The post you are reporting:
If knee-jerk response it was, it was in response to the knee-jerk Oz response to what, as you rightly say, is a long term serious issue.
As one of the commentators in the article explains...
""The problem is so profound and endemic. We're way, way past the point where we can responsibly simply pass the ball over to the victims and say you fix yourselves.""
It is one thing for someone to look back over their life and career and conclude that, not only are the footprints upon the road of their history all of their own making, but the very highway and each bridge too are of their own unique design. They can then lope to the 'undeniable' conclusion that their life is an entirely self-made success, and with another small step go on to tell others to pull their socks up. "I did it, so can you."
This dumping on the victim, come, sweeping the problem under the carpet, notion; is both all too common and very very stupid, as the guy who thought this up this time is both an idiot and a politician:common/stupid, idiot/politician, such pairings as peaches & cream, boiled beef & carrots etc. are seen all around the place, but this is not to say that the one cannot exist without the other.
What is common need not be stupid, a politician need not be an idiot... and so on.
Fortunately for the BBC reporter, fortunately for us and fortunately for the Aboriginals of Northern Australia the answer is to be found within the people themselves, not as individuals but as a community...
"Sitting in the yard at Alison Ferber's house, the world of evidence and political debate feels a long way away.
But she has a simple solution of her own.
"What I think," she says with a mischievous grin on her lips "is to blow (up) the bottle shops."
She laughs a rueful laugh, then becomes more serious. "Just close it down, let the alcoholics drink water again.""
It appears Australia has caught the Media-Sound-Bite bug, and has it pretty bad for they too have concluded that what can be expounded in twenty seconds will work in practise.
...and, of course, it does work...it gets them another twenty seconds. By that time its all about a whole other problem.