I’ve been critical of Noel Pearson’s nostrums on welfare reform for some years now. In 2005, I wrote:
Noel Pearson ought to be obliged to provide some reasonable policy proposals rather than the tired Third Way rhetoric and populist authoritarianism that’s become his stock in trade.
Three million dollars later, we now have Pearson’s 373 page report [pdf] which is hardly surprising in its tone and recommendations.
I haven’t had time to read it thoroughly, but it’s worth observing that the Federal government seemingly wants to extend its authoritarianism to non-Indigenous citizens “suffering” from “welfare dependency” also, something I was sceptical about when proposals to take control of welfare recipients’ spending were first mooted in 2004.
Labor, as has been the case since Jenny Macklin took over Indigenous Affairs, provides an echo not a choice. Just for once, it would be nice if some of our white political leaders took some notice of someone in the Indigenous community other than Noel Pearson.
Pearson’s also been spending his time attacking what he claims is the emphasis on education rather than sanctions in the Northern Territory Wild/Anderson Report, completely ignoring the fact that the report found that some of the worst, and by far the most organised, predators and pedophiles are whitefellas. But his approach sits nicely with the over-emphasis on authoritarianism and the criminal justice system from Mal Brough, who has had a lot of tough words to say but has delivered very little.
With a trial of Pearson’s plan in four communities, it will now be possible to evaluate whether his ideas are in fact capable of “rebuilding social norms” or not.
It seems to me that the two missing elements in the prescription (aside from its total paternalism and illiberalism, something that’s very much shared by other recent welfare changes from the Federal government) are the actual lack of any economic opportunities in those communities not blessed with minerals under the ground, and the total repudiation of self-determination. Before anyone jumps in with a hand-wringing condemnation of Nugget Coombs, let me just point out that it’s my view that self-determination has never been tried. That’s a view that’s very well argued by Gary Sauer-Thompson, whose post on this I’d unreservedly endorse.
It strikes me that the inevitable result of Pearson’s agenda of “engagement with the real economy” will be both an increased individualisation of Indigenous people as “responsibilities” trump collective rights and also a sense of collective being; and a concomitant new disposession of Indigenous people to the cities and to mining towns. No doubt as with purposeless labour market programs such as Work for the Dole, employers will welcome the cheap labour of those prepared to accept their “mutual obligation”.
It’s all of a piece with the fairly blatantly stated Howard agenda of assimilation, and the fact that none of the participants in the (lack of) debate over these “reforms” remotely attempts to validate or even comprehend Indigenous worldviews, let alone participate in a dialogue with those Indigenous people who aren’t “Cape York Leaders”, will ensure that there is little opposition expressed.
Elsewhere: More commentary from Robert Bollard at Leftwrites.
Update [by Kim]: Posts on the news which broke during the discussion on this thread – Howard’s announcement of a state of emergency in Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory are here and here.
Someone wrote on another thread about the hectoring tone of the government spokesthings lately. Pearson has that too. I don’t know where it came from, but when I saw him on the news just now, he sounds incredibly aggressive and patronising. It does make you wonder how representative he is and how far outside traditional norms of decision making within Indigenous communities he himself is.
If those communities don’t have any economic opportunities, do they have a future, and is continuing to prop them up delaying the inevitable as surely as it is delaying the inevitable in other small towns across Australia?
When these communities have engaged with economic “realities”, will they build a nice chamber of commerce in every township and camp? I’d suggest they call them all “Noel Pearsons Cabin”.
How do you propose that an Aboriginal group on a remote native title holding, far from any centre of employment, successfully exercise “self-determination”.
Can you actually spell out what you mean? And please, for the love of clarity, drop the Latin pretensions and use plain English if you choose to answer the question.
I saw Noel Pearson on Australian Story on the ABC a couple of weeks back. I have never before heard an Aboriginal leader speak with such clarity, intelligence and insight. Extremely impressive and very moving.
Pearson had support from the likes of Murrandoo Yanner, the Gulf Country leader, who said:
“My view of Noel and Gerhardt Pearson and their work in the Cape is one of immense admiration, because they’re doing some really innovative and ground-breaking stuff and I want to be part of it.”
http://www.abc.net.au/austory/content/2007/s1936373.htm
I also note Aboriginal educator Chris Sarra’s comments on the last edition of Landline:
“It’s an issue we’ve tended to tippy-toe around for a long time. There’s like a white status quo that accepts Indigenous failure, dancing with an Indigenous status quo that somehow embraced victim status as something of our identity. So, those two sides tend to collude with each other, and it’s in a highly complex state. It’s a matter of smashing mindsets on both sides that we can actually see that”
http://www.abc.net.au/landline/content/2006/s1952637.htm
The antipathy you express towards Pearson and other like-minded Aboriginals is startling, to say the least.
I think a more apt description of Pearson would bbe to use a term of derision used by indigenious people to denigrate some of their own who aren’t true to their racial origins a “Coconut” – Black on the Outside, but White in the Middle.
Also, he is the perfect type of indiginous person that Ratty & Co love post ATSIC – A sort of Yes Man for the loony right, as opposed to those Radicals who ran ATSIC like Geoff Clarke etc.
It’s nice, melaleuca, that you spend some time listening to Indigenous people on tv talking about Noel Pearson. In order to educate myself about the issues, I like to spend some time talking with Indigenous people.
The point to make, here, I think, and I’ll come to Robert’s question because it’s related, is that Pearson is not actually smashing any sacred cows. He’s just substituting one whitefella-centric paradigm for another. He really isn’t thinking outside the square at all.
I think the question is wrongly framed in two ways.
The first is that, as Gary argued in the post to which I linked, there are no relations of equivalence between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. Hawke might have been overly sentimental and too quick off the mark in his talk of a treaty in the 80s, but there’s a lot of reason why we should think in those terms, which are of course now dismissed as heretical after so many years of “practical reconciliation” (a phrase in which Paul Keating observed, the adjective doesn’t modify the noun but negates it). There is a lot to learn from the North American experience, and in particular the Canadian experience, where residual sovereignty is recognised, and provides a basis for the establishment of (imperfect) self-determination, and thus a basis for dialogue, not for cherry picking unelected and unrepresentative “leaders” who happen to agree with whitefella politics. Incidentally, there are legal parallels in such a recognition with the principles of Mabo.
If such recognition were accorded, and relations of equivalence established, then Indigenous people themselves could think outside the square and (for instance – but it should not be up to us to specify) agree on sharing mineral royalties communally in such a way as to make communities economically sustainable, should that be the choice of those who live in them. It’s a very different mindset from Pearson’s belief that individual leasehold title will enable some sort of social norms to arise, because the imposition on Western forms of title (and understandings of “economy”) contributes to the process whereby communal norms are disrupted. Rebuilding them is indeed urgent, but the impetus has to come from within Indigenous peoples, and to be recognised by us as partners in sovereignty in this land.
My second point (again no doubt very unfashionable) is that we do have a mutual obligation to recognise and empower Indigenous choices by virtue of the dispossession that founded our nation.
He worries me,welfare dependency in some places where the individual is also totally dependent on everything from outside if,there is a physical ailment or us whitefellers with little concern but plenty of do… can get up to all sorts of destructive stuff. Pearson reminds me of the father instructor,who already had written a book about how to bring up sons whilst they hadnt reached any ripe old age in their…….That writer is now bidding time about girls,he must have internet cameras everywhere,and time to watch them longitudinally,and boy wonder Pearson,in getting back dad and grandads vigor for everyone,blows across every aboriginal life that cannot fit into his own skin and eyes!? How else could he be so observant about other members of communities and those that leave!? Beats me…astral traveling ,perhaps!?
I have spoke to Aboriginal people, Mark. Not the academic ones either.
All you can offer Aboriginals in your above post is mineral royalties. No education, employment or integration.
You think within a paradigm that is racialist and absurd on so many levels. One obvious reason is that Aboriginal out breeding is so common that Aboriginality has already begun to lose any real meaning. This is an inevitable process and we see it everywhere: how many English people today identify themselves as Picts or Saxons?
I find it incredibly hard to believe that blokes like Michael Mansell and Geoff Clark, who possess a meager ration of indigenous genetic material, speak no indigenous tongue, live in Western style homes and wear western clothes are “dispossessed” because of what happened to an ancestor 200 years ago.
Success can be declared when people of Aboriginal ethnicity are well represented as doctors, lawyers and scientists and they are as integrated as the 150-odd other ethnicities on this continent.
On the other hand, your vision of separatist Bantustans where the racially segregated remain trapped in a vortex between the stone-age and the modern world will mean the holocaust of morbidity and dysfunction continues.
Or at least, that this whitefella’s opinion.
Mark, I had the distinct impression that we had 13 years of Hawke/Keating government taking “some notice of someone in the Indigenous community other than Noel Pearson.” Didn’t really seem to work a treat.
As an aside, I thought it remarkable in the recent 2nd series “Going Bush” (with Cathy Freeman and her pal Luke visiting aboriginal communities throughout the north,) one of the healthiest looking communities was Santa Teresa in the middle of nowhere in the Northern Territory. Run by the Catholics until (I think) the 1970’s, it still has an active catholic community (run by what looked like a Vietnamese priest!). The contrast with the short visit they made to the (I believe) highly dysfunctional community at Uluru could not have been greater.
Unfortunately, the show being what it was (with its rather tedious repetition several times every episode of Cathy and Luke going on about how meaningful it was for them to sharing an activity with the communities) there was no explanation of why Santa Teresa looked like a relative success. And one would have thought that Uluru would provide one of the best places for an economically integrated community.
My gut feeling is still that lack of economic activity is at heart of much of the problem, yet the reasons why the availability of some “real” work has failed many time to make the difference expected shows that cultural and other factors are also at play. I find it hard to believe that any really new form of genuine self determination would be capable of addressing any of these issues in any particular hurry.
So, if you want to help the abused kids now, if it takes a more “authoritarian’ approach, I reckon it is the right thing to do, given that other approaches have not worked over the last 30 years. Your dislike of this suggestion indicates your preference to ideological purity over lived experience, a common problem with the Left!
Yep, melaleuca, and predictably not one that engages with what I’m actually saying. You’re completely misrepresenting what I’m suggesting – for some guidelines to where I think we actually should go you might like to contemplate recent developments in Canada.
http://www.canadiana.org/citm/themes/aboriginals/aboriginals13_e.html#nunavut
I specifically said that the current situation is untenable, and needs rethinking, but that rethinking should be the product of a process of dialogue and negotiation.
The whole point is that Indigenous people aren’t just one of the “150-odd other ethnicities on this continent”. Your refusal to recognise that is entirely consistent with Howard’s assimilationism, of course.
If I were you, I’d also be very wary indeed of accusing your interlocutors of being “racialist”. Not only is it untrue, it’s offensive, and it hardly conduces to a climate for constructive discussion. But perhaps that’s not your aim.
And Steve, before you reduce all of this to a simplistic moral frame of “this helps the abused kids” – which is also Pearson’s rhetoric – you might also like to consider whether there are other ways to help abused kids, and other ways that might arise from within the Indigenous community if recognition and relations of equivalence were accorded. A professed motive of saving kids has done enormous damage to Indigenous social structure and culture before. That’s not to say that it isn’t an imperative, just that the way in which it should be done needs careful thought, and not kneejerk and simplistic solutions. I’d be much more inclined to listen to Indigenous women and elders who’ve been fighting that fight than Mal Brough, to be frank. I don’t deny he’s probably well intentioned, but he really doesn’t seem to get past really punitive solutions which sometimes aren’t practical and aren’t the best way to go. It’s also well worth remembering, as I said, that the problem of organised pedophilic abuse by whitefellas on Indigenous kids won’t be solved through changing the structure of welfare or whatever.
I’d agree that the Cathy and Luke series was good in providing a broader picture of what’s actually occurring, though obviously its purpose wasn’t to do socio-economic analysis.
Steve, see Gary’s post to which I’ve linked for reasons why. But, yep.
Mark says:
That would be by comparison with the fresh “Second Way” rhetoric that has characterised Left thinking and policy making towards indigenes over the past two generations.
You know, ATSIC, Sorry Days, unconditional sit down money, liberalised access to pubs and the rest. Symbolic politics and shambolic policies.
mark seems to think that a more extravagant version of the same old-same old will arrest the catastrophe facing remote-domiciled indigenes. This kind of thinking is a sort of Leftwing “Dream Time” which I understand give spiritual succour to those a la gauche trying to get in touch with true belief.
Mark,
I meant racialist in this sense:
“a. An emphasis on race or racial considerations, as in determining policy or interpreting events.
b. Policy or practice based on racial considerations.”
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/racialist
You are plainly operating in a racialist paradigm in this sense.
You say:
“And Steve, before you reduce all of this to a simplistic moral frame of “this helps the abused kids… ”
Sorry champ. My sister is a social worker and as a result of numerous conversations I am well aware that a similar racialist approach informs our child welfare systems. A black kid has to be bashed, battered and bruised much more than a white kid, an Asian kid or any other kid for that matter before the welfare luvvies will intervene. Once again, as Sarra rightly notes:
“There’s like a white status quo that accepts Indigenous failure, dancing with an Indigenous status quo that somehow embraced victim status as something of our identity.”
Steve in Brisbane on 20 June 2007 at 12:04 am
What you said, word for word.
melaleuca, I note that as in other debates recently, you’re able to reduce this one on the basis of anecdote and stereotyping (“welfare luvvies”) to some sort of moral dichotomy in which you occupy the high ground, which just happens to coincide with common right wing wisdom. You might like to consider whether ascribing moral validity to one policy choice over another is a sensible way of arguing, and you might also like to consider that there are different means to a moral end, some of which do not involve denying the cultural specificity of Indigenous people and trumpeting assimilation in the name of the welfare of the kiddies. It’s rank moral blackmail, and we hear too much of it, and it disables any sort of discussion which actually empowers the people you profess to show concern about.
Would this be worse than the “Fantasy Time” of the Great Economic Management of the dries who Pearson would have us believe a step beyond all this? The only sucker here is Pearson for believing that the Howard Government is genuinely interested in progressing any social cause outside of looking after their big business mates.
Pearson has long been a Howard cheerer and now appropriately, just prior to an election, he comes up with a plan to help him out. Can’t see anyone much except Pearson getting a benefit though. Under Pearson’s way, would electoral rorting lead to a cutting off of Government entitlements?
Pearson and Brough appear to be up to the old right wing shenanigans. You had to love Brough’s aboriginal home “ownership” scheme, he copped a healthy amount of boo’s on Difference of Opinion over it.
On a side note I remember a group of us sitting down with an Aboriginal elder and him asking us what do you think has affected aboriginal people the most? Everyone said “white people” etc. of course not without validity but I said plainly, alcohol. He said that was exactly right. “We” have had alcohol in our systems for centuries of years but aboriginal people have only been introduced to it for just over 200 years. I don’t think too many people are worried about all this job’s rhetoric and can see the bigger picture and possibly the thing at the core of all this, booze.
Oh, and don’t forget the current Young Australian of The Year, who appears to be from what I’ve seen on JTV (Links to streaming Video) a Junior version of Noel Pearson.
What is it with Right Wingers hanging out with Qld Based Indigineous folk – the late Senateor Neville Bonner was a Qld’er FFS.
My Theory is these folk don’t look as threatening to “Whitefellas” and the Mainstream as someone from the NT.
Frankly, I’m amazed. Untold thousands of words written in reports, studies, shallow celebrity fly-ins/fly-outs, government tinkering, grant rorting and all the associated BS that has been promulgated for 200 years resulting only in a huge bill at the end but no result.
Oh, sorry there is always a result after a Native Australian media event and that is evidenced by many of the comments I have just read – the self righteous, insular bleating of macchiato-fueled feel-gooders who have a theory for everything, but no clear, practical plan for anything.
Noel Pearson may be any one of the many things ascribed to him but he has at least come up with something that has a high possibility of working. So lean back ladies. tune in to The View and recall that “those who can – Do and those who can’t – Criticise.” And if you must worry about something, ask where M. Yanner stands in all this
This was spoken of in one of the original Lateline interviews with Professor Judy Atkinson but it didn’t fit their Walkley award winning agenda so the story wasn’t followed up. It suits the gov to pretend this has just come tp their attention when in fact they have been aware of the issue since Amanda Vanstone was minister responsible and no doubt before. Noel Pearson demonstrated his complete lack of understanding when he framed abuse as a moral issue. It is really sad that the people, like Prof Atkinson, who do understand the issue are not being heard.
What I liked about Pearson’s thinking in the past – and I haven’t read the latest report, but I assume this has changed somewhat – is that it was framed by the assumption that Abl people were capable of negotiating risky engagements with the mainstream within a frame of cultural continuity. Coercing people to do that is of a different order, though. If some communities want to sign up to the Pearson plan, then good for them, but as far as applying some of these things in a blanket way – where’s the democratic element? Are Pearson’s ideas representative, or is this going to be something that communities take because it’s the only reasonable thing offered?
Another problem that I see is that, at the moment, land rights are also under attack: communities are being asked to sign away land to obtain basic services etc. I don’t know where Pearson stands on this trend, but if he has abandoned a pro-land rights stance, then that is a real problem with the report. The history of Abl politics, right up to the rejection of Brough’s offer in Alice Springs, has been about land as much as about civil rights and services. Access to and control over country have to go hand in hand with any policy agenda.
Frank Calabrese,
Stop it; you’re giving the game away. We kind of knew that any aborigine who agrees with a whitefella is necessarily not being true to their ‘racial origins’ (!) and therefore needs to be immediately branded a ‘coconut’, and really it’s beyond the pale for any right-winger to be interested in indigenous communities, particularly in Queensland. But must you be so explicit about it? I for one don’t want to wake up the punters to the fact that the indigenous policy debate has been reduced by ‘Teh Left’ to a mere opportunity to demonstrate some old-school doctrinal purity.
Cheers
BBB
Booze at the core of poverty, Futt Bucker? That’s an argument that takes me back to Temperance days. It’s a total externalisation.
I’d bet that if every blackfella in a remote community could afford to drink like an inner-city professional, you know, pinots grigio washing down mushroom risotto, Czech beers with flashy labels, spirits measured by years of age rather than %alc/vol, there wouldn’t be a structural alcohol problem.
And Jack Strocchi, you can take your ‘liberalised access to pubs’ out the back and drink from a paper bag it in the loading dock.
Rich alcoholics never blame the alcohol.
The problem is not simply that the Howard government and the right-of-centre media regard Noel Pearson as the only indigenous identity worth reporting or listening to. It is also that they report and listen to him selectively, so we seldom see or hear the more nuanced aspects of his position which aren’t, for want of a better expression, easily assimilated into assimilationism.
Pearson himself has recounted, in the recent past, a discussion with Dr. Marcia Langton in which she specifically advised him that, whilst she could see merit in his proposals, he ran the risk of having them (and himself) co-opted into a right-wing anti-rights agenda. He concluded the recollection with the observation that her advice had been “prescient”.
In response to Adam Gall, as I read Pearson’s recent comments he has not abandoned a pro-land rights stance.
Very good points, su.
Having said that, I have to say that my view of Pearson’s position on welfare reform is that Pearson himself doubtless has benevolent motives for advocating benevolent paternalism, but paternalism has a way of being turned to decidedly non-benevolent purposes, and that when a society deprives one group of people of the right to make decisions for themselves about their lives it is on a slippery slope, especially when both that society’s major political parties are full of punishers and straighteners with all sorts of ideas about minding other people’s business, and about which groups of other people need to have their business minded for them.
On Elsewhere’s blog she suggested that this may be part of an over-arching agenda – perhaps Pearson is looking for a politically opportune time to emphasise some of those other aspects like land rights. The quote from Pearson was: ‘Some day we’re going to get a convergence of Mabo and welfare reform.’
I agree, having read some of Pearson’s key ’90s stuff, but little since, that there has been a selective appropriation of his ideas. Besides the immediate political motivation for this, it may relate to a wider white reading practice that assimilates Abl thought to positions within liberal debates.
And we return to a problematic of intention. Good points, Paul.
Mark,
I hate to quibble on a subject that I will fully admit I do not understand very well, but this strikes me as more than a little utopian.
What if the communities who happen to live on top of mines decide “well bugger the rest of you, this is our community’s land, our community’s money, and we’re going to spend it on us”, leaving the others in the same position they are now?
And, furthermore, isn’t it plausible that, if the largesse of mining royalties were shared between communities, being dependent on the good grace of other Aboriginal communities might be little better than being dependent on the federal government?
If you would buttress or seek to restore a premodern social system, some element of paternalism is inevitable. This is a petard on which the right will often hang the post-industrial left: does tolerance of Islam include clitoridectomies? Does respect for traditional Aboriginal society include spearing people in the leg? Can you encourage pluralism while resisting the urge to bury those whose opinions you don’t like?
I saw the Australian Story program and have followed Pearson’s career. It seemed that Pearson would seek to have his people engage in eco-sustainable economic activity independently of mining activity. Rather than putting up with a dichotomy between those Aborigines who stay in their communities and those who move away, Pearson seems to be cultivating a community where people might move away for a while, then return to their roots, and it seems to be working for those such as Tanya Major (Young Australian of the Year). I have no basis to judge for whom Pearson’s approach is not working and why this might be so. It may be that what Pearson is doing within his community provides a sounder basis to judge the man and his contribution than another doorstopper report that few would have read but for Pearson’s high profile.
Pearson appears to be to Aboriginal social organisation what Bob Hawke was to trade unionism. Those union leaders who’d worked their way up the union movement from the shop floor disdained Hawke’s university education and his very real personal weaknesses, but he did bring the debate over working conditions into the modern era and he did become Prime Minister. Pearson’s achievement has been to do the former and may yet do the latter. He’s a genuinely impressive man, not your standard media darling or opportunist.
Pearson represents an advance on people like Charles Perkins or Pat O’Shane, who were/are essentially shallow thinkers with little to say once you got past the notion that being tertiary-educated Aborigines isn’t a contridiction in terms. He is a lot more hands-on than, say, Lowitja O’Donohue, and Geoff Clark can be as radical as all get out but he was totally ineffective. I have no idea what the community is like that the Dodson brothers hail from, but something tells me Pearson’s mob have got their acts together a bit better.
Mark, I know that we’re all suckers consuming the mass media and you’ve got the good oil from those in the know, but in order to assess this I for one need real points of comparison. Otherwise, tired old memes like assimilationism is all that’s available.
I think the key point, really, is about who decides on what forms these agreements or whatever may take. I agree with Mark that self-determination hasn’t really been done in a meaningful sense. I also think that the abolition of ATSIC, in spite of its problems, was a step in the wrong direction regarding these questions of inter-community dependence that you’re raising Robert. An overarching, democratically elected Abl leadership could do much to offset any risks associated with community insularity.
Gary Sauer-Thomson said:
Mark, as a sociologist, please tell me that you have at least some reservations about the assumptions behind that statement.
“If you would buttress or seek to restore a premodern social system, some element of paternalism is inevitable.”
I think this is beside the point, because it involves a totally discredited evolutionary hierarchy of culturally specific temporalities. Aboriginal culture is already both ancient and modern! It is a mistake to assume that advocating for self-determination, land rights etc is about reviving something – rather, it’s about facilitating those cultural practices that have survived, and synthesised with new practices, into what are fundamentally modern Aboriginal cultures. The whole question of revival involves false assumptions about what practices belong to what period in human development ie the idea that it is possible to be more modern or more human then what already exists in modernity and humanity.
The test of Noel’s ideas is in whether they work or not. Give them a go – if they work, great, if not, well try something else. The efficacy of his ideas can be evaluated after they’ve been tried.
Noel Pearson’s ideas have white liberals steaming. This alone points to there being merit in what he says.
His ideas advocate aboriginal people taking responsibility for themselves, earning in a REAL job their own income, developing their own resources (ie, opposite to the environmental/green ideology) to become a part of the modern economy, and NOT covering up molestation of children, etc etc.
Pearson also slings off at the way (long known) child sex abuse has been mishandled/swept under the carpet by the white liberal government in the Northern Territory.
Speaking for himself, not sucking up to white liberal patronisers, & rejecting their ideas in the interests of bettering his people.
No wonder white liberals are sour at him.
On the child abuse issue, this is from today’s Crikey:
Devil Drink. I disagree with you. I blame the alcohol.
The shires in Queensland which have prohibited/restricted alcohol. Why was this done? Why do the people there wish the prohibition/restriction to continue?
Because it is WORKING. Life improves, particularly for the weak and depedants, whose support money is not going on grog.
Rich white alcoholics will at the very least, behave with some decorum in public, in front of friends and guests, and will lose the respect of peers.
steve at the pub wrote:
Well then, we have an easy fix.
Make sure all transfer payments (including family tax benefits) are governed under the same proposed systems for all Australians and not just Aboriginals. Here’s the proposed list, straight from the desk of Michael Clarke:
No drinking, no smoking, money must be spent on school uniforms before food. Persons not in possession of a comb and a razor to be publically lashed. Toothbrushes to be checked for wetness each morning at 8:05am. All vegetables must be consumed. I’d include gambling too, since this institutional wowserism will take much of it’s direction from those great upstanding members of the community, our clergy. Clearly, the poor of all colours cannot care for themselves and must be slapped into shape, boarding school style (including communal dining halls and the re-introduction of the strap into schooling). Credit cards to be outlawed and replaced with indentured servitude.
Better still, citizenship will revert to property holders of a minimum acreage.
More seriously – are there any problems that are actually endemic to Aboriginality that can’t simply be explained as poverty related? After observing behaviour in regional towns in NSW, there is little to no difference in the “bad behaviour” exhibited by poor white trash and Aboriginals, except that the trash (and I’m including myself here, being an afficionado of chateau cardboard and VB on a regular basis) are not subject to discrimination.
Pub Steve, again we meet.
Look, I’m totally in favour of people not drinking, if that’s what floats their boat. Y’know, good for them, they’ll live a life free of hangovers, and they’ll be able to drive whenever they want—whoopee. If living sober works, sweet. That’s very different to depriving communities of a valuable commodity that other Australians take for granted. There’d certainly be a stink to end all stinks if you tried to shut down Redfern’s grogsellers.
In fact, blaming alcohol stinks of the worst hypocrisy of Temperance: blaming poor people for poor people’s behaviour.
Dependents of alcoholics suffer, it’s true. Me, I’d prefer that Mum and Dad were able to share a few too many beers and still pay for their kids’ slinky new sneakers and school excursions than not, but hey, that seems to me a function of parents having money than drinking lots.
Give us a break. Aren’t you ashamed of any of your friends when they drink? You must have pretty boring friends if they all shicker decorously.
None of that has any bearing Devil Drink.
There are several problems facing aboriginal settlements: (generalisation alert)
The people are prepared to live in squalid surrounds, that is, left to their own devices they are comfortable living in rubbish tip conditions.
It is very difficult to get them to show any interest in their own health. That is, even when medical care is easily accessed, provided free, and medicine is handed to them, people have not enough interest in their own health to take it.
They cannot resist grog. The grip alcohol has on people has to be seen & experienced to be believed. People who show no interest in either of the above points, even when they may die, will, when the grog is cut off, pick up the rubbish, and start taking medicine, as a condition of the pub being reopened.
David Rubie and Devil Drink, if the people of a shire want grog rationed/restricted, why do you oppose this?
The restrictions apply to all people, regardless of race, so both of your posts are beside the point.
So do lots of sober poor people around the globe.
So do lots of sober poor people around the globe.
Well, that’s not just a black thing. Look to your gubba morning regulars for examples.
Also, not just a black thing. C’mon, Steve—you’re the publican here.
No, not really, no. You haven’t explained why Indigenous alcoholism in remote communities is somehow special or more deserving of Prohibitionist social policy. If the City of Canterbury Council were to make Lakemba a dry zone in response to the urging of concerned residents, how would that be with you?
I’m the Devil, mate, that ought to suffice.
steve at the pub wrote:
Because some of the communities identify it as an issue and decide it’s an appropriate mechanism, somehow it’s generalised to all Aboriginal communities which is absolutely dead wrong. I don’t care either way whether each community wants to implement it although it seems to encourage a hell of a lot of illegal activity smuggling grog into the “dry” townships and that inevitably means it’s more expensive, which in some cases is going to escalate the problem and introduce further criminality.
In short, I think it creates more problems than it solves, where encouraging the responsible consumption of alcohol would have much better outcomes. All I see is that old double standard being applied to Aboriginals where other parts of society are allowed to live in all the squalor they can handle. These are the poorest people in Australia, of course they are going to be living in surroundings that reflect that poverty.
(and I meant David Clarke, not Michael Clarke in the above rant).
Two comments – the extant data shows that while those Indigenous people who do drink drink more on average than non-Indigenous Australians, there are a much greater proportion of Indigenous people who don’t drink at all:
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2006/07/25/lets-play-amateur-sociologist/
Secondly, I might just observe that none of the Pearson fans have addressed either the refutation of the myths about Indigenous culture and child abuse posted above or the fact that the most systematic child abuse is perpetrated by whitefellas.
“Noel Pearson’s ideas have white liberals steaming. This alone points to there being merit in what he says.”
I’m less impressed with the way that Pearson is being listened to at the expense of other Aboriginal voices, than with what he has had to say. That is to say, Pearson doesn’t annoy me one bit as much as his current ‘allies’. From his perspective, I’m almost certain those allies are strategic.
The alcohol issue: I would support any localised, democratic initiative to limit or exclude alcohol consumption. Some of those initiatives have been very successful indeed. It is when the government wants to do blanket punitive versions of these kinds of policies that I begin to have a problem.
After observing behaviour in regional towns in NSW, there is little to no difference in the “bad behaviourâ€? exhibited by poor white trash and Aboriginals, except that the trash … are not subject to discrimination. – DR
I grew up in such a town; that was exactly my experience. It left me with a lifelong distrust of those who claim that the welfare site is a cause of, rather than part of a cure for, poverty. They sound too much like the graziers – the self-appointed local aristocracy – I knew who were always ready to blame in order to avoid being asked to help.
Not one poster here has exhibited any comprehension of the problems of aboriginal people, no poster has exhibited any interest in improving the lot of aboriginal people.
Not one poster above has ANY IDEA of what they are talking about. It reads like a drawing room discussion about the “common people”.
SATP:
PULP:
Then there is Mal Brough’s latest brainwave in today’s Bulletin Magazine.
A case of the rest of the world being out of step with the only true genius?
Steve, I read what some Abl people write and I listen to what some Abl people have to say. What more could I do than what I’m not doing in order to form an opinion?
The thing is, there’s a tacit understanding in this context – ie of political discussion – that we’re talking about some things we don’t have first hand experience of. You might’ve noticed that a lot of what goes on here, and in the public sphere, is along those lines. To play the ‘authenticity’ card is disingenuous to say the least. Anyway, I don’t see you out there living black for a couple of years, sitting down to learn from elders, before you put your point of view.
SATP that should be. More than one Steve after all.
Excellent post Mark. I don’t have much to add except what I think is an interesting historical analogy outlined here.
steve at the pub wrote:
Bouleshat steve, some of us see it on a daily basis. However, in the interests of discussion I think there are some solutions that could be explored:
1) Repeal of the constitutional changes that allowed aboriginal specific legislation other than land rights. It’s been nothing but counter productive. Poverty needs to be attacked and having Aboriginal specific solutions just leads to the kind of institutionalised racism that is part of the problem. Make it regional based and put in some real performance targets that are measurable in terms of outcomes (i.e. school attendance), not doctors visits or other nebulous statistics.
2) Major reform of the health provision to the poor. Far more needs to be done to intervene early, and often, with screening for common problems that cause educational difficulties (hearing, eyesight,dental and violence issues that simply don’t happen to well off children). If this means dismantling the aboriginal specific health centres and replacing them with means tested centres, so be it. Too many of these centres end up being controlled by a small cabal of local elders, which mean that significant numbers of the local community refuse to use them (or in some cases are afraid to).
3) Changes to the provision of low cost housing. The loss of government owned, low cost housing in Australia is an oft forgotten scandal that falls heavily on Aboriginal communities in particular. Use regular inspections just like any other landlord to keep them in shape.
4) New approaches to the stewardship of traditional lands. Not all of these communities are going to be tourist attractions or mining bonanzas. We need to understand what exactly keeps families in unworkable communities and encourage them to shift where employment prospects are better. There are plenty of ex-Redfern aboriginals in various regional towns who do well in smaller communities where there are jobs. We might be better off giving them a tax-break to visit their traditional land in exactly the same way a landlord can write off travelling expenses to visit his rental properties. Land rights have been handled incredibly poorly by both sides of politics (massive fear factor at work). Either make it full property rights where they can be established or don’t bother.
5) Get the police in there to stop unlawful behaviour (including predatory whites) without the violence. Some of those communities are starting to resemble the shanty towns around Johannesburg (a no-go zone for the police) and that’s the last thing we need to happen. Policing needs to be done with familiar faces (i.e. a big recruitment drive amongst Aboriginals wouldn’t hurt).
It’s gonna be spendy. It has to work better than pointing at them and saying “be white you black bastard, or I’ll cut off your welfare”.
Explain why you don’t see me living black “out there” Adam Gall.
Apologies to Robert Merkel, Melaleuca et al for saying that nobody has “any idea”. Born of frustration at the total ignorance by some (yet pontifical pronouncement on) as to the lot of the helpless in aboriginal communities.
Pearson is an Uncle Tom,pure and simple. He is the worst kind of uncle Tom because he has worked himself into a position of power over his people with the assistance of his white masters. The plan is to give over Palm Island and other attractive places to white developers and to staff them with black servants. Any mug can see that.
Are you saying you’ve lived black, in an Abl community, talked to elders in order to form your opinions SATP?
“Pearson is an Uncle Tom,pure and simple.”
Have you read his stuff, Huggybunny? I don’t know what you think an Uncle Tom is, but I defy you to show how Pearson is supposed to be one. There’s nothing subservient about the man. I think you can disagree with his arguments without having to dismiss him in that way.
Answering a question with a question Adam Gall.
I’ll take that as a retreat.
You made a statement, and have been asked to back it up.
Instead you back off. Anything else you have said which you wish to back off from when challenged?
“Explain why you don’t see me living black “out thereâ€? Adam Gall.”
To be honest, I don’t understand the question because I think it’s pretty clear what I was suggesting. My question was supposed to imply that your demand for ‘authenticity’ has its own limits, and that I doubt that you have surpassed those limits yourself. I mean, for most Australians living black is an impossibility, and sitting down with elders and learning from them is pretty much outside of their experience. In other words, I think that you talking about authenticity and proximity to the problems discussed is a rhetorical ploy with no real substance. Which is not to suggest that I have a more ‘authentic’ basis for my opinions, after all I’ve done neither of those things either.
Now you can answer my question if you like.
Mark says:
“I might just observe that none of the Pearson fans have addressed either the refutation of the myths about Indigenous culture and child abuse posted above or the fact that the most systematic child abuse is perpetrated by whitefellas.”
I pointed you in the direction of Louis Nowra’s work in your previous post on a similar topic.
Nannette Roger’s 12 years as a prosecutor in the NT give her insights weight in my opinion. See here for example:
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/sex-abuse-rife-in-nt-communities/2006/05/15/1147545263399.html
We also might have some confusion here about the definition of culture. When I use the word culture, I mean what people actually do in their lives. If male Aboriginal elders in Alice Springs exchange plastic dinosaurs for sex with 13 year girls in their community (as Nowra alleges), then that is culture. If they talk about it openly and without shame, then it is probably a normalised rather than deviant cultural practice in their community.
It is also obvious that if Aboriginal youngsters in remote communities are having sex with white men, skipping school and so on, this is the responsibility of the parents.
I also note this:
“To the extent that this problem is successfully tackled, the real heroes will be Aboriginal health workers in the affected communities. In January this year, the Kimberly Population Health Unit Bulletin reported 44 sexually transmissible infections in children under 14 in the previous 18 months. To put this into perspective, in 2004 there were 185 notified sexually transmissible infections in children under 14 throughout Australia.”
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=4629
I doubt these children are picking up STIs from toilet seats.
Hello, SATP? Am I to take this as a retreat also?
To be honest, I do understand your initial point, even though I don’t agree with it. There is a certain amount of abstraction here, which must grate on a man of action such as yourself. My suggestion would be: take a look at the context ie a political blog and tell me that any opinion on LP holds up to those standards of authentic experience. Or that anything in the MSM does for that matter.
16 years ago, i was a left wing social work graduate from UQ holding very closely to some of the standard frameworks outlined above.
Then i began working in Far North Queensland in Child protection, juvenile justice, and later in program development/funding/resourcing in an indigenous community.
More recently i’ve been in the field of domestic violence.
I’ve known many idealistic and highly educated doctors and teachers working in community, who deeply love indigenous people, yet who have become cynical and jaded at the entrenched problems facing some of these communities.
My own experiences have been wonderful, tragic, complex, messy, depressing and inspiring. I’ve been to marches and rallys, funerals and festivals.
But i do know that ignoring the reality experienced by many indigenous people (or being too afraid to face it) will only mean more of the same.
And, over the years i find myself sympathising with poeple like Noel Pearson more and more. (IMO slurs such as coconut have social darwinist undertones and are racist when spoken by white people or black.)
If you really want to get a sense of the issues in communities, go and spend some time in a couple of them. Listen to everybody. Visit the schools, the health clinic, the canteen and the church. Talk to the teachers, the guys in the local band, the pastor, and the domestic violence safe house workers. Look at the life stories of those who are doing okay, and those who are not.
Then listen especially hard to the women……
Oh, really, melaleuca? Not at all the responsibility of the white men in question? Talk about blaming the victim.
Leaving aside the issue of different kinship and family structures in Indigenous culture, you really have displayed an even more simplistic understanding of the issues than Mal Brough, I’d suggest.
Mark:
You again miss the point by a country mile. Obviously the abusers, white, black or purple, share responsibility.
My point is that if Aboriginal children are wandering the streets alone or in groups day and night, as I’ve seen for myself in places like Townsville and Alice Springs, they are open to predation.
Why aren’t they in school, at home or in bed? Why are their parents unwilling to exercise proper parental control? Whose fault is this?
These are the questions that concern Aboriginal leaders like Noel Pearson and Chris Sarra. And these are the issues that, when raised by Aboriginals, provoke racist sneers and smears (coconut, Uncle Tom) from a subset of white liberals.
And what Sublime Cowgirl says. Her experience is exactly what my social worker sister has been telling me about.
melaleuca, when I was going out with someone who lived in Redcliffe, and stayed over at her place I often observed white kids “wandering the streets alone or in groups day and night”. Perhaps you could explain firstly why you always single out Indigenous people when discussing problems which are common to everyone living in poverty, and secondly, how stringent restrictions on access to welfare and the removal of discretion and autonomy from parents will magically solve these problems.
You’ve nailed it one Mark. I find it hypocritical of people like Pearfson & Brough singling out Blacks for punative welfare measures, but flinch if someone dared applied the “No School, No Welfare rule to non indigineous kids. Can you imagine the outcry from the “Howard Battlers” ?
Mark,
Give me a predominately Anglo-Saxon postcode where life expectancy, chronic poor health, suicide, truancy rates and other such statistics match those of our indigenous communities.
If you can do this, I’ll begin to take you seriously.
Well, for a start, melaleuca, most (60% plus) Indigenous people live in towns and cities where they’re not all concentrated in one area.
But, to answer your question, you might wish to read this report:
http://www.jss.org.au/documents/070226-Summary-DroppingofftheEdge.pdf [pdf]
And you haven’t answered mine as to how punitive welfare measures will “solve” these problems.
Which of course underpins the problem with the Pearson/Brough “One Size Fits All” solution.
I’m of the opinion that a lot of these “Social Workers” do more harm than good in most cases and assume that their University Training and skills are a Panacea to all the ills, plus this misplaced thinking that tying welfare to work will give people a work ethic, white or black.
You’ve nailed it one Mark. I find it hypocritical of people like Pearfson & Brough singling out Blacks for punative welfare measures, but flinch if someone dared applied the “No School, No Welfare rule to non indigineous kids. Can you imagine the outcry from the “Howard Battlers� ?
Pearson may well be genuine in his attempt to alleviate the problems of Aboriginals, that’s of course if you havn’t experiend our benelovent Liberal Party,however Brough et al are that shallow they could parachute out of a snakes arse.
Since when did anyone in the Liberal Party take an interest in the plight of Aboriginals? This is the thin end of the wedge,yes indeed, it is the “Howard Battlers” that the Howard government is really after period.This is political oportunism of the highest order, a two yr old can see what is going on here.
This is a cake made of shit, nothing else.
And so is this….
What a bunch of murdering racist scumbags.
Oh well, at least the precedent that they can be charged after only 200 years has been set….
Sigh.
The fact that most Aboriginals live alongside the rest of us in towns and cities rather than on segregated reservations actually buttresses my argument. Moreover, Australian Aboriginals out breed at such a rate that in less than a dozen generations there will be no genuinely distinct Aboriginal population left.
I’ve said on this forum many times that I am a supporter of the Nanny State. I’ve read recently for example (do not remember where) about a successful pilot program in an American state where “at risk” mothers and children are targeted for intensive support from social workers, health workers etc until the child is three. Such intervention has successfully improved the life chances of both mother and child. Interestingly, the intervention even resulted in a statistically significant increase in the child’s IQ. Amazing stuff.
I would like Australia to spend billions of dollars on these types of programmes. I would also support carrots and sticks to maximise compliance.
In other words, I am entirely consistent.
melaleuca, yes the “Aboriginal race is doomed to die out” theme was a big one in school textbooks in Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s Queensland.
You are now being petty and sneering Mark.
The Aboriginal race will not die out- it will live on in melting pot that is contemporary Australia.
Again, I beseech you, show me the contemporary Brits who identify as Picts, Jutes, Normans, Saxons and so on and so forth.
Once you’ve done that, please point me in the direction of the distinct Vandal and the Ostrogoth communities on continental Europe.
I thought I would add my two bobs worth. It seems when faced with the sociology of despair, leading to self destructive behaviors including alcoholism, interventions may be justified. These short term measures might well be described as authoritarian, but they are seldom. I would guess, long term solutions, which require understanding the conditions that caused the despair in the first place and to prevent its reoccurrence.
Pearson made a point of saying that families would be first directed to appropriate programmes. These programmes currently are not available. What exists is subject to temporary funding and is woefully inadequate. Read the recommendations of the Little Children are Sacred report. What are the chances that Brough will jump on the punitive measures and the funding increase to those services will never eventuate or will be inadequate. How about providing the services and not stripping people of the right to run their own lives?
First of all Bollard using the Aboriginal problem to push his commie position is a joke.Please comrade..The so called dream ended.
A lot of you are right but you also are wrong,the reason is that you just don’t know the Black fella,you can’t lump then all together, over 250 past tribal groups and close to seven hundred dialects do not add up to one people.Noel Pearson is right but he comes from the top end,Harsh reforms will work well for costal groups who speak english and know about work ethics but in the center the black fella has only been introduced to white man in large numbers in the lasy 50 years.they don’t understand the consept of work and money,some do, a lot don’t.you all want a quick fix but it took generations to get to this point and it will take generations to get out. Drinking is a big problem but so is petrol sniffing.Why do they do it,you were a bored teenage once.the biggest problem is education.Educate someone to eat right and stay healthy will do wonders. I’ve worked with little Chi Chi’s and seen that that a main meal for the day was a can of coke and a packet of chips.Why no food,no money,why no money,Because there is no ownership,every thing is shared with in the family group.I’ve traveled from Alice Springs to remote communitys with up to twenty ATM cards to give back to owners who gave them to me two weeks before to give to relatives,and these are people who are getting to hits at the pie SIT DOWN money and MINNING payments. Want to give them more money. Go ahead if it makes you feel better. Violence and abuse is not cultural,it a trait of all humans,some cutures just condone it more than others.But don’t buy into the peacefull noble savage.Australia is a harsh country,and a harsh land needed harsh laws so people could survive,to brake those traditional rules would result in harsh punishment even death.come out and see a payback spearing to the leg to see what i mean..I could go on and on and on but this is a blog.I’ve built communities and drove bush buses,I’ve ran tours all through remote areas,worked and lived with these people for years,I’ve seen socialist come out to change the world only to leave screaming and yelling back to the cities because the don’t understand, the ones that do end up staying and realise that it small steps and a bit at a time.But they realise that they only people that will make a differance is the black fellas themselves.Get out of your office and see for yourself,not for a day or a week but for 6 months or more it will open your eyes. For a chi chi to become a wati the a tjilpi took a whole life time,it takes time to earn trust and to recive their knowledge.
Mark to answer your question is yes they will in some areas, you can’t drink a food voucher.The problem is that Governments and others want a one size fits all.
An aboriginal friend of mine at school’s father said
Quite.
Melaleuca:
Funny ….. I can remember hearing many ordinary Aborigines speaking with equal clarity, intelligence and insight — back in the ‘fifties, ’sixties, ’seventoes, ‘eighties and ‘nineties — about the problems facing Aborigines, about their own creative and usually inexpensive solutions and about their own realistic hopes for the future of all Australians.
Trouble is, their views were never heard in the news media or in academia …. or, if such views were heard, they were heard without attribution!!! After all, as the thinking [white - or fashionable black!] went, what would blackfellas who drink tea out of chipped enamel pannikins know of such things?
As for Pearson and Yanner, I don’t give a rat’s ar** if they have become media celebrities and being groomed for political and/or corporate office …. just so long as they get there without causing even more harm to Aborigines.
Melaleuca has said:
What is the disinction you are trying to make? – are you suggesting educated Aboriginals not as genuine as non educated Aboriginals? Is the real Aboriginal experience to be felt in a lack of education? Do these discussions with your authentic models of aboriginality then somehow negate Mark’s discussions? Do you ever question the binaries with which you order your thinking in race matters?
Then: Compare your negation of Aboriginality on the basis of modernity:
with your negation of Aboriginality of the imagined basis of the fearful premodern,
Either way, negation is achieved. You disenfranchise modern aboriginals and then pour scorn on the idea of a traditional culture. Which is really the point. Modern Aboriginals negate the concept of dispossession for you, just as “stone age” Aboriginals negate dispossession by existing outside of history and modernity, in their refusal to “integrate” (which is another way of saying disapear).
Melaleuca, your woefully essentialist (real aboriginals dont live in houses and wear white clothes) and eugenicist rhetoric (What do the words “breeding out” connote do you think? Do you think that using these words as a way of describing your highly contentious model of integration is appropriate? And do you think its appropriate to speak of a diverse body of peoples in such terms, when historically those words raise a whole history of erasure? )are working from a discourse of denialism of the complexity of aboriginal identity. Aboriginal identity is not determined by blood alone but on ongoing connection to community. It encompasses rural and metropolitan culture, its peoples are both academic or not, both ancient and modern. But you would know this all this. And you would also know that there is no question that dispossession occurred. The high court established that without a shadow of a doubt.
I am sorry Mark, as I know all this is off the topic, but I find some of these descriptions actually offensive.
So do I, casey, but I prefer to let them stand because it allows a chance for counter-arguments to be put, and I think shows up the emotionalism and threadbare nature of those who fall all too easily into stigmatising Indigenous people.
Loved this piece of Liberal Party dogma on page 40 of Pearson’s Report.I have heard hundreds of thousands of hours of parliamentary debate in my time covering both good times and bad and this is a classic straight from the Liberal Party dirty tricks department.
Always a wild generalisation of jobs being available but never the specifics of where a person looking for work could turn up and find that job tomorrow. If the jobs ever are or were available I am wary on Liberal supporters past form as to whether there ever were enough of these mysterious jobs to make a difference to the point that is being argued.
And of course anyone who doesn’t “intend to increase their income” is by definition puzzling and problematic in Liberal land!
Totally agree, that’s the common fallacy that’s also given to the so-called Jobs for people with Disabilities – when push comes to shove , an Employer would prefer to employ an able-bodied person than to risk it on someone with a disibilty whose health circumstances can radically change from day to day, or may have to take time off for medical appointments etc.
Another aspect is when there is a death in an Aboriginal Community, they go inmto a long period of “Sorry Business” and tend to mourn over a longer period than their non-idigineous peers, plus there are other factors such as cultural business which may require them to travel to other communities etc.
Page 48 of his report seems to be a cross between the 10 commandments and conscription. Hope he’s planning on mustering a huge army or recruiting a couple of police Forces to enforce this brilliance and stop his scheme from collapsing in a screaming heap.I think it might be a bit of an ambit claim but for $3,000,000 I expect a bit more realism.
I think these rules could catch up to quite a few non-idigineous folk as well, especially those who voted for Ratty last time and are recipients of the Baby Bonus
The Devil Drink would embrace the Pearson temperance League revival or would it be a cricket helmet type structure with the bars protruding so far from the mouth that alcohol could not pass through the lips? I can see why the idea was tempered in communities etc.
“First of all Bollard using the Aboriginal problem to push his commie position is a joke.Please comrade..The so called dream ended.”
No doubt you believe so Wati – though I suspect, like most red baiters you have no idea what my dream consists of. Do you think the Communists who organised the strikes by Aboriginal stockmen in the 1940s were also “using the Aboriginal problem to push [their] commie position”? Would you have preferred the ALP or the Liberals, both of whom adhered faithfully at the time to the doctrine of White Australia?
Apparently I am “using the problem” to push an agenda. And presumably Pearson and the rest of the prophets of “harsh reforms” are not.
I plead guilty. I may be a descendant of the Oyster Bay people – but I admit that doesn’t make me an expert on anything Aboriginal. I certainly haven’t had the experience you have with traditional people in the Centre. But I smell a rat whenever I hear anyone anywhere talk about “welfare dependency” as a problem. It’s not. It’s a symptom of a deeper problem. I think the answer to dispossession and oppression is resistance – not punishing the victims. If that is a “commie agenda” then I plead guilty.
Casey is willfully misinterpreting what I have said.
Out breeding is not a pejorative. Australia has one of the world’s highest rates of out breeding. This applies to most Asian ethnicities and white ethnicities as well as indigenous ethnicities. It is a fact of life.
Apparently you want to employ censorship to a fundamental demographic reality. How odd.
When I said to Mark “I have spoke to Aboriginal people, Mark. Not the academic ones eitherâ€? what I meant was that I was brought up in the arse-end of the rural housing commission lumpen proletariat and have consequently known Aboriginals since day one. My sister’s first partner was Aboriginal and I have Aboriginals in my extended family tree.
Casey:
You are on shaky ground when you asked Melaleuca
Oppression. neglect, exploitation or paternalism does not depend on one’s race, religion, level of education or wealth.
Sadly, we have seen too many Aborigines who have misused their education to deliberately advance their own selfish interests at the cost of the interests of their fellow Aborigines. Naturally, the news media praises such scoundrels to the skies and at the same time maligns their victims. Is it any wonder there is sometimes suspicion about the motives of certain well-educated
AboriginesIndigenie$$ ?Just love the military language employed by the Family Income Management worker with the goal of aiming higher and mopping up the stragglers no doubt.
Frank Calabrese:
You hit the nail on the head when you compared the lack of jobs given to the disabled with the lack of jobs given to Aborigines. Employers are foolish in not giving such people a fair go.
A magistrate providing gravatas and stature? I thought that two JP’s equalled a magistrate in Queensland so perhaps we have thhe first signs of genuine job creation under the Pearson plan but not a lot of gravatus or stature I’d have thought.
I find the term “coconut and Uncle Tom “offensive guys.
Graham Bell
On the contrary, my ground is quite firm thank you, the question I pose refers to the essentialisation of Indigeneity – issues of white constructs of Indigenous identity rather than a discussion of the merits of certain ‘educated’ Aboriginals. And I also refer to the racing of such questions, and the white concerns behind them. I do not believe, that in his wildest imagination, could Melaleuca ever imagine posting a statment to Mark which read: I have spoken to white people Mark, and not educated ones. Not educated ones, indeed.
But I would rather move back to the discussion at hand, being Noel Pearson’s report now.
Casey,
You are being disingenuous. Mark has repeatedly referred to his Aboriginal academic counterparts and how they disagree with Noel Pearson.
I also repeatedly attack aspects of white culture, for example Christianity.
I also do not shy away from supporting special privileges for people who claim to be Aboriginals but are in fact as white as a Klu Klux Klansman’s bedsheet. That includes Geoff Clark and Michael Mansell.
If Mansell deserves “compensation” for “dispossession” because his great aunt’s kipper once saw a ridgy-didge Tasmanian Aboriginal, then I demand an apology from the Swedish Government for the Viking raids on Britain. Naturally I would also like the Mongolian Government to apologise for the wrongdoings of Ghengis Khan.
Oops. That should read:
“I also do not shy away from NOT supporting …”
Page 68 of the report has the above quote but what I want to know is why would financial sanctions be any better or different to intensive case management? After all if a compulsive gambler loses all available cash on the punt, it’s never stopped them from betting as soon as possible again has it? I’d say the results of financial sanction could well be worse than intensive case management.
Here is some demographic evidence that validates my out-breeding thesis and destroys the Aboriginal exceptionalism paradigm favoured by Mark.
“A report published on the opinion pages of The Age today reveals a sharp increase in the number of intermixed Aboriginal couples.
In 2001, 69 per cent of couples with an Aboriginal partner were intermixed , according to the 2001 Australian census. This compares to 64 per cent in 1996, 51 per cent in 1991 and 46 per cent in 1986.”
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/08/14/1029113955646.html
It is thus a demographic and mathematical inevitability that, as I previously stated, a distinct Aboriginal ethnicity will not exist within 12 generations. Hopefully this will soon be followed by the demise of a distinct “white Australian” identity.
Yibbidy yibbida, that’s all folks.
Humbugging or being subject to standover tactics seems to be a big risk if payments are directed to another person but even if the system worked it seems there is also a big risk that it could all bog down in paperwork and red tape.
melaleuca, in response to what you’ve written, I’d endorse what casey wrote:
Except that I’m not sure at all that you do know this. You’ve previously expressed a belief that Indigenous problems would be solved were their identity to be dissolved within Australia’s “melting pot”. No doubt this is one reason why you support the individualisation that Pearson endorses so wholeheartedly. However, aside from the questionable grasp of multiculturalism that statement betrays, and your apparent inability to understand “race” and cultural identity are not equivalents, you obviously have no conception that Indigenous people may not want to dissolve themselves in your recommended fashion, and that their culture proceeds “ours”.
But this is all taking us away from the discussion of Pearson’s report. You’re yet to explain how any of this would go to solving social problems which are common across citizens on welfare (not “sufferers” of “welfare dependency”) both Indigenous and non-Indigenous.
Be so kind as to address yourself to the topic of the thread, please.
It really is a bit difficult to understand why Pearson can see the problems with CDEP so clearly but has yet to cast any doubt on the Job Network System which surely has to be as dysfunctional as he is claiming CDEP to be. The ambiguous sentence I quoted is as near as he has got so far!
I wonder if Pearson’s Grand Plan is to set up a group of Indigineous JN Providers staffed by Indigineous folk and thus make money from same ??
Mark,
Mansell is perfectly entitled to tell anyone who cares that he is a “cultural Aboriginal”. In the same manner, as per the old Monty Python skit, I am perfectly entitled in a free society to consider myself a lentil. But this doesn’t mean that we should get taxpayer funding and special privileges from the Aboriginal Affairs Department and the Legume Board respectively.
Pearson argues that various dysfunctional behaviours in certain Aboriginal communities, such as incest and child abuse, is normalised behaviour. We know this to be true as we see Aboriginal elders without shame explain how they procure children for sex in exchange for toys. We also know this because of the bizarre of STI’s found in children in many Aboriginal communities.
Pearson understands that such communities are unable, and possibly unwilling, to remedy these dysfunctions. As such, external carrots and sticks are required.
As a sociologist, you should be well aware that law and its enforcement can result in cultural change. Hopefully this will be the case here, so that within a generation more functional norms will develop in these communities, thereby maximising the life-chances of indigenous children.
Pearson’s approach may fail. But if it does, he won’t be Robinson Crusoe.
I must also say that the way you and many of the commenters above have singled out Pearson for a kick in the head is disgusting. It is almost identical to the way Andrew Bolt and co. have singled out Michael Mann for a head-kicking in the AGW debate.
As I’ve previously mentioned, other Aboriginal figures, like Major, Yanner and Sarra broadly support the Pearson approach.
The Indigenous Land Corporation – the nation’s peak indigenous land business – will today outline its radical plan and call for help from state education departments to explore ways of operating the boarding houses.
The facilities, which would either be bought or built on land purchased by the ILC, would initially be established in regional centres and later spread to cities.
The corporation has not outlined a budget for its proposal. But last year it spent $8 million on its land-acquisition program, which until now has focused on helping indigenous communities buy land to operate businesses such as cattle stations.
Hmm, And we all know that some of the Top Class Schools in the City aren’t as Squeaky-Clean as their Glossy Brochures may make out them to be
Hyperbole, as usual. What, he’s beyond criticism?
I imagine they don’t support your assimilationist agenda, though.
In any case, how do we know how representative these “figures” are? There are significant numbers of people who are part of Pearson’s mob who vehemently oppose his ideas (some are academics, most aren’t) but they rarely get a hearing in the media. ATSIC, as Gary argued in his post, was a most imperfect body, and it in many ways institutionalised a buffer between Indigenous people and the government and also placed huge tensions on those who worked within its structures, but at least it was an elected body and thus there was some way of guaging representativeness. Of course, the Howard government couldn’t abide that, and replaced it with either a neutered appointed body or prefers to hire people like Pearson as consultants.
Labor in the last term promised to restore a representative Indigenous body. I wonder if that’s still ALP policy?
Would it be because they are all from the Cape York Area ?? As Mark has been trying to tell you, Cape York Aboriginal People do not, and should assume that what works for them will work in WA, as would what may work in WA may fail on it’s arse in Qld.
I Wonder if Noel Pearson considers himself to be the modern day version of the “Super Boong” from the ground-breaking 1970’s Indigineous Stage, and later TV show entitled “Basically Black”
The most consistent aspect on this thread seems to be cynicism on every side.
IF we say we support aboriginal self -determination, then it seems only fair we support communitities (and this is a specific issue about particular remote communities) who say they want to experiment with a new system, to overhaul the current sit-down money system, to see their beautiful kids have some sort of a future.
To sit back and watch (some of these) communitites implode, and not support those from within who want to address the issues of human dignity seems to be a sort of genocide by default.
And as Mark pointed out, traditional aboriginal culture does not condone child abuse. The issue is the lack of social mores in the face of endemic alcoholism, poverty and domestic violence.
You are being silly Kim. Various (white skinned) commenters above have called Pearson a coconut and an Uncle Tom. Mark repeatedly has a go at Pearson.
Here is some information on the Chris Sarra:
http://www.abc.net.au/message/tv/ms/s967204.htm
The school in which he is principal has seen a 94% drop in truancy. Standards in reading and writing have sky rocketed.
It for these reasons, and his own words, the rejection of ” a white status quo that accepts Indigenous failure, dancing with an Indigenous status quo that somehow embraced victim status as something of our identity”.
Like Pearson, he wants Aboriginal kids to be able to dream the same dreams as other kids. And it is this rejection of racialism that attracts the hate and scorn of a subset of white liberals.
The only vision Mark has been able to articulate above is Aboriginal people sitting in reservations and living off mineral royalties. How the hell could that constitute a meaningful life?
Well said Mark. I reckon Pearson’s approach will be, post-election, decried in convenient media quarters as ‘disriminatory towards Aborigines’ & consequently be heard by an eager Federal Govt keen to assist “Aboriginal mobility & esteem” & in turn announce the paternal welfare ideas MUST be turned into policy ASAP & used for the entire population of welfare recipients w/ children…for the “good of the Nation, to ensure we avoid any accusations of discrimination”. Paternalism gone mad.
Let’s hope Labor wins, takes the best of the ideas & scuttles the rest.
It’s just another Clinton (w/ his arm behind his back & media w/ impeachment smell in his face) style ‘Welfare to work’ ploy to create masses of cheap labour & to get the Aborigines off the Land so the Corporations & entrepeneurs of ‘Greedville’ can do the same as they did in Canada & America. hmmm…I wonder where they’re planning to create the new Las Vegas of Australia?
“Labor in the last term promised to restore a representative Indigenous body. I wonder if that’s still ALP policy?”
Good question Kim.
Sublime Cowgirl, I would always argue for a democratic approach. Therefore, I have no problem with the idea of communities choosing to try out Pearson’s ideas. The problems that I see are: firstly, Pearson is one of the few who has the ear of government, a position which may be unrepresentative – it hasn’t been tested; secondly, if the government is only offering one set of strategies, and introducing punitive measures to make sure they happen, then I don’t see that as the same thing as communities determining their own path at all. There is nothing inconsistent in offering these criticisms and accepting that some communities do want to take Pearson on board. As I’ve consistently argued, we should not reduce Pearson’s agenda to the current government’s agenda, but we should be asking how the government claims to represent Abl interests.
‘Hostels proposed for Aboriginal kids’
Well here’s one way they propose to get the Aborigines off their Land:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Hostels-proposed-for-Aboriginal-kids/2007/06/21/1182019230461.html
start w/ the children.
plus ce change eh?…kinda like the American ‘backdoor’ conscription, no matter how you dress it up, it still ends up being the same old crap.
and why are Lateline & all those other news shows/outlets, that seem to be addicted to showing lengthy shots of drunken, stumbling, poverty stricken, bedraggled Aborigines whilst the ‘talking heads’ rant on so earnestly about the ‘child abuse’ issue, not focusing on the non-aboriginal perpetrators of these horrendous crimes?… rarely moving beyond the stereotypical representations?…seeming to imply by their approach that “Abos are savages…& all Aboriginal men are potential rapists & drunks” BS line?…considering Crikey & other sources have revealed that the abuse cases involved a number of non-aborigines, including a priest & a teacher.
Imho, some in the Australian media can’t help emulating approaches out of a racist, bigotted past. Contributing to the malaise.
It’s hyperbole, ‘moral panic’ & political wedge issues all the way in the election year…& screw how this will damage the esteem of the Aboriginal people…the media don’t seem to worry that they are contributing to the FEAR & cultural divide factors…or eroding the efforts of good people who are trying to foster positive feelings in Aboriginal children…don’t give a hoot that they are tarring all Aborigines w/ the same brush because of a few bad apples. When was the last time we heard about incest in Anglo-Celtic families & comments accompanying said reports like “the Anglo-Celtic community is melting down, its children are being damaged continually”?
And now the ABC has become a main contributor to this distorted gaze (they’ve done some effective reporting on the issues but undermine it continually by way of irresponsible shots, a biased focus…& lack of discussion regarding problems w/ non-aborigines in the communities)…w/ SBS following closely behind. No wonder heaps of people are turning to the more ‘rational’ blogs for a different perspective.
There’s obviously a real problem w/ the abuse of children in some communities out there…but our mainstream media could be reporting & providing discussion forums in a far more responsible way, less HYPE & distortions & stereo-typing…a bit of wide thinking…less ego boosting…& political point scoring…& ratings obsession, would help.
So it would be interesting to hear how many of these jobs were filled and when and whether they were filled by people on CDEP or by a Job Network Member etc. That would teel us very quickly whether the argument that note 37 is attached to is real or not.
Robert
I am not a Red “baiter.” Let’s face it, if one were in 2007, one would starve to death, as there are not that many of y’all left. One of my best friends remains a Commie (yes, I KNOW…’one of my best friends’….).
However, the style of Commie I encounter on Leftwrites is a bit of a Straw-Commie and does (as you are accused of above) tend to simplistically instrumentalise issues surrounding race in a manner that renders many other worthwhile politico-insights idiotic.
To wit, Commies have nothing to stand on when it comes to the moral highground on these issues. Of course, you never have the intellectual highground, but that is not important right now.
That’s not true, melaleulaca, and I’ve already pointed out why it’s not true a lot earlier on the thread. I’ll be charitable and assume you missed the comment:
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2007/06/19/welfare-reform-pearson-style/#comment-377844
Nasking, that story seems to be a response to Pearson’s report page 100 (by pdf page number).
The Indigenous Youth Mobility Program seems to have been operating for a while now and the report calls for an expansion of the program
“How do you propose that an Aboriginal group on a remote native title holding, far from any centre of employment, successfully exercise “self-determinationâ€?. ”
It is conventional wisdom tha Aboriginal people in the Cape are doing badly because they are so far removed geographically from any centre of employment.
Aboriginal communities in and near Victorian country towns such as mildura and Shapparton should therefore be doing a lot better, because these towns are booming. There are a lot of jobs around.
In fact, on a range of indicators, these Aboriginal communities are doing about the same as those in the Cape, that is, really badly.
Also, Native Title Law requires ongoing attachment to the land. A few years ago the Yorta Yorta people couldn’t prove they had it, so they lost their case. Aboriginal people are being given mixed messages. On the one hand, they are told that if they want what is important to them, meaningful land rights, they have to stay on their land. On the other hand, they are told to get off their land so that they can empower themselves with economic opportunities (as if mere proximity to a centre of economic activity will improve their lot in life, just like that, through some process of financial osmosis.)
One can always argue that Aboriginal people should just forget about this land nonsense and start trying a grab a slice of the whitefella good life. The problem is, attachment to the land is a locked in part of Aboriginal culture. Maybe this cultural attachment is a causal factor in the general misery that is Aboriginal life today, maybe it isn’t, but it isn’t going anywhere.
There are simple solutions to every complex problem in Aboriginal affairs, and they are all wrong, or at best incomplete.
Spiros, it looks like students and the unemployed will be expected to travel and be more mobile under the Pearson plan.
Probably the biggest change recommended in this report is private Home ownership.
Public or communal provision and ownership of individual assets in communities should
be rejected for the same reasons that wider society rejects across the board communal
provision of housing and state ownership of other assets. As one community member said,
‘communal ownership is only as strong as the weakest link’.
Home ownership should be established in the Welfare Reform communities as a priority.
In the medium to longer term, the housing market should be allowed to normalise to a
point where houses have a market value (although this may be low) and people make
investment decisions on the basis of this value alongside their engagement with the wider
economy.
Mark:
However, aside from the questionable grasp of multiculturalism that statement betrays, and your apparent inability to understand “race� and cultural identity are not equivalents, you obviously have no conception that Indigenous people may not want to dissolve themselves in your recommended fashion, and that their culture proceeds “ours�.
So, because their culture precedes “ours”, you argue that tax money should be spent to prevent it from ever altering?
So when do you plan to stop arguing against the Liberal right’s conservative agenda? The 1950s culture precedes “ours” by several decades, and many conservatives may not want to dissolve themselves into a liberal culture in your recommended fashion.
I have to say, the label ‘progressive’ is becoming a more and more ironic description of the left.
No, that’s not my position.
It would be nice if people could realise that sometimes we’re arguing things which aren’t the stereotypical “leftie” line.
SimonC, my position is set out here:
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2007/06/19/welfare-reform-pearson-style/#comment-377827
I’d also observe that “liberals” and “conservatives” are not cultures in the sense of distinct worldviews and traditions, but rather political positions within one culture. There’s no analogy with the dispossession of the original inhabitants of this nation.
Democracy and self-determination sound plenty progressive to me, SimonC.
I suspect that there is an ontological dimension to Mark’s discussion of ‘pre-ceding’.
You are invoking a hierarchy of cultures laid out across a linear understanding of ‘progress’ – that is, an understanding of progress that can never break the frame of one way of thinking about modernity because it assumes that all humanity is essentially the same, but in different ’stages’ of development. This monocultural account amounts to C19th social darwinism, which has been thoroughly discredited in other spheres, so why not here?
The idea that pro-Abl politics can be aligned with a defense of conservatism within the dominant culture is inattentive to cultural difference. Mark’s position is not for a revival, but as a response to living Abl culture and politics in the present.
Well I think the statement Mel makes is a truism. Namely that, without outside influences, different races of people will tend to outbreed until there is no meaningful distinction. The ‘melting pot’ theory.
The same thing goes for culture. Without a specific force (in this case, government support of multiculturalism) different cultures will take on the parts of surrounding cultures that are successful, and will drop the parts that are not.
So your statement that “Indigenous people may not want to dissolve themselves in your recommended fashion” goes against the data, because they are dissolving themselves in that fashion. So you must be implying that an outside influence (government money) is required for these people to maintain a distinct, segregated culture.
No, the separation and distinctiveness of Abl cultures from the dominant culture is a reality in spite of several hundred years of attempting to do exactly what you say comes naturally – ie bring Abl culture to an end.
No, not at all. As I’ve previously argued, it’s a false dichotomy to suggest there’s an Indigenous culture that’s unchanging and frozen in time and one that’s fully “assimilated” to the dominant culture. In fact, Indigenous culture is dynamic and changing, but it’s up to Indigenous people themselves to steer their own ship. The concept of “segregation” in this context is just a red herring. Note also that Pearson’s plan, and Brough’s announcements, both require the spending of government money. I merely seek to question whether their programmes are the most appropriate and democratic (wrt to the views of Indigenous people across Australia) ways to go.
Comment crossed with Adam’s, but I agree with his argument.
‘Segregation’ was always a strategy that shared a logic with assimilation anyway, in the sense that it was supposed to end in the extinction of Abl people. As a policy, it took place during a period when it was assumed that Abl people would die out. Depending on who you look at during that period it was supposed to protect them from predatory whites, or prevent the growth in the so-called ‘half-caste’ population, or both. Self-determination on the other hand takes cultural survival and continuity – indeed vitality – as a beginning point, and goes from there.
The nub of the argument relates to the words “most appropriate”. This is a not clearly defined concept and there will be a wide range of views concerning it. I certainly don’t have an answer for what policies are most appropriate – to my mind, part of determining the degrees of appropriateness of different policies is by knowing the extent to which they work or not. I’m all in favour of policy experiments, unless there is some overriding reason the policy is undesireable. All I know about aboriginal communities is what I read in the media and hear from work colleagues and personal contacts. If there are major problems in aboriginal communities (or any communities), and there is a role for public policy to potentially improve lives in those communities, then there is room for policy experiments.
Not only do I not think that that is a truism, I don’t think it’s true. This statement seems to come, strangely, from the most simplistic base-superstructure view of culture as an algorithmic construction from economic conditions.
I agree with Mark etc comments about culture as a dynamic entity. In particular, people seem to have no problem with the idea of their own Western-Australian-Anglo-whatever culture incorporating new technologies and social changes, yet this always seems to be forbidden for other cultures which much exist in a static unchanging pre-contact form or not at all.
It seems Ratty and Brough have reacted to Pearson, and some of their proposals would NOT be tolerated if they introduced in non-aboriginal communities.
John Howard and Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough announced the measures today in response to a “horrifying” report into indigenous child abuse
I think it will. Predators prey on the weak. If these towns and camps can be strengthened then the predators will not have the opportunity. There is a reason this abuse happens in certain places and not in others.
I am particularly disturbed by this development:
SMH today.
Compensation for what? For land? Somehow on the basis of ‘cleaning up the community’ they are reclaiming Aboriginal lands. Using the term of a ‘national emergency’, they are taking back land which actually belongs to people. You are right Frank it would not happen in white communities. There would be serious civil unrest if it did. I wonder now if in fact Noel Pearson’s report did precisely the kind of recuperative work regarding land ownership for conservative forces in this country, that the High Court failed to do for them, when it decided for Eddie Mabo in 1992.
Yep, The Cape York Black Mafia that Ratty & Co speak so highly of have basically wound back Black-white relations pre 1967.
Disturbing indeed, casey. I don’t think declaring a state of emergency and suspending civil rights is going to end nicely. Basically they’re talking about forcing through, for a limited period, the kind of land agreements that many communities have rejected and they’re using abuse as an alibi.
Frank said – “some of their proposals would NOT be tolerated if they introduced in non-aboriginal communities.”
Crap – if white communites had the same type and level of problems as aboriginal communities the same type of measures would be called for.
Face it – left-wing touchy feely policies have manifestly failed aboriginal communities. Time for some tough love.
Tough love it is, indeed.
Arleeshar:
I agree with arleeshar’s reading of the situation.
Oh Dear, Mal Brough’s Fact Sheet is Missing.
And I bet the Territorians now regret voting against Statehood a few years back.
I’ll bet Ratty will now decree that Blacks won’t be allowed into Towns after Dusk, and that they will wear ID Colars so they don’t get mistaken for interstate blacks.
They’re not Pearson’s suggestions, but his suggestions have paved the way for this, and created a climate where it’s seen as a legitimate response.
Oh and banning X-Rated videos won’t help – Sexual predators can get their jollies by watching Video Hits or Rage . or by grabbing the nearest Target Catalogue, especially in Summer.
And will they clamp down on Traditional ceremonies where they dance wearing nothing but BBody paint and a loin cloth ??
Silly proposal from a silly Govt responding to Pearson’s Dog Whistling.
Well, we have been waiting for Howard’s wedge, and here it is in spades.
Not only is it a big, bold gesture, it is one of the few recent announcements that will sit comfortably with Howard’s own position.
This feels like another $10 Billion Water Plan, with a bit better planning behind it.
I have no doubts it will play well in a lot of marginals.
Rudd is now in the same position Beazley was with Tampa. Damned if he supports it by his own base, damned if he doesn’t by a significant number of swinging voters.
As to the actual policies, I beg to differ with Razor’s comments, this would not be tolerated in a white Australian community. Mind you, a white community would not be left to slide to the level that Aboriginal one’s have been either.
One of the myths requiring some examination in this debate is the ‘you can’t solve indigenous issues by throwing money at them’ one. Mythologically, zillions have been poured down the drain, and indigenous Australians have been given all these taxpayer-funded privileges not available to other Australians. In fact, on any calculation of government expenditure per head, indigenous Australians have received less – in the past a great deal less, now just considerably less – on health, education, infrastructure etc. No taxpayer-funded privileges are available to indigenous Australians. The myth serves to exculpate governments from their obligations and helps fuel the Pauline Hanson agenda. Sadly, Pearson’s reported remarks help support the myths although I doubt this is his intention.
The causes of immiseration are much the same for indignous and non-indigeous folk, and it is not ‘left wing touchy feely’ to say so. People are primarily dependant on welfare because they have few other options. Lack of education helps the intergenerational transfer of poverty. What was true in industrial revolution England is equally true in Hope Vale or Woorabinda.
Mmmm… feel The Wedgeâ„¢.
Well, the wily King John has done it again.
Another election wrapped in race baiting, paternalism…bigotry. And using the mainstream media to make it seem he CARES. It’s for the good of the Nation.
I’d like to know why those Aboriginal communities were left in such disrepair. Who ran the shops? Who undermined the wide thinking educators & administrators? Who pulled the strings of the more corrupt Aborigines? Who ran the pubs? Why wasn’t the petrol changed sooner? Who infiltrated these communities w/ drugs & preyed on the children? What role has police abuse…Govt. negligence…& KKK style propaganda and violence had in the deterioration of some of these communities? What role has the onslaught of negative views & footage & finger-pointing in the mainstream media played? What effect has the lack of reconcilliation processes by Howard & co. had on these people?
Disintegrating communities can be constructed for political purposes & financial gain.
How many decent Aborigines will sneak in a drink & find themselves in a lockup…stripped of the right to vote?
Prohibition in Australia by the backdoor.Censorship. You name it. It will spread across this land. The Moral Guardians are being constructed day by day…a form of ‘Moral Majority’…just like in America. Eventually the only ones drinking will the Elite…& the mobsters.
Welcome to the time just before the last depression. Temperance & Prohibition. The throng of Corporate Fascists intend to crush the Unions…anything to the Left that gets in the way of The Ruling Class industries.
They’ve given you War…now they intend to take every freedom away. And then sabotage the economy. Turn you into a Serf. And they start w/ those who have the least voices in society. The Aborigines.
But it’s all because they care…RIGHT?
Every Libertarian should be outraged. Time to WAKE UP!
Yep. Wedge.
I haven’t had a chance to read the comments but on reading Howards announcement all I could think of was 11 years.
He’s had 11 years to starve them, drive up the negatives and drive down the positives and now he owns them.
He’s done nothing, this has become much worse on his watch.
My thoughts exactly.
Breaking news: Howard anounces Indigenous “state of emergency�
Published by Mark on 21 June 2007 at 4:40 pm in Politics, Indigenous.
On the eve of the parliamentary winter recess in an election year we are confronted with a “state of emergencyâ€? that requires a Three-Phase “military style” response. In The War on Indigenous Child Abuse, El Rodente has launched his first salvos; decisively, like a strong leader. The day before he goes on hols.
Sure, there is a serious problem of Indigenous child abuse. The same problem that was there when The Rodent became King Rat in 1996 and began bestowing his benevolence upon all Indigenous Australians.
Mr. Howard’s pitch has the timbre of a dog-whistle.
His timing seems to corroborates this.
Sorry, Frank, it was simultaneous. Honest.
Have been waiting for this, Ratty really is a prick of the first order.What a first class bastard.
Adam you said
“I don’t think declaring a state of emergency and suspending civil rights is going to end nicely.”
It never does with land, which is the locus for all the anxieties and fears of the white race and the legitimacy of its place in this country, no? And speaking of truths and fictions of history, I am so sorry I will not be able to get to the ASAL conference to hear your paper on the Grenville/Clendinnen debate. I am soo poor and I have just finished a draft chapter on The Secret River and would have loved to hear your thoughts on it all….
Cheers
Liliana (casey is my cat’s name)
An absolute wedge.
And a recall of Parliament in recess which give him another chance at some big time media.
I wonder if this will include those getting the “Baby Bonus”, which is not means or asset tested, and where in most cases people have spent it on anything BUT for their offspring.
There goes the vote of the Howard Battlers
Here’s my take on the politics – it’s the 2007 Tampa.
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2007/06/21/tampa-2007-edition/
Kim, I hope you’re wrong — but I feel pretty sick right now.
Clare Martin has already been Wedged.
And note how Ratty announced it, smack bang in the middle of Rudd trying to deal with Joe McDonald, hence no response from the ALP.
Me too, Nick.
Rudd’s response:
“Children before Politics” is the Government Gazette Matt Price Blog headline.
http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/mattprice/index.php/theaustralian/comments/price2104/
And reading from the comments, so do the public support Ratty.
I’m so ashamed to be an australian today – no wonder Midnight Oil recorded Redneck Wonderland.
Forgive me for my contraryness , but while on one hand i completely understand the intensity of the reaction to Pearson’s report, given the disastrous experiments of the past, but I guess what concerns me is the presumption that an/the aboriginal world view is monolithic and static or that all aboriginal people must necessarily subscribe to a particular ideological paradigm in order to be perceived authentically aboriginal.
As the dominant and prevailing essence of aboriginal culture and spirituality with its ideas of community, collectiveness, dreaming, connection with land, etc etc. dovetails beautifully with the less dominant though emerging western movements of ecospirituality, (see David Tacey’s Re enchantment – the new australian spirituality) i can understand how many progressive, liberal thinkers could assume that (apparent) moves away from these ideals to individualism etc are an ideologically backward step. I would be for me , personally.
However, I;m just not so sure that being economically right wing or successful in business or law or government (for want of better terms) is somehow mutually exclusive with being indigenous, as the reactions here, and the disparaging comments over Bonner et al seem to presume. I;m not sure that the right to buy and sell your own property should be the vestige of everyone else, but our first peoples.
Re: ‘disposession of indigenous people’s to the cities and mining towns’ .
Currently across the entire globe there is a strong move from villiages to urban centres – Asia, africa, russia….. Again while i understand the loss of cultural homeland is too high a price to pay, virtually no caring parent black or white, wishes nothing but opportunities and a future for their kids. Correct me if i’m wrong, but i’m not seeing any significant shifts in urban indigenous australians, other australians or even refugees, for that matter, moving their families to remote australian settlements in search of a better lifestyle/education/future. In fact i’m struggling to come up with any indigenous leader from a remote community in any field – sports, art, business, government etc. who hasn’t at some point moved to the more urban centres to pursue their chosen direction. I’m not saying remote communities are defunct, but they do limit choice.
Look I dont like everything i hear from Pearson. A lot of it seems extreme, but i am prepared to listen and give the ideas a fair hearing without shooting him down as a traitor to his culture.
As to the Howard state of Emergency….sorry i havent read anything on this yet, so dont take the above comments as any sort of response to his politicking.
Ruddster plays the “me too” Tampa card. Rubber to The Rodent. Kevvy, bland as his upcoming unauthorised bio, missed a great opportunity to show leadership.
“Is this some kind of election stunt Mr. Howard, because this poll-driven bombshell is not a terribly smart one at all. Here’s what really needs doing” etc,etc. Make a flash, not dart for Howard’s shadow.
Rudd squibbed it, and now Ratty is on the front foot. PJK was right about the lack of bottle in Kevvie’s handlers.
Politically, Rudd has to at least give it qualified support.
After all, who else are the disaffected going to vote for? The preferences will flow back to the ALP anyway.
A significant proportion of swinging voters will lap this policy up.
It is a disgrace, but that is now the level of politics in Australia.
Policy is not formulated to solve the root problem but to nullify or exploit the political situation.
My bet? In another ten years, this policy will have failed miserably.
Ratty was on the front foot anyway, with Rudd playing into his hands on “swearing unionists”.
Ken Lovell has a great post:
http://www.roadtosurfdom.com/2007/06/21/dont-talk-dirty-kevs-listening/
If you’re using Firefox and can’t read it, just click on the main page.
I reckon Rudd might be about to squib this election, and win it for Ratty. If that happens, I want Gillard as leader!
Howard has had 10 years to sort this problem out. Why are we hearing that it’s a national emergency right now? When Pauline Hanson was going around saying that too much attention was being paid to aboriginal deaths in custody in 1996, Howard was defending her rights to say whatever she thought. There were statistics not long ago revealing that the state of Indigenous health has not improved one iota in 10 years and we heard nothing about it. He abolished ATSIC last election campaign and put nothing in its place.
As far as I can see these new set of reforms for indigenous people have probably been brought in without consultation with community leaders and now without ATSIC there is really no consultative aboriginal body that can engage with the government in dialogue regarding issues in aboriginal affairs. This is not to say that aboriginal communities would not ban pornography and alchohol if they had the choice, but it seems to me that reforms would be far more effective and long lasting if these kind of reforms Howard is proposing (with a view to making political mileage) were not just constantly handed down to aboriginal communities from above. I believe the key may be self determination and this is something Howard has consistently ignored.
Anyway I am sick and tired of Howard’s fanfare policy announcements. He is forever getting started on something new and brilliant five minutes before the next election – you know v.fast broadband, Murray-Darling basin, education and training and now aboriginal children. God knows what else he’ll come up with next, but you can bet it will be a whole lot more. I really wonder if the public is a little tired of these kind of magic tricks which they have all seen before and which may in the long run highlight the supine and long standing policy laziness of this government. I notice an opinion poll report somewhere (I think it was Newspoll) that notes voting intentions appear to be significantly more committed this time around than last election…
BigBob, I still think if Beazley had shown some leadership on Tampa, things might have been different. But like I said, Rudd probably supports this sort of thing in large amount anyway.
But Ratty has the ear of Noel Pearson – according to Ratty, he IS the Aboriginal Community Leader of choice.
All this talk about ‘the children’ is downright creepy. When the PM starts talking about ‘constitutional niceties’ being less important than ‘the children’ we should all be very afraid. His announcement will be popular, of course. Former One Nation voters will love it. And Rudd doesn’t deserve to win with his gutless me-too-ism. I wonder how Noel Pearson’s feeling tonight? I’m not saying he’s responsible for government policy but in the way of these things, he was probably consulted, more closely than Claire Martin was by the sound of her press conference.
Go Carp’s
“How we could cooperate with the federal government in the Northern Territory, I’m not quite sure,â€? Mr Carpenter said.
“We have already with the Northern Territory established a joint police station and joint police presence in areas where before that there were none.
“It’s certainly a national issue, I have no doubt about that.
“And Mr Howard, if he thinks it’s an emergency – one could ask the question why hasn’t he done anything about in the last 11 years.â€?
“And Mr Howard, if he thinks it’s an emergency – one could ask the question why hasn’t he done anything about in the last 11 years.â€?
Go Carps, indeed, Frank, but it’s Ruddster who should be bellowing it.
Frank Calabrese – Fuck Noel Pearson! It’s just so typical of Ratty to have one little populist adviser on call about an issue of incredible complexity and difficulty. The word consultation with stakeholders such as community groups is not in his lexicon and we can see that from the way he hates unions. I mean Ratty brought in WorkChoices basically to bring back the master/servant relationship and limit consultation to the detriment of issues like OH&S. So why would it be any different for aboriginal people? Of course the Bringing Them Back Home report on the stolen generations was totally ignored by Howard who obviously still believes aboriginal children were stolen for their own good.
I am disgusted by Ratty’s bigotry and paternalism which stretches out over white people as well as aboriginals, disgusted with the OZ and some of the right wing trogs on this blog trumpeting the return of ‘tough love’ paternalism, disgusted with spineless , power-hungry little lackeys like Noel Pearson – I’m disgusted period.
Mr Rudd has also asked for a briefing on the changes the Prime Minister proposes.
Doesn’t sound like the Blanket support that Matt Price alluded to.
And one final thought. What is it with the Liberal Party and issues of child sexual abuse?
With Bill Heffernan hiding in the background Debnam tried his best on that issue to smear a good man in NSW and that backfired monumentally……of course Debnam was no Howard.
Now they have a real issue to tackle and they have taken the nuclear option to deal with it, wedging anyone with serious concerns or alternative positions on how to deal with this.
And yes, I’ve always thought of Pearson as useful cover, I’d almost forgotten that I’d written this. My view has not changed.
The whole process sounds eerily familiar to Queenslanders because it is a repeat of the tactics pulled by BjelkePetersen to win an election. Putting sport before politics, Bjelke Petersen declared a State of Emergency so that the Springboks could play Australia at the Exhibition Grounds and went on to win the election after cracking heads and repressing normal freedoms.
It became apparent to me last night while reading the Pearson Report that it could only work with enforcement from police or the military. Very nasty politics but after eleven years of doing nothing something was bound to give. Pearson actually was pedalling his report in the Queensland Parliament the week before last but unfortunately for the Northern Territory,it seems they have been cut out of all loops and consulted by nobody.
Thank goodness for Mal Brough. A man with enough heart, passion and go in him to do something about a curse over this nation. The NT Government has had years to move on this, but has failed at every turn. Wedge? Maybe, but if it gets the job done, good!
So where’s the “hand up” in all of this? And is that a pineapple it’s holding?
I wonder how the local constabulary will react when these “Alcohol Bans” will affect their Friday Night Drinks and other social events that are held in those same communities where the sad officers reside in.
Oh and watch the rise in Moonshine brewed from your normal garden variety vegetables etc.
Facelift. With Brough it is a case of have to do something to save his political hide. No doubt he has done what needs to be done but it will be a trying time for Northern Territory aboriginal people with a crack down of these proportions and half their pay being diverted to someone else. This confiscating of payments was where Pearson could see the biggest potential for violence to occur.
That is without the rolling in of responses to the Northern Territory child sex report recommendations which will make the process even more difficult as the institutions will operate differently to Queensland which the report was written for originally.
How bloody sickening – the two events don’t correlate.
Brough is as thik as his TV star Brother Rob
Like a $460 million a year shortfall in primary health care according to the AMA [link]
“I am soo poor and I have just finished a draft chapter on The Secret River and would have loved to hear your thoughts on it all”
Sorry to hear about your poverty, Liliana. The conference has just about maxed the credit card. It’s going to be an interesting place to get feedback on my stuff actually.
On topic: This is some seriously clever politics, because there is still a strong public perception that Aboriginal people have special rights and privileges – ie that they are already in some way exempt from the norms of citizenship because of land rights etc – so when it is pointed out that you can’t do some of these things to citizens, there is already a popularly viable counter-argument. Also, way to derail the IR issues.
Can I suggest: we have to fight the election as though there was no wedge, and we have to fight the wedge issue as though there was no election?
What I’m genuinely curious about, is how these people (Howard, Brough, various other cheerleaders) perceive themselves at this moment.
I would dearly love to see into the thoughts (conscience, perhaps) of Howard while he ruminates on today’s events.
I wonder if he thinks of himself as a good man.
Do you think people like Costello et al. would be slapping Howard on the back tonight, congratulating him on his political masterstroke? (if that’s how they see it)
… and what about Mal Brough? How does he feel about the sexual abuse of children being used as a tool to further his party’s political/electoral agenda.
What do you have to tell yourself in order to feel good about it, I wonder.
Beside the point, but you do wonder, don’t you?
I think I’d class that as Political Pedophillia
I judge Howard on his record. Same for the rest of the party members in the Federal parliament.
This announcement has no effect on my thoughts. I just hope that others can remember more than a few days in the past.
The people of Australia must be confronted with the monstrousness of what is being done to Aborignines in their name.
Aboriginal legal groups need to take out injunctions preventing federal authorities administering their duties in a discriminatory manner.
If Howard wants to make use of the race powers provision in Australia’s racist constitution, then force him to pass legislation:
1. Garnishing entitlements.
2. Compulsorily acquiring land owned by Aboriginal bodies.
3. Banning sale and consumption of a legal product
4. Banning possession of certain classes of publications.
The most retrograde thing that can happen to Aborigines is that they are returned to a state of legal second class citizenship. Because if you don’t have your liberty, you don’t have anything.
Isn’t this ironic, that Faith Bandler has lived long enough to witness this.
Before the serious hero worship of Brough begins let us not forget that he has still to finalise and fund the Commonwealth State and Territory Disability Agreement. Months overdue and no extra funding in the Federal Budget for it. He offered some money to an Indigenous Housing project in Alice Springs a few weeks ago that was knocked back by the locals and there may be an element of get square in today’s proposals.
Last Friday his electorate was nominated as the area for the Nuclear enrichment plant so his electoral stocks have not been high. Printgate has cast a pall over the whole Queensland Federal Parliamentary team with allegations of misspent printing expenses by some Federal Liberals.
For these reasons his seat was looking shaky and it will be out of character if this ambitious plan can be made to work by him-because on past form one would have serious doubts. He just does not inspire confidence in his ability to date.
“Reconciliation Australia shares the community’s outrage at acts of criminal violence perpetrated against children who have the right, like all Australians, to be safe, and we welcome the sense of urgency reflected in today’s announcement by the Prime Minister.”
This is what’s been getting air on the TV as representative of Abl opinion. I saw it on one of the commercial networks this afternoon. The reservations expressed later in the media release aren’t being mentioned. The fact that Reconcilation Australia is not an Abl representative organisation wasn’t mentioned.
http://www.reconciliationaustralia.org/downloads/157/Family_Violence.pdf
I Wonder if Mal Brough’s Electorate comprises areas with a high indiginious population, or would the ruralness of the electorate have voters who would warm to such extreme measures ?
It’s not an Indigenous organisation full stop.
Some other reaction:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/06/21/1958547.htm
Hell, fellas this is nothin’ that an authoritarian government wouldn’t try on in the lead up to an election. Predictable and extreme. Last Monday, rodent came up with this, that hardly hit the radar…
“up to 80,000 people will be required to join full time work-for-the-dole programs or lose their welfare payments because the Federal Government believes there has never been a better time for people to find jobs. From today, people who have been unemployed for two years or more will have to work for 25 hours a week on programs such as tree planting or building maintenance for 10 months of the year as a condition of receiving unemployment benefits.”
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/job-market-never-better-so-80000-to-work-for-dole/2007/06/17/1182018939054.html
Today, Team Howard has a radical new plan to solve all infrastructure probs for indigenous peoples. They lose all control over all their land and are provided with new, revised, ‘public service positions’, called ‘work for the dole’, that will solve everything. First nation peoples’ will cop the 4 dollars an hour with the bonus of another 4, if they are good.
It is no way rascist, as the plan is to screw all people who are poor ,either black or white, because it helps excite focus groups with free textas.
I also saw that grab on Channel Stokes (7) as well, talk about selective editing, and still there has been no official statement from rudd either, nor from Noel Pearson, whose “Ground breaking report” caused Ratty & Brough to react.
Frank i ask that you please retract the political peadophilia comment.
Ever visited a community and had grandmothers hanging off you, begging you to take their grandchildren away with you to protect from their parents?
Ever heard of the International convention on the rights of the Child?
Authoritarian, reactionary and extreme perhaps, but political peadophilia is a vile and opportunistic slur.
Sure, sublime cowgirl, your point is taken about the importance and urgency of the situation. I would also distance myself from that kind of rhetoric you’ve mentioned.
But the question is: how suspending land rights and civil rights are going to address this successfully? It seems like the government wants to start violating all manner of UN conventions in order to secure the rights of the child. That, for me at least, is not good enough.
Has any Government or Opposition won an election because of their indigenous affairs policy? I still think IR, health, education, environment, industry, and economic policy will trump whatever Howard does in the outback.
On a more optimistic note, I’m not ready to give up hope that Australians will see how blatantly OTT and cynical this policy is… or that they’ll ask, if the Government has had this authority all along, why didn’t they use it a long time ago?
I’m still boggled by the compulsory STD examinations for all children. This involves swabs and blood tests, and the full battery of swabs is throat, rectal and add cervical swabs for girls, which require the vaginal insertion of a speculum.
They are seriously advocating rectal and cervical swabs for children who may never have been sexually active, just because they are indigenous and under 16? In an assembly line atmosphere?
What safeguards will be in place to ensure that non-indigenous abusers don’t get employment performing these examinations? Because you can bet that some of them have medical/paramedical training.
BigBob wrote:
I think you’re drawing a long bow, BigBob.
This is quite different from Tampa and its effect on voting intentions is likely to be negligible.
What made Tampa so potent was the threat of the ‘other’.
That element simply does not exist with this issue. People are likely to forget about this in a few days as it has no tangible or even perceived effects on swinging voter’s lives.
What Rudd should say is that he agrees something urgently needs to be done but he doesn’t agree with elements of the governments approach and he’ll form his own policy in government after careful consultation with the indigenous community.
He also needs to point out why the government has neglected this issue for 11 years.
I’m assuming they’ll get the already overworked Community Nurse that job. But who will pay for the additional resources to process said tests – especially in areas a long way from major regional areas like Darwin or Alice Springs.
And my use of the term “Political Pedophilia”, in this case is totally justified as the Govt are using Abused Childrem as a power base to gain control of Aboriginal Communities from the Northern Territory – the exact same tactic used by Sexual Predators themselves.
Tigtog,
that is horrendous – it shows the human magnitude of what is proposed.
As I said above, this feels like another Water Plan. Cooked up pretty quickly to try to create a positive out of 11 years of inactivity by making a grandiose statement and stripping powers from states (or a territory). An effective wedge could also be possible.
It may well be as effective as that water plan, and slowly disappear up it’s own fundamental orifice as how it will be implemented starts having to be addressed. I actually don’t think the plan will be workable – or that it will not be tied up in court action for the foreseeable future – something Howard may well be banking on.
Production line invasive testing of young children would not be a good look at all, as well as being morally repugnant.
One thing, if Howard wins, next election the Coalition will not be able to hide from the success or failure of the grand plan.
How about the new police recruits? Who’s going to be first to volunteer for that job? And anyway, how long will a good cop stay that way when s/he’s asked to enforce some of these measures in the face of strong resistance? I don’t have a visceral reaction to a lot of political announcements, but there is enough implied in this one to make me genuinely emotional. I guess that makes it a win for Brough and Howard then. On that note, I’m signing off for the night because I’ve got to sleep sometime and I need to wind down.
Frank: No, it *isn’t* equivalent, quit while you’re behind fella.
Tigtog: I didn’t realise all of that. I feel ill.
Mick Dodson on the SBS news said he couldn’t see any link between land tenure and child sexual abuse. Neither can I.
I should mention tigtog has an excellent post about this issue
http://viv.id.au/blog/?p=671
Folks, this thread is probably getting a bit too long for easy reading. Please continue the conversation here:
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2007/06/21/tampa-2007-edition/
Please also note a number of updates to the original post.