Less than a month after Australian journalist John Pilger used his Sydney Peace Prize acceptance speech to belt Australia over its treatment of Indigenous people, another winner of the same prize yesterday did the same.

Amnesty International Secretary General Irene Khan, who won the Sydney Peace Prize in 2006, yesterday addressed the National Press Club after touring several Aboriginal communities this week.

Irene Khan

Her words were not pretty, and not a first.

“That Indigenous peoples experience human rights violations on a continent of such privilege is not merely disheartening, it is morally outrageous,” she said.

“The moral imperative to eradicate such poverty is no less an imperative on government than to eliminate torture.”

She also followed in the foot steps of many others by heavily criticizing the NT intervention, stating that it’s “one-size fits all” approach would not work.

“The blunt force of the intervention’s heavy handed ‘one size fits all’ approach cannot deliver the desired results. The Government will not secure the long term protection of women and children unless there is an integrated human rights solution that empowers peoples and engages them to take responsibility for the solutions,” she said.

“…Indigenous people in remote Aboriginal communities deserve the same respect, safety and protection as does any Australian - but this will not be achieved in a sustained manner under the Emergency Response, which is stigmatising and disempowering an already marginalised people and which is in violation of Australia’s international obligations.”

It has become commonplace for Australia to be criticized for its human rights failures in Aboriginal Australia.

This year, the UN has expressed concerns several times and human rights organizations continue calls for Australia to get in line with its international human rights obligations.

This is ironic considering it is the year Australia endorsed the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

If Australia can’t even listen to the large body of human rights activists who are calling on it to reassess it’s position on Aboriginal people, how will we ever hope that they begin listening and trusting Aboriginal people themselves? How can we believe the Rudd government is seriously committed to “re-setting the relationship?”

The answer is simple - we can’t.