Informit article: Settler colonial closures

Western Australian premier Colin Barnett has announced plans for the forced ‘closure’ of ‘at least 100 or more’ of the 274 remote Aboriginal communities across the state. It seems that South Australia may soon follow suit, with sixty locations in that state also earmarked for ‘closure’. As with the Howard government’s Northern Territory Emergency Response (the Intervention) and its extension under the Gillard government’s perversely named Stronger Futures legislation, we are seeing what Patrick Wolfe has characterised as a persistent settler colonial ‘logic of elimination’.