If you think John Howard could possibly have "good intentions" behind his latest round of attacks on Indigenous communities, just remember the first Governor of Australia.

Governor Phillip's way of "befriending the natives" was a template for the next two centuries of racist abuse. In order to make two blacks his "companions", he had them kidnapped. One of them became an alcoholic, rejected by both societies.

From that day to this, those who rule over this capitalist system have alternated between outright brutality and blatant policies to exterminate the Indigenous people and the pretence of "humanitarian" concern for them. But no talk of sympathy for the Indigenous population or "protection" of their welfare has ever meant that their rights have been seriously promoted.

Whatever the rhetoric or policies, the agenda has always been the same: untrammelled access to land, and the destruction of the ancient culture that stands as an accusation against the blight of a "civilisation" that by winter of 1788 had already reduced the local Eora population to starvation.

The aim today, as it has been for 220 years, is to impose the ideals of capitalist private property and the rights of a tiny minority to profit from natural wealth and human labour. Capitalism cannot tolerate a culture which emphasises reciprocal, collective and egalitarian responsibilities and relationships.

In the first onslaught of the invasion, the British occupation was justified by talk of a country "uninhabited" and "unoccupied". But repeated massacres and brutal dispossession made this an obvious lie, so the language changed to "practically unoccupied, without settled inhabitants or settled law, at the time when it was peacefully annexed to the British dominions."

But by the mid-nineteenth century, Aborigines were no longer just "pests". With the end of transportation, they became a potential source of cheap - and even unpaid - labour for the pastoralists swarming all over their land.

The same exploitative racism drives Howard's attack: communities that don't promote profit and business enterprise, that don't welcome the destruction of their environment by mining companies, or don't come up to the "standards" of non-Indigenous oppressors, have no rights.

Amanda Vanstone, when Indigenous Affairs Minister, kicked off a campaign which laid the basis for today's takeover of Indigenous communities. In December 2005 she branded Aboriginal outback communities "cultural museums" that might make people feel good, but were not "economically viable". Aboriginal children, she opined, should have the same rights to "move to the cities and become doctors and lawyers" as any other children. Her means of ensuring this "right" was to refuse to provide schools, medical care and running water as "uneconomic".

Now Howard and Mal Brough are hoping they can sell the lie that the military occupation of Aboriginal lands is perfectly civilised and peaceful. And the justification is the same: hypocritical sympathy for the plight of Indigenous people.

Profits before human rights

George Gipps, NSW governor from 1838-46, was one of the first in a long line of hypocrites to mouth concern for the plight of "our poor savage fellow creatures". His instructions to G.A. Robinson, the Chief "Protector" of Aborigines, flickers across the centuries like a beacon to light Howard's way: notwithstanding the government's sympathy for the blacks, "nothing was to interfere with the improvement of the Colony."

Howard, supposedly so distraught about these issues, has been one of the most determined to impose mining on Aboriginal communities, in defiance of the 1976 Ranger Inquiry into uranium mining in the NT plus a major survey in 1984 of the effects of mining since 1978. Both concluded that mining increased the incidence of alcoholism and its attendant family violence in Aboriginal communities, to say nothing of predatory whites who abuse women and children. Nothing, of course, should stand in the way of a chance to make a profit.

Paternalism - another form of genocide

Nor is patronising paternalism - with its authoritarian control and the consequent incarcerations, abuse and genocide - new. In the mid-1950s the Aboriginal artist Albert Namatjira was jailed for giving "grog" to his friends and relatives, as was actor Robert Tudawali (star of Jedda) in 1959.

During 1956 the Cairns & District Trades and Labour Council reported on conditions at the Yarraba Aboriginal Mission 10 miles from Cairns. Their recommendations were typical of the proposals many unions made about "missions" they visited and give us a picture of the conditions: provision of a timber mill, a grant of £50,000 for new homes, the election of a council to run their own affairs, building of a deep sea jetty and a decent road.

They protested that child endowment was not paid to Aboriginal mothers, but had to be taken out in kind from the local store. They concluded that the Mission was "a shocking example of deliberate criminal Government and semi-Government neglect". A people once proud are now "frustrated, starved, uneducated and hopeless".

As late as 1964 wages for Aboriginal performers at the Elizabethan Theatre in Sydney were paid into a trust account. We know this because Actors Equity was still taking action to get award wages for them, as well as demanding it be paid directly to them.

The idea that Aboriginal people can't run their own communities, and that they should be judged by the "standards" of respectable, middle-class white society, fuels brutality or paternalism. The results of either are the same.

Life on the missions, set up as part of the new paternalism of the twentieth century known as "smoothing the dying pillow", inflicted unimaginable suffering on Aboriginal communities which led directly to today's astronomical rates of suicide, appalling health, and substance abuse. They suffered abusive "protectors" who had draconian powers including the right to dictate who could marry whom, to withhold wages, and to control movement in and out of the missions. Schools refused to educate mission children; churches stole Aboriginal children and gave them as virtual slaves to middle-class families in the cities.

The justifications for these racist policies? Supposed concerns for the welfare of children. Until the 1970s, children could be stolen because of "parental neglect", or simply because they looked pale enough to be kept from growing up Aboriginal. Is it any wonder Indigenous people are living in terror once again?

Genocide is the name given to these policies of the twentieth century. They all include the same ingredients: control of income, appointed managers, "law and order" - and they remain genocidal.

Missions were the answer to what pastoralists, miners and other profit-seekers saw as an intractable problem - the existence of a population that didn't fit their view of a workforce that could be exploited for profit.

Today, the same mentality informs talk of "passive welfare". The Community Development Employment Program, the first work-for-the-dole scheme, which applied originally only to Indigenous people, has systematically been cut in the hope of forcing people to leave for work in larger towns and cities. In Oodnadatta, the local tourism industry spokesperson explicitly said it had to be cut to try to force people to train for work in the industry.

But Howard and his racist backers in big business have lost patience. They're hoping that Howard's campaign against the so-called "black armband" view of history (which acknowledges past wrongs and says Aborigines deserve special rights to atone for them) and his campaign against land rights and the minimal rights of Native Title have laid the necessary basis to peddle the lie that outback communities are intractably dysfunctional.

That's why history has never been more important. It makes it glaringly obvious that Howard's plans for Australia's Indigenous people are nothing but a new round of genocide.