This article first appeared in The Australian, 11 October 2006

What is to become of Aborigines forced to move

Hon. Gary Johns

Slowly, if unsurely, the pieces of Aboriginal policy are falling into place. The permit system in discrete Aboriginal settlements is to be removed. Land on collective title in the Northern Territory will be more readily converted to individual ownership. Social security obligations are being reimposed in remote areas. Community Development Employment Projects are being abolished in all but remote areas and substantially reformed there.

There is also revision in the received wisdom of the findings from the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody.

Some Aborigines who died in custody were fostered (stolen was the propaganda of the time), but all were school dropouts.

The possibility of delivering education outcomes in remote communities is also being questioned.

Slowly the policy and propaganda props to the collectivisation of Aborigines are being kicked away.

But where is it all leading? This is the question Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough must answer soon. The reason he must do so is that the changes will spark a move away from remote communities. Those people will create problems at the fringes of towns in northern Australia and government must be prepared. Those whose livelihood is invested in controlling such communities will blame the Government for any adverse outcomes. And there will be adverse outcomes. There is more heartache to come.

The Australian National University's Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research director Jon Altman has expressed concern about the recent turn of events.

"Worryingly, while concern is widely expressed about the economic viability of out-stations, the very basis for their limited dependence---flexible CDEP income support and remote area exemptions in relation to welfare payments---is being dismantled. More viable economic alternatives are not in place. There is a real danger that in seeking imagined economic independence, new government policy will reinvent the extreme dependence that many of today's out-station residents experienced at townships in the 1960s and chose to leave in the 1970s."

Altman's warning must be taken seriously. Not so seriously, however, as to embrace the alternative economy he envisages: "a future as a successful artist or hunter or land manager dependent on indigenous knowledge and on-country education".

Aborigines should not suffer from the prejudice of low expectations. Aboriginal children can be teachers, mechanics, insurance salesmen and accountants. To do so they must move. Unemployment levels in remote communities approach 70 per cent. Unemployment levels in regional centres and cities are nearer 20 per cent and declining. Whether for employment or training, people will have to move.

Moving will not be easy, nor will it be possible or sensible for all. But mobility will be a big part of the structural adjustment story in remote Aboriginal society.

Aborigines have proved to be mobile. They may be attached to customary lands, but they have no difficulty leaving them, often for non-work purposes. This is not particularly surprising given that pensions and royalty payments are transferable electronically and, with better transport, access to remote areas has increased significantly.

It is also clear that people move to other places to use the resources of kin (that is, bot from their family). In other words, governments are funding a recreational lifestyle for a leisured class.

Mobility may be a key to independence. Indeed, despite all of the difficulties encountered by migrants, including prejudice in the labour market, migration has traditionally served the purpose of economic independence. In the NT, for example, despite strong growth in output and employment in the past decade, the position of Aborigines in the labour market has worsened. The only growth in Aboriginal employment has been in CDEP.

The outcomes from the experiments in changing people's behaviour within their communities have been dismal.

The Shared Responsibility Agreements and Regional Partnership Agreements have started the dialogue of changing behaviour, but as a practical exercise they fail because they are structured as collective agreements. Collective agreements in the context of Aboriginal culture will not stick. They are unlikely to change behaviour.

Noel Pearson has come to recognise this fact. His ideas (and La Trobe historian John Hirst's) to reassert the discipline of the mission days, with magistrates and elders imposing rules on recalcitrant families, may be a useful device in preparing people for change. Let us hope so.

The second generation of reciprocation policies is more powerful. Abolishing Remote Area Exemptions for beneficiaries, abolishing CDEP in all but remote regions, and changing the time that a candidate can remain on CDEP in remote areas will change individuals.

Patterns of mobility are likely to become labour related rather than kin related. The pattern of shifting from place to place for mainly kin and recreational purposes will begin to break up. Governments will need to assess the magnitude, characteristics, source and destination of such movement if they are to make good the out-migration.

The challenge for government is to stop funding programs that militate against the migratory solution. The challenge is to manage those who are neither eligible for work nor school; in other words, those who fall outside of the main institutional arrangements for socialisation. In looking after those who fail to benefit from the change-of-behaviour regime, government will have to be careful not to make investments that inhibit the ongoing migratory trend.

The Government has begun to stop supporting a recreational lifestyle in the name of preserving a culture. The extent to which Aborigines from remote regions will be more akin to refugees than migrants will be a measure of the difficulty of their adjustment to new circumstances. Fortunately, Australia has vast experience in catering for both.

The hope that out-stations and other remote settlements would provide stable environments and meaningful lives is one that appears to be without foundation. Economics is making a comeback in Aboriginal policy. Its beneficial impact will be enhanced when the minister outlines the plan for the future.