two week intervention
26 Feb 2009
You Got 40 Cents?
Scott Mitchell winds up his fortnight of income management feeling like crap and wondering how anyone can be expected to live under such restrictions, least of all Australia's most disadvantaged people
This article is part of newmatilda.com's Urban Intervention experiment. For more information read this.Day Twelve
I'm heading to Central station today so in anticipation of transit police I buy a ticket. That leaves me with $15.60. I meet an old friend who's a graffiti artist; he's brought along someone in his "crew". He wants to have a drink.
I spend my last note — a fiver — on a beer and sit down. My mate, it turns out, was squatting in Melbourne last year. He got done by the police and has over a grand in fines and nowhere to live full-time in Sydney. His buddy was in Silverwater jail last year for three months and then spent another six under house-arrest. When we finish our first beers they buy not one, but two jugs for the three of us.
I'm doing some shitty little experiment and I have to look at these two guys and tell them I can't buy them a round. Of course they laugh it off and keep pouring me schooners, but their generosity only makes me feel even more like a bastard.
I'm a coddled, protected, privileged little poser. I pathetically buy my friend a single glass of whichever piss for $4.60 and leave.
I walk home to save money for tomorrow. I'm going to have to head into newmatilda.com over the next couple of days, and all I have is $6. I buy two cans of tuna, some bread and Vegemite on the way home, which pretty much polishes off my tab of quarantined money at the grocery store.
Days Thirteen and Fourteen
In to newmatilda.com where I eat some over-ripe bananas for lunch. There's only one more day to go and I'm finishing off the articles.
When I started I was 66.5 kilos. Today I weigh just over 64 kilos. Yes, in many ways the weight loss has been my fault for putting myself in situations where I was likely to misspend my money and separating myself from my fridge full of food. But without doing so, would it be possible for me to have a social life at all under these restrictions?
I've only been eating carbohydrates really — meat and fresh fruit have been a rarity. Constant anxiety over money, guilt (mostly for not buying my share of the drinks) and boredom mean I'm not relaxed with people.
Yet it has only been two weeks, and my discomfort during this simulation pales in comparison to the genuine experience of life for an Aboriginal person in the Northern Territory.
Of course, there are the cultural and social conditions that I wouldn't claim to be able to experience, but there are also many tangible circumstances that it was not possible to simulate during this experiment.
Life for the average Aboriginal person in the Northern Territory can be pretty damn hard. For starters, because of the extreme housing shortage, you could be living with anywhere between a couple of roommates and 15 or more. Apart from the cramped living conditions, depending on who you live with you might get harassed, be deprived of sleep or have your food and cash stolen. Even if you're living with good housemates, "people come and help themselves", said one Alice Springs social worker I spoke to, referring to some of the groups that periodically blow through the town camps. Police can also search your home at anytime, day or night.
Then there is education: low literacy and numeracy is, in itself, a hurdle to living comfortably on a low income, but many people also lack savvy when it comes to negotiating consumer society. "When you think about your supermarket shop, you know what's a bit of a scam [and] what's a bargain", the social worker said to me. "You don't buy all the chocolate bars that are marketed to you right at the end. You also have a proper kitchen."
Of course there are plenty of people who manage their money well, who buy raw ingredients and cook properly to save money and have healthy diets. But for those who are still adapting to consumer society there's a real threat of budgets blowing out in the first few days of the fortnightly welfare cycle. These are disadvantages I hadn't considered.
"A lot of people skip meals", the social worker told me, and are forced to depend on people who have just received their cheques or on those who have budgeted more effectively. It must put a lot of pressure on social relations. I think about feeling obliged to buy my friend a glass of beer.
Oh, and as far as the alcohol ban in prescribed areas is concerned, we were told that in some town camps the ban is "unenforceable" and that "really heavy drinking" continues in the worst areas.
There are plenty of stories if you care to go find them.
To those who say these circumstances are not a result of the Intervention, I would say: this policy should be judged not only for what it does, but also for what it has failed to do. At great expense the Intervention has so far failed to address the health, housing, crime and education crises in Aboriginal communities across the Northern Territory.
This Urban Intervention series has been as much a platform for discussion as a collection of articles and it has certainly drawn some strong comments. Only good can come of that — it is the disturbing absence of debate and awareness about the impacts of the Intervention on people's lives that inspired us to undertake this experiment in the first place.
As a re-creation of life under the Intervention, this project would be a complete failure. But that was not its purpose. We pursued this in order to remind the affluent, city-dwellers of Australia that even without the entrenched disadvantage that Indigenous Australians face, it is extremely difficult to lead a functional existence on a low and restricted income.
With all my privileges — my inner-city flat, my middle class friends and my electric toothbrush — in only two weeks, I feel like shit. I would not continue for another fortnight let alone another year.
If you believe you could, I encourage you to try.
But if you fail, ask why the people who are most in need of targeted assistance in this country are being treated as an homogenous group and judged according to the lowest common denominator. Ask whether the millions of dollars that are spent on administering the income management scheme alone could not be better spent.
When I finish at midday on the final day I have 40 cents in my pocket.
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Okay for my first ever comment on a site i quite enjoy im sorry but i must play devils advocate. The following has been rolling around in my head for quite a while with few rebuttals. So im looking for some. Anyway here goes:
While the racism in not allowing alcohol and porn in outback aboriginal camps is clear, wrong and probably futile. Plus income managment only being used in these areas is also clearly racist. I don’t see why income managment is such a bad thing… I dont see why it souldn’t be for all those on unemployment benefits? Not one of these articles has convinced me otherwise.
As scott quite clearly points out he lost much of his income on mistakes while out socialising and on socialasing itself. Why should the australian tax payer be coughing up so those on benifits can go out and party? Should they not be doing their upmost to find employment? While socalising is key to being happy it can also be distracting. He even says if he planned meals properly it would be more then enough. Then why should these people have the option to waste money on unhealthy fast food?
What we need is an eftpos card like system. Accepted everywhere but can only be used for essentials. If people want to be able to spend their money how they please perhaps they should earn it for themselves.
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As for those in out back camps why doesn’t the government try the real solution of luring these people away from these toxic environments. Harsh yes. Leaving ones home is not a nice idea. These people should be offered an opprotunity to move to areas with jobs. Be offered free training that could lead to employment. Then these peoples kids might have a chance at change. I mean mixing them in with the general population not moving them all to a gehtto.
Sure leaving their ancestoral homes is unfortunate but if they want the benefits of modern society like benefits when you cannot feed yourself why don’t they come in and join society? If they want to live out there why not let them live as they used to before europeans? The alcohol wouldn’t need to be illegal it simply would be out there removing what is clearly a serious problem. These ghettos of extreme social problems need to be dismantled person by person imo.
**"I don’t see why income managment is such a bad thing… I dont see why it souldn’t be for all those on unemployment benefits? Not one of these articles has convinced me otherwise."**
Where do you draw the line - almost everyone with kids gets some form of taxpayer funding. Why is receiving the dole any different than receiving family tax benefit? or child care rebates? or the any of the host of middle class handouts we’re showing no signs of ceasing?
It’s racism AND classism.
Good middle class folks who receive taxpayer support in order to purchase private healthcare, private education for their kids, family tax benefit, child care rebates and perhaps the baby bonus as well are obviously to be trusted and they don’t need some bureaucrat telling them how to look after their kids.
Those on the dole however are dirty working class people and we all know what terrible parents they are.
**"If they want to live out there why not let them live as they used to before europeans? "**
How do you propose they do that? Will they be allowed to camp in their traditional hunting grounds? (as opposed to the shitty mission camps they were rounded up into on non productive land left over from the white man’s land grab)
Will they be allowed access to their traditional water sources?
Will the massive environmental damage caused by white settlement be reversed?
Seriously that’s a not very well thought out solution.
The indigenous peoples can NOT go back to Traditional living on tradional lands mainly because after 200 plus years of white destruction of wild life, and the land being destroyed by cattle and sheep, they could not survive a week. It was alright for the Bush Tucker Man to describe bush-tucker up in the Far North, (does anyone remember him?) but that is only a fraction of the lands required to feed, clothe and ‘house’ a nomadic population in a traditional manner. I find ‘pirate monkey’s’ comments somewhat offensive, indicative of a certain state of mind, and a total lack of information. Certainly some ‘class’ distinction there.
Scott, I have had some criticism of your little experiment, but if it educates even a few people, it will be worthwhile.
I still find your ‘socializing’ jarring. No way could I justify spending even a dollar on buying booze, and especially visiting a pub. For the last few years, I have not been able to even visit relatives, because the cost of fuel totally eliminates even the thought. But I am no longer young, and I suppose the older you get, the less you need the company of others. Still, I do enjoy a good gas-bag with contemporaries on my weekly visit to Woolworths, the only time I ever see them these days. Very dry conversation, though, and all the time, on my mind is the thought that I probably should not buy such and such a thing, like apples, as I can probably do without them at $7 a kilo. But at least the decision is mine, not some damned mindless interfering bureaucrat somewhere, and if I spend too much in here, I will not have anything to spend elsewhere. I just do without! I do a lot of that!
I reckon our pollies have never had this problem, and never will! Dazza.
Invalid Australian Constitution empowers crooked (High Court) Judges to violate Common Law rights for ALL Australians
Australia Sovereignty: So who wants to be King and Queen of Australia?
Invalid constitution means Terra Nullius still?
http://www.scribd.com/doc/12725319/Invalid-Australian-Constitution-empow…
http://kangaroocourtaustralia.com/
http://iwitness.x24hr.com/kangaroo_court_australia/index.php?showtopic=1…
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Form 1 Notice of a constitutional matter
(rule 5.01.3)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA No. of
[ MELBOURNE OFFICE OF THE ] REGISTRY
BETWEEN:
TRAN ©® (artificial person)
tran (natural man god creation) deny consent to be enslaved
PHAM ©® (artificial person)
pham (natural man god creation) deny consent to be enslaved
WILSON ©® (artificial person)
wilson (natural man god creation) deny consent to be enslaved
Plaintiffs
and
Defendants
Governor General (Commonwealth of Australia)
Prime Minister of Australia (Commonwealth of Australia)
Attorney General (Commonwealth of Australia)
NOTICE OF A CONSTITUTIONAL MATTER
1. The Plaintiff gives notice that this proceeding involves a matter arising under the Constitution or involving its interpretation within the meaning of Section 78B of the Judiciary Act 1903 .
Recently I attended a conference where a research paper was presented comparing two Aboriginal communities in western NSW and their contact with the criminal justice system. I was struck by the fact that break-and-enter offences in the town with the higher contact with the criminal justice system were to steal food from stores owned and operated by non-Aboriginal people. Asked why they drank, respondents said it was due to grief and trauma, boredom, aimlessness, nothing else to do. I drew the conclusion that another unstated reason for a high degree of alcohol consumption is simply that alcohol is cheaper and more accessible and available than food, and that communal drinking (unlike shopping for food in inhospitable supermarkets) is very central to Aborigines’ social lives and relationships (as borne out by Scott’s experience). Communal drinking needs to be replaced by communal eating. Sequestering money and forcing people to buy only in certain shops etc is alienating and disempowering. A better way to do it would be for Aborigines to run their own Pub-Without-Beer - a communal cooking and eating facility, and supplied by an Aboriginal-run Food Co-operative. This needs to be set up on an Australia-wide basis, as an alternative to the supermarket chains. I also suggest that a branch of the Grameen Bank be set up in Australia to serve the banking needs of Aboriginal people. Now is the time to look at co-operative models because financial and other systems based on individualism, are collapsing, having done untold harm to cultures on which they have been imposed.
OK, life for an Aboriginal or part Aboriginal is bad most of the time. We’ve apologised for what the whites did to them and we are spending a lot of our money trying to remedy this. The ‘stolen generation’ was an attempt to help part Aborigines and we got that wrong too. Now we have the "intervention". Isn’t the idea to sequester benefits to enable women in these areas to spend at least half the money on food, instead of giving it to the men who drink it and then come home and beat up their families? That’s what I understood one of the purposes of the intervention to be. Frankly I can’t see anything wrong with it. Of course the men and others who had power hate having it taken away from them and its just so sad for them, my heart bleeds! The results won’t be seen for maybe twenty years when we get healthy Aboriginal people, better educated than before, who can take their place in Australian life. There’s no doubt that there are some bad mistakes being made, and they need to be fixed, but almost anything must be better than what has gone before. I applaud Scott’s efforts to live on the money but with due respect its like comparing apples with oranges and fundamentally flawed. I agree with Dazza, not for the first time. We’ll have to stop meeting like this!
Mere survival is not enough. All people have a right to quality of life and socialising is a fundamental part of that. And if I think of all my early jobs they have all come from knowing someone socially or having the social confidence to pursue a particular avenue. In our market based economy, its should be brutally clear right now that a persons worth is not based on whether they have a job or not. Employment, like all markets changes and fluctuates in difficult to predict ways. When all those bankers find themselves jobless in the next few years, will they expect the same harsh criticism?
The middle class are the first to scream out in pain when something disturbs their eden. I’m in full agreeance with MissnOmar; the middle class don’t even see those benefits as handouts but as their basic right. We need a bill of rights to put these things in perspective in this country. Basic freedoms that we can all appeal too.
Martyns, the Government set aside the Racial Discrimination Act where it related to Indigenous peoples in order to sequester the income of ONLY Aboriginals in the NT (at the time, they are now adding Indigenous communities in Queensland and WA to the mix) and this is what is MOST objected to. In some places, NOT the NT, the sequestering of income is voluntary, not COMPULSORY for ALL Indigenous peoples. This has been set up as a wide dragnet, with no exceptions, even if the majority of Indigenous people have been coping quite well with their income, feeding and clothing and educating their children, but now, HAVE TO have their income split, and this is both humiliating and insulting… and WRONG! If this thing had been kept to a VOLUNTARY basis, the Racial Discrimination Act NOT interfered with, I doubt that too many could have objected, other than the mostly men, but not exclusively so, who are ‘humbugging’ the women who were getting the income un-split.
At the same time, your callous throw-away of the ‘power’ of men is terrible. The major problem with Indigenous peoples is that their family structures have been completely destroyed by whites over a couple of hundred years, and not replaced by a good and decent value system. Forget the Missionaries, and their foreign religions. They were more often partly instrumental in this destruction, at the behest of Govenments of the day. You see the problem of males who have no longer any ‘worth’ in the family system every day, in both white and black society, our Justice system is clogged up with them. I agree with ‘livefeet2’ here.
I have said before, where you an find an Aboriginal Community where the men are occupied in worthwhile work, such as stock and station, and are not inclined to drinking, the whole Community is happy and healthy. There is none, or little, of the ‘humbugging’, the violence towards women and children, because the men have SELF-RESPECT. I have been there! Where this self-respect has been taken from the men, and all power handed to the women (as has happened with the Intervention) you are going to have increased problems for decades to come, unless wiser heads are brought into the loop. But consultation with the leaders of the Communities, not just a few of the most insistent and aggressive women members, has NOT been carried out, either by Howard and Brough, or Rudd and Macklin, and we have the disaster of today.
Wiser heads can not include Rudd and Macklin, they have already proved that they know nothing! And, moreover, have no interest in finding out.
We also need the Racial Discrimination Act to be re-instated, NOW!
This would ensure that only VOLUNTARY adherence to the Intervention Income Sequestration be applied. Dazza.
lefties love to cry racist. often in our society it is warranted. the reality is however that circumstances on remote communities are different, and therefore the responses need to be different. ( People comparing remote indigenous communities to welfare dependent urban poor really have no idea.) the question is how this would be done. if communities were empowered in the planning of policy responses (the morally correct course of action and the one that will lead to effective action) and the decision was to take a course that was different to what would be a suitable approach in the cities, then that should be supported.. shouldn’t it. would it be racist? no. i cannot for the life of me understand why people who oppose welfare quarantining as a blanket approach (as i do) routinely suggest that strategies to tackle disadvantage in the cities would be the same one that would work on remote communities. sure this is a much broader blanket to throw than universal welfare quarantining on communites… and just plain stupid.
Scott… you have created an interesting forum with this series. Your experiment has again demonstrated to me that i have much more constructive discussions with political centrists and the right on these issues than i do the left. we saw in the lead up to the last election prominent indigenous leaders strongly aligning themselves with political right. not because they are corrupt or evil but because the left is experiencing chronic ideological inertia on these questions and generally it is a waste of an intellegent person’s time engaging with them. in almost every conversation i have with a lefty they demonstrate that they are more committed to the culture war against the right than they are committed to progressive change on remote communities.
it seems that the left is incapable of any analysis of anything more complex than a slogan… so here’s one to try "outcomes not ideology’. give it a go… i dare you…
Do those who think the NT experiment is reasonable also think it would reasonable for the child-less, non home owning, non private health owning amongst us to dictate how YOU spend YOUR government handouts?
If I can’t afford a house and my taxes help fund throwing first home buyers a lazy 14K should the recipients of that largess be limited in the type of home they can buy, maybe we should say you only get the FHOG if you accept living in the povvo suburbs? After all if you want a house in a middle or ruling class area perhaps YOU should pay for it.
If YOU want kids and I don’t, should I be able to dictate how many you have and how you raise them given I’m helping to fund you via FTB and child care rebates.
If I subsidise YOUR private healthcare should I be able to limit what kinds of medical assistance you receive? Shouldn’t I be able to say if YOU want wanky new age untested snake oil crap like homeopathy that YOU should pay the full cost of your own private healthcare.
ALL of us receive subsidies from the community at large in some form.
Those who agree with the NT experiment need to ask themselves why it’s only ONE group of Australians who need babysitting with what they do with ‘our" money.
Collins you are aware that this bullshit doesn’t actually apply to ALL people living in remote communities? Or even all people in remote communities who aren’t top notch parents.
Do you think p’raps THAT may be why people call it racially motivated, not merely because of a knee jerk lefty PCism which exists mostly in the minds of NewsCorp columnists?
There is a smallish rural community in Victoria in which almost every single family has a child protection order slapped on it.
Rampant child abuse, sexual and otherwise, drug and alcohol abuse, violence etc and at least 3 underaged girls impregnated by their relatives in the last 2 years.
It’s also an almost entirely welfare dependent place. Strangely the white abusers of this little shithole are entirely free to spend their dole as they see fit.
Dazza seems to know what he is talking about and I agree with him in the general sense. Clearly what he is talking about are "some of the mistakes that need to be rectified". Part of my difficulty with this matter is that there are so many different experts on the subject with different solutions to it. We’ve had so many enquiries, commissions et al that we could have built everyone in the communities a house and probably included a swimming pool with the money we’ve spent on the enquiries. By the sound of it the people who are actually on the ground in the areas concerned should be asked what they think. The intervention has been going for a while now so data on results should be available. With respect to a "Left" and "Right" debate on this, I don’t think so. Its a question of humanity mixed with practicality as well, not whether you are of a capitalist or communist point of view.
Scott, you claim that "At great expense the Intervention has so far failed to address the health, housing, crime and education crises in Aboriginal communities across the Northern Territory."
Again, you are dead wrong, not just on minor details but in major ways. You are displaying a quite arrogant ignorance or disregard of the facts. You run the risk of appearing to be either an innocent prat, or worse, a politically motivated propagandist.
Here are some facts for your consideration.
Health: The Intervention is providing an extra $189 million (over the three years 2007 to 2010) for expanded health services to Aboriginal people in the effected areas, most of it via Aboriginal community-controlled health services. Many of the new/expanded programs will be continuing past mid-2010.
This funding increase has meant the start of a huge expansion of treatment for chronic diseases, early childhood/maternal health programs, and eye, ear, dental & respiratory problems. Much has already been done. All that is holding back making enormous strides in these fields is the availability of more skilled workers to carry out many of these programs. Look in the health sector job advertisements of your weekend papers or employment web sites, and see all the positions being advertised to work in the NT.
Education: between the Commonwealth & NT Governments, there are hundreds of millions extra being ploughed into these remote communities for education since the start of the Intervention. In the three remote Aboriginal communities in which I work, school enrolments have risen. In the largest community, average attendance rates have more than doubled. There are more class rooms & teachers. The children are much better fed, and have much lower rates of respiratory & ear infections, & are receiving better dental care.
Crime: These communities have much less noise & violence from partying drunks & dopeheads at night, so the kids get more sleep, as do their carers & teachers, & are able to concentrate better at school. They are better clothed, given more attention by their carers, & are generally able to participate in sports and other activities more consistently & productively. There are now some youth workers working in the communities, and expanded sport & recreation programs. There are more police in the region, a safe house in the largest community, a mens centre, expanded night patrols & improved aged care services.
Housing: Most houses have had significant repairs & been repainted under the Intervention, but the commencement of building new houses & undertaking house renovations is in some cases mired in community politics about traditional ownership rights & leases.
The difference between your fanciful scenario and the reality is so great as to call into question your good faith, &/or journalistic research abilities.
Bob Durnan
Martyns, Jenny Macklin recently had a full enquiry into the results of the intervention, and when she got it (it has not been released publicly to my knowledge) she did not like what it said; that the Racial Discrimination Act be brought back into operation for NT indigenous peoples; that more consultation with affected people be quickly done, and acted on; that the Welfare Discrimination be made Voluntary; and because she did not like what the Report said, she has totally ignored it. Not just that, she has dismissed it, because she says that some women she has spoken to, like it!!!! Well, what intelligence, what a qualification for a Government Minister. A million dollars or so thrown into a drawer to rot, and because she has her own Far Right autocratic ideas, she takes the word??? of a few aggressive Indigenous women, who very definitely have an axe to grind. Some of them have appeared many times on TV, and it is fairly plain that they and the Minister are one on this matter. Everyone else can ‘go hang’! So, for these few women this thing may work, but does this have to apply to everyone else, WHETHER THEY LIKE IT OR NOT! I say NOT!
Then again, there are a few male Indigenous leaders, like the ex Labor Party President (he really is an indication of how far Right Wing the Labor party in Australia now is); like Noel Pearson, who is a very authoritarian indigenous leader who was previously egging on Mal Brough, and even Galuwaay Yunupingu of the Yolgnu (East Arnhem Land), who for a while was sucked in by Pearson/Brough, but has since had second thoughts, and reconsidered his ill-advised support for the Intervention, but has lost some ‘face’ and authority over the matter. There are a few others.
The Yolgnu probably have the best chance of carrying off the future for indigenous peoples in remote areas. The have had generally far-seeing leaders, both male and female, and have accepted education as a means of slowly shifting their society and their young into more assimilation with white society. They have been working on this for many years, and their isolation has helped immensely. But the intervention has set back this progress by many years, with it’s transfer of power to White administrators and to Centrelink. All the good work has been nullified by aggressive, humiliating and insulting interference in their lives, much more than has happened for quite a few years.
But other remote communities have to slowly be brought into the 21st. Century, and I do say slowly because this will mean educating the young in white ways as well as traditional, and eventually the older people, who can not cope with the massive changes, will die off, but we would hope that they would leave their social culture, or at least the ideas of it, intact as far as possible with the young and educated. Eventually the educated young will more away from their communities, for further education of for work, but hopefully will return to assist their communities to progress into the future.
But….let us keep in mind that these Communities may still have one Hell of a lot to teach us, the arrogant whites, who have almost totally destroyed this world, in survival in Australia, when the ships stop sailing, the planes stop flying, and we again have to survive on our own resources..what we have left after mostly being sold off for quick profit (to a few large Multi-National Corporates generally), to the rest of the world.
It is very disheartening to see that so very few people seem to understand just how bad things are, and are going to be, in the quite near future. One would almost think that the general populace is being fed ‘dope’ in order to keep them malleable and controllable. But then, most people seem to be on ‘dope’ all the time. Dazza.
what exactly are you suggesting Missnomar… i’m hearing the ranting but i’m not hearing a conclusion. don’t worry you are not alone in this. this forum over the last two weeks has seen that some people want to discuss solutions others want to be outraged. Isn’t it the role of political progressives to have ideas for change? a viable vision for an alternate program that you can try to convince the community to support? That that support is translated into political power and change is created?
unfortunately in this debate has shown that many progressives choose to sit on the sidelines whingeing. At best arguing for a return to a failed era of policy at worst are in total denial about the need for a rethink in policy. There is a mood for change in the way business is done on remote aboriginal communities not least of all amongst the residents themselves. If you don’t like the intervention - argue for an alternative. and even better (and you can call me a radical) argue for something that might work
what ranting Collins (or is that what you term any disagreement with yourself) I simply asked the question why it is that ONLY indigenous people need their welfare quarantined.
So I’ll try again, can we quarantine YOUR state assistance too?
If not, why not?
I don’t have much to say that hasn’t been said already by the tireless Dazza and Missnomar.
Keep up the good work, you two, and thanks for a refreshingly uncompromised perspective on these issues. As Missnomar puts things, we just need to honestly turn these things around to ourselves to see that it *is* racist, and it *is* wrong, demoralising, counter-productive (to professed aims, not real ones).
That, unfortunately, takes an element of self criticism that many ‘newscorp’ thinkers don’t seem to possess. I hope its not representative of the majority of the country (but it maybe is, based on my own anecdotal evidence).
Scott’s project may be slightly naive, or pointless in one sense, but what it has done is opened the issue for discussion. The more articles on ABoriginal Australia, the better, because what lies at the heart of all issues within that realm is the ultimate shame for us non-indigenous Australians and our indignance against even seriously admitting it. How can I be all but guaranteed one of the best lifestyles in the world (if I chose to live there), comparative to the rest of the world, with health and longevity near the top of world scales, and yet my Aboriginal cousin all but guaranteed not even a slice of that ‘wealth’, and factoring in somewhere closer to the bottom of world stats on health, wealth, longevity? We need to stop thinking like patronising, bigoted benefactors who constantly reassert the racist notion that at the end of the day, it’s their fault, not ours, and start doing a little serious, productive hat-in-hand peace-making toward Aboriginal groups. That doesn’t mean ‘sorrys’ but solutions proferred by them *always*.
Are we that insecure that we can’t even do that?
cheers, Derek
Thanks for some of the facts Bob.
Have those community jobs been restored?
Is there a stage 2 of the intervention where we ensure serious employment opportunities for the males and any females wanting paid employment.
A range of social enterprises might be the starting point.
e.g. perhaps melding reforestation with companies interested in carbon credits or offsets.
"The Intervention is providing an extra $189 million (over the three years 2007 to 2010)"
For what number of people? Derek
Since there appears to have been a loss of interest in responding to the truth underlying the ‘facts’ Durnan offered, I thought I’d take the initiative.
http://www.jennymacklin.fahcsia.gov.au/internet/jennymacklin.nsf/content…
Firstly, some facts: there are approx 60000 indigenous people in the NT. There are about 174000 people in total.
If the ‘extra’ funding were to be divided between just the indigenous population, there would be just $3 166 per person, *over 3 years to a generation*, to provide:
-maternal and child health/welfare
-rheumatic fever and heart disease
-drug and alcohol services, including rehabilitation facilities
-smoking initiatives
-heath worforce training plan for indigenous people
-expansion of primary heath services
-specialist dental, hearing, ear, eyes nose and throat
-reuniting families broken by the stolen generation initiatives
Either the AU govt makes the dollar work very hard, or, based on past evidence, the money they proffer is a drop in the ocean. Hardly a massive expenditure.
Also, the pertinent questions that need asking are:
-How much were they spending before?
-How much of this funding is spread across the whole state? There are only some clauses (the lower funding amounts) that specifically refer to the indigenous sector of the NT. The rest, I suspect, are for the whole of the NT.
-How much of this money is going to go directly to funding and not into ‘initiatives’ and ‘thinktanks’ and other black holes into which Aboriginal spending routinely disappears.
If we recalculate the amounts then, we get just $9 per person per (best outcome) 3 years period!
So is this something to crow about? I don’t know, but the funding *amount* on it’s own isn’t enough to prove that the government is serious about spending in remote Aboriginal communities. Considering that, according to the budget, it would seem the rest of Australia (with far less health problems per capita) gets about $650 per head as it stands *per year*, on top of an already relatively good infrastructure of health care, the question of what the so called ‘extra’ funding for Indigenous NT dwellers is extra on top of seems quite an important one (particularly as this budget includes separate issues like education and legacy problem solving, ie, stolen generation). It doesn’t seem too unrealistic to come to the conclusion that the promised funding might, if they’re lucky, reach only the level of funding that the rest of Australia enjoys, in practise, and if they’re not (they aren’t, by past experience), far less.
cheers, Derek