Rally calls for end of NT intervention

Northern Territory communities have their own ways of dealing with crippling social problems and don't need Canberra bureaucrats instructing them how to do it.

That is the message from advocates using the seventh anniversary of the Northern Territory intervention launch to call for the controversial program's end.

The Stop the Intervention Collective Sydney rallied for the cause on Saturday, marching on the tent embassy at Redfern to highlight the intervention's impacts.

Ray Jackson says communities are aware of the problems drugs, alcohol and gambling pose but "we have our own way of dealing with that".

"I want the alternative that allows the elders in the communities themselves to decide how and what is going to happen," the Indigenous Social Justice Association president said at the rally.

The former Labor government passed its Stronger Futures legislation in June 2012, continuing the intervention policies introduced by the Howard government in 2007 to address alcohol and other abuse in the Northern Territory.

Kyol Blakeney, an University of Sydney indigenous officer, said the intervention had been a huge violation of human rights.

"There are accusations of alcohol abuse and drug abuse...people that would rather spend money on the pokies then take care of their kids," he said.

"And that does exist.

"It also exists in not just my people, it exists in all nationalities in Australia.

"And nobody seems to do anything about that."