Aboriginal policy has been the graveyard of good intentions. Over the past 30 years, there has been so much goodwill, so much money and so many new programmes yet so little change for the better in the way many Aboriginal people live. Australians want nothing but good for Aboriginal people and are perplexed and frustrated that it seems so difficult to achieve.
It would be the be presumptuous, even by the standards of politicians, to draw too many conclusions from a three week stint as a teacher's aide in Coen on Cape York. Still, politicians can't avoid formulating policy and often do so on the basis of an even more slender personal acquaintance with the relevant issues. My strongest impression, based on much more of an immersion in Aboriginal life than before, is that making a serious difference to the key indicators of indigenous disadvantage can be expected to take decades rather than years. It's a generational task.
Some changes can make a swift difference. In the Northern Territory, for instance, alcohol bans and welfare quarantining seem to have quickly improved nutrition. Issues such as poor life-expectancy and low employment outcomes, on the other hand, are not amenable to a "quick fix". Precisely because it will take so long to make an impact, it's important to get the policy right now.
The changes culminating in welfare reform on Cape York (and also the Northern Territory intervention) constitute a long overdue watershed in Aboriginal policy. For some 30 years, lurking behind everything government did was guilt about Aboriginal dispossession. Tragically, the result of obligation-free welfare has been the reinforcement of an Aboriginal underclass. As Noel Pearson advises his people: "Of course, you have been ripped off". That doesn't mean, though, that the past can be changed or that the future can be secured by people who see themselves as helpless victims. Largely due to Pearson's work, Coen (and three other Aboriginal centres in Cape York) have been designated "welfare reform communities" with carrots and sticks against irresponsible behaviour.
Compared to most Aboriginal towns, Coen presents well. There are fewer camp dogs, almost no wrecked car bodies and, in three weeks, I witnessed no drunkenness in public places and heard the noise of only one all night party. In part, this is because Coen is a town administered by Cooktown Shire Council rather than a "community" run by an Aboriginal body. It has a modest real economy based on beef and tourism and long-term white residents including two fourth-generation Coen families. Although nearly all local Aboriginal people are now in work for the dole jobs or the Aboriginal service sector, the older men have usually worked as stockmen or labourers. Under the current principal, primary school attendance is close to 100 per cent but it's always been good and nearly all local children have subsequently completed Year 10 or higher at boarding schools in large centres.
Despite these advantages, Coen has a number of problem drinkers and associated family violence. Among the school children, there's plenty of affection but also lots of hitting and pushing despite teachers reiterating a rule to "keep your body parts to yourself". A blunter rule, that boys should never hit girls, is deemed culturally inappropriate because that's not how it is in the home. Even so, violence towards women, in Coen as in all welfare villages regardless of race or culture, is invariably alcohol-fuelled and is the almost inevitable product of men having very little to do.
Noel Pearson's decade-long crusade against the welfare "poison" hasn't noticeably increased Aboriginal employment but, at least in Coen, it has changed people's rhetoric. Local leaders are now far more likely to attribute their problems to the welfare system than to racism. They're also far more committed to giving young people the capacity to operate in a modern economy as well as a grounding in Aboriginal culture.
Pearson's programme involves alcohol bans, no excuses for children avoiding school, insistence on "no pay for no work", and higher rent in return for better housing. Pearson understands that a good night's sleep is essential if children are to attend school and adults are to go to work. This is almost impossible in houses with too many visitors looking for a party. Pearson wants on-site housing inspectors to ensure that renovated houses are not trashed by long term visitors. He also wants rent increased to 25 per cent of household income, which is the public housing standard. This should mean more house-proud residents and also less economic incentive to keep people in places with very few real jobs.
Pearson understands that governments won't indefinitely fund the maintenance of towns in remote locations with no economic base. He anticipates voter resistance to government building expensive houses in places where there's no work for their residents. If Aboriginal people are to maintain their links with the land, they will eventually need to do so from their own resources, much as many Australians maintain hobby farms or houses on the coast. This is why Pearson is now talking about Aboriginal people developing "orbits" where work might take them to Weipa, Cairns, Sydney or London but attachment to country might bring them for holidays or retirement back to Cape York.
Thanks to the humane realism applied by people like Pearson and former ALP national president Warren Mundine, there's now more ground for optimism about Aboriginal policy than for many years. It will be important to resist the calls for change when things don't improve overnight, especially when they're made by people who take Aboriginal disadvantage as proof of what's wrong with Australia. There's no bigger challenge than moving people from subsistence to full participation in Australian society. Of course, it will take time and there will be disappointments and setbacks. The alternative is to keep people trapped between two worlds: the traditional one that can never be recovered and modern Australia that can never fully be accessed by people without productive work.
Tony Abbott is the federal member for Warringah, and shadow minister for families, community services, indigenous affairs and the voluntary sector.
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A learning experience
I commend your efforts in actually going out to get some hands on experience of Cape York.
It is clear to anyone who'se been involved in indigenous affairs that the challenge of bringing about change to the lives of aboriginal people, espeically in reomte Australia is indeed generational, and will involve a comprehensive response dealing with housing, healthcare, education, civic infrastructure and so on...
However, I think it's important to maintin the focus on empowering Aboriginal people to help themselvles, empowering elders and leaders within communities to lead the change. The people who do the most for indigenous people are other indigenous people, and it's these people we need to support in order to build stronger, healthier communities.
If we want more aboriginal kids to finish school, we need more aboriginal teachers, if we want healither aboriginal kids, we need more aboriginal health care workers, nutritionists, doctors and nursers. If we want less domestic violence we need aboriginal men to be strong enough and manly enough to stand up and defend their communities and the families from violence and drugs.
The best intentioned and the most well meaning gubbas can do little bits and piece, but the intrinsic changes which are need to be driven from within, by the people, for the people. this iis where programs and policies need to focus, on empowering people to help themselves.
JV Douglas -
technology writer by trade, luddite by conviction