A leader of Amnesty Inter­na­tional spoke out about abo­rig­ine poverty in Aus­tralia. Irene Khan com­pared the poverty to tor­ture and called on Australia’s gov­ern­ment to end what she called “dis­crim­i­na­tory” practices.

From the Syd­ney Morn­ing Her­ald, this AAP story recorded Khan’s comments.

The poverty expe­ri­enced by many Abo­rig­ines is as morally rep­re­hen­si­ble as tor­ture and must be erad­i­cated, Amnesty Inter­na­tional secretary-general Irene Khan says.

In Aus­tralia for a week-long visit, Ms Khan has also called on the Rudd gov­ern­ment to end the dis­crim­i­na­tory mea­sures of the North­ern Ter­ri­tory inter­ven­tion into remote indige­nous communities.

They were “stig­ma­tis­ing and dis­em­pow­er­ing an already mar­gin­alised peo­ple”, she said.

Ms Khan vis­ited Abo­rig­i­nal home­land com­mu­ni­ties in cen­tral Aus­tralia before address­ing the National Press Club in Can­berra on Wednesday.

The poverty she saw north­east of Alice Springs reminded her of a third world coun­try, she said in a statement.

“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.”

Ms Khan, the first woman, first Asian and first Mus­lim to head the world’s largest human rights organ­i­sa­tion, also blasted fed­eral Labor for con­tin­u­ing the for­mer Howard government’s inter­ven­tion­ist policies.

She was par­tic­u­larly scathing of the com­pul­sory quar­an­ti­ning of wel­fare pay­ments and sug­gested there was a “real risk” Labor could squan­der an oppor­tu­nity to change direction.

“The blunt force of the intervention’s heavy-handed one-size-fits-all approach can­not deliver the desired results,” Ms Khan said.

“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.”

The Racial Dis­crim­i­na­tion Act was sus­pended in the North­ern Ter­ri­tory to allow the intervention’s more con­tro­ver­sial mea­sures to be introduced.

Indige­nous Affairs Min­is­ter Jenny Mack­lin has vowed to rein­state the act and will intro­duce the rel­e­vant leg­is­la­tion into fed­eral par­lia­ment within days.

But Ms Khan warned Labor needed to do so “in line with Australia’s inter­na­tional oblig­a­tions not to dis­crim­i­nate against indige­nous peoples”.

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