Alison Anderson. Photo: ABC
Seems like I’m always driving on the Stuart Highway when “Big Things” are announced in the NT.
Two years ago I was driving the 800 kilometres from Yuendumu to Ti-Tree when the the Prime Minister John Howard and his Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough, launched their “NT Intervention”, an extraordinary and failed attempt at social engineering on a massive scale.
This week I was driving from Adelaide to Alice Springs while the latest folly unfolded.
On Wednesday this week NT Minister for Indigenous Policy Alison Anderson and her embattled Chief Minister Paul Henderson announced their newest attempt at recovering the failed administration that is the NT: Working Future – Remote Service Delivery.
Back in 2007 the NT intervention was justified by the straw man of the drunken Aboriginal male sexual predator that was apparently preying on Aboriginal women and children in all remote NT townships.
Many knew this to be a lie from the start but Howard, Brough and their running dogs in the press weren’t about to let reality get in the way of a political beat-up.
And it seems that the only real success of the NT Intervention, apart from lining the pockets of several hundred southern public servants and the hire car companies, has been to fill the NT’s jails to capacity – as the ABC reported yesterday:
Increased policing under the federal intervention in the Northern Territory has led to a dramatic rise in the number of people being sent to jail, a Senate inquiry into remote Indigenous communities has heard. The North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency told the inquiry, which is being held in Darwin, that the Northern Territory now hands out three times more prison sentences than the national averageA Central Australian Aboriginal Legal Aid Service officer, Mark O’Reilly, says there has been an increase in police charging people with a range of offences but the penalties were mostly jail terms or fines, with very little in between.
The director of the Northern Territory Legal Aid Commission, Suzan Cox, QC, has told the inquiry she has not seen a sentence for a community work order in a remote community in years. “I haven’t seen anyone do a community work order for years. “They just don’t get them.”
And now, almost two years down the track, the NT Government has released Working Future – Remote Service Delivery, a plan that envisages a utopian future of jobs, education and prosperity for Aboriginal people living in remote communities.
As Lindsay Murdoch revealed earlier this week in The Age:
Thousands of Aborigines living on their remote Northern Territory homelands will be forced to move to larger communities to receive key government services in a radical shake-up of indigenous policy. The NT Government is set to announce that 20 communities will be developed into regional economic hubs with a wide range of government services such as housing, schools and clinics. But about 580 smaller communities will be deprived of many government services, threatening the fruits of what became known in the 1970s as the homelands movement when thousands of Aboriginal people moved back to their ancestral lands.
Lets be clear on one thing – the policy behind this brave new world for remote townships in the NT was not an original idea of the NT Government, Minister Anderson, her advisors or anyone else north of Canberra – no-one in Henderson’s now-marginal, single-seat majority government has the intellectual or moral wit, rigour or vigour to think outside of the prevailing assimilationist paradigm that now runs in Australia’s management of indigenous affairs.
This policy comes straight out of the Canberra office of Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin, and the chief drivers of this, and similar policies in her office is her left-hand man, senior advisor Mike Dillon and a group of like-minded cronies.
As Lindsay Murdoch noted in The Age, Working Futures – Remote Service Delivery will:
…bring the Northern Territory into line with the Federal Government, which announced in March that only selected larger communities would benefit from initial funding in a 10-year program to build 4200 houses in remote indigenous communities across Australia. Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin said at the time the Government would, as a first step, bring selected communities up to a standard equivalent to other non-indigenous towns of similar size in Australia.
And just what is the brave new world that Working Futures – Remote Service Delivery will bring?
All new policies need a few hooks to lock into the public’s five-second attention span – a few catch phrases and key words. Minister Anderson revealed a few of her favourites in an opinion piece published in The Australian – “the dripping tap of dependency“, “reservoirs of opportunity“, “gaps sealed by equality, respect and shared responsibility“, and most bizarre of all “Territory Growth Towns“, which, Minister Anderson, or more likely her flowery ghost writer, tells us will be “proper towns“.
Territory Growth Towns will:
…not be black towns or white towns – they will be proper towns. They will have town plans; secure land tenure; private investment; integrated transport links; high schools; police stations; hospitals; cafes and recreation facilities. Strategically placed, they will be the service delivery centres for the vast majority of Aboriginal people living in the bush. From this day forward, we will move with urgency to build our Territory Growth Towns – our reservoirs of opportunity – in partnership with the federal Government, remote shire councils and, most importantly, local Aboriginal people.
Anderson’s utopian “Growth Towns” will come at a substantial cost to the many small homeland communities – small remote hamlets nestled in the heartland of traditional Aboriginal lands – that will be effectively de-funded by the NT Government.
The abandonment of support by governments for people living on these remote places is nothing new – in one of its first acts in coming to power in 1996 the first Howard government removed Commonwealth support for homelands, also known as “outstations”.later they gave what little responsibility was left to the NT government – who now seem prepared to abandon them completely.
Over the intervening years many homelands have strugged to survive and some, unsurprisingly, have been abandoned. But in all corners of the NT there are small hamlets where people live close to their land – often barely connected to the economy of mainstream Australia – by choice rather than circumstance.
And the broader social vision of Anderson’s brave new Northern Territory?:
The growing and youthful populations of our remote areas will be viewed as a demand-driven opportunity rather than a sinkhole of future welfare transfers. Local people will be encouraged to own property, build wealth and establish real economic independence. As a self-governing jurisdiction, the NT is young. Through recent tumultuous events we are a little wiser and a lot more aware.
I hope you can make more sense of that gobbledygook than I can – this is a home-grown NT version of the neo-liberal ideal of the “maximised human economic unit” – each person in a society represents a notional capital value to be exploited to their maximum potential for the so-called “common good”.
There is no room for any other model, i.e. welfare or what economist Jon Altman of the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research at the Australian National University calls the “indigenous hybrid economy”.
And it is the reality of this indigenous hybrid economy – which is the only reality in much of remote Australia, that the Anderson plan fails to recognise.
And by failing to recognise this reality it has sown the seeds of its own failure.
Altman and his colleagues at CAEPR have written widely on remote economic realities and this speech to The Fabian Society in 2005 provides some insights into his research and the nature of remote Aboriginal economic reality:
The hybrid economy:…this is about a three sector economy that includes the customary rather than the more conventional two sector private and public model. The hybrid economy also has four segments of articulation rather than the more conventional one.
Realistic: suggests that development needs to be context specific recognizing the very remote regions where Indigenous people own land
Sustainable: is inclusive not just of the economic but also of the ecological, recognizing that the Indigenous estate is relatively in tact and that customary activity is dependent on species; and that the socio-cultural looms large, again the customary is dependent on reproduction of practice
Development: is a term that is used in a wide sense to refer to livelihood and choice and the processes of improving well-being.
The focus here is on remote Australia where only 27 per cent of the Indigenous population resides, about 130,000 people at over 1,000 remote communities ranging in size from townships to tiny outstations. These are the most difficult of circumstances for economic development owing to remoteness…Much of my model of the hybrid economy is premised on the notion that customary non-market activity is undertaken…In this research, we referred to the hybrid economy, including the customary sector, as the real ‘real’ economy in remote Australia, because in very remote Australia only 15 per cent of Indigenous adults are in mainstream employment, 42 per cent are in CDEP employment and if one takes away CDEP then the unemployment rate increases from its current 7 per cent to 76 per cent.
These are the positives of living on country, often at outstations, of land rights and native title laws that are rarely reported.
Minister Anderson talks a lot about failure in her article in The Australian – but it is the failures of others, not the failures of her own government, that she chooses to highlight.
Perhaps this will be be the biggest failure of all – are we witnessing the last desperate attempts of a failed government in a failed state?
22 Comments
Starry eyed and nestled in the heartland of traditional Aboriginal lands, Gosford attempts to lead the Crikey audience again down the romantic hybrid path towards a 1970s imagining of contemporary Aboriginal life: utopian, idealised, deluded, plain silly. Along the way he lashes out at the people who are actually dedicated to breaking out of the 1970s policy ghetto, finding some decent futures for Aboriginal kids, and helping many of them get plugged in to the real world instead of having Hoppy’s Camp as the only available Nirvana. Thanks so much for your efforts Bob Gosford, we really needed that.
Wouldn’t it be nice if for once Aboriginal people had a say in their future?
It seems that all that Bob Durnam and I share are the same forename and residence in this wonderful part of the world – from there we diverge.
I’m encouraged that there are still a few, like Bob, who think they can ignore the facts and choose instead to resort to in personam attacks and a blind allegiance to the party line.
And I’d rather have the stars in my eyes that the bleak world view that Bob and his ilk persist with.
I can’t let Bob’s remarks about the ’70’s “policy ghetto” stand without challenge – I don’t know where he was during that time but there is a lot about the policies of that era that give me heart and that have given many people enduring rights, freedoms and benefits – the Aboriginal Land Rights Act, NT Self-Government Act, the Anti-Discrimination Act and the Trade Practices Act make a pretty good start for such a list.
But the glorious intervention we had to have overrode all of that legislation in order to achieve something that could have have been done in a reasoned and reasonable manner by any Government that chose to treat its citizens with respect rather than contempt.
And Bob, I agree that some of the policies of the seventies had some flaws – that could be said about any era – but why do ignore the blatantly racist and assimilationist polices of the nineties and beyond – surely they have had greater and longer lasting negative effects on people than anything from the seventies?
Over to you Bob D.
And yes, I agree with Jon – it would be nice if Aboriginal people, other than the self-serving Minister Anderson, had a say in their own futures – surely that is what good governance is all about. From what I hear from Darwin this policy has gone down like a lead balloon with Minister Anderson’s fellow Aboriginal MLAs.
Bob, (Gosford), can you be a little (or perhaps a lot?) more specific about what you think should be done as an alternative to the current and proposed policies? Can you maybe direct me (and others) to some of your older posts where a coherent alternative is laided out? (Sorry I’m new here).
I ask merely because I am a white, inner city living fella who is generally fullly supportive of ‘fixing’ whatever ‘problems’ currently exist for Aboriginal people. I mean, on a personal level I don’t discriminate against people based on their race, whatever that may be, but I’m quite frankly clueless when it comes to knowing what the true situation is, and what could be done better. Their are a number of things that are done that to mean seem like common sense, but which get labelled with extreme vitriol as ‘racist’ etc, and I can’t see why. However, I re-iterate my cluelessness of the real situation. I did visit the top end once to attend the Garma festival, but that hardly makes me an expert on Indiginous policy.
To put it another way, I’d like things to be better and everyone to get along, be healthy etc etc but sitting in a city seeing things through the filter of the media only it is impossible for me to form a genuinely informed opinion (although very easy to form just an opinion…). I once met Noel Pearson and from that and other statements of his he seems, to me, to represent an excellent way forward. Yet he is often critisised with extreme vitriol from many quarters in the idigenous community. In general I hear a lot of critisism, but not a lot of practical alternatives. Again though, the whole ’seeing through the media filter’ ensures that will be the case anyway, since critisism is always more exciting than boring incremental progress.
So, could you maybe outline somewhat of a vision that you see as the better alternatives than what is currently in place?
That’s a very good and unbiased comment Bogdanovist.
If you would allow me to put in my two bob’s worth (and I have no problems saying that’s not to say I am correct).
To my mind if they wished to be “assimilated” (which I find to be a rather strong word) they would be already. There’s nothing stopping them from being white. The point is that they don’t want to be, neither should they be forced to be is they don’t wish. Look at how stuffed up the stolen generation turned out to be and here we are trying to do similar things. I am sure the result would be the same. The reason many choose to live in misery is that this is better than losing whatever identity they have. Would you live in a slum if you didn’t have to?
The answer, if you wish one, lies not in trying to fix the superficial things people see; the alcohol abuse, the domestic violence; the high rate of illness. These are not the problem. The problem is what colonisation has done to them; it has taken away their identity, culture, their land, their lives, and given them very little in return.
To to “fix” that, although this isn’t a “fix” because nothing will fix what has happened, is to give them back a little of what is lost. The social justice report ( http://www.humanrights.gov.au/social_justice/sj_report/sjreport08/index.html ) describes a great deal of this, whilst the Australian Indigenous Doctors Association describes in the first few pages of their submission to the intervention review board the basis for improving health within Aborigianal communities ( http://www.aida.org.au/submissions.asp ).
Note that none if these reports suggest telling these people what to do. The reason that they remain in such a mess is that that is all White Australia has offered so far.
Sorry about the typos by the way….
Thanks to all for the comments and discussion so far – I’m just home after a series of long drives and days and will respond, particularly to Bodanovist early tomorrow.
Best and cheers, Bob
Jon, Typos forgiven and of course I meant ad hominem, rather than in personam, attacks in my response to Bob D above…and as for my star-gazing, Venus is beautiful this morning, low and bright in the north-eastern sky and I was lucky enough to see the Moon, Mars and Venus in beautiful conjunction two mornings ago at 0530 coming out of Coober Pedy…later, coffee calls.
Bogdanovist, I think you will find the assimilation policies do sound persuasive until you think about them for a bit. In a way what assimilation sounds like it is trying to achieve is for everyone to be treated the same. This sounds good, but on implementation these policies tend to turn into everyone being the same. Indigenous Australians should not have to be the same as mainstream Australian society if they don’t want to and differences between the two do not necessarily result in the problems we see today.
You can spot the assimilation policy if it boils down to Job – House – Mortgage. They really don’t have much more going for them than that.
On Noel Pearson I think he moved the Indigenous debate forward and made a lot of good points, but he has no relation to things in the NT. It is a bit like the french commenting on some policy in england. All well and good, but they don’t really have much to do with it except that the french and english share a more common cultural background than most Indigenous groups.
Some of the stuff he said about the Intervention and how it was okay to suspend peoples rights were thought of poorly in the NT. Now that he is getting so upset when some of the rights he fought for are being taken away because of the wild rivers legislation it seems a tad hypocritical. If he had stuck to commenting on issues he was actually related to I think he would be a lot more respected.
Let us be clear.
The NT Government’s decision to establish 20 ‘real towns’ is the latest in a war of assimilation being waged by Australian governments which has seen child sexual abuse shamelessly used as a fig leaf for the Intervention, the linking of welfare to school (a move unsupported by any evidence) and the forced teaching of English in indigenous schools.
Chief Minister Paul Henderson makes much of the relative number of businesses in Gundagai and in Maningrida. Is he for real? Gundagai is close to the large rural centres of Wagga and Yass and a relatively short drive from 300,000 people in Canberra. It’s connected by the national highway rail and air to the rest of Australia. Maningrida is close to… well it’s not close to anything. This is a ridiculous comparison.
This decision, not made by or in consultation with the communities, is a naked rejection of the Royal Commission into Black Deaths in Custody recommendations on empowerment and self determination. It has also been made after ATSIC had it throat cut and as the final consultations its replacement are being held.
Even in the tiny pockets of land that Aborigines still own outright and where they live as they wish to live there can be only one model of life for indigenous people and that is the white one. Henderson has exposed the thrust of white policy to indigenous people as overtly assimilationist. Again we are diminished as a Nation by treating the original owners of this country so shabbily.
“Growth towns, flowery (white) writers and Aboriginal MLAs”…therein lies part of the problem and part of the answer.
And remember Bob (Gosford)…they are NOT Aboriginal MLAs – they are Northern Territory Labor Government MLAs.
Yes, desperation is a key word – for a government(NT & Fed) and its failed policies. Just because they are pressed with the ‘black’ stamp does not make them smart…or even suitable. Don’t be naive. Don’t think whitefellas are the only empire builders around the NT ( & Australia).
It seems to me that the latest thrust at Aboriginal policy is that old “Kill the Indian, Save the Man”* mentality – now also being embraced , and imposed vigorously by NT Aboriginal MLAs, and all the rest who work for the Intervention – in an effort to please their colonial masters. *[See Ward Churchill who writes on such genocidal impacts due to national patterns of oppressors.]
Cici – thanks for your dose of reality.
I tend to accord politicians just a little too much credibility sometimes.
And I’d never assume that colour affected intelligence – I’ve seen plenty of dumb whitefellas and I’m sure there are plenty more out there!
I’m certainly aware of the black ‘empire builders’ out there – and intend, in the fullness of time, to turn my attention to a few of them – including Minister Anderson and her little fiefdom at Papunya – which, extraordinarily for a village with a population of about 350, gets a guernsey as a Territory “growth town”!
Oh for a Crime and Corruption Commission in the NT!
And I dunno about the “kill the Indian, save the man” mentality but this plan reminds me of the justification for the strategic hamlets policy during the American war in Vietnam – “in order to save the towns, we had to destroy them”…
Finally I wouldn’t be saying that all the NT Aboriginal MLA’s support this plan – I understand that one of them is preparing a very strongly worded opinion piece for publication sometime during the coming week…and that others may be very upset – on behalf of their remote constituents – about the more than likely effects of this farce.
Twenty-first century genocide – NT style!
It seems that most people in this country (including sadly, a number of Aboriginal people) have neither historical memory or historical knowledge. Most need to re-visit the original land grabs of both govt and settlers in earlier colonial times to see a similar pattern taking place right now, right here in the NT. In earlier land grabs, some people indigenous to particular areas and regions were so thoroughly extirpated that their names were officially expunged from the records. Indeed some are not even represented on the famous Tindale map Tribal Boundaries in Aboriginal Australia. And this exclusion of certain “tribes” occurred well before this latest govt intervention into re-location and ’strategic direction for remote towns and communities of the territory.’
What if? What if this latest ingenious idea at land grab – disguished as addressing disadvantage, doing away with “difference” and presenting opportunity commences a new phase of expirtation? After all this is simply another experiment and I don’t believe the primary object is to effectively mediate difference or fill gaps in society, education, employment, health and service delivery and etc. and etc. and etc. Reservoirs of opportunity? The right way? Elimination of the constant affirmation of difference? And the Territory Growth Towns idea will make all this happen or the bad stuff go away? All of a sudden the Henderson govt – in cohort with central govt, and its high profile celebrity specially selected “indigenous” advisers and all round white “Indigenous experts” show interest in long-term Aboriginal future growth? and long-term certainty? by establishing western models of governance and development based on the pursuit of attractive destinations, private opportunities, investment and individual economic opportunity. All that is good and well – and if Ms Anderson and others truly believe we should eliminate the constant affirmation of difference, lets go all the way and stop producing “indigenous art” and “culture” and (some) “indigenous language” and please lets stop promoting “indigenous tourism” – lets stop exploiting and milking “indigenous” for all its worth. Lets do away with the “indigenous industry” Lets see how well Australia copes then. We will quickly see the ranks of the unemployed swell to unbelievable numbers when the “indigenous industry” grinds to a halt. Lets speak of “culture” and “independent spirit” and “our unique strength” then, and only then, when we Aboriginal people control our own destinies and develop our own programs and ideas and create our own futures – which will be inclusive of all our own and in our own countries – urban, rural and remote – and be guided by that spiritual independence instead of, once again, being guided and herded like sheep by this latest round of protectionist policies. Just what is govt “protecting”?
I agree that change is needed, and that the need to treat all Australians equally is well nigh but am suspicious of Ms Anderson and other supporters of future development, or Intervention, who speak so passionately while they stand by and allow discriminatory (difference) legislation that disables only certain people and denies them even a tiny amount of long-awaited social justice? And lets not forget the “reforms” apparently could only be carried out by suspension of the RDA. Shame on them! However, this latest initiative tells me I smell a rat – well a number of (usual) rats and I implore all Aboriginal people, and especially those who have self-designated as our “leaders” – BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU ASK FOR.
I conclude with this statement from Marie Battiste (1986), Mi’kmaq educator from Potlo’tck First Nations of Unama’kik, Nova Scotia:
“You can’t be the Doctor if you are the disease.”
Bob, I have been waiting for a couple of days for your reply to Bogdanovist you promised him, I share his request above as I feel similar feelings
“Bob, (Gosford), can you be a little (or perhaps a lot?) more specific about what you think should be done as an alternative to the current and proposed policies? Can you maybe direct me (and others) to some of your older posts where a coherent alternative is laided out?”
Thanks
KMCD & Bogdanovist – apologies for the tardy response to my promise…I’m working on another piece on this issue that will address your concerns – though I’m unsure as to how ‘coherent’ my alternative might be.
But for some discussion on how at least one Aboriginal person views the recent policies, in an historical context, have a look at this piece by my friend Sue Jean Stanton at Crikey yesterday: http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/05/26/assimilation-another-word-for-bridging-the-gap/
Cheers and I’ll fulfill my obligations soon – I promise…
As someone who has lived in the NT for twenty six years now it is hard to sit back and watch all the spin being put out by people with vested interests, and I am talking here about the push by the Murdoch press, the country liberal party and big business to get Traditional Owners off country so that their land can be “opened up”. The policies of the past failed in part because the NT had for so many years a corrupt white government who refused to aknowledge land rights, spent millions in court fighting land rights, starved communities of funding, housing, schools, money for health etc- all the time coveting traditionaly owned land.
White Australia still believes in its own superiority and cannot see that many many Indigenous people dont want a white future.
I can sit and watch ads on TV telling me that one in four white children will be sexually abused but noone calls for an intervention.
I can read about women being smuggled into Australia to be forced into working for the sex industry but noone calls for an intervention.
I can read about endless abuse of white children in government and church run institutions and no talk of an intervention.
I can read about a South Australian magistrate talking of pedophile rings operating at the highest levels of society and still no intervention.
I know that as a women I can be raped but it will be close to impossible to get a conviction in the courts, because the law is an ass. And there will be no intervention.
I can read about the links between hard core porn (which is produced in Canberra and distributed in the NT) and violence and still no intervention.
So many of us want desperatley to see conditions improve on communities and in town camps, but not at the expense of Indigenous owners loosing control.
It is so sad to see the Labour party has now joined in the push to break land rights and return to the assimilationist policies of past.
Australia is a wealthy country. So much of this wealth is currently being taken from Aboriginal land. So much taken, so little given back and now that which has been returned about to be taken yet again.
There is alot of hurt and confusion out there now- people who fought so hard for their right to land and culture under pressure to abandon it all.
There will always be Indigenous ’spokespersons’ who are given prominance by those with vested interests, and they will be financially rewarded for betraying their people.
Real consultation does not happen as this is not the white way.
Down south, many Indigenous people are again standing up for their culture and are fighting to regain control of lands stolen last century.
This connection to country will not go away.
Support the right of Traditional owners to determine their own future.
This is the only proper way.
I read the Sue Jean Stanton article and I am, ufortunately, still pretty confused. I really do not envy those politicians, black and white, who have responsibility for this policy area.
As I see it (and please correct my misconceptions) there is a fundamental tension between preserving indigenous culture (in the sense of not being assimilated into ‘mainstream’ culture) and the infamous ‘closing the gap’ approach. If people, any people, want to live in small remote communities and follow a subsitance lifestyle then this appears to be a clear opting out of ‘modern’ livng which entails conveniences such as top notch health care etc. Historically (globally) life expectancies have risen dramatically due to modern, expensive, medical advances. Take this away and life expectancies drop back to where nature intended. It isn’t neccessarily a bad thing, if that is the way you choose to live. I can’t see that it is reasonable for a government to provide world class health care across an area as large and sparsely populated as parts of the interior of Australia. On the face of it, centralising services to a smaller number of larger centres makes some compromise that could be viable.
I’ve also seen in this blog and other articles the inference that there never was any real problem with sexual abuse, and that this was a trojan myth used to justify the Intervention, which is really just a land grab. Now, whether or not the policies of the Intervention were good or not (and I can’t reasonably make that judgement myself) if I for a moment put myself in the position of a politcian reading the report that lead to the intervention, at a time when everyone from John Butler (e.g. ‘gov did nothing: Do you really think the government would do nothing if all those people were white?’) to the UN was demanding Australia fix this problem as a serious human rights issue, I can see that clearly there would feel a need to act. Now whether what was done was a good thing or not is another matter, but plenty of critism seems to be claiming that in fact there was no problem with sexual abuse in the first place. Again, a real nightmare for anyone with responsibility for this policy area. You seem to be violating Human Rights regardless of what you do.
Again, I think this comes down to the fact that whenever I read critisism of government policies the alternatives are rarely spelled out. This may be the media filter (angry words sell more copy than constructive ones) but in neither this blog nor the Sue Jean Stanton do I see practical alternatives, mainly just some vague ethereal concepts, as if the reader should know exactly what they are implying in practical terms.
I am someone who has actively tried to get an understanding of this issue, since I would dearly like the wrongs of the past to be reconciled and the future to be prsoperous for all (whatever each persons personal notion of prosperous is) and yet I find it essentially impossible to glean what should be done by those in power from the vast majority of the almost universally negative commentary. I guess that is why I have a liking for Noel Pearson, since he talks in direct practical terms, rather than vague motherhood statements, and is prepared to work with governments constructively and acknowledge areas in which he feels they are doing well, as well as not being afraid to critise.
Again, I stress that I am speaking from a position of ignorance (though not through lack of some effort), but that is the way I see it. I’d be interested in what anyone with more direct knowledge of the issues has to say.
Sorry, one more quick point. As an example, Penster writes:
“Support the right of Traditional owners to determine their own future.
This is the only proper way.”
Sounds great, but what does that actually mean in practical terms? What does this really mean on the ground? Australia has (admitaddly shamefully recently) equal rights for all, so in what way do traditional owners have less ability currently than anyone else to determine their own future? Governments make socially engineering choices about where, when and how to deliver government services that affect all members of the community, not just Indigenous Australians (I mean that’s what governments do), so I’m not sure how different groups are treated differently in this way?
Put it another way, does the Italian-Australian community have the right to determine their own future? Or the Lebanese-Australian, Greek-Australian etc etc? Indigenous Australians do seem to have in fact more rights in this area than others, e.g. the permit system and the notion of ‘Aboriginal Land’ in and of itself. Therefore in what way do indigenous Australia’s not have the ability to determine their own destiny?
Bogdanovist – thank you for your long and thoughtful posts – I am particularly impressed that (1) you admit your ignorance, and (2) you ask reasoned questions. I trust that I can be of at least some help – though I see my only role in this issue as a commentator – not an educator.
You ask for my alternatives to the policies I am critical of – I’ll most likely disappoint you in this regard because I don’t see that as my role – my real concern, as should be apparent from my Crikey pieces, and posts and comments here – is with the repeated failure of policy design and delivery by government.
I’ve taken this line right from the first day of the Intervention in late July 2007 to the present – there were undoubtedly good elements to the Intervention as the Howard Federal government set it out but it was more concerned with the political impact of the Intervention rather than getting the policy design and implementation right.
The Little Children are Sacred report gave them all the justification they needed (which they used) but also gave them a good outline of the scope and nature of the problem and some pointers to how to proceed.These they ignored.
I said then and believe now that the Intervention was doomed from the start – it’s only real success has been to bring some aspects of Aboriginal disadvantage in the NT to the attention (for a while at least) of the Australian public. This, and the other aspects of the Intervention, that have largely been an inordinately expensive failure, could have been achieved far more efficiently and effectively had a little more reason and respect been incorporated into the design of the Intervention.
But, through political manipulation of both the public imagination and a compliant and lazy media, they have been able to reduce the issues to ‘protecting the women and children’, control over money, movement and alcohol and taking control of land with spurious justifications for unclear ends and using extraordinary legislation.
But the real policy failure here is that, as has been said too many times before, the whole intervention was a ‘top-down’ exercise – designed in and for the Federal government’s purposes. One issue from Little Children are Sacred was cynically used to justify an exercise in social engineering unseen before in this country (and hopefully never to be attempted again) – and at no time during the whole of the Brough/Howard administration of the intervention was any real consultation undertaken with Aboriginal people – Canberra knew what was right for them.
There was a time here in the NT when local governments vigorously resisted such efforts from the south – but Clare Martin’s Labor government was so incompetent that it could neither see the Intervention coming or react to it appropriately. Labor in the NT became, and remains, supine at the feet of Canberra.
And when Howard was thrown out in late 2007 there were many, myself included, who thought that Rudd & Macklin would/could/should fundamentally transform the Intervention into a program that might at least give some accord to the views of Aboriginal people in the NT.
Sadly that did not happen – Macklin quickly became a sort of Mal Btough lite – and has continued along that path – though with a sense of mean-streaked smarts that Mad Mal never had. The best indicator of this is the Yu Review into the Intervention – it made wide and sweeping recommendation to bring some humanity and commonsense into the Intervention – but Macklin ignored it (she and NT government have just now released, ten or so months after they received it, their comprehensive response to the Yu Review – but I’ve not yet read it).
And the NT Government has just followed suit by initiating a policy almost completely contrary to the recommendations of a well-conducted review of an issue (remote service delivery) of vital importance to Aboiginal people living outside of the few NT cities. But I’ll save that story for the next few days…
Phew…back to your questions…I don’t think there is any real tension between people living a close-to-traditional lifestyle and at least the rhetoric of the ‘closing the gap’ idea – all it needs is some imagination by government to meet people halfway.
And despite what government may tell us (or omit to tell us – good news stories about blackfellas don’t get a run in government or the press nowadays), there are some excellent remote service providers in the remote corners of the NT – most notably the remote Aboriginal-controlled health services which do a far better job of health service delivery that the NT government agencies ever did or could.
Another example is the Aboriginal land management agencies that have taken over, and extended, land management over large parts of the vast swathes of the NT and northern Australia.
And centralising service administration is most likely a good thing – but centralising service delivery is not.
So, I hope that this has helped – at least to show where I’m coming from – my problem is not that all parts of the Intervention, or recent policy delivery in the NT, is wrong-headed – obviously there are some good parts of these – but my real issue is that the policy design and implementation is almost exclusively top-down – and, in a policy domain where people’s live are concerned, that is the wrong way to do things.
I’m off to feed the dogs and myself.
Cheers and tanks for your time, thoughts and questions!
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN IN PRACTICAL TERMS? To listen to Indigenous people and accept that they may have their own ideas about how they wish to live. These views will be many and varied.
I tried to point out the hypocracy underlying the intervention. You may interpret my comments as you wish.
Noel Pearson is one voice that appeals to you, but there are many other voices the media does not promote.
You infer that Indigenous Australians have more rights than other Australians. You use the permit system as an example of this. Do you really believe this?
If so, I am wasting my time replying to your blog.
There are vast tracks of the Territory owned by multinational companies and individuals (Tipperary Station one example of many), and you need PERMISSION to enter these lands.
I dont claim to have the answers.
And I dont claim to know all the issues.
But I can spot a land grab when I see one.
I don’t think it is actually all that complicated. Basically:
They are different people to “Westerners”
They do not wish to be like “Westerners” (thank goodness I would say)
Their current problems are due to colonisation
Unfortunately they can not now be what they were prior to colonisation.
Up until now all Government attempts at helping these people has essentially failed, because they do not address, or may even worsen, the underlying problems of “poverty, dispossession, marginalization and despair”.
After 200 years it is probably about time that the Government, and the public, realised this and they should bloody well do something about it.
Thank you, Bob, for your valuable opinion pieces. I certainly agree with your philosophies behind your views. I guess that means you and I, et al, will always be on one side of at least one fence, and others will not be able to agree with the approach.
I also appreciate the standard of this blog. Usually I find blogs on Aboriginal issues become a forum for race hate or ignorant prejudices (is there any other kind?) or thereabouts. The standard here, even for opposing views, is much better.
I decided to wade in on one particular point, and that is that Aboriginal people have the right to decide our social, cultural, economic and, yes, even political development. Colonisation of Australia did not give that right to alien forms of government. Do-gooders (a term often used in the 1970s but now forgotten) might be ‘right’ in their opinions or even clairvoyant in seeing outcomes but they cannot assume to have a right to decide for others. We do not tell Indonesia how to run their country and we do not want them to tell us. The same stands for Aboriginal people. Considering all the cultures in the world you could not find a bigger chasm between the ‘british’ culture – call it what you like – and Indigenous culture, especially Aboriginal culture.
So Australian governments and mainstream media should swallow the bitter pill – we are not ‘your Aborigines’. Stop fixating on our problems as a means to control us, and start providing the overdue measures to remove the disadvantages derived from two hundred years of white arrogance. In turn we will agree not to fixate on your problems – yes, you must have some, to talk about giving out billions and trillions of ‘taxpayer’ dollars – or control your lives to meet our expectations.
The isolated communities in NT have not only a right to decide their futures but also the rights to have those futures assisted by government. Equal standard of education, for example, became an inherent right when Captain Phillip landed in Australia to take possession. ‘Equal’ means in Aboriginal languages, despite the cost. If that is too much of a burden give up the right to a sovereign nation on Aboriginal land. And stop ripping the wealth out of Aboriginal land.
Having reached to the fundamentals, back to the blog topic. The NT politicians are absolutely blind to good governance. The exercise of democracy in the NT has something to do with promoting and protecting the rights of the Aboriginal people and a lot to do with the rights of isolated communities. Perhaps the NT parliament should be reviewed to ensure that its structure, poorly borrowed from the Westminster system, is representative and responsive. Maybe a territory parliament should be replaced by community councils with greater powers. (The ’shire council’ model is an invention from the ivory towers of COAG.)
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