indigenous politics

14 Mar 2008

Questions from the Top End

By Graham Ring

Big questions remain in the Northern Territory after the PM misses the second meeting of his hand-picked advisory group on Aboriginal affairs, writes Graham Ring

In December, a triumphant Kevin Rudd presided over a meeting of hand-picked Indigenous leaders in Darwin. The new Prime Minister had travelled to the Top End to court Aboriginal people on their own country, dubbing them his "advisory group" and promising nothing more than a meeting in three months time.

The second meeting of the group was held last week, but 'Kevin from Queensland' was in Papua New Guinea. His Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Jenny Macklin, was left to carry the can, explaining that Rudd has an "enormous schedule" and preparing the ground for further Prime Ministerial absences from the forum.

While Macklin was able to assure all concerned that, in general terms, the meeting was "excellent" and "very productive", there was the same absence of concrete detail that characterised the December discussions. In the Northern Territory, where the Federal Intervention is the only game in town, the big questions remain unanswered.

Barbara Shaw is a town-camper from Alice Springs' Mt Nancy camp, and also a member of the Tangentyere Council Executive. She recently travelled to the national capital to speak at the "Converge on Canberra" rally which coincided with the opening of the Federal Parliament. Shaw told the Working Group for Aboriginal Rights of her trip to Canberra and her reservations about the Intervention. "We met with Minister Macklin, made our protest march and statements, and met with politicians in Senate meeting rooms at Parliament House where we each told our stories and asked for the Intervention to please be stopped."

But Shaw is concerned that the protest made little impact. "It is like no-one was listening and so the fight goes on in Central Australia. We are collecting stories from community members about how the quarantining of welfare payments is affecting them and making life harder." Yesterday more protests were held at Centrelink offices across the country.

The draconian welfare quarantining measures have also been beset with administrative difficulties. In the Alice Springs region - the only place where the Government's cumbersome quarantining measures have begun to bite - it's no surprise that many of those affected are unhappy about having their entitlements withheld because they are Aboriginal (meanwhile, the Intervention legislation denies them recourse under the Racial Discrimination Act). While there is some support for the scheme emerging in surrounding communities like Hermannsburg, the situation in the town of Alice Springs itself is highly problematic.

The ABC reported in late January this year reported that Centrelink admitted it was intending to quarantine the pension of an 80-year-old Alice Springs woman because her street name was the same as that of a town camp. She was advised that part of her pension would be withheld "to pay for rent and power bills" despite the fact that she lives rent-free with her daughter and son-in-law in a house that operates on its own solar power.

Steve Gumerungi Hodder is an Indigenous journalist in Alice Springs who presents the Strong Voices program on CAAMA Radio. newmatilda.com spoke to him on Tuesday when he expressed concern that the Federal Government had not put resources on the ground to match the broader commitments of the Intervention. "Look at how much has already been spent on the bureaucracy alone and compare that to the services that are in place. I know they've said that one of the next phases of the Intervention will be about the service delivery - but why wasn't that done as part of the first phase?"

According to Hodder, the income management system is having some unfortunate results. "There is one fella who lives a fair way out of town and he doesn't get any of his quarantined money put aside to travel in to do shopping. He is a good dad, and a man who cares for his country. But he can't pay for a cab to get into town. He's got to hitch-hike."

The mechanics of the quarantining system were clearly conceived in haste. Remarkably, the much vaunted 'store cards' are not issued in the name of particular clients. They are simply vouchers entitling the bearer to goods of a certain value and are traded as currency. Stories abound of individuals in possession of these cards being prepared to exchange them for cash or contraband at discounted rates.

But the hoariest chestnut of them all is the simplistic assertion that the problems facing remote Territory communities can be laid substantially at the feet of the permit system.

David Ross, CEO of the Central Land Council has made the telling observation that "the prospect of retaining permits for communities on Aboriginal land in the Northern Territory provokes outrage among those least affected by the issue". He has also noted that "positive social change is best implemented with the consent of the people it most affects" That the permit system is imperfect is an argument for it to be strengthened, not jettisoned.

The Intervention has served at least to highlight the fact that the problems facing remote Indigenous communities in the NT are many and considerable. The injection of substantial amounts of funding for infrastructure will be warmly welcomed. Increased police numbers to curb the scourge of trafficking in alcohol, drugs, and petrol - and to help restore order when necessary - will also be regarded as a boon.

But to date, the Intervention has produced far more colour and movement than tangible results. In a landscape strewn with the corpses of well intentioned programs conceived in Canberra and foisted upon Aboriginal people, many Indigenous Territorians remain deeply suspicious.

Regardless of whether the Prime Minister's pressing schedule allows him to darken the door of the next Darwin Group assembly, the Federal Government must respond to the concerns of those on the ground with statements of precision and substance.


For more on Australian politics, visit our blog PollieGraph

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dazza 14/03/08 12:38PM

As I have said before, Rudd really does not give a s**t about Aboriginals. He made an election promise to keep to the Howard Intervention, and keep to it he is, no matter that it is destroying the very communities he is supposed to be helping. Meanwhile, the small measures that pre-election Rudd did disagree with, such as the Permit System, are being held up by the Libnats in the Senate.
Also, as I have indeed said before, Minister Macklin is also as weak as the proverbial, and will not deviate one little whisker from what she is allowed to do and say by Rudd. She may as well not even exist. And was it her who screwed up on the Carer’s Allowance? She most definately should NOT be a Minister, and certainly not one in charge of such a definative Ministry as Indigenous Affairs.
Rudd is going to play on the World stage, and such minor things as Indigenous Rights and Health have now passed beyond his ken, after the Great Apology, which was, for him, a political masterpiece, but very little more. Dazza.

rmg1859 14/03/08 1:11PM

Meanwhile, in urban areas, Indigenous people battle on: this year, there will be a record number of Indigenous people enrolled at universities in degree-level courses and post-graduate courses. Last year, it seems likely, there were a record number of Indigenous university graduates. While women outnumber men by two to one at universities, it seems that the male enrolment numbers are actually now starting to pick up. Every year, there are at least a thousand more Indigenous graduates who can contribute to the well-being of the general community, or even - if they are ever asked - to the well-being of the Indigenous community.

This should not come as a surprise to those watching Indigenous education stats: Year 12/HSC enrolments and graduations are increasing very rapidly, and in spite of the destruction of Indigenous support systems at universities over the last three or four years, as Indigenous academics ‘borrow’ funds from support allocations (with the connivance of some university administrations) to teach non-Indigenous students, (in their eyes a much higher calling than ‘merely’ providing support services to Indigenous students), the number of Indigenous university students will keep rising, and with more in higher-level courses.

The participation of Indigenous people in tertiary study is here to stay. Why ? Because they know that education is power, and are not going to be fobbed off any more with Mickey Mouse courses. Joe

rmg1859 14/03/08 4:14PM

DEEWR has just released figures for university enrolments in the first half of 2007 - commencing Indigenous numbers are up by 6 % to 3,212, and total enrolments are up to a record level, 8,108, which is 7 % better than last year’s figures. Final figures, which are always about 20 or 25 % better than first half-year figures alone, look set to top four thousand for commencing numbers, and nine thousand for total enrolments. That’s about 3 % of the entire Indigenous adult population, better than most of Europe’s. So it’s not all doom and gloom.

We seem to be entering a third phase of Indigenous tertiary participation:

* the first phase, from about 1960 to about 1978 or so, covered the time after Indigenous people were allowed to enrol in secondary education, and from there in tertiary education, but in very small numbers: from 1960 to 1977 or so, probably fewer than two hundred Indigenous people had the qualifications to enrol, and then mostly in teachers’ colleges. Isolated cases of graduates have been reported before 1960, in NSW in the forties and fifties, perhaps a couple in Victoria in the fifties, and in Queensland in 1957 or so. Of course, we should not forget the dozens of fully-qualified nurses from this time, most of whom battled discrimination to get employed. Not so different now, actually.

* the second phase, involving support programs, massively increased the numbers of students and graduates: from James Cook and Mt Lawley and Torrens CAE, in 1974-1978, through to the nineties, almost every university set up support services for Indigenous students, who were mostly ‘Special Entry’ - mature-aged students who had not gone through Year 12. Enrolments went up twenty or thirty times, and annual graduate numbers rapidly rose to triple figures and from the mid-nineties, into the four figures. Even so, females have outnumbered males by two to one. This phase seems to be coming to an end.

* a third phase, after about 2003-2004, is associated with massive increases in Year 12 enrolments, and graduations. This rise is coinciding with a rapid rise in the birth-rate reaching Year 12 age after about 1999. These birth-cohorts started to reach tertiary age in about 2001-2002 and numbers in standard three-year degree courses have risen strongly since then. As Special Entry numbers (and external students numbers, and sub-degree student numbers, and enrolments in Indigenous-focussed courses) have all declined, numbers of Standard Entry students, in mainstream, degree-level courses, on-campus, have risen rapidly, and seem set to rise much further as the size of birth-cohorts moving through the education system really hits tertiary age.

To give you some idea of birth-group changes: back in the 1970s, barely seven thousand Indigenous kids were being born each year - but after about 1990, around eleven thousand babies have been born each year. Indigenous young people are now very likely at some time to go to university, perhaps 60 % of each age-group, perhaps more eventually.

So fifty thousand graduates by 2020 - this is entirely possible. I hope I’m around to see it. I fervently hope that a growing proportion of those graduates are from remote communities which so desperately need people with any sort of skills whatever. Education provides opportunities, and without it, the lives of the young people of the northern communities are ruined. Joe

famie 14/03/08 6:35PM

These statistics sound very impressive.Education is the key to any marginalised community elevating their social position and human independence. Australia is not doing as well as it could. But it seems that the indigenous people are awake so long may it continue. I am sure they will accomplish things we cannot even begin to imagine.

dazza 14/03/08 6:54PM

Joe, again you are trying to send me to sleep with statistics, damned statistics. I am glad for you and yours, but what you keep repeating has absolutely nothing to do with the subject under discussion.
Personally I have never read your screed beyond the first time some moons ago, and I am not in need of continual reminders of irrelevant (to the time and subject) writings.
How about getting off your hobby horse, and getting down to ‘tin tacks’?
Surely, you must have something relevant to say. Dazza.

rmg1859 14/03/08 6:57PM

Thank you, Famie. Yes, there are now twenty two thousand graduates (getting on for one in twelve of all Indigenous adults, one in nine women, one in fifteen men). I remember the time when we waited, almost with bated breath, for Margaret Valadian and Chalie Perkins to graduate from their uni studies. Actually, few knew then that there had already been perhaps a dozen graduates around the country, two or three dozen counting the nurses. And over the next decade from the late sixties, painfully, each year might yield up one or two more graduates.

So the 1,360 graduates in 2006 (and probably 1,400 in 2007) seem to be - well, they are - in a different era. A total of around eighty thousand Indigenous people have been enrolled at some time at universities, with another four thousand each year now.

A consequence which is totally overlooked has been the development of a fairly clear class structure: while there is a well-known welfare class, or under-class (it fills the news, after all), there has been a working class for a very long time, and now over the last twenty five years, we can see the beginnings of a middle class, one section based on the professions and the other based on employment in bureaucracies. They each seem to have a different ideology, and to be operating in a different paradigm,with different aspirations and different trajectories. The working class and middle class are now driving their children through to higher education. Needless to say, most of these positive developments are occurring in the cities, where a working class has established itself over the past sixty years.

As a section of the welfare class painfully makes its way towards the world of work, in remote and urban situations, they will have a very long struggle ahead of them: it took sixty years for a willing, English-language, desperately-motivated section of southern communities to do it, and the people in the remote communities don’t have even those attitudes going for them. Will they make it ? God knows. Joe

rmg1859 14/03/08 7:01PM

Hi Dazza,

I’m sorry if Indigenous achievement turns you off. Education is, for Christ’s sake, ‘tin tacks’, Dazza. Perhaps if you ever try it, you may begin to see some purpose for it. It’s never too late, even for racists. Joe

rmg1859 15/03/08 9:20PM

Thinking more seriously about Dazza’s observation - how relevant is education to the remote Indigenous predicament - has forced me to work through a few scenarios, all but one of which has education at its core:

SCENARIO # 1: suppose that the Labor government requires people to work if they are able-bodied, and for children to go to school. What sort of jobs can mostly unskilled people do ? Maintenance jobs around the settlements, work at the schools, clinics, carers for old people, basic office work, basic workshop work, etc. - this might soak up 10 %, and probably already does.

What about the rest ?
Enterprises ? Sure, if people had the skills. But they almost invariably don’t, and furthermore, don’t want to set up enterprises, too much effort - otherwise why hasn’t it been done already ?
One problem with training people for enterprises, usually away from the settlements - they usually don’t come back, but find work elsewhere, which is their right.
Work in nearby towns (i.e. 50-150 miles away) ? As above.

So: the Intervention would have to initiate education and work-skills programs for young adults involving basic literacy, numeracy and work-skills;
: the schools would have to actually involve all of the school-age children and actually teach them literacy and numeracy at least to the level where they can look for work;
: once the violence and abuse are under control, it is likely that women will be able to lift their heads, look around and think about doing something useful such as adult education programs, again involving literacy, numeracy, home care, child care, diet and exercise, and improving social relations;
: slowly, it may become clearer to families and children that lifelong unemployment is not an option, that they and their kids will need to get some sort of education for employment, in settlement enterprises or outside.

Of course, every settlement will have a huge proportion of non-working age-pensioners, invalid pensioners (of all ages), single mothers, carers, sick people, abandoned children, and assorted layabouts who will have to be catered for, while they may not have to make the slightest contribution to the maintenance of the settlement. After all, in much of the North, people will also be able to keep getting mining royalties regardless of whether or not they are on government handouts. And, of course, humbuggers will still be standing over their grannies for grog money.

Well, this is probably the best scenario: let’s look at another one which is more likely:

SCENARIO # 2: Able-bodied people already in maintenance jobs will keep providing their services at a level which keeps settlements as they are now. If the government was a bit stricter with providing payments to those who meet standard conditions of re-training etc., many otherwise able-bodied people might tell the government to shove their money, and seek alternative sources of income and sustenance. This may involve increased humbugging, stand-over tactics in the settlements, street crime in nearby towns - which, in turn, may lead to increases in incarceration.

But jails should be educational institutions, if only to ensure that criminals come out with better skills than when they went in, i.e. better skills for legally-sanctioned work. After all, there are going to be vast numbers of jobs in the mining industries across the north in the next twenty years: why shouldn’t Indigenous people have the lion’s share of them ?

Meanwhile, while they are in jail, the rest of the settlement populations will have a breathing space to get themselves together and plan their futures. I fear that most won’t, that deserted wives and single mothers will rely on government payments, and only a handful will try education of any sort.

If people like Dazza cannot see the efficacy of education, then it is unlikely that many children in remote settlements will either: so truancy will continue, children will keep reaching leaving age unable to spell their own name or use money, and without seeing any use for education: after all, a common belief in Indigenous settlements (and elsewhere) is that education is for kids, unemployment (and, less frequently, employment) is for adults, and the two have nothing to do with each other.

Meanwhile, people will still die early and often violent deaths, they will still get involved in stupid crime, they will get lumbered and they will do time. Half-hearted attempts will be made to start small enterprises at settlements, usually with great fanfare, which will quietly come to nothing.

This is still a relatively optimistic scenarion.

SCENARIO # 3: Sorry, too terrible to contemplate, but it does not involve education.

Sorry for the bad news: shoot the messenger. Perhaps Dazza is right: education is irrelevant to the northern settlements. Joe

dazza 16/03/08 12:48PM

Joe, you are a nut case. You know, as well as I do, that I never mentioned education in my response. Putting words into my mouth is hardly good tactics. Racist? I wonder if you are like all those Jews who shout ‘anti-semite’ every time someone criticises israel/Palestine. Try to hurt with total lies. Jews and Palestinians are all mostly Semites. So what actually is the insult? I think it is about time you pulled your silly head in, Joe, you are totally irrelevant, besides being an outright liar! Dazza.

rmg1859 16/03/08 4:00PM

Yeah, sorry, Dazza, I thought that you might have said something sensible, about the need to be relevant, so I put 2 & 2 together - perhaps wrongly - and thought that you had suggested that I find something relevant about education in the northern settlements.

I still live in hope of my first scenario (education through English immersion, for enterprise skills, for outside employment skills, for the professions), but I fear that the third one (no real improvement, merely dropping-the-bar education, no settlement enterprises, increased violence and abuse, more senseless deaths) will play itself out.

So relevance: yes, how can one say anything relevant when nothing much is going to improve ? When we have imbecilic education policies like bilingualism, when we have parents who can’t even feed their kids breakfast, when most people won’t ever have to work or actually do anything, and abuse continues on unabated. ‘Closing the Gap’? Very unlikely. What’s the bet the ‘gap’ gets bigger ?

In those circumstances, relevance means only what is relevant in terms of soothing the dying pillow. Maybe Daisy Bates was right: those Aboriginal people in the northern settlements are passing. According to the latest Census, yes, the numbers in remote areas are either stagnant (Kimberleys) or dropping fast (SA’s North-West), although there is a lot of ducking and diving about how fast the population is rising. Maybe some people can escape from those hell-holes, but the majority ? God knows, but not if nothing very drastic is done very soon. Perhaps I should join you, Dazza, and stand idly by, and add to the problem that way.

Meanwhile, in urban areas, more and more Indigenous people will graduate from universities, and TAFE, and wait to be asked to contribute to the solution. Joe