MARK COLVIN: Like most people working in the area, Muriel Bamblett says the child abuse problem
goes much wider than just the Northern Territory.

The theme of "crisis one day, forgotten the next" is echoed in other states too.

In Queensland, senior Aboriginal leaders say it's the men who must take a stand if anything is to
change.

But the President of the Australian Indigenous Doctors Association, Mark Wenitong, says
recommendations from a Government-sponsored Indigenous male working group have been virtually
ignored.

Cherbourg is one community that says it's having some success in tackling the problem of violence
and abuse, by forcing men to take responsibility.

Lisa Millar reports.

LISA MILLAR: Cherbourg's about three hours drive north-west of Brisbane, an Aboriginal community
with a population of 2,500.

I was there five years ago, filming a story about violence, when I met Arnold Murray - a wife
basher who'd spent time in jail.

ARNOLD MURRAY: Oh, I bashed my girlfriend. I... I would've killed her. I had a madiganal (phonetic),
I was going to kill her, but in this community there's a lot of blokes that here I know that bash
their partners.

I think one of us might have to, you know, have to kill one of our partners for us to get attention
again.

LISA MILLAR: The community changed its approach, concentrating more on the men, while still looking
out for the women and children.

Now Arnold Murray is a councillor, and he says the level of violence has fallen.

ARNOLD MURRAY: To be honest, it has slowed done, hey, domestic violence, you know?

LISA MILLAR: And why do you think that is?

ARNOLD MURRAY: I think... I think some of the men are getting the message across that, you know, it's
not going to be tolerated in this community anymore - no more domestic violence.

LISA MILLAR: Because when I last spoke to you, Mr Murray, you had bashed your girlfriend and you
had said to me that you could've killed her, that you...

ARNOLD MURRAY: I could've killed her, yeah. Look where I am today.

LISA MILLAR: You're a councillor.

ARNOLD MURRAY: Yeah, I've, you know, come a long way, you know, and look, and we've got six lovely
children, and you know, it, you know, you sit back and... well, I sit back and look at it, you know,
and I said, you know, I could have been sitting in jail.

LISA MILLAR: It's still a struggle.

Lillian Gray coordinates the safety house, and says, like the Northern Territory, child abuse is a
problem.

LILLIAN GRAY: It's not really increased, it's just that sexual abuse on children was, like, more or
less swept under the carpet, you know, and I think domestic and family violence was more to the
front than what child abuse was.

LISA MILLAR: But she's not happy with the tone of the debate over the last few days.

LILLIAN GRAY: It seems to me like they're tarring us to the one brush, you know, and it's not true,
not for us mob in Cherbourg, because I feel that we've come a long way in the last couple of years.

LISA MILLAR: The former Queensland governor Leneen Forde called a meeting of 400 women eight years
ago that resulted in an inquiry into ritual abuse. She's almost disbelieving that the same
conversations are still being had.

LENEEN FORDE: We have to fix the problem, and I don't know how you do it, but it's a big, big blot
on Australia. And because it's out of sight for a lot of people, it's not high up on the agenda.

LISA MILLAR: Mark Wenitong is an Aboriginal doctor based in Cairns who was involved in a working
group looking at Indigenous men's issues. He says came to nothing.

MARK WENITONG: Their key was that if you address the men's issues instead of only being reactive to
men being perpetrators, there was real chance of actually addressing some of the underlying issues
that are causing these problems in communities.

LISA MILLAR: So you think the work of the Indigenous male working group was virtually ignored?

MARK WENITONG: It was never funded. It was never particularly taken up as a policy.

LISA MILLAR: Leneen Forde thinks it's time Australia's eyes turned inward.

LENEEN FORDE: We're going off to East Timor and we go off to the Solomons and we go off to Iraq,
but if people could see what those communities are really like, they'd be so shocked to think that
that was Australia, that this is our home, this is how some of our people are living.

MARK COLVIN: Former Queensland governor Leneen Forde ending that report by Lisa Millar.