize control of the Northern Territory’s Aboriginal settlements.

He said that every child under the age of 16 years would be checked by teams of doctors the Government intends to send into Aboriginal areas. Remote schools will get funding boosts so that they can provide a meal every day to Aboriginal pupils. Aboriginal settlements will be taken over by Australia’s national Government for the next five years and the able-bodied idle made to repair houses and clean up communities in return for continued welfare payments.

The proposals mean scrapping the entry-permit system under which Aboriginal people have controlled access to northern Australia’s 660,000 square kilometres of Aboriginal lands - an area about of the size of Afghanistan - in recent decades.

A leading Aboriginal activist and lawyer, Michael Mansell, said the Government’s actions were an “immoral abuse of power” aimed at taking over the lives of Aboriginal people.

But Mr Howard said that he had no choice: “We are dealing with a group of young Australians for whom the concept of childhood innocence has never been present. That is a sad and tragic event. Exceptional measures are required to deal with an exceptionally tragic situation.”

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