Funding ‘lifestyles’ of the less rich and famous
There has been understandable fury about Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s offensive suggestion that people living in remote communities were indulging in “lifestyle choices” at the taxpayers’ expense. What has gone missing, though, is appropriate focus on the thousands of Aboriginal people who face upheaval and potential removal from these communities in the next few years if governments, such as Western Australia’s Liberal government, pursue plans to close them down.
The debate has barely attracted a blink of attention on this side of the continent but it has been burning for months in the West, where about 12,000 people live in 274 remote communities. Yet even in Perth, the discussion seems airily divorced from reality, as though no one is really talking about people’s lives.
This is a vitally important issue, a complex one that could have dramatic and dire ramifications for the cultural traditions and social cohesion of Aboriginal communities. The obvious risks in closing the communities are that many hundreds, if not thousands, of indigenous people will gravitate to camps on the outskirts of towns and cities, their health, education and welfare prospects will not improve in such conditions, and their links to country, to homelands, will diminish with distance.
This nation’s first people deserve respect, and that means consulting and partnering with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities to find the best ways to improve standards of health, education and economic opportunities. That requires consideration of the particular circumstances of each community, and not a blanket application of decisions by politicians and bureaucrats that are based solely on numbers.
Indeed, the justifications for the proposed closures offered by WA Premier Colin Barnett or Mr Abbott vary. Mr Barnett has framed the decision largely in terms of “social outcomes”, implying that child abuse, poor health standards, high rates of suicide and domestic violence were rampant in remote communities.
He told WA Parliament: “The smaller Aboriginal communities are simply not viable. They cannot provide education. They cannot provide health. They cannot provide employment … and the social outcomes and the abuse and neglect of young children are a disgrace to this state.” He then pointed to one of the bigger communities, Balgo, and said: “There has virtually been civil war in Balgo for the last three months – 150 Aboriginal people fighting among themselves. That is not acceptable.”
No, Mr Barnett, brawling is not acceptable. Nor is domestic violence, child abuse or child neglect. But it is disingenuous to imply that any is a direct consequence of living in a remote community. Knowing that the Commonwealth last year transferred decisions about funding and the provision of services for remote communities to the states, and that the Barnett government has estimated the cost will be anywhere from $2 billion to $6 billion over 10 years, we suspect Mr Barnett is seeking a way to weasel out of the bill.
And that brings us to Mr Abbott’s justification, which draws on the “lifters and leaners” slogan of last year. He suggests taxpayers do not want to subsidise people in remote communities and “there’s a limit to what you can expect the state to do for you if you want to live there”. It is a raw and divisive argument dressed up as fiscal pragmatism, but it disregards fundamental tenets that we believe underpin our community. We look after the most vulnerable. We respect all, equally. We do not sever culture or compromise it. And we certainly do not do so on the basis of contrived austerity.
If Mr Abbott wants to discuss the minimum level of services that Australians might expect from government, let’s do that. But do not impose such controversial ideology from above, and especially not at the expense of communities that deserve far more than they are getting now.
http://www.theage.com.au/comment/the-age-editorial/funding-lifestyles-of-the-less-rich-and-famous-20150312-142bne.html
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Lifestyle choices speech presages return to brutal past
Prime Minister Tony Abbott has demonstrated his commitment to Aboriginal Australia over many years. He has declared himself the Prime Minister for Indigenous Affairs. Having been on country with him I have personally witnessed his easy engagement with Aboriginal people. All of this makes his “lifestyle” remarks about remote communities this week inexplicable.
Abbott has backed the West Australian government’s plans to close nearly half the state’s 274 remote communities, arguing it’s reasonable to do so if the cost of providing services outweighs the benefits. Specifically, he said: “What we can’t do is endlessly subsidise lifestyle choices if those lifestyle choices are not conducive to the kind of full participation in Australian society that everyone should have.”
Please Prime Minister for Indigenous Affairs, don’t repeat the brutal mistakes of the past when people were kicked out of their remote communities and left to rot on the edge of towns.
If Aboriginal people, after all the Prime Minister’s commitment and experience, cannot rely on him to understand their situation what hope have they?
When Premier Colin Barnett announced last November that many communities would be closed I wrote an open letter to the Prime Minister, Premier Barnett, and the Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Nigel Scullion, as below. None has provided an answer. Abbott’s comments in Kalgoorlie suggest that the issues I raised  in my letter have not been considered.
I wrote: “The Premier has correctly identified that even reducing the number of those communities is going to be traumatic for the people involved and that it will affect regional towns and cities as people move into them. We can learn from history.  What we are facing is a rerun of the 1960s when after the equal wage case people moved from the stations to the nearby towns with disastrous social impacts.
“It was the social and economic degradation of the people who had been moved off country which led the McMahon government to commence the purchase of pastoral leases to enable people to go back to their country. I cannot emphasise too much the horrific outcomes at that time which saw good people degraded, reduced to social and economic misery.
“If governments have decided that these communities have no future there is a clear obligation to chart a course which does not involve repeating the disastrous mistakes of the 1960s. It will require planning by both governments of appropriate housing, education and employment strategies which will enable people, ill prepared for town life, to live decent lives with the hope of a good future.
“This will be a massive undertaking in its own right and I see no sign that any government is prepared for the consequences of an accelerated drift to the towns.  If governments simply let things rip by withdrawing services and driving people into towns without careful and comprehensive preparation the outcomes will be shameful.  That shame will reflect on you and your governments and on all of us.
“There has been a lack of clarity about policy with respect to remote communities for many years. In my view policy should have been to ensure that the local economies, which are almost wholly government based, were employment rather than welfare economies and that maximum effort would be made to ensure their children were fully educated so that when and if they moved off country they were enabled to be more than fringe dwellers.
“The pathetic failures of governments with respect to Community Development Employment Projects in remote communities and its replacement with ineffective job arrangements mean that in recent years we have gone backwards rather than forwards in terms of making people work-ready.
“The recent Commonwealth program to ensure that children go to school has forced children unaccustomed to school and discipline into classrooms which often have been disrupted as a result. In all these things the lack of careful planning for a better future for the people of remote communities based on clearly articulated policies represents significant government failure.
“I implore you to approach this matter on the basis of the careful examination by all governments of the future of these communities and the part they play in remote Australia.  If your governments decide they are to cease to exist we must have transition policies which will treat people with the dignity every Australian is entitled to expect.”
Once again I make a plea to Abbott .  Please Prime Minister for Indigenous Affairs, don’t repeat the brutal mistakes of the past when people were kicked out of their remote communities and left to rot on the edge of towns.
Listen to the many voices including that of your chosen adviser, Warren Mundine, reminding you of what you know, that Aboriginal people have a deep relationship with country that is central to their lives. Remember that many Aboriginal families in remote communities lead healthier and more peaceful lives away from disorganised larger centres.
Please see this as more than a budget and cost-shifting exercise. Understand that threats by the Western Australian government to withdraw funding support flow from a long dispute between the State and the Commonwealth about who should pay for municipal services in remote communities. There may be a case for closing some communities and this will have a huge impact on the lives of those involved so you share the responsibility of ensuring that their lives are not destroyed.
I work with remote-dwelling Aboriginal people I admire for their fortitude in the face of unpredictable interventions by distant governments.  Too often their lives are disrupted rather than supported by governments. We should be thinking of lives, not making cracks about lifestyles.
Fred Chaney was minister for Aboriginal affairs from December 1978 to November 1980. He is a former deputy president of the Australian Native Title Tribunal and was on the board of directors of Reconciliation Australia and chairman of Desert Knowledge Australia.
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/lifestyle-choices-speech-presages-return-to-brutal-past-20150312-141q3l.html
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Tony Abbott’s lifestyle comments highlight the lack of policy in Aboriginal affairs
The truly sad aspect of this media-grab commentary is that it encapsulates what is fundamentally amiss in the relationship between descendants of the first Australians and those Australians who arrived in the wake of Governor Arthur Phillip in 1788.
The comments and subsequent response from our Aboriginal leaders, whose frustrations have again been highlighted by this commentary in the absence of policy, have reinforced  our despair at ever being able to build a true and just relationship between our peoples that is based on dialogue, negotiation, mutual respect and the recognition that this nation has culture and languages that have survived for millennia and which have successfully sustained our lifestyle well before any engagement with the colonising peoples.
Aboriginal domestic scene from Blandowski’s Australien in 142 Photographischen Abbildungen, 1857.
Australia would be at risk of becoming a pariah state if its foreign policy and engagements with other nation states were run in the haphazard manner in which our policies towards Indigenous Australians are managed.
In the past weeks we have celebrated the freedom ride to western New South Wales from the 1960s; and we have laid to rest a national treasure – our sister from the South Pacific.
Yet less than a month later we are highlighting to the whole world our failure to negotiate in a considered way the right of Aboriginal people to live as Aboriginal peoples in our own lands and seas, whilealso participating in every aspect oflife  as contemporary Australian citizens.
Aboriginal children playing footy at the Gunbalanya School in Arnhem Land. Photo: Pat Scala
A government’s aspiration that the gap between the wellbeing of Indigenous and other Australians must be closed, and that Indigenous people cannot expect to have their lifestyles subsidised by government, does not amount to national policy or informed engagement  with Indigenous people.
Removal of frontline services from Indigenous organisations working towards closing the gap would seem counter intuitive to any fair-minded Australian.  But that has been the result of the Indigenous Advancement Strategy funding that was announced, ironically, just this week.
If the gap between the wellbeing of indigenous Australians and their fellow citizens is ever to be properly addressed, the starting point has to be a genuine engagement between our Indigenous peoples and all Australian governments. The negotiation must be fully informed and the first step is for governments to  reach a real understanding of the diverse nature of Indigenous societies, their hopes and aspirations.
It is not a “lifestyle choice” to be be born in and live in a remote Aboriginal community. It is more a decision to value connection to country, to look after family, to foster language and celebrate our culture. There are significant social, environmental and cultural benefits for the entire nation that flow from those decisions.
There are also direct economic benefits, especially in reducing the costs of front-line services dealing with health, welfare and the criminal justice system in our regional centres. The dialogue with our people must be informed by factual data and empirical evidence informed  by an Indigenous cultural framework.
As a nation we are moving slowly towards a referendum that will ask people to finally give full recognition to the status of Indigenous Australians as the nation’s first peoples and to remove the historical fiction that puts the supremacy of our colonial history above the reality of indigenous peoples as custodians of the national estate.
If the referendum is ever to occur, and if it is to garner universal support, Aboriginal values, priorities and concerns need to be better understood by the whole nation, and by our leaders in particular.
Pat Dodson was the first chairman of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation.
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/tony-abbotts-lifestyle-comments-highlight-the-lack-of-policy-in-aboriginal-affairs-20150312-141u4s.html
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