AM - Wednesday, 17 May , 2006 08:04:00 Reporter: Lindy Kerin TONY EASTLEY: The Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough says there are paedophile rings operating in Indigenous communities in Australia.
His comments follow harrowing accounts of Indigenous children, one of them just a toddler, being raped and abused.
Mr Brough says senior Indigenous men are using children at their whim, protected by what he calls a veneer of cultural tradition, and without fear of prosecution.
The Federal Minister has told Lateline that if the Northern Territory Government can't strengthen and implement law and order he may have to step in.
Lindy Kerin reports.
LINDY KERIN: The Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough says violence and sexual abuse against Indigenous women and children isn't isolated to Central Australia and extends to Indigenous communities around the country.
Now in a shocking development Mal Brough has revealed that there's considerable evidence that paedophile rings are operating in Aboriginal communities.
MAL BROUGH: Everybody in those communities knows who runs the paedophile rings. They know who brings in the petrol; they know who sell the ganja. They need to be taken out of the community and dealt with, not by tribal law, but by the judicial system that operates throughout Australia.
There are examples of people that have been operating, and at a very senior level within Indigenous communities, that have such power over those communities and that use children at their own whim.
LINDY KERIN: Mal Brough says the Northern Territory Government needs to strengthen law and order and target he's calls mafia-style communities, where people are living in fear.
The minister has questioned whether the Territory Government is taking the issue of violence in communities seriously enough. And he's warned if the Territory doesn't cooperate he'd be prepared to step in and take control.
MAL BROUGH: I would first and foremost want to work with the elected government of the Territory.
If that fails to produce what I think are the only workable solutions, which is good governance and law and order, then we shouldn't close our minds to any alternative that is possible to the Federal Government.
LINDY KERIN: An Indigenous male leader is also calling for drastic action.
Mick Gooda is the head of the Cooperative Research Centre for Aboriginal Tropical Health in Darwin.
He's worked in Indigenous Affairs for decades and is the former CEO of ATSIC, the now defunct Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission.
Mick Gooda says if the safety of women and children cannot be guaranteed and violence and sexual abuse continues, then dysfunctional Aboriginal communities should be shut down.
And he says if children are at risk they should be removed from their families.
MICK GOODA: We should not shy away from these hard decisions on the basis that we might be creating another stolen generation. I think what we're talking about here is kids being removed from risk situations.
LINDY KERIN: Mick Gooda was involved in the closure of a Swan Valley Nyoongar community in June 2003. The Western Australian Aboriginal community was closed after allegations of sexual abuse and violence.
MICK GOODA: I put it straight to people in government, including the Premier: if you can't guarantee the safety of women and children in that camp I think you should do something about it, and if that means closing that community down to protect the women and kids, I think that's what you should do.
And they subsequently done it. It wasn't only me saying. There was a whole lot of other people saying that sort of stuff. We got to the stage where government couldn't guarantee the protection of women and children.
LINDY KERIN: For others who've worked in Indigenous affairs for decades this isn't a new story.
Sharon Payne from the North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency says violence against Indigenous women and children has been a problem for many years, and she fears little will change.
SHARON PAYNE: The impact on these people's lives and then the fact that they will turn up, often the young people who have been molested will turn up as clients of ours later on.
And so then they'll be victims, then they'll be perpetrators, and they'll be responsible, and they'll go to jail, and then they won't be able to parent their kids properly.
Unless something is done, this cycle is just going to continue.
LINDY KERIN: But the Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough is more optimistic. He's hoping the debate will bring positive changes.
MAL BROUGH: Quite frankly, I think it's wonderful that this has been highlighted to the rest of the Australian public so that people can have their sensitivities shocked to the core, and as a nation, not just as politicians, but as a nation, we demand that these things change.
TONY EASTLEY: The Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough, ending that report by Lindy Kerin.
Australian media reports that a recently leaked Northern Territory police briefing paper exposes "shocking" cases of sexual abuse and violence against women and children in remote Australian Aboriginal communities.

Northern Territory, Australia
Central Australian Crown prosecutor, Dr Nannette Rogers, alleged a range of "dreadful" cases she has heard of. Her paper claims details of abuse (over a 15-year period), including the rape of a seven-month-old baby, and the sexual assault and drowning of a girl by an 18-year-old man. The report refers to a disturbingly abusive and secretive Indigenous male culture. She says a "web of kinship" has helped to create a "conspiracy of silence" and that Aboriginal communities were suffering from "tragedy fatigue," allowing horrific crimes to appear unremarkable. 

"It doesn't augur well for Aboriginal people to be functional human beings with the attributes of turning around and caring for children themselves," she said. "The child grows up seeing violence done to him or her and having violence done to him or her." 

 Tangentyere Council chief executive William Tilmouth says it is appalling behaviour. "It's a behaviour that's got to stop, it's behaviour that denigrates the family, as well as the women," he said.