This article first appeared in The Australian Financial Review, 31 March 2003

Aborigines Need Economic Assimilation

Hon. Peter Howson

Earlier this month police confirmed that a child whose remains were found near a settlement of Aborigines established five kilometres from Dareton on the NSW--Victorian border came from that community. Other reports indicate that the community is one where houses and infrastructure have been trashed and where lawlessness and domestic violence are rampant.

When established in the 1990s, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission proclaimed the 20 modern homes replacing the shanties as a model for improving the living conditions of modern Aborigines.

Unfortunately Dareton is not alone: a similar story about living conditions in separate Aboriginal communities exists elsewhere.

While ATSIC policies have contributed to this situation, the basic need is to recognise the serious problems in the more remote communities around Australia and to change the mistaken separatist policies of the past.

In reality, most such separate communities are so small, and have so few employment opportunities, that they do not provide sustainable living conditions. The Australian Bureau of Statistics report in 2001 on Housing and Infrastructure in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Communities revealed that, of the 1216 remote communities (with a total population of 121,600), 889 had typical populations of only 15 and another 327 had populations typically less than 300 people.

Although this report shows remote communities as generally having housing and other public facilities not dissimilar to those elsewhere, more than 30 per cent of dwellings managed by indigenous housing organisations need major repair each year; annual maintenance expenditure per dwelling is high; more than one third of communities experience water restrictions each year, mostly due to equipment breakdowns; and nearly half of larger communities experience annual problems with sewerage systems. In short, publicly provided facilities are badly maintained---and maintenance depends heavily on employing non-indigenous labour and managers.

The limited extent of the job market is particularly relevant for the many young males whose traditional role in the society has largely disappeared.

Should the Government continue to provide extensive services that encourage Aborigines to stay in communities where limited employment opportunities are available? Of course, some may wish to continue living there. But the more that facilities and welfare---'sit down money'---are provided, the less inclined will residents be to make the integrationist moves that provide improved life styles and health.

If Aborigines are encouraged to move to where employment is more available, and where the law is enforced, they will more likely find jobs and live longer and more happily. Measures of assistance, such as the provision of larger housing and employment subsidies in more populated areas, and higher subsidies for educating children outside remoter communities, could be enormously helpful.

Similarly, the economic activities of Aborigines in remoter communities should not be confined to communal land. A major reform is needed to the basis on which land is useable for economic purposes. Greater opportunities for individual Aborigines to hold land, and operate small businesses themselves, would be a big step forward.

It is remarkable that since the 1970s historians and other well-meaning academics have condemned Aboriginal assimilation into the mainstream and urged the same policies of segregation that were such an abject failure in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

In The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Keith Windschuttle has exposed the failure of most orthodox historians to give an accurate interpretation of the history of relations between indigenes and non-indigenes in colonial Tasmania. His analysis of the establishment in the 1830s of a government-funded separate community of Aborigines on Flinders Island is particularly relevant. As he points out, this concept of physically separating Aboriginal people from British colonists, in order to "civilize them", provided a model that was followed by both colonial and state governments for the next 150 years.

The separation experiment on Flinders Island was an utter failure, ending with the death of all the Aborigines within 30 years from disease and boredom. It is about time we learned from history.