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	<title>Larvatus Prodeo &#187; Indigenous policy &amp; reconciliation</title>
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	<description>Life, Culture and Politics from BrisVegas</description>
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		<title>A new indigenous representative body</title>
		<link>http://larvatusprodeo.net/2010/05/07/a-new-indigenous-representative-body/</link>
		<comments>http://larvatusprodeo.net/2010/05/07/a-new-indigenous-representative-body/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 06 May 2010 23:15:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Robert Merkel</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Activism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Government]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Policy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Race]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[atsic]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Geoff Clark]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Indigenous]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Indigenous Australia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Indigenous policy & reconciliation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Torres Strait Islander]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://larvatusprodeo.net/?p=13280</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[ABC News from a few days ago: A new national representative body for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders has been unveiled in Sydney this morning. The National Congress of Australia&#8217;s First Peoples is the first Indigenous representative body since 2005, [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a HREF="http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/05/02/2887983.htm?section=justin">ABC News</a> from a few days ago:</p>
<blockquote><p>A new national representative body for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders has been unveiled in Sydney this morning.</p>
<p>The National Congress of Australia&#8217;s First Peoples is the first Indigenous representative body since 2005, when the Howard government abolished the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) amid claims of corruption and mismanagement.
</p></blockquote>
<p><span id="more-13280"></span><br />
Former ATSIC chair Geoff Clark isn&#8217;t <a HREF="http://www.standard.net.au/news/local/news/general/a-nonevent/1821980.aspx">terribly impressed</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>GEOFF Clark has slammed the launch of the new national indigenous representative body, declaring it a &#8220;non-event.&#8221;</p>
<p>The outspoken Aboriginal activist said the new National Congress of Australia&#8217;s First Peoples was undemocratic and subservient to the federal government.</p></blockquote>
<p>I have no idea how seriously one should take Clark, given his well-documented <a HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoff_Clark_%28politician%29">past</a> and the level of political analysis demonstrated by this piece of wishful thinking:</p>
<blockquote><p>Mr Clark said recent poor polling by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and the Labor Party was in part a result of the government&#8217;s actions on indigenous affairs. &#8220;There was the big sorry from Kevin Rudd a couple of years ago and then nothing since,&#8221; Mr Clark said.</p></blockquote>
<p>That said, for all I know the position he articulated on this new body may be one with currency in indigenous leadership circles.</p>
<p>For what it&#8217;s worth, as a complete outsider looking in, indigenous Australians have suffered dearly from not having people who can speak for them all, leaving white politicians to pick and choose whose voices they wish to hear.  And this body avoids the problem that ATSIC had of being a little bit pregnant &#8211; partly an advocacy body, partly a service delivery body, and thus highly compromised at both.  I&#8217;ve read that some indigenous activists seek what is essentially a parallel government, which gets handed a cheque by the Austrailan government once a year and is then left to its own devices.  Even if that was what <em>should</em> happen, it&#8217;s never going to.  Given that, a pure advocacy body, free to beat up on the government without having to worry about being responsible for service delivery, seems like the right model for now.</p>
<p>But, then again, this still, as Clark points out, has the whiff of something coming from the top down, rather than the bottom up.  So it going to be a body that can reach and articulate consensus positions across Australia&#8217;s diverse indigenous communities?</p>
<p><b>Elsewhere</b>: <a HREF="http://nswtoxindigenous.blogspot.com/2010/05/reknown-aboriginal-activist-micheal.html">Michael Anderson</a> expresses similar distaste to Clark; again, I don&#8217;t know whether to take this as representative of broader opinion or not.</p>
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		<title>Racist theft</title>
		<link>http://larvatusprodeo.net/2009/11/30/racist-theft/</link>
		<comments>http://larvatusprodeo.net/2009/11/30/racist-theft/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 30 Nov 2009 00:11:34 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Idiot/Savant</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Indigenous]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Race]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Indigenous policy & reconciliation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[politics&govt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[racism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://larvatusprodeo.net/?p=11283</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Crossposted from No Right Turn. Australia has some of the worst racial disparities in the developed world. The average household income of indigenous Australians is only 60% of the average. The proportion with high-school or higher educations is only half [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><i>Crossposted from <a HREF="http://norightturn.blogspot.com/">No Right Turn</a></i>.</p>
<p>Australia has some of the worst <a HREF="http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/00000000000000000000000000000000/294322bc5648ead8ca256f7200833040!OpenDocument">racial disparities</a> in the developed world.  The average household income of <a HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_Australians">indigenous Australians</a> is <a HREF="http://www.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/abs@.nsf/Previousproducts/1301.0Feature%20Article112004?opendocument&amp;tabname=Summary&amp;prodno=1301.0&amp;issue=2004&amp;num=&amp;view=">only 60% of the average</a>.  The proportion with high-school or higher educations is only half that of the average (a fifth for university qualifications), while their unemployment rate is <a HREF="http://www.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/abs@.nsf/0/bc6a7187473c6fb6ca256dea00053a29">triple that of non-indigenous Australians</a>.  Their <a HREF="http://www.uq.edu.au/bodce/index.html?page=68411">health statistics</a> are equally appalling, with complication and disease rates at least double the average, with a consequent effect on life expectancy.  The average indigenous Australian <a HREF="http://abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mediareleasesbyCatalogue/C65F4C150DD0497ACA2575BE002656BC?Opendocument">dies a decade earlier</a> as a result of poverty, disease, poor access to health services and institutionalised racism.</p>
<p>The Australian Federal Government spends billions trying to correct these disparities, with apparently little effect.  But that&#8217;s because <a HREF="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/bn-diverted-from-aid-for-aborigines-and-welfare/story-e6frg6nf-1225804773394">most of the money never actually reaches its target</a>, instead being diverted to buy votes in marginal seats:</p>
<blockquote><p>
THE Northern Territory Labor government has for the past five years diverted $2 billion earmarked for indigenous disadvantage and other key services to mainstream spending in marginal Darwin seats.</p>
<p>Detailed figures obtained by The Weekend Australian reveal that hundreds of millions of taxpayers&#8217; dollars provided by the commonwealth and intended for indigenous health, homelessness, delivery of services and families have been used to service debt and bolster superannuation payments.</p>
<p>The figures come as the Territory government continues to defend its handling of the $672 million Strategic Indigenous Housing and Infrastructure Project, which has so far failed to result in one new house being built, despite $45m being spent in the first 15 months of the project.
</p></blockquote>
<p>This is not a new story; the <i>National Indigenous Times</i> <a HREF="http://www.nit.com.au/news/story.aspx?id=7091">highlighted it back in 2006</a>, the <i>Sydney Morning Herald</i> <a HREF="http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/how-aboriginal-funding-gets-lost/2005/09/27/1127804474173.html">in 2005</a>.  But still it goes on &#8211; and indigenous Australians suffer as a result.</p>
<p>It is time to end this organised racist theft, and for state governments to spend the money they are allocated for indigenous peoples for its proper purpose, rather than <a HREF="http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/most-states-underspend-on-indigenous-housing/2006/06/16/1149964743559.html">misappropriating it</a>.  But that would require Australians to accept that indigenous people <i>matter</i>, that they are human beings equally deserving of government attention.  And looking across the Tasman, even after Rudd&#8217;s historic apology, that acceptance is still a long way away.</p>
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		<title>Entrenched racism</title>
		<link>http://larvatusprodeo.net/2009/08/28/entrenched-racism/</link>
		<comments>http://larvatusprodeo.net/2009/08/28/entrenched-racism/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 28 Aug 2009 05:26:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Idiot/Savant</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Authoritarianism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Indigenous]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Race]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[authoritarian]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Culture Wars]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[human rights]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Indigenous policy & reconciliation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[intolerance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Kevin Rudd]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[racism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[United Nations]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://larvatusprodeo.net/?p=9727</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Crossposted from No Right Turn. In the run-up to the 2007 election, then-Australian Prime Minister John Howard decided to repeat his successful racial wedge tactics with Aborigines as the victims, declaring a &#8220;state of emergency&#8221; in Northern Australia, taking over [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><i>Crossposted from <a HREF="http://norightturn.blogspot.com/">No Right Turn</a></i>.</p>
<p>In the run-up to the 2007 election, then-Australian Prime Minister John Howard decided to <a HREF="http://norightturn.blogspot.com/2007/06/howards-racist-wedge.html">repeat his successful racial wedge tactics with Aborigines as the victims</a>, declaring a <a HREF="http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/northern-territory-grog-ban/2007/06/21/1182019254302.html">&#8220;state of emergency&#8221; in Northern Australia</a>, taking over townships, and suspending anti-discrimination laws so it could subject aborigines to authoritarian and paternalist controls on the basis of race.  Now, James Anaya, the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights of indigenous people, has pointed out the obvious: that this was <a HREF="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601081&amp;sid=aB4oRJiGK6OA">fundamentally discriminatory</a>.  And he didn&#8217;t mince his words in saying so:</p>
<blockquote><p>“There is entrenched racism in Australia,” Anaya told reporters in the capital, Canberra, after visiting several Aboriginal townships in the past week. “These measures overtly discriminate against Aboriginal peoples, infringe their right of self determination and stigmatize already stigmatized communities.”
</p></blockquote>
<p>The <i>Australian</i> <a HREF="http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25989388-26103,00.html">has more</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>Compulsory income management and blanket bans on alcohol and pornography were &#8220;overtly discriminatory&#8221; and further stigmatised already stigmatised communities, he said.</p>
<p>&#8220;People who have a demonstrated capacity to manage their income are included.</p>
<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s inappropriate to their circumstances but is also, as expressed by them, demeaning.&#8221;</p>
<p>The indigenous rights expert was also scathing of federal Labor&#8217;s insistence that housing funds would only flow if indigenous communities signed over their land.</p>
<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a mistake to assume that indigenous peoples &#8230; aren&#8217;t capable of taking care of their homes,&#8221; Prof Anaya said.</p>
<p>&#8220;Indigenous control can be appropriate to indigenous peoples&#8217; development, to their aspirations, to indeed being in control of their lives like all others.&#8221;</p>
<p>As for compensation for indigenous people taken from their families by government agencies, the UN rapporteur was unequivocal: &#8220;There should be reparations,&#8221; he said.
</p></blockquote>
<p>That&#8217;s a pretty stunning condemnation of a government we all expect to behave better.  It will be interesting to see how the Rudd government, which has <a HREF="http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/bfull-apologyb/2008/02/12/1202760286861.html">moved a long way from Howard&#8217;s position</a>, responds.</p>
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		<title>On Rage: Germaine Greer reviewed</title>
		<link>http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/08/21/on-rage-germaine-greer-reviewed/</link>
		<comments>http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/08/21/on-rage-germaine-greer-reviewed/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 21 Aug 2008 13:31:47 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Kim</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Culture]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Disasters]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Feminism]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Indigenous]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Policy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Race]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sexuality]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Women]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bob Katter]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Book review]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[child sexual abuse]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Germaine Greer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[hunter gatherer societies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Indigenous Australia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Indigenous dispossession]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Indigenous policy & reconciliation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Judy Atkinson]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Marcia Langton]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Melbourne University Press]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Noel Pearson]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[NT intervention]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[On Rage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[political journalism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[race relations]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[rural suicide]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sociology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Stolen generation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[welfare policy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Writings]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/08/21/on-rage-germaine-greer-reviewed/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Well, as I noted on another thread about Germaine Greer, I&#8217;ve bought and now read On Rage. I&#8217;d like this post to stick to discussion of the merits of her arguments, which I continue to think has been something largely [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignleft" src="http://larvatusprodeo.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/on-rage.jpg" alt="" />Well, as I <a href="http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/08/16/on-rage-raging-against-germaine/#comment-497408">noted on another thread about Germaine Greer</a>, I&#8217;ve bought and now read <a href="http://catalogue.mup.com.au/978-0-522-85518-0.html"><em>On Rage</em></a>. I&#8217;d like this post to stick to discussion of the merits of her arguments, which I continue to think has been something largely absent from most of the debate to date. I also think that very few people who&#8217;ve rushed into print have actually read her book, and instead taken the odd comment here or there that she&#8217;s made in the course of promoting it and projected all sorts of things onto her.</p>
<p>Even those who have seem to be reacting to parts instead of the whole &#8211; for instance, <a href="http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24202631-7583,00.html">Marcia Langton</a>, describing the remarks about her in the book as an &#8220;astonishing attack on me&#8221;. That&#8217;s quite odd, because Langton is being challenged rather than attacked in the book &#8211; challenged to agree with Greer&#8217;s view that &#8211; on the basis of the evidence &#8211; the literal appropriation of Indigenous women&#8217;s bodies by white men, something Greer documents with footnoted citations from both historians and contemporary sources &#8211; is part of the reason for Indigenous male rage. All the rest of what Langton says &#8211; accusations of &#8220;a 1970s style argument&#8221;, a &#8220;panoply of protest slogans deployed as social theory&#8221; and so on &#8211; unless I&#8217;m missing something, appears misdirected, or at least based on inference rather than the text itself. On p. 88 of the book, any reasonable reader would see that Langton is not the one being accused of &#8220;collusion&#8221; with the state, what she took umbrage at, and that in fact the point being made is that the differential impacts of gender on the colonised is still used by whitefellas as a lever to avoid responsibility and to divide people. There&#8217;s a disagreement of view, but not an accusation, and it hardly justifies Langton&#8217;s claim that the essay is &#8220;racist&#8221;.</p>
<p>What Greer is doing in <em>On Rage</em> is a provocation to the degree that it&#8217;s asking a range of people differently positioned within Australian culture to reflect on the totality of what has occurred and how ineffectual slogans are &#8211; and there are slogans within the talk of the &#8220;responsibilities&#8221; crew as well &#8211; in the absence of both understanding and a genuine coming to terms with the parade of extraordinary horrors that is the story of Indigenous dispossession. Greer&#8217;s essay doesn&#8217;t make for comfortable reading, and that&#8217;s the point. Langton may be justified in taking umbrage at some of the things Greer has said in the course of promoting it, and I can quite understand that, but I think in this instance it&#8217;s vital to separate the force and quality of the argument in the text itself from the personality of its author. Much of what has been published and said elsewhere, for instance in Greer&#8217;s <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/a-look-at-the-rage-epidemic/2008/08/01/1217097533898.html"><em>Sydney Morning Herald</em> op/ed</a> adds to (and in a way detracts from) the argument in the book, rather than reproduces it. Greer might be her own worst enemy in this case, but that doesn&#8217;t absolve her interlocutors from reacting with their own rage, or at least spleen.</p>
<p><span id="more-7025"></span>Unfortunately, and again here Greer is not an innocent in all this, I need to dispose of the &#8220;howlers&#8221; claim before moving to address the substantive arguments in <em>On Rage</em>. There&#8217;s been <a href="http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/08/16/on-rage-raging-against-germaine/#comment-496652">commentary on a previous thread</a> about errors of fact in some other articles Greer has written over the years. But some of the factual inaccuracies &#8211; such as the claim that Bob Katter has a following in the Northern Territory are not in the book itself, but made in interviews by Greer. I could only find two errors in the text itself &#8211; the claim about the absence of younger Indigenous men at the apology on February 13 2008, and a slip where Katter is said to have been a Commonwealth rather than a State Minister. I suspect the first is an artefact of watching television coverage from outside Australia, but it doesn&#8217;t imply that distance devalues everything she says. It&#8217;s clear, for instance, that she does maintain contact with Indigenous people. The second, I think, is most likely an error that is easy to make when writing &#8211; and raises the issue mentioned <a href="http://larvatusprodeo.net/tag/melbourne-university-press/">here</a> in the context of very slack editing and fact-checking at Melbourne University Press, which is a real worry and calls into question the rhetoric from Louise Adler and Glyn Davis about its role.</p>
<p>So while I think the whole question of why Greer herself attracts such personalised loud denunciation (and I find it hard to believe that any male Professor would be <a href="http://skepticlawyer.com.au/2008/08/what-has-happened-to-greers-feminism/#comment-13976">described</a> as a &#8220;bint&#8221; and a &#8220;termagant&#8221;, for instance) is an important one, and one that throws its own (pretty unfavourable) light on aspects of Australian culture, I don&#8217;t want to discuss that further here &#8211; it was considered <a href="http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/08/16/on-rage-raging-against-germaine/">on this earlier thread</a>.</p>
<p>I want to focus on what Greer actually has to say about rage. As she pointed out when interviewed by Leigh Sales on <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2008/s2334393.htm">Lateline</a> last week, in one respect, she&#8217;s reflecting on rage itself. It&#8217;s a good rule of thought, I think, not to do so in the absence of a concrete context, but to some degree anyway, her phenomenology of rage can stand on its own merits &#8211; though in practice it&#8217;s closely intertwined with a historical aetiology of rage in colonised hunter gatherer populations. Indeed, Bob Katter is mentioned because he&#8217;s relevant &#8211; he articulates rage on behalf of a particular group &#8211; farmers who he thinks have been dispossessed in their own way (whether Katter is right is of course neither here nor there, but it&#8217;s true to say he is representing pain in a real fashion). Greer questions what motivates Katter &#8211; who must know he is tilting at windmills &#8211; and wonders whether he thinks of himself as somehow sacrificing himself for &#8220;his&#8221; people. That&#8217;s a relevant question because she points to a range of clinical studies which show that extreme anger and rage are incredibly deleterious to human well-being. That&#8217;s because it&#8217;s turned against oneself &#8211; the position from which one expresses rage is an inarticulate one &#8211; one deprived of power, one dispossessed from the ability to negotiate &#8211; a last and futile act of resistance which eats up and destroys the self, and which is far too often turned against those closest to the self.</p>
<p>[Greer remarks that women tend to grieve while men rage. That may be true, and probably is, but it's unclear whether she recognises this as a cultural artefact. Perhaps the biggest problem I have with the essay - and one which commentators like Langton have rightly highlighted - is a certain essentialisation of gender that's not really foregrounded.]</p>
<p>Greer points to the prevalence of suicide among young rural white men, something Katter has made one of his causes. That leads her onto a consideration of the differences as well as the similiarities between white and Indigenous male despair and rage. Without diminishing the reality of the suffering of rural folk who have seen a way of life torn away by forces much greater than they can seemingly influence, she notes what life possibilities and resources remain to them, which are absent in the case of Indigenous dispossession. She is right to see dispossession as a secular and continuing <strong>process</strong> rather than a once-off act, and also rightly pings the casual intermingling of disparate cultural groups, which has a lot to do with much of the &#8220;dysfunction&#8221; Noel Pearson complains of in North Queensland &#8211; and it was going on as recently as the 1970s &#8211; Palm Island, too, being an effective dumping ground. That&#8217;s something I&#8217;ve heard myself from Murri people I&#8217;ve known.</p>
<p>I don&#8217;t actually want to follow her argument step by step, because my hope is that people will read the book itself and consider it on its merits, which are considerable &#8211; it&#8217;s well argued and passionately written. She doesn&#8217;t make this exact analogy, but the story she tells &#8211; of how Indigenous women were actually essential to the &#8220;frontier&#8221; and &#8220;progress&#8221; &#8211; as chattels, sexual objects, servants and how the Stolen Generation was a state action to re-impose norms against miscegenation among other motivations &#8211; reminded me of <a href="http://larvatusprodeo.net/2007/05/06/the-great-australian-silence/">a post Mark wrote here last year</a> on <a href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/20110">Charles Taylor&#8217;s characterisation</a> of Native Americans as having suffered &#8220;culture death&#8221;:</p>
<blockquote><p>A culture’s disappearing means that a people’s situation is so changed that the actions that had crucial significance are no longer possible in that radical sense. It is not just that you may be forbidden to try them and may be severely punished for attempting to do so; but worse, you can no longer even try them. You can’t draw lines or die while trying to defend them. You find yourself in a circumstance where, as Lear puts it, “the very acts themselves have ceased to make sense.”</p></blockquote>
<p>Greer argues that hunters can&#8217;t survive in the absence of gatherers &#8211; and the gatherers had effectively been appropriated by white men, even if the whitefellas refused to recognise the kinship and cultural obligations of the women they took. She quotes the well respected Indigenous scholar Judy Atkinson on this:</p>
<blockquote><p>Sexual violence, as well as physical violence, was rampant on the frontier. What must also be named is that the experiences of colonisation were different for Aboriginal women in comparison with Aboriginal men. This created tension and dichotomy in relationships between Aboriginal men and women that continues into the present.</p></blockquote>
<p>According to Greer, this is the elephant in the room.</p>
<p>And the sexual violence of white men is still effaced and denied &#8211; she asks why the evidence that much of the sexual violence against girls in remote communities was perpetrated by transient white men and often in an organised fashion was totally absent from the justification of the Northern Territory intervention. Greer&#8217;s focus on Indigenous male rage is a gender aware anthropology of the discarding of Black men as useless by the colonisers, while Black women were to be used. It&#8217;s not unreasonable to believe that this dynamic continues to do its vicious work, although one can see why discussion of it provokes such affect. But it&#8217;s certainly not the case that Greer is in any way either justifying the incredible rates of self-harm and violence or that she&#8217;s somehow betraying feminism by focusing on the differential effects on Indigenous men of dispossession and cultural death. Much of what she is doing is just asking questions about the displacement of responsibility &#8211; if the reason for heavy drinking is disinhibition to allow rage to express itself, disinhibition driven by hopelessness and cultural death, will taking away the bottle salve all ills?</p>
<p>Finally, it&#8217;s also clear that Greer is not writing a prescriptive or a policy text. She&#8217;s arguing that a political structure needs to be created that brings all Indigenous people to the table, and that we all need to confront a whole range of things in our present as well as in our past which we would very much rather not see. In making this argument, she is in effect suggesting that incitements to responsibility and a fictional mutuality (as I&#8217;ve <a href="http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/08/15/mutual-obligation-and-indigenous-policy/">discussed previously</a>) are forms of a displacement of a deeper and very painful wound that many of us &#8211; Black and White &#8211; don&#8217;t want opened. But we need to face our demons. All of us. Rightly she&#8217;s not prescriptive about how we do that. But she does insist that we do.</p>
<p>Mark wrote in the post on &#8220;The great Australian silence&#8221; I referenced earlier:</p>
<blockquote><p>Recognition of your interlocutor in their own uniqueness and difference is, after all, a precondition without which there can be no meaningful reconciliation whatsoever.</p>
<p>Is it too much to ask anyone who professes concern about the condition of Indigenous Australians to try to see what the world might look like from their point of view?</p></blockquote>
<p><strong>Elsewhere</strong>: We&#8217;ve already linked to Legal Eagle&#8217;s post, but since then <a href="http://skepticlawyer.com.au/2008/08/what-has-happened-to-greers-feminism/#comments">the comments thread</a> at Skepticlawyer has developed quite a bit and makes for an interesting read.</p>
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		<title>On Rage: Raging against Germaine</title>
		<link>http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/08/16/on-rage-raging-against-germaine/</link>
		<comments>http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/08/16/on-rage-raging-against-germaine/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 16 Aug 2008 05:59:44 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Mark Bahnisch</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Books, Writers & Writing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Culture]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[History]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Indigenous]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Masculinity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Media]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Race]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Germaine Greer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[hunter gatherer societies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Indigenous Australia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Indigenous dispossession]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Indigenous policy & reconciliation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[NT intervention]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[On Rage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[political journalism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sociology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Writings]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/08/16/on-rage-raging-against-germaine/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[As a bit of a follow up to the discussion of Germaine Greer&#8217;s latest book On Rage here, I was interested to see Gary Sauer-Thompson observe that most of the reaction (and there&#8217;s been tons of it) to her writing [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>As a bit of a follow up to the <a href="http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/08/15/mutual-obligation-and-indigenous-policy/">discussion</a> of Germaine Greer&#8217;s latest book <a href="http://shop.abc.net.au/browse/product.asp?productid=538965"><em>On Rage</em></a> <a href="http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/08/14/qa-plug-marcus-westbury-and-germaine-greer/">here</a>, I was interested to see <a href="http://www.sauer-thompson.com/archives/opinion/2008/08/greer-indigenou.php">Gary Sauer-Thompson</a> observe that most of the reaction (and there&#8217;s been tons of it) to her writing and various speeches and appearances in the press has completely avoided the issues she actually raises, and concentrated on interweaving loud denunciations of her &#8211; and claims that she&#8217;s irrelevant &#8211; with already well established &#8220;media narratives&#8221;. If she&#8217;s in fact got nothing of relevance to say, as <a href="http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/08/14/qa-plug-marcus-westbury-and-germaine-greer/#comment-496322">one of our commenters observed</a>, you have to wonder why all the energy expended.</p>
<p>Her book hasn&#8217;t hit the shelves in Brisneyland as far as I can tell, but I&#8217;m awaiting it with interest. There&#8217;s a taste of what&#8217;s to come at <a href="http://www.sauer-thompson.com/archives/philosophy/2008/08/germaine-greer.html">Public Opinion</a>.</p>
<p><span id="more-6993"></span><b>Update</b> [by Kim]: Elsewhere, <a href="http://skepticlawyer.com.au/2008/08/what-has-happened-to-greers-feminism/#comment-13853">Legal Eagle</a> agrees with Tracee Hutchison about Greer. I think the post is unfortunately all too typical of one of the weird confusions that swirl around Greer&#8217;s thought and indeed have a much broader contemporary purchase &#8211; that to explain something is to justify it. Greer appears to be setting out to explain Indigenous male rage. From what I&#8217;ve seen of her interviews over the last few days, she is insistent that this is not a justification. But apparently people either can&#8217;t understand that distinction, or believe that any reference to the origins of phenomena in Indigenous Australia in dispossession and colonisation signals justification. It does not. But it does indicate that we are not exempt from blame. Perhaps the demand that Indigenous people take responsibility, as I was arguing <a href="http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/08/15/mutual-obligation-and-indigenous-policy/">the other day</a>, evades our own mutuality and our own responsibility, and as Greer has been suggesting, diminishes our humanity if we make it in the absence of providing the conditions of its possibility and understand that those conditions involve determinations made by communities whose freedom is a pre-condition of any successful partnership and any true reconciliation.</p>
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		<title>Mutual obligation and Indigenous policy</title>
		<link>http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/08/15/mutual-obligation-and-indigenous-policy/</link>
		<comments>http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/08/15/mutual-obligation-and-indigenous-policy/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 15 Aug 2008 03:46:48 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Kim</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Culture]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Education]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ethics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Health]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Howardia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Indigenous]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Poverty]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Andrew Forrest]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cape York]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[closing the gap]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[education policy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Germaine Greer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[indigenous education]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Indigenous policy & reconciliation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jenny Macklin]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[John Howard]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Kevin Rudd]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mutual obligation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Noel Pearson]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[NT intervention]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[On Rage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sociology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[welfare policy]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/08/15/mutual-obligation-and-indigenous-policy/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[In the wake of discussion of Andrew Forrest&#8217;s proposal for the creation of 50 000 full time jobs for Indigenous Australians (discussed here at LP) and Germaine Greer&#8217;s remarks on the continuing force of history in shaping Indigenous responses to [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>In the wake of discussion of Andrew Forrest&#8217;s proposal for the creation of 50 000 full time jobs for Indigenous Australians (discussed <a href="http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/08/05/the-ultimate-public-private-partnership/">here at LP</a>) and Germaine Greer&#8217;s remarks on the continuing force of history in shaping Indigenous responses to state initiatives (discussed <a href="http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/08/14/qa-plug-marcus-westbury-and-germaine-greer/">here</a> and see <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s2327956.htm">the video of last night&#8217;s Q&amp;A</a>), I thought it was worth linking to a <a href="http://www.aeufederal.org.au/Publications/2008/LBehrendtpaper.pdf">paper</a> prepared for the Australian Education Union by UTS Indigenous academics Larissa Behrendt and Ruth McCausland. The specific topic they examine is welfare quarantining and schooling outcomes. I&#8217;d recommend anyone interested read the whole thing, but the abstract has also been posted at <a href="http://www.apo.org.au/linkboard/results.chtml?filename_num=225405">Australian Policy Online</a>.</p>
<p>As well as discussing the philosophy of mutual obligation (referred to as John Howard&#8217;s most significant legacy to social policy), the authors point to the lack of an evidence base for most policy initiatives in this area &#8211; something almost totally lacking in the research which justified Noel Pearson&#8217;s proposals for &#8220;family commissions&#8221; in Cape York, which is now being held up as a model for the rest of Australia. This appears inconsistent with Jenny Macklin&#8217;s disclaimers of ideological motivation and claims that evidence and &#8220;what works&#8221; would be the criterion for Indigenous policy. They also point to several studies which demonstrate that parental responsibility in sending kids to schools is at best only one factor in school attendance and outcomes, with the quality of schooling and child health also being very important variables.</p>
<p>The obvious conclusion to be drawn is that most policy initiatives in this area are at best blunt instruments. It also suggests that they are being driven by a new orthodoxy &#8211; arguments about &#8220;personal responsibility&#8221; and &#8220;social norms&#8221; being more assertion than evidence based. Most tellingly, perhaps, and here Greer&#8217;s comments are important too, is the suggestion that the obligation is almost entirely one sided and thus lacking in mutuality &#8211; and that the state is failing to put in place the preconditions for such experiments to have much chance of providing enduring outcomes. That doesn&#8217;t leave me feeling me feeling very hopeful about the prospects of closing the gap.</p>
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		<title>The ultimate public-private partnership?</title>
		<link>http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/08/05/the-ultimate-public-private-partnership/</link>
		<comments>http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/08/05/the-ultimate-public-private-partnership/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 05 Aug 2008 12:37:29 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Mark Bahnisch</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Economics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Energy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Indigenous]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[International]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Poverty]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Race]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Religion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Indigenous policy & reconciliation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Kevin Rudd]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[racism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sociology]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[In the (new) tradition of rich dude saves the world, someone I&#8217;d never heard of, Andrew &#8220;Twiggy&#8221; Forrest &#8211; apparently Australia&#8217;s richest man, has been putting his head together with Noel Pearson and Kevin Rudd to announce a plan to [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>In the (new) tradition of rich dude saves the world, someone I&#8217;d never heard of, Andrew &#8220;Twiggy&#8221; Forrest &#8211; apparently Australia&#8217;s richest man, has been putting his head together with Noel Pearson and Kevin Rudd to announce a <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2008/s2323940.htm">plan to create 50 000 full time private sector jobs for Indigenous Australians</a>. Incidentally, I&#8217;m sure Pearson is behind the phraseology of a &#8220;covenant&#8221;, which no doubt appeals to our religiously inclined Prime Minister as well. No doubt such proposals should be judged on their merits, and the whole thing appears fairly sketchy at the moment.</p>
<p>But it is fair, I think, to say that it&#8217;s consonant with not just corporate social responsibility agendas, but also with the broader phenomenon of the privatisation of development assistance which we see worldwide &#8211; also in the field of public health. One of the criticisms of such programs &#8211; often delivered by NGOs deriving funding from foundations owned by benefactors of great wealth &#8211; such as Bill Gates &#8211; or foundations which leverage money off showbiz or biz or even political celebrity (as in Bill Clinton&#8217;s activities) is their paternalism and the lack of an integrated and properly public focus on the true dimensions of a problem &#8211; and the tendency or at least the temptation to focus on outcomes which make for good pr. Of course, in the symbolism driven political environment in which we live, you could make equally telling criticisms of a lot of public sector programs. This proposal also obviously partakes in the notion &#8211; beloved of Noel Pearson &#8211; that work and all its associated ethical dispositions are the solution to most &#8211; if not all &#8211; social ills.</p>
<p>There is also an obvious line of trajectory from one if not several of the logics of the Northern Territory Intervention. <span id="more-6928"></span>Given that Mal Brough&#8217;s fantasy of a vibrant private sector in remote communities was always just that, there&#8217;s clearly also a labour market element to this &#8211; particularly in terms of creating employment not so much in the mining sector per se but through ancillary (and lower paid) service and unskilled jobs which service and facilitate capital and labour utilisation in mining. It also implies &#8211; and here we&#8217;ve got the Third World parallel again &#8211; a sort of remittance based economy for those who remain in remote communities. Very similar things have been happening in Queensland on a much smaller scale &#8211; targeting Indigenous workers for jobs in retail, construction and labouring in mining communities. And it&#8217;s interesting to observe that <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2008/s2323731.htm">Pearson himself</a> has framed his rhetoric very much in terms of young men&#8217;s opportunities under this scheme.</p>
<p>The assertion often made with regard to Indigenous policy is that the &#8220;rights agenda&#8221; is or was pre-eminently ideological. It&#8217;s worth pointing out, with Professor Jon Altman writing in today&#8217;s <a href="http://www.crikey.com.au/Politics/20080805-The-Forrest-plan-A-high-risk-strategy-to-close-the-Indigenous-employment-gap.html">Crikey</a>, that this sort of proposal isn&#8217;t exactly &#8220;evidence based policy&#8221; either. Altman poses a range of questions that need to be answered &#8211; whatever assessment you might have of the political underpinnings of this agenda (and it definitely has them) &#8211; particularly when the commitment of so much public money in providing the training and the changes to public policy involved are at stake.</p>
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		<title>No plan?</title>
		<link>http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/01/15/no-plan/</link>
		<comments>http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/01/15/no-plan/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 15 Jan 2008 01:13:56 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Kim</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Health]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Indigenous]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Policy]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/01/15/no-plan/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;m finding the comments of the chair of the NT Intervention Taskforce just a bit rich. Dr Gordon said she would ask Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin, who meets the entire Territory Indigenous Intervention Taskforce for the first time on [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I&#8217;m finding the <a href="http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23053300-601,00.html">comments</a> of the chair of the NT Intervention Taskforce just a bit rich.</p>
<blockquote><p>Dr Gordon said she would ask Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin, who meets the entire Territory Indigenous Intervention Taskforce for the first time on Thursday, to spell out how the takeover would proceed in the critical areas of health and employment.</p>
<p>&#8220;What we want to know is the direction the Government is taking,&#8221; Dr Gordon said.</p>
<p>&#8220;As the chairperson of the taskforce, I want to know: Do they have a plan for this next six months? Do we continue as we are? Do they have any new ideas?</p>
<p>&#8220;Everyone wants to know what is happening following the health checks; what is the next phase? That is what the Government will have to be looking at. There&#8217;s not much point doing health checks and then no follow-up.&#8221; </p></blockquote>
<p>Indeed, there isn&#8217;t. And since the previous government provide funding for the first twelve months, presumably the absence of a plan is down to Mal Brough. And weren&#8217;t we told that the health checks were to detect child abuse? The point has been made repeatedly &#8211; by medicos on the ground &#8211; that no money was allocated for additional health services, and that the cost of the intrusive bureaucracy involved in income management and what not could easily provide some. The whole thing seems still to be characterised by confusion about its objectives, and a lack of clarity about what exactly is to be achieved. That&#8217;s hardly surprising, since it seems to have been characterised by mountains of rhetoric and policy ad-hocery right from the start.</p>
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		<title>Anna Bligh: the first hundred days</title>
		<link>http://larvatusprodeo.net/2007/12/20/anna-bligh-the-first-hundred-days/</link>
		<comments>http://larvatusprodeo.net/2007/12/20/anna-bligh-the-first-hundred-days/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 20 Dec 2007 02:28:20 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Kim</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Brisbane]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Climate change]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Culture]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Education]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Government]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Labor]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://larvatusprodeo.net/2007/12/20/anna-bligh-the-first-hundred-days/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[It&#8217;s been a bumper year for Queenslanders with a brand shiny new Premier as well as a PM. So what&#8217;s the report card on Anna Bligh&#8217;s time in office? So far, so good, I&#8217;d say &#8211; though the big problem [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img src="http://larvatusprodeo.net/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/bligh.jpg" align="left" /></p>
<p>It&#8217;s been a bumper year for Queenslanders with a brand shiny new Premier as well as a PM. So what&#8217;s the report card on Anna Bligh&#8217;s time in office? So far, so good, I&#8217;d say &#8211; though the big problem with the Beattie administration was brand shiny new announcements without the necessary follow up in all cases.</p>
<p><b>Weird Queensland stuff</b></p>
<p>Well, we get fluoride in the water, but we don&#8217;t get daylight saving. I imagine the Premier is banking on the fact that people in SEQ don&#8217;t care enough about it, whereas the bush has to be politically pacified after the Council amalgamations stoush. It&#8217;s up to us to let her know she&#8217;s wrong (with our brand new shiny teeth smiles)&#8230; &#8220;It&#8217;s time to end the state of decay&#8221;, says Anna.</p>
<p><span id="more-5393"></span><b>Climate Change</b></p>
<p>Good to see Tim Flannery appointed as head of the Premier&#8217;s Climate Change Advisory Council. Whether he has a real role in recommending on the disposition of the $430 million state climate change fund, I&#8217;m not sure. In little but significant initiatives, allowing public servants to make public transport tax deductible and offsetting the carbon cost of all government flights are good.</p>
<p><b>Edumacation</b></p>
<p>&#8220;Blueprint to improve numeracy in schools&#8221;.</p>
<p><b>Rivers of grog</b></p>
<p>Dunno why anyone is scared of the AHA. Bligh acted swiftly to stop pubs opening at 7am to get that all important &#8220;must lose all money on pokies before lunch&#8221; trade, and quietly introduced changes to licencing laws to allow more of those boutique bars all of us in the chardie set are longing for. (Note to culture warriors &#8211; they have wine bars and latte in teh suburbs now too&#8230;) Deciding whether to persist with alcohol management plans or a complete ban in Indigenous communities, and Indigenous affairs generally pose much bigger policy challenges.</p>
<p><b>Process stuff</b></p>
<p>Good to see David Solomon commissioned to review FOI laws and government accountability &#8211; something of a sore point for previous governments.</p>
<p>The big picture, of course, is how &#8220;coast to coast Labor&#8221; governments mesh in with the reign of Rudd. There&#8217;ll no doubt be some pointers at the first COAG meeting today, so feel free to comment on that too!</p>
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		<title>Tracking The Intervention: Discarding and devaluing Aboriginal work</title>
		<link>http://larvatusprodeo.net/2007/11/08/tracking-the-intervention-discarding-and-devaluing-aboriginal-work/</link>
		<comments>http://larvatusprodeo.net/2007/11/08/tracking-the-intervention-discarding-and-devaluing-aboriginal-work/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 07 Nov 2007 20:03:37 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Guest Poster</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Authoritarianism]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Guest Post from Lauredhel Crossposted from Hoyden About Town and also crossposted yesterday at LP in exile, but I wasn&#8217;t able to access LP to post it here until now! You may comment over at LP in exile while comments [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<h4>Guest Post from Lauredhel</h4>
<p><em>Crossposted from <a href="http://viv.id.au/blog/?p=1112/">Hoyden About Town</a> and also crossposted yesterday at <a href="http://larvatusprodeo.wordpress.com/2007/11/07/tracking-the-intervention-discarding-and-devaluing-aboriginal-work/">LP in exile</a>, but I wasn&#8217;t able to access LP to post it here until now!  You may comment over at <a href="http://larvatusprodeo.wordpress.com/2007/11/07/tracking-the-intervention-discarding-and-devaluing-aboriginal-work/">LP in exile</a> while comments are closed here, as we await an end to our <a href="http://larvatusprodeo.net/2007/11/06/blog-issues/">server woes</a>.</em></p>
<hr /> Jangari&#8217;s <a href="http://aidhoss.wordpress.com/2007/11/06/four-corners-on-the-intervention/">&#8220;Four Corners on the Intervention&#8221;</a> pulls out a few key points from the other night&#8217;s Tracking The Intervention show.You can watch the show for yourself <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/special_eds/20071105/intervention/default.htm">here at the ABC</a>.</p>
<p>Jangari details the ways in which Aboriginal communities are being undermined, not assisted, by the invasion and recolonisation process. I&#8217;m just pulling out a couple of points:</p>
<p>Discarding successful women-run community-based child safety programmes:</p>
<blockquote><p>In Maningrida, the community women operate a night-watch called the Child Safety Service. The women ensure that children are safe at night while playing, and that they go home at a reasonable hour on school-nights. The service was praised in the Ampe Akelyernemane Meke Mekarle report [<a href="http://www.nt.gov.au/dcm/inquirysaac/pdf/bipacsa_final_report.pdf">PDF</a>]:</p>
<p><em>  &#8221; The Inquiry regards the [Maningrida Community Action Plan Project, including the Child Safety Service] as an extremely valuable project and one that can be utilised to both establish a Community Justice Group and help guide reform in relation to the mainstream response to child sexual abuse in Aboriginal communities.&#8221;<br />
</em></p>
<p>However, the funding is about to cease, and none of the $1.3 billion spent so far on the intervention (a lot of which is going towards the <a href="http://blogs.usyd.edu.au/elac/2007/08/500_new_bureaucrats_to_the_res.html">extra Centrelink bureaucrats</a>) is finding its way to helping out this group of 15 Maningrida women who are undertaking this âextremely valuable projectâ.</p>
<p>This is particularly hard to understand, since the purpose of the entire intervention is the protection of children, presumably, and not the scrapping of CDEP nor the quarantining of welfare payments, which are mere means to achieve this end, supposedly. It beggared our collective belief that something as closely related to the issue at the heart of the intervention as this project is, could be allowed to suffer, especially with all the investment the government is putting in.</p></blockquote>
<p>&#8220;Transitional&#8221; slave labour:</p>
<p><span id="more-5331"></span></p>
<blockquote><p>There were however, a number of Aputula residents, mostly men, who were employed under CDEP to tend to the community-owned fruit orchard. While they provided food for the community, there was no commercial viability in the venture as they couldnât grow enough surplus to sell, so the project was funded by CDEP. Its cessation meant that the former workers will be moved on to something else. In the meantime they receive âCDEP transitionalâ payments of $8.24 (thatâs not a typo: eight dollars and twenty-four cents) per fortnight, for 50 hours work! Thatâs less than 20 cents an hour!</p>
<p>Since the menâs wives often work in the aged and child care centre and get a steady wage, the men feel justifiably disinclined to work 25 hours a week for an extra four bucks. This is how the government apparently gets people into jobs.</p>
<p>The worst part for the men though, is that whereas before they were performing important community-oriented tasks and were widely regarded as good workers, they now feel completely undervalued.</p></blockquote>
<p>This is a fruit orchard. Providing fresh produce for Aboriginal communities, which are typically sorely lacking in it. So the colonisation produces these triple whammies &#8211; workers devalued, more people on the dole, and less fresh food in communities with severe malnutrition-related health issues. What are they thinking? Where is the logic, let alone the humanity?</p>
<p>Jangari&#8217;s summary:</p>
<blockquote><p>Iâd like to finish off this post by pointing out that I really havenât spoken much about child sexual abuse, alcohol and drug abuse, violence, incarceration rates and all those other issues that are central to this debate and central to (the most recent incarnation of) the report that started it all. Thereâs a good reason for this, and that is that the response from the government to these issues &#8211; this very intervention &#8211; doesnât address them either. Instead theyâve gone after community assets, land rights, the permit system, and everything there is that makes living in remote communities possible. In this respect, and I say this (repeatedly) without delving too far into the realm of politicking, it looks as though the real motivation is to free up that resource-rich land.</p></blockquote>
<p>For more background on this, check out the potted history at <a href="http://savageminds.org/2007/11/04/indigenous-crisis-states-and-emergencies/">Savage Minds</a>, and the <a href="http://www.clc.org.au/media/publications/fact_sheets/factsheets.asp">Central Land Council&#8217;s factsheet</a>.</p>
<p>~~<br />
Edited to add: This post at <a href="http://agedcareact.wordpress.com/2007/11/06/remote-doctor-says-intervention-money-being-wasted/">Health and Nursing Issues in Australia</a> picked out issues on the show that particularly struck me. Emphases are mine:</p>
<blockquote><p>A doctor at a health care clinic in the remote Northern Territory community of Maningrida thinks money going towards the Federal Governmentâs Indigenous intervention could be better spent.</p>
<p>In Maningrida, the taskforceâs demountable clinic is operating in the backyard of the communityâs permanent medical centre.</p>
<p>Doctor Geoff Stewart says <strong>the $83 million already spent on health checks would be enough money to correct the underfunding of all existing health services in the Territory</strong>.</p>
<p>âItâs more than what would be estimated to be required to bring all health services across the Northern Territory up to a level of funding where weâd all be expected to provide a comprehensive range of primary health care services.â?</p>
<p>The taskforceâs doctor in Maningrida Chris Henderson says itâs important to seize the window available to help Indigenous children.</p>
<p>âI can understand the Northern Territory doctors feeling somewhat defensive about people like me coming in and taking over their patch. But politics works in different ways to medicine. And right now we have a political window where the kids are being concentrated upon.â?</p></blockquote>
<p>Meanwhile, <strong>the chairwoman of the taskforce Sue Gordon says itâs up to the Territory Government, not her body, to fund child safety programs.</strong></p>
<blockquote><p>âSometimes itâs easy to think âWell, this is the special oneâ, but there are so many Aboriginal organisations within the Aboriginal communities in the Territory who are doing a fantastic job across the board, but you have to look at them as a total picture.â?</p></blockquote>
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