Yahoo Australia/New Zealand: Bans for Aborigines may be needed: PM

Sunday December 5, 02:11 PM AAP

Bans for Aborigines may be needed: PM

Curfews and alcohol bans may be necessary in Aboriginal communities, Prime Minister John Howard said, adding that civil liberties were less important than staying alive.

His comments drew harsh criticism from the Australian Council for Civil Liberties, which said economic solutions would do more than restrictive rules to improve the health and wellbeing of Aboriginal people.

Indigenous problems should be solved at a community level rather than from the top down, Mr Howard said, even if that involved community-imposed curfews and alcohol bans.

"The answer lies in finding solutions at a local level that keep families together, re-assert the authority of parents, instill a greater sense of responsibility in parents and Aboriginal leaders," Mr Howard told ABC Television's Insiders program.

"Where they want to impose the disciplines of things like alcohol bans and limitations, they should be fully supported by governments and they shouldn't get tangled up with people running around and saying this is some kind of restriction on civil liberties.

"The most important civil liberty is to stay alive and unless people are given the opportunity to do so then you can't really start even talking about civil liberties."

That approach was completely unacceptable, Australian Council for Civil Liberties president Terry O'Gorman said.

"It is a policy approach that would never be tolerated in the wider community and it's not being approached equally across all Aboriginal communities," Mr O'Gorman said.

"Leaders in any community, be it Aboriginal or not, have an important role but the fact is that Aboriginal welfare cannot be considered in isolation from the policy issues of the rest of the country.

"Ultimately it has to be an economic approach and the federal government has to be involved in that."

The government would be willing to "go halfway" and work with all Aboriginal leaders to find solutions, Mr Howard said.

However, he emphasised that the new National Indigenous Council (NIC), which will meet for the first time this week, would remain the government's principal source of advice on indigenous issues.

Mr Howard last Friday met with indigenous leaders including Pat and Mick Dodson and former AFL star Michael Long after the footballer walked more than halfway from Melbourne to Canberra to highlight indigenous suffering.

Pat Dodson said he and other Aboriginal leaders were willing to work with the government.

"There's room to negotiate the ways these things can take place but we're all committed to turn around the sadness and the sorrow and the lack of opportunity in the indigenous communities in many places," he told Insiders.

"Instead of being in a position that appears to be oppositional to what the government's position is, we're seeking to have a dialogue about the best way to do that."