Why do so few of the media reporters actually ask the Aboriginal demonstrators why they are so angry with being told to change tactics? Maybe the poor record of the past decades of more polite advocacy discourages beliefs that main party politicians listen to their needs and what works. There is little joy in the Closing the Gap figures, constant reports about what isn’t working and more pain in the pipeline but the only evidence of change is more programs that remove rights and fail to follow evidence of what works.
There is current legislation before the Senate that extends some of the punitive aspects of the NT intervention. Despite claims by the government to have consulted the targets, they do not have the consent and engagement of those affected, despite evidence that this is the crucial factor. The past few years have seen deteriorating relationships with often poor policy outcomes and a reluctance of government to use evidence to inform their policies.
Tony Abbott’s simplistic assumptions about progress over the past 40 years is unfortunately too often shared by others on both sides of politics. They confuse the passage of time and some relatively minor legal reforms with serious changes in the relative status and well-being of Aboriginal people. The ’70s optimism and some valuable changes to legal status and land have dissipated as little of serious value has happened recently. Nor do many of the people affected see evidence that there is still the goodwill to making what they would see as progress.
Many of those, celebrating the 40th anniversary of an unexpected successful strategy, gathered in Canberra to address some of the continuing problems. The government should stop quoting the Rudd apology as a landmark of change, as many current policies create injustice and disrespect, ignore criticisms and lack local engagement. There is widespread concern in the NT and elsewhere that the current bills in front of the Senate, ironically named Stronger Futures, will pass despite the lack of evidence that these measures have worked or will work.
Some of those in Canberra are already negatively affected by current laws, including the extended version of income management. Barbara Shaw, a highly competent articulate woman, is one who Centrelink policy deems to be unable to manage her own income support! There are thousand of others who share the indignity of not being allowed to make their own financial decisions, even if they are completely competent. And it costs the government about $80 per week to administer this payments system.
This is an example of what creates the anger and disrespect. The Income Management program has been “de-racialised” by extending it to other out-groups in five areas including Bankstown and Shepparton. Again there is no valid evidence it works. The government and opposition are inseparable on indigenous issues, an unfortunate bi-partisanship because the past records of both, over the past two decades at least, are dismal. Both have consistently failed to follow the recommendations of the very dry Productivity Commission, which tracks “gap closing progress”.
This organisation sets out clear criteria for what works, as does the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare Closing the Gap Clearing House. Some of their criteria show clearly where the NT policies fall short:
What works:
- Community involvement and engagement
- Respect for language and culture
- Working together through partnerships, networks and shared leadership
- Recognising underlying social determinants
- Commitment to doing projects with, not for, indigenous people.
What doesn’t work:
- “One size fits all” approaches
- External authorities imposing change and reporting requirements
- Interventions without local indigenous community control and culturally appropriate adaptation.
Therefore, it is not surprising that the Tent Embassy mob would resent being told they were doing OK and they should stop protesting like that. There is political diversity and some Aboriginal office but it is important to look at what is happening to those who haven’t benefited to see what structural issues remain to be solved. This is not the current direction of current social inclusion policies that seek to fixing the excluded by making them fit majority models, to fit in.The 1970s were, retrospectively, a decade of serious change, the final years of postwar optimism and growing the state to make a better world. The Western “revolutions” of the sixties pushed changes in class, race, s-xual and other relationships and beliefs that we could make the world a better place by acting collectively for the common good. For groups who saw their pasts disrespected and their futures as limited by prejudice and legal discrimination, the reforms that started in the sixties and seventies offered hope.
However, times change and Aboriginal groups saw their desire for actual land rights and formal recognition of sovereignty moving further off the agenda from the early nineties onwards. So-called practical reconciliation imposed Canberra programs rarely worked, land rights became watered-down native title and recent policies in the NT, now extended, have been punitive and controlling, undermining human rights.
So a relatively minor demonstration, which was noisy and maybe scary, but with no evidence of violence, created an over-reaction and demands that anger be channelled into more acceptable lobbying. Many of the Aboriginal people I know are deeply cynical about the possibilities of advocacy for change because they see the government as only listening to those who agree with them. The media and political over-reactions will only confirm to many participants and observers that it is increasingly hard to challenge, let alone change, either government or opposition’s bad indigenous policy and practices.
Public negative responses on all sides of politics will only be fuelled by the cynical use of the incident for political point scoring. Why a Coalition demand for an AFP inquiry into the so-called affray? This was hardly a major security breach and using it for a no-confidence motion makes no sense at all, unless Aboriginal demonstrators are to be seen as a major threat!
Eva Cox is in her usual form defending the indefensible. The aboriginal agitators at the tent embassy are so angry because they will not make the necessary adaption to fit into the economic mainstream of Australian society, as a consequence they are socially alienated and forced to live on handouts through Centrelink whilst being continually fed the idea that they are entitled to some massive handout as a consequence of the so-called invasion of Australia by white Europeans.
World history is a series of conquests by stronger groups overtaking weaker groups, and no amount of chest beating or wailing is going to make any difference. Australia was colonised over 200 years ago, and you cannot go back. The terrible excesses of World War II at the hands of the Japanese and Germans and to a lesser extent Italians whilst not forgotten has been substantially forgiven because the current population, seven years later, had no part to play in these excesses. Similarly the average non-indigenous Australian is in the same position, should move on.
Unfortunately aboriginal activists and their caucasian fellow travellers get their rocks off by sowing seeds of deprivation and entitlement, when they should be facilitating integration of so-called indigenous Australians into mainstream society. What is really quite interesting is that a significant component of the genetic background of many so-called indigenous Australians is Western European. One is forced to the inescapable conclusion that aboriginality is a state of mind more than anything else.
The leaders of the so-called indigenous Australian community should be facilitating the education and social development of their children so that they can take a meaningful place in Australian society with appropriate education and training to acquire vocational skills so that they can (and should) work for a living and pay their own way.
Activists like Cox are happy to facilitate the sense of alienation of some indigenous Australians in the pursuit of power. Probably billions of dollars have been spent trying to solve indigenous Australian problem, and after nearly 50 years of advocacy we still have the same mantra of alienation and disadvantage which has traversed several generations. It would be much more appropriate to facilitate education, training and relocations to of urban areas so that at least the children can have a chance of fulfilling social existence as part of a community that looks after itself rather than relying on handouts.
The worst aspect of the current situation is the continued inculcation of a sense of entitlement and disadvantage in indigenous aboriginal community by activists intent on pursuing their own personal goals of agitation and friction rather than integration. If indigenous Australians are not able to adapt and integrated in to a modern Australian economic system, then the aboriginal activists and their fellow travellers are doing their children a gross disservice.
Eva obviously didn’t listen to a word these particular protesters said . It’s patently clear why they’re angry. They’re angry simply because we non-Aboriginals are in their country. We are invaders and they want to return to the idyllic, utopian, affluent life of comfort, prosperity and progress they enjoyed before we arrived. In other words, they’re deluded.
I agree with everything Eva has said. I have lived and worked in Darwin
and the Kimberley for four years now. As an Aboriginal person from Victoria
I chose to have a look for myself at the issue affecting the most marginalised
communities in Australia. There are good things happening in these
communities but only when they are driven by the communities themselve
As an AOD worker in Fitzroy Crossing, I witnessed first hand the hard work
and leadership of the women of the valley as they tackled alcohol abuse
by pushing for full restrictions on take away alcohol which affected not just
the Aboriginal communities but the non Aboriginal communities as well.
My observations in Darwin over the last two years is not one of great
change or improvements in Aboriginal affairs. The intervention is truly
a divisive experiment, which allows racism to be applied blatantly and
publicly. I have witnessed on numerous occassions fellow Aborigines be
humiliated, belittled and treated with such disrespect due only to the fact
they are Aboriginal. So ask yourself this, if you had to face each day wondering
when you are going to be humiliated, put down etc would not you be angry.
I do not agree with injustice but eva cox seems to ramble here and seems stuck on income management.
I also do not agree with people storming a place where brave people who activly serve this coutry where being awarded national emergency services awards in a ceremony. This was a bad move and has damaged the peacful campaign that many have waged for decades. It has rightly been given the negative media coverage that it diserves. I hope those that have aboriginal elders give them a stern talking to.
I have lived in the NT and have worked with Aboriginal people for more than twenty years now. There is much discussion of the Intervention, and very little attention paid to the other major compound factor that simultaneously impacted on Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory – the disbanding of community government Councils and the creation of a handful of super-Shires. The allocation of resources to the Shires has been very uneven, and most of the Shires are struggling to provide the most basic of services to Aboriginal people and communities in the region. For example, one Shire was well-funded to provide youth services in their communities; the neighbouring Shire got nothing, and is juggling scarce resources to try and stretch their limited capacity to provide youth services. Shires by their nature are managed in a top-down way, and Aboriginal “inclusion” in decision making is tokenistic at best. Every major report dealing with Aboriginal issues for the last twenty years has made the same recommendations – and have been met with the same political and organisational indifference or lack of capacity. Plus ca change?