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.”
[link]
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”
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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.
[link]
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.”
[link]
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:
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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:
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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.”
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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 symp