Bennelong Society Conference 2001: From Separatism to Self Respect

Moree's Aboriginal Employment Strategy

Dick Estens

The Aboriginal Employment Strategy began with one of the recommendations of the Royal Commission into Deaths in Custody at the end of the 1980s. Seven Aboriginal employment promotion committees were set up in NSW, including one in Moree. Alice Scott and I, both cotton growers, were on the Moree committee. We met quarterly for two years until we ran out of people attending the meetings. It was then suggested by Janelle Boyd, a young Aboriginal woman, that maybe the cotton industry should look at establishing an Aboriginal employment program. It took from 1992 until November 1996 for a contract to be signed with DEETYA for $112,000, with the cotton industry contributing $10,000, plus set up costs and management. The delays were caused by continual changes in DEETYA staff and the prolonged drought in the Gwydir Valley. The strategy officially started in February 1997 with the employment of Mr Warren Barnes as Coordinator and a young offsider to man the phone. When we started, I did not meet with the Shire Council or any Aboriginal organisations---we just opened the door and went about our business.

We were not sure of what we were doing, let alone what we were in for. The Department could not furnish us with any success stories, nor with a blueprint on how to make large-scale Aboriginal employment successful. Because we were working under the banner of the cotton industry, we decided to adopt a low-key approach for the first 12 months. We did not want publicity for the wrong reasons. From the start, we were determined that the office would be manned and operated by Aboriginal people, and that we most likely would have to train them.

Moree's reputation as a racist town was highlighted by the Freedom Rides during 1965, which centred around Moree's pool. This was followed by the referendum, which removed any Constitutional discrimination against Aborigines. We also had the moving of the Aboriginal community from shanties at the bottom of the Gwydir River into the town. Moree was one of the wealthiest towns in the north-west, with export earnings of nearly $1 billion dollars, and a population of approximately 11,000--12,000 people, of which 25% were Aboriginal. From 1965 to today, Moree as a town has been stalled, with little growth and a negative national image. Few outside businesses look at setting up in town and it has always been a problem attracting professional people: hop in a taxi in Sydney and mention that you are from, or going to, Moree and it will always attract a negative comment---'too many social problems'.

By the mid-1990s, Moree was demanding that the Government should fix its problems. We had a high incidence of crime, in fact we were in the top 50 towns, in 6 out of 8 crime categories. That generated some great headlines in our local paper:

'Fire Bombed'

'Shame List'

'Crime Jobs Link'

From the Police Commissioner: 'We are aware of your problems'

As we were getting the Aboriginal Employment Strategy under way, we even had a Streets Reclaiming Committee formed. At the time we had a visit from the Police Commissioner, Peter Ryan, the Committee were demanding more policing and punishment for the crime. I guess this is this point that I really became committed to the idea that we needed to fix the problem locally. Someone needed to take a lead role---the answer was jobs. We needed to fix problems so that they did not occur again. Wasting taxpayers' money in court costs and trying to gaol more Aborigines was not the answer. It was not their fault that not enough was being done to include them in the community. Aborigines were perceived as being lazy and it was an impossible problem---thus Government had to fix it.

Now, back to the strategy. From a commonsense point of view, I knew we needed to do three things, if we were going to make the program work, become sustainable in the long term, and save Moree:

1. Get Aborigines jobs;
2. Find ways of drawing the Aboriginal community together and building new team leadership---there were five main factions in the Moree Aboriginal community that were pulling it apart;
3. We had to reward the broader community as we gained success; we had to bring our communities closer together, or at least have them respect each other to some degree.

I also knew we needed 'internal' rules:

1. Don't talk about our fellow employees;
2. Don't get into debate about past wrongs (we concentrated on the business plan);
3. Realise that we had to do a good job on mentoring---and doing it constantly.

We also made a conscious decision to use young Aborigines to work in the strategy, because it would be less threatening to local businesses.

From the start, no-one wanted to know us---black or white. Most whites said it was a good idea, but their attitude was 'get the neighbour to employ the Aboriginal'; and Aboriginals did not come, because nothing had worked in the past. We basically had to get Aborigines off the street to fill jobs.

We had some interesting times in the early days. I remember, six months into the program, we had five Aborigines in jobs. One morning, all of them were missing! Our last steering committee meeting had been noticeably short on numbers. I generally thought that we were going to fail---proof was staring us in the face. I could hear people laughing behind my back. By 3 pm that afternoon, Warren Barnes, our manager, had four of them back at the coalface, the mentoring program was working, we were successful and still in business.

When we started, we made a conscious decision to fly the Aboriginal flag together with the cotton symbol from our premises, and for our staff to wear the joint symbols as part of their uniform, with the words 'Working Together' underneath. This approach made some people hesitate but it did have an impact---that flag---'why was the cotton industry getting involved with the Aboriginal community?'. We are known as a 'can do' industry and it had a positive effect on the local community. We encouraged our Aboriginal staff, to be open and honest when dealing with employers. We talk about all the issues which affect Aboriginal employment and the team seeks to get a commitment from the employers to work with the strategy. We offer no guarantees and, in fact, we warn the employer that we may have problems and that we are here to make it work. The key is building relationships. We don't offer Government money for people employing Aborigines. In general, we find that the businesses who ask for financial assistance do so for the wrong reasons. Indeed, 95% of the 450 jobs that we have found are not subsidised by the Government. It is more motivating to the Aboriginal person to know that the employer is not getting subsidised for him or her being there. They are then on an equal footing with other employees.

The 'walkabout' problem is the single biggest issue that gets in the way and is the one that the most focus is placed upon. We try and concentrate on what we call the 'middle third' of the community. It is not about turning over the top third who are making their way quite well through society. Rather, it's about giving the next big group a fair go---it's about getting 2/3 of the community into real jobs and giving them a role within the wider community. Remember, we are mostly working with private businesses who generally operate with 'one man less', so it is important that we do not lose the confidence of our employers. Aboriginal people with drug and alcohol problems, or next to no training, or bad attitudes (the bottom third)---these we tend to recommend to their local CDEP, although, nonetheless, we have used quite a few successfully in casual-type positions. One of the things we try to do is to get the employees of the business involved in the interview process---it is no good having existing employees saying that the boss has gone mad today by employing an Aborigine---the placement is bound to fail without the support of the employer's existing workforce. Psychology is an important part of our program---we do not ask people to change---instead, we create ways in which people will change. If employees help to choose which Aborigine they want to work with, then this builds personal commitment and enhances the chances for success

An interesting point: if an Aboriginal person misses a day's work and we don't expect him to turn up the following day, then he won't. Likewise, if someone drops him home, and if he does not ask about how he is getting to work the next day (which is often the case), you will have him missing again. You constantly have to check on their transport. A great deal of the AES work revolves around transport issues, although we have to be careful about who's seen driving with whom (jealousy arises from simple work issues, with disastrous consequences).

At the end of the first 12 months, approximately 40--50 Aboriginal people had used our services and we had 12 in full-time positions. This was real success, and we promoted it with front page headlines in the Moree Champion: 'Jobs Plan Works'. We now knew it was time to launch the strategy fully. We involved the resources of the cotton industry. We had a great function at the Moree Art Gallery attended by approximately 180 people, including around 50 Aboriginal people, who all gathered at the western end (we worked hard to get their attendance), with the Sydney media in attendance. In short, it was a good day. The Hon. John Herron officially launched the Cotton Growers Aboriginal Employment Strategy in May 1998. Probably one of his greatest successes---the media did not bag him on the event, no high consulting fees were involved!

DEETYA increased our funding to $200,000 and the cotton industry upped theirs to $30,000 per year---which is still being maintained.

Off the back of this publicity, jobs were easier to get. I realised that the media were the key. The smart thinkers in the community were beginning to see where the answers lay. It was possible to fix our own problems. We had a new CEO join Moree Plains Shire Council, Vince Paparo, who took up his position in September 1998. This proved to be an important moment, as, previously, we had been doing it all on our own. We now began to gain Moree Council support. Another key person was Kamilaroi Elder, and Mr Lyall Munro, Chairman of the local ATSIC Regional Council,. Keeping Lyall informed of our progress and having him as a guest speaker at our launch helped keep the community on side. He loved us, he constantly promoted Moree, he nullified the 'radical' side, being an old radical himself. We gave him as much publicity as we could and we still do---he loves it!

I remember, after that event, people said to me 'Gee, Lyall Munro spoke well, he's changed his attitude'. Amazing---no wonder why he was so happy

Moree started to see the answers and elected their first ever Aboriginal Councillor in the elections of September 1998.

In the beginning of 1999 we needed another event to reward the town. We decided to approach the TV program A Current Affair. In March, Ray Martin visited Moree to begin work on a story about the strategy. His visit lasted two days and his visit was one of the few times a reporter visiting Moree was doing a positive story, rather than a media beat-up. We had 44 Aborigines in full-time employment and the local leadership was gaining confidence. It was at about this time that we noticed a lot of anger evaporating from the community. The breaking of windows slowed down. We had a manager and a mentor, plus our junior administration person on the team. In June 1999, we started our fourth employee, Natasha Newman, to concentrate on town businesses.

We also realised that local media are important: good one-liners to attract people's attention are crucial. You need to stop people for a second and make them think---try to capture their attention. Grabs like 'You are better off employing a middle-class black than white trash' are attention-getting!

Our initial contract with DEETYA required us to get jobs only in the cotton industry, but we went through the 'boundary gates' and decided to get jobs wherever we could. Moree had serious problems and we did not want to end up like Walgett and Wilcannia---third world countries. In general, this did not please our main funder, DEETYA, but they went along with us. They saw us as being in competition with their new employment providers and perhaps they thought that they were paying twice---the employment providers claiming on our positions filled. This was never the case. It took DEETYA another couple of years to figure out that their job network providers were not getting very many jobs for Aborigines. One thing I might add: we go out and find jobs. We do not wait for them to arrive; we are constantly working the town and district over.

When we started out, driving licences were a real issue. Not a lot of Aborigines had licences, if any of them did, they were expected to be a taxi service for the community. We worked with the RTA and set up a computer-testing program---this allowed us to start training our clients to obtain licences. The first group went DUI on their L's---we lost another nine months getting them there. It is interesting that, today, licences are no longer an issue. We have trained dozens. The only worry driving around Moree these days is plenty of Murri's with vehicles but not a lot of insurance on board! Another problem is court-imposed fines parked against Aboriginal names at RTA offices. It is nothing for an Aborigine to have up to $2,000 in fines stopping him from getting a licence until paid. How does he hold a job? In regional Australia, he can't, unless he can drive.

In the latter half of 1999, Woolworths opened in Moree, employing 140 people, mainly part-time, including 22 Aborigines through the Strategy. This was a huge event for us. Today, Woolworths have a staff of 80, with 11 Aborigines. The initial problem was that there were too many people and not enough hours---so the staffing was scaled back. They are still one of the best retail outfits to work with. Roger Corbett, CEO of Woolworths visited us last month and was so impressed with the work we are doing that he is sending members of his corporate HR team to visit us on 5 November 2001, which will be followed by our visiting a management meeting in Sydney sometime in the near future. As a result, we hope we can help develop a successful Aboriginal Employment program with Woolworths. We hope we can develop a better result with Woolworths then the Government's has with its Corporate Leaders Program.

The Government, through DEWRSB, have companies such as Coles-Myer, NAB, NRMA, Westpac and McDonald's signed up under their Leaders Program, but they don't seem to be going anywhere. It's not their fault. There are some Aborigines employed, mainly revolving around the top third of the community, but no long-term solutions have been formalised so far to make this Corporate Leaders Program work. The solutions lie with well-trained mentors, who can hit the scene early (within an hour) to facilitate large-scale Aboriginal employment. Aboriginal employment mentors are required to be well-trained, straight talkers and be people who can get to the problem quickly and hold the confidence of both parties Otherwise, private business can be ruthless---each can only handle a maximum of about 30 people. Where available, with the right programs taking no short cuts, jobs can be gained quite quickly for your local Aboriginal community. As jobs are gained, it is important to lift their whole community, otherwise your success cannot be sustained. This requires good contact with local councils and working with other groups and the local media. We have now noticed that Aborigines are a lot better dressed around Moree and that there is less grouping and standing around in the main street. Moreover, when one family member gets a job, you will find that others will follow---peer pressure does work. Pride is being rebuilt and peer pressure in the community is working.

Back to the story. By mid-1999, due to our success, our team were coming under a great deal of pressure from the community. Everyone wanted jobs---more than we could fill. We were accused of only getting jobs for the cousins of the people who worked for us. After living in the area for 50,000 years, I think this was true. In Moree, all Aborigines are related, especially if they have a successful outcome. The community is quick to claim the success, we too have to prove we can live here for 50,000 years. Pull-down was threatening our team, especially after hours, and our employees were coming under intense pressure---people were threatening. Ways had to be found to defend our employees. 'How can I pull this community together', I thought. It seemed that we were going to fail---so a bold decision was made. We decided to back the Boomerangs Rugby League Team, which had been thrown out of their competition. They could not understand why, no-one wanted to help and this really amazed my friends. Working through codes of conduct, training Aboriginal security guards to help manage at football games, consolidating their files, and having team meetings out of the AES office sent a powerful message back to the Aboriginal community: we now had full support, we were starting to get the community to work together. I'm beginning to think that football is their modern day corroboree.

We have now trained 50 Aborigines through security courses. Some of these can be seen at Coles and Woolworths and that sends a powerful message to the greater community of Moree---they know which kids to target and are known by the community as security people. More peer pressure is being exerted by the Aboriginal community on the problem youths. Crime in Moree has now halved, the window-repair man now gets a lot less work, although I still get people stopping me in the main street specifically to tell me about an 'Aboriginal' crime. They frequently ask: 'why do I help them?'

We still needed something with which to reward the community, to drive the town forward---to involve both black and white, to build better social harmony. As it turns out, we got a lucky break with good timing. One of the great partnerships we developed was with Peter Sjoquist and the Croc Festival. Initially, we took 32 Aboriginal kids to Weipa, by bus, to meet with their traditional communities and to attend the Weipa Croc Festival---four days to get there, five days in Weipa, and then four days to get home. The cotton growers in Emerald looked after them on the first night, the RAAF at Townsville the second night, the third night we took the punt and booked them into a motel in Cairns---I don't think we'll get invited back to that motel again (half escaped, the police and our leaders tracked all around Cairns that night, but we managed to find all of them and had them on the bus the next morning heading for Weipa).

We have now run three festivals in Moree, the first in September 1999. It's a bit like the Rock Eisteddfod, but it concentrates on towns with large indigenous communities. Here was the perfect tool for bringing Aboriginal organisations together, and, at the same time, reward Moree with our advances in reconciliation through our employment program and help keep Aboriginal kids at school. Warren Barnes had been working steadily with the Aboriginal Interagency Group as Chairman since the early days---this was part of our program to bring Aboriginal organisations together to try and break down the nepotism and the defence of turf and finance. We needed something that this group could latch on to; we needed an outcome.

The Croc Festival worked. It was noticeable to Moree that this program was helped, run and organised by our local Aboriginal people. It generally involves three months of meetings and planning to run a successful program. Over the three years, we have successfully involved the Aboriginal Interagency Group in an increasing role in its organisation. It sent a powerful message to the larger community: Aboriginals can do something. Once again, with the AES leading the way, we ran a pre-Croc function at the Moree Plains Gallery attended by around 200 people, of which approximately 60 were Aboriginal, still gathered at the western end. At our second Croc Festival in 2000, we had the Prime Minister, the Hon. John Howard in attendance, with quite a few of his Cabinet Ministers. Great national press resulted. Moree's image is changing, especially when the PM discussed our program at the Menzies Institute Series of Lectures during December last year.

We have now just finished our third Croc Festival, with over 300 people attending our Moree Plains Gallery function, including approximately 130 Aborigines (we could have easily had more). This time there were no groups gathering at the western end. Fantastic! When we first ran this program, there were many negative comments. Moree Plains Shire Council were negative, the Mayor asked me 'why do we want this'?. So were some of the school principals---Moree had a long memory from an Aboriginal Knockout Football Carnival held in the early 1980s. Programs that bring communities together, which build commitment, are generally difficult to find, but the Croc Festival has proved to be a fantastic program for Moree. But they won't work unless you have good partnerships involved.

The Government's focus has been on education. Strangely, there are not many Aboriginal employment strategies set up in Australia. You have no hope of keeping Aboriginal kids in high school, if their parents, uncles and aunts do not have jobs---why bother going to high school if you know that you are not going to get a job? A lot of our clients keep coming in-and-out of jobs on a regular basis, but one has to hope that their kids will see their failures and build more commitment to gain career paths. In fact, one of the early positive phone calls I received was from the careers' adviser at Courallie High School, who rang and said 'Dick, your program is working---we are getting more kids talking about career paths'.

One of the great tragedies is the loss of family structures within Aboriginal communities---broken relationships lead to a lot of job losses for Aboriginal people who have otherwise been employed successfully for up to 12 months. More commitment is needed to highlight the importance of family structures. The Ministers Fraternal in our towns and cities also need to get more involved. How many Aboriginal weddings do you see? Another one of my favourite one-liners: 'Too many funerals, not enough weddings'. People simply do not realise that the destruction of the Aboriginal community was created by us. If 2/3 of non-Aboriginal Australians were unemployed, we too would be a third world country! We need more partnerships and more of our business leaders involved and we still battle with our local Chamber of Commerce. We managed to get an Aboriginal person on their Board last year and we are gradually getting the Chamber to focus on the community more than themselves. We still do not have many Aborigines employed in the main street---our public face---but we're still working on it.

It is important to build local role models. Last year, we sent two trainee Aboriginal cotton classers to America for two months to complete their courses. QANTAS sponsored their travel, whilst DEWRSB and the cotton industry helped them through. This attracted a great deal of media attention in the north-west and was extremely positive for young Aboriginal people. Both of them are still employed in the cotton industry, one with Dunavant Enterprises and the other with Namoi Cotton (which is presently classing cotton in central Asia somewhere, Turkey or Ubekistan, I think---amazing that they are now helping to decide how much money I get paid!)

During the Prime Minister's visit we launched the logo 'Moree leading the way in Reconciliation' ending in the words 'Yaama' (Kamilaroi for welcome). A large sign stands at the southern entrance to Moree. This caused much comment, both positive and negative, and it certainly attracted media attention. We mainly did this to keep peer pressure on the community and to help change Moree's image nationally, again psychology is important. One of the Moree Plains Shire Councillor's asked me if they allowed us to do it, would we get a guarantee from the Aboriginal community they would behave? Some people are just slow learners.

I've learnt that you can light a fire under a community. People say 'what can I do, my voice won't be heard?'. This is a negative attitude, one person can make a difference.

By June 2000, our program was coming to a close, our three years were up. We had placed Aborigines in over 320 jobs and still had 100 in employment. And that's not counting those who were now getting jobs themselves, and what the employment providers were achieving off the back of our promotion. DEWRSB, our funding body, were most likely happy to see us go. As Peter Reith had said to me, the employment providers were contracted to do the work, because that is what they are contracted to do. They will get Aborigines jobs. We can not keep funding you guys. Thank heavens for the Prime Minister's visit and the positive media coverage it generated---it kept pressure on the public servants' arms to keep us alive. Employment providers have no hope---specialised programs are needed to do this---and it is crucial that Aboriginal mentors are involved. CDEP's in the future will do a better job on Aboriginal employment---providing that they have good training and we can lift their performance in the next few years. Unfortunately, most are going nowhere, including the one in Moree---with which we have constantly tried to build a partnership. In their last budget, the Government allocated $31 million for CDEP's for job placements in the future---it will take another 10 to 50 years for this to work. Other methods need to be found, such as establishing Aboriginal Employment Strategies in partnership with industries and businesses to change Aboriginal unemployment quickly.

To give you an idea: it cost around $330,000 to run our program. It is costing around $2,500 per placement, which can last for a week to in excess of 12 months. 65% of our placements are potentially full-time placements. From 120 placements, generally we get around 40 surviving 13 weeks and 30 surviving 26 weeks. From the first 320 placements we filled, 31 survived longer than 12 months. There were another 30 between 9--12 months and something like 40 between 6--9 months.

We now have Tony Abbott as our funding Minister. He spent a day with us along with his senior public servants in July. An independent report has now been finalised by Reconciliation Australia with recommendations to the Department of Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business. Attitudes in the public service are changing, and it seems that they are learning from us. Mentors are increasingly seen as the important part of our success, and are being used elsewhere. Likewise, the partnership with the cotton industry has had a powerful effect. Last month, the industry handed the strategy to the Aboriginal community, to be managed by our 'all conquering' Aboriginal Interagency, mostly young 33-year olds, who this year ran a fantastic NARDOC week program running day and night for six days. It now has a board of eleven, of which a minimum of six must be Aboriginal. They are now having a close look at their CDEP. They do not get paid, nor do they want to be paid as a Director of the AES. Our programs have worked; we are now building good, solid sustainable leadership in the Aboriginal community by the young, who are successfully managing programs. The leadership of the strategy has changed, but the partnership continues. To be able to achieve all of this in under five years has been fantastic.

I guess I can sum up the success of our program in six words: 'Partnerships, Partnerships, Partnerships, Mentors, Mentors, Mentors'. It has been a tremendously rewarding program, to help change a community and save families. It gives one immense pride. To help change Australia is an even bigger challenge.