Bennelong Society Conference 2002: Celebrating Integration

Indigenous Policies for the Future

Bob Beadman

The experts advise us never to discuss sex, politics or religion. How Indigenous Affairs has never been put at the head of the list remains a mystery. Without a doubt, a far greater number of people purport to have the answers in this field than in any of the others.

The very topic of this Conference, Celebrating Integration, of itself will excite the passionate. Assimilation, Integration, Self Determination, Self Management, have all had their day, and things continue to get worse. Sure, there are more houses, and better water supplies, and so on, indicating progress, but the quality of the social fabric is the acid test, and I wish someone could convince me that this is getting better. My own view is that if the Conference theme envisages Indigenous peoples being forcibly salt and peppered through the serried rows of the urban sprawl then I will oppose it every inch (millimetre) of the way. On the other hand, just about every set of programme performance indicators I have seen targets equality with the wider community as the objective (the Programme Managers would be vilified if any lesser objective were proposed, wouldn't they?). So is such an objective really integration? If all programmes achieved their objective, then I could accept this sort of integration. So it seems all programmes of assistance that seek to achieve equality are integrationist, or assimilationist anyway, and I have always wondered why people expend energy on this argument. The equipping of people to hold their own in the wider society has always been the aim, rather than the obliteration of cultural identity as sometimes claimed by some.

Indigenous Policy is the greatest minefield of them all, so what is someone who crossed that field, when I recently retired in December 2001, doing back in the middle of it? Very good question. One of my early responses to the invitation to speak here was that ' I am now retired and can do without the aggravation', to which Peter Howson (and others) cleverly suggested that perhaps there is something unique in my collected experiences, and that I have a duty to share them. So I do this out of a concern that my commentary might contribute in some small way to better, more pragmatic policy, and less feel-good, over-lenient, 'something for nothing' (thanks Noel Pearson) programmes that seem to convey a sense of guilt about them and take on a faulty form of reparation. I am also motivated by a belief that there are encouraging signs that Welfare has bottomed out, and that people are looking around for help to shed the welfare shackles.

But first I want to take out some indemnity insurance. I hope nobody will find anything in this paper of a party political nature. I have worked for them all, and have been critical of them all, and I now have no inhibitions. In the past, I have felt at times that I may have pushed the envelope a bit far, but I got away with it, perhaps because there may have been a ring of truth in whatever it was I was saying, and it would be a bit tough to get shot for that. And I hope nobody will interpret this paper as a criticism of Indigenous peoples, or some tawdry attempt to blame the victim. Rather, the opposite is the case. I haven't spent almost thirty years in the game to try that on in retirement. I regret that things haven't turned out for the better, and I am still opinionated enough to strive for improvement. My remarks may be construed as disappointment that Indigenous people exploit loopholes and go for the soft option. No, I am not naïve. I am also disappointed that this is fundamentally the human condition, and politicians, lawyers and millionaires are very adept at it. In the case of Indigenous peoples I mean people have opted for welfare benefits, and the chooks, fishing, sawmills, orchards, bakeries and so on have been abandoned. I will elaborate later.

I should also pre-empt the critics by saying that I know there are exceptions to the generalities in this paper. There always are, fortunately. They keep us going.

Finally, these views have been honed in the Northern Territory, about the Northern Territory, and I have no recent experience in the States. So this paper is about the Northern Territory. I leave it to others to consider whether my remarks are relevant elsewhere. For my own part I have taken some interest in developments on Cape York.

Now to the chase.

Have Governments Failed Aborigines?

This was the title to my Foreword to the 1997/1998 Annual Report of the Office of Aboriginal Development to the Minister. I went on to develop the case for the affirmative, but not for the reasons of neglect as are so regularly claimed, but rather because of the unintended effects of well-intentioned policies. Policies which I must say, if we were confronted with the same set of circumstances again, we would make again. Such is the difficulty. What policies? Decisions? I will outline the key ones:

• Award Wages for Aboriginal stockmen in the pastoral industry. About 1966 the Arbitration Commission determined that Award Wages would be phased in over a three-year period. I seem to recall figures of about 7 pounds, 10 shillings for white stockmen ($15), and 3 pounds for Aborigines ($6). During the hearing the pastoralists warned that the same number of stockmen would not be able to be maintained on the payroll, and that they would not be able to continue the support of the non-working Aborigines in station camps. (The situation was exacerbated with the advent of
• Mechanisation, with motorbikes, rotary and fixed-wing aircraft being used in mustering, and the development of beef roads allowing the operation of road trains to displace droving.
• The 1967 Referendum removed the obstacle to the Commonwealth legislating on behalf of Indigenous peoples (and also allowed them to be included in the Census) leading to the enactment of the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act 1984, and the Native Title Act 1993, amongst others.
• 1973 saw the cessation of a programme where all able-bodied people in remote communities in the Northern Territory were employed and paid a 'training allowance'. Queensland had a similar programme with the added feature of the authorities taking control of people's wages, which is haunting the Government as we speak.
• Around the same time (and in most cases as a replacement) welfare benefits began to flow freely with the work test not being seriously applied (if at all), or any other smidgeon of mutual obligation attaching.
• In 1972 The Commonwealth Government created the Department of Aboriginal Affairs, and variously the Aboriginal Loans Commission, the Aboriginal Land Fund Commission, the Aboriginal Development Commission, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commercial Development Corporation, the Indigenous Land Corporation, Indigenous Business Australia, Aboriginal Hostels Pty Ltd, the National Native Title Tribunal, the National Aboriginal Consultative Council, the National Aboriginal Conference, and so on. Massive sums of money have been appropriated over the last thirty years to support these bodies, and the programmes administered by them. These programmes in turn supported the creation of thousands of Indigenous organisations around Australia---created for the prime purpose of establishing a parallel, separate stream for the delivery of services of every kind.
• Also in 1973, the more interventionist or authoritative approach of Government officers or Missions managing remote communities was abandoned, virtually overnight, in favour of elected councils of community representatives taking on the responsibility.
• Throughout the 1970s, the policy guidelines for the myriad of programmes created to spend the rapidly increasing flow of funds, invariably required Indigenous peoples to incorporate as community-wide organisations, or communes if you like, to be eligible for grants.
• During 1978 the first inalienable freehold titles to land under the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act were delivered to Land Trusts, leading to the present-day situation where about 54% of the Territory has been granted or under claim (including 84% of the coastline), and royalties from mining on Aboriginal land continue to flow (is this income flow also 'something for nothing'?).

The Native Title Act is another issue, which I will skirt in this paper, in order to finish it!

As I said, I believe these decisions were made with the best of intentions, designed to correct the wrongs of the past, to remove the last vestiges of institutional racism.

A big decade indeed.

I turn now to the reasons why things have not turned out as well as hoped.

What Has Gone Wrong?

I mentioned the sweeping changes that award wages, mechanised mustering and road trains bought to the pastoral industry. Add now the Brucellosis and Tuberculosis Eradication Programmes that soon followed. All of these developments impacted dramatically on Aborigines, causing an exodus from their ancestral lands to a life of fringe dwellers on townships, unemployment benefits, ready access to alcohol, and inadequate housing (for the most part, none).

The impacts on townships have been significant, too, with almost every set of social statistics painting a pretty morbid picture. They continue to this day, with each major political party well tuned to the need to convince the electorate that they are the toughest on crime. It is a daily issue in the Northern Territory media, as is mandatory sentencing, incarceration rates, and so on. As I write this, the Minister for Central Australia, and Minister for Justice the Hon. Peter Toyne, was quoted in the Northern Territory News on 7 June 2002 as saying that alcohol abuse and anti-social behaviour had turned the Alice Springs Hospital accident and emergency department into a war zone, and that he staked his political career on correcting things in 12 months.

I should take a minute to correct some myths about mandatory sentencing. The very same edition of this newspaper carried a story about youth offenders, and how 2,196 cases of juvenile crime had been dealt with in the previous 12 months. Seventy per cent of the cases involved offenders under the age of 17, only 659 of which progressed to the courts. The rest were diverted and dealt with by oral or written cautions, victim/offender conferencing, family counselling, and life skills programmes. Nevertheless, offending rates are too high, and sadly there is evidence that a term of imprisonment is seen as a rite of passage into adulthood for some youths from dysfunctional communities or families.

Of course, not all of the contributors to this sad end were happily employed on below-award wages over 30 years ago, but remember, I am trying to talk about the cumulative effect of a decade of major change.

The replacement of the Training Allowance Scheme with the free availability of welfare benefits led to more unemployment, and amazement on the part of Aborigines that the Government preferred to pay them to do nothing, hence the coining of the term 'sit down money'. I have heard Senator Herron describing this term as having its origins in the Kimberley. Perhaps he is right. Perhaps I am. More likely still is the possibility it was coined in many regions simultaneously, such was the level of amazement.

Until this time, most small remote communities were self-sufficient in many of their staples, thus avoiding the high cost of importation, whilst creating constructive, character-building, prideful activity for the inhabitants, preparing them well for the brutal, inevitable, confrontation with the wider society. I have heard all of the arguments about how the harsh climate, distance from markets, lack of training and so on, all militate against the viability of enterprises in such locations. But who is talking about economic viability? Not me. I'm talking about import substitution and restoring pride and self-esteem. I'm talking about an active involvement in the real economy, and abandonment of the 'something for nothing' economy.

Until this time, we could find tanneries, brick-making, chooks, orchards, market gardening, fishing, cattle, goats, bakeries, sawmills, oysters---all creating wealth. We need them all back, as well as further measures. I will devote more time to this later.

Grants to community-wide incorporated organisations. Notwithstanding the evidence from around the world that the communal approach was failing (sure, the spectacular collapse of the USSR came later), and the evidence that there was no such thing as pan-Aboriginality, the communal approach was foisted on Aborigines, as was the Western democratic model of governance. The Pitjantjatjara, say, were never going to share beyond extended family groups to other skin groups, let alone other communities, and they are an unusually cohesive group in the remote area of the NT, SA, and WA borders with minimal (in comparison) impact to their traditional lives. It is an absurdity to think for a minute that such a level of mutual caring and sharing might work in, say, Maningrida, where there is a mix of tribal groups all living on another group's traditional land. No, what we have created is the lowest common denominator effect---one person is not going to labour in the burning sun if they are required to share the fruits of their labour with the person sitting under a shady tree with his/her ankles crossed. What happens in that situation is you end up with two people sitting under a tree and the work doesn't get done.

On the issue of governance, not only was responsibility transferred to elected councils with little preparation and indecent haste, the tension between traditional owners and the Aboriginal migrants to the townships that had been built on traditional land without proper consultation, continued unaddressed. The migrants were generally more numerous than the traditional owners, so the Western democratic model could produce anomalous outcomes in Aboriginal terms. It needn't be so, given that councils deliver services on the ground, and that traditional owners are more concerned with the ground, but inadequate attention has been given to this point until relatively recently.

Then there is the problem of the most remote Councils, and consequently the most likely to be the least equipped, having to take on a range of responsibilities that far and away exceed those of the Territory's biggest council, the Darwin City Council. I will elaborate on this point in the next section.

The delivery of land rights following the disappointment of the Gurindji walk-off from Wave Hill Station, and the Gove bauxite mining case (and clearly a response to those embarrassments) produced some dramatic and emotional responses. After decades, even a century, of being confined to reserves, denied access to townships after dark, denied the right to marry the person of their choosing, being told they had no rights in relation to land, that the Government even owned the Aboriginal Reserves, Aboriginal people, not surprisingly, became quite proprietorial on being delivered the titles to the land, leading to the exclusion of others.

The inalienable title was designed to preserve the land for future generations, after the experience in North America---a fine goal. Unfortunately, it complicates the raising of venture capital in as much as the root title of the land cannot be mortgaged. Coupled with the title being a communal title vested in Land Trusts requiring wider consultation, and the proprietorial disposition of landowners, a perception has been developed that an iron curtain has been erected around Aboriginal land. Of course it need not be so. I understand that London, for example, is built on leasehold land, and most of the commerce of the world is conducted on the security of long-term leases. I cannot see the difference between a 99-year lease over Aboriginal land, and a 99-year lease over Crown land. If Aborigines are going to move on from being dirt poor, but land rich, it is time to put some concerted effort into demolishing the perception and derive some wealth from their asset base.

But the real negative of land rights is the separation that follows. There were, no doubt, solid grounds for giving traditional Aborigines sanctuary from the worst elements of the encroaching society, whether in the form of pastoralists, miners, or even servicemen in World War II. I think these were the reasons behind the creation of the reserves. Decent reasons. Not the nonsense one hears about herding Aborigines away to the inhospitable corners. It is also true, though, that by the time the Aboriginal Reserves were being created, the more productive land had already been granted to pastoralists. But back to the point. This separatism, or closed communities, also meant that the normal migration of businesses in their myriad forms, from a windscreen replacement workshop, to a hairdressing salon, to a hamburger joint, and their multiplier effect, and employment and training spin-offs, have been denied Aboriginal communities. So has the normal establishment of Government offices (with the exception of Police, education and health), leaving the Community Council taking on an incredibly wide range of functions. Let me repeat---the most remote, least equipped, Council has to take on the widest range of functions. Entry to Aboriginal land (and Communities) is controlled by a permit system to this day.

Let me summarise these thoughts quite brutally. We have ignored traditional land-holding arrangements in setting up remote townships, encouraged Aboriginal migration to those towns built on someone else's land, constrained those townships from benefiting from business migration, outlawed the mortgaging of Aboriginal land in seeking to raise commercial loans, made it virtually impossible for enterprising individuals to rise above the pack, caused deep resentment amongst traditional owners, and then expected Community Government Councils to correct all of the above while taking on a range of responsibility that exceeds that of the Brisbane City Council.

The Compounding Consequences

The social outcomes have been tragic. Life expectancy, educational attainment, substance abuse, health status, unemployment levels, incarceration rates, homicides, youth suicides, family violence, and the rest remain intractably depressing. Too depressing and extensive for me to try and cover them all here with current statistics.

There are many reasons why this is so. The social commentators in the main have generally been bluffed out of doing any incisive investigative journalism in the area. Government agencies, in their glossy publications, deal selectively with the performance indicators for the myriad of their programmes in order to paint the most positive picture. An example might be reporting on a greater number of Indigenous students in tertiary institutions whilst managing to omit any reference to the appalling attendance rates in remote community schools, or the fact that the attainment rate of kids leaving at the end of their schooling is equivalent to 8-year-old kids in the cities.

And we tend to be suckers for the red herring, and be easily distracted. For example, how about the resources that went into the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, when, on the figures I have seen, such Aboriginal deaths were statistically no greater than for non-Aboriginal (although incarceration rates certainly were greater). Or this:

• Aboriginal Deaths in Custody: 0.6 per 100,000
• Aboriginal on Aboriginal Homicide: 11 per 100,000
• Road Trauma: 25 per 100,000

I will not agree that the circumstances of Aborigines can be likened to Third World Countries either. There is no welfare net in those countries, or education, health and police services laid on, or public housing. Indeed, there is something awfully poignant about recently arrived Vietnamese immigrants constructing remote-area housing, while local Aboriginal people, the prospective tenants, remain on welfare benefits.

The sad fact is that these negative social indicators are all connected. A person in gaol is more likely to have a poor education and employment record. Or a person with poor housing is more likely to have poor health. And so on. The Office of Aboriginal Development coined the phrase The Recursive Loop to describe the situation. Unfortunately, worldwide, this seems to be the common lot of welfare recipients.

The Desperate Need for New Thinking

I may have plagiarised Noel Pearson here with this title (and probably elsewhere too), and, if so, I acknowledge him now.

Can this situation be turned around? Of course it can, but it will now take time. The last 30 years have taken a terrible toll, with the current generation of young adults less literate and numerate than their parents, and a lifetime of dependency as their role model, and the resultant loss of self-esteem seared into the psyche of people.

About three years ago, a new Federal Minister asked me whether there was a simple but explosive measure that might be taken to set a new direction. I said, "Yes. Apply the work test to the payment of unemployment benefits". (Or whatever new name)

Let me now turn back to The Recursive Loop. If the Loop has a starting point, or perhaps is drawn together by a knot, that point must be the point at which a person becomes dependent on welfare. The knot, then, must be the starting point of corrective action. I strongly believe that welfare is a curse. Necessary, and unavoidable, but a curse. No wealthy, caring, nation could not put out a net for the less fortunate---but I think in many cases we have put out hammocks. A curse because, once entrapped, world experience suggests that the downwards-social spiral is rapid.

How do we unpick the knot?

The Commonwealth's overdue attempts at Welfare Reform are the key; the reduction in the multiplicity of allowances, while at the same time tightening eligibility criteria. Senator Newman tellingly described mutual obligation as "Doing something in return for what your neighbour provides". And it is the neighbour, not the Government, and as one Aboriginal spokesman said a few years ago now "The goodwill has dissipated. If the Referendum held in 1967 was held in 1997 it would have failed". The Welfare Reform measures were reinforced by the Treasurer's announcements in the 2001/2002 Budget of a further strengthening in the requirement to maintain job search diaries, to apply for a requisite number of positions, and attend interviews, periodically to assess progress, and to determine any training or retraining needs. If you have been unemployed for 6 months, you are now required to do an approved activity for the dole. No longer is it possible (as it has always been in the bush, if not on the surfing circuit) to continue to draw benefits forever with little effort on the part of the recipient.

First, if a simple, but similar in intent, set of measures is not quickly designed for the bush, that would not be compassion, but neglect. You can't have the same measures as in the cities because out there in the bush in the Northern Territory it is not a simple matter of turning to the employment section in the weekend newspapers and circling some likely-looking advertisements. In the bush, employment will take on different forms, like employment by the Community Government Council. Why should locals continue to draw welfare benefits when the available employment, like school cleaning, or janitor, road maintenance, house construction and maintenance and so on, is taken by white people from elsewhere? One study has shown that only 4% of remote contract work is taken up by local people. There are many complex reasons for this, but should one of them continue to be simply one of personal choice?

Don't be fooled either by the gloss of the Community Development Employment Projects scheme administered by ATSIC. At one level, it is a marvellous scheme where, for well over 20 years, Aborigines have shouldered the burden of mutual obligation and worked for the equivalent of the dole. At another level, the scheme shrouds the truth about the real levels of unemployment, and consequently leads to a diminished effort to find more enduring solutions. I mean the costs are in ATSIC's budget, and not those of the Department of Family and Community Services, and are therefore not a 'welfare cost'. And nor are CDEP participants categorised as 'unemployed', so that statistics can be very misleading. The CDEP scheme is ATSIC's largest cost item, and as its cost exceeds significantly the cost of the alternative 'welfare' approach, it cannot be an end in itself.

I believe it would be useful to try and map community employment profiles over the last 30 years, say for the years 1970, 1980, 1990, and 2000, to try to show:

• Nature of position/work
• Employing organisation
• Full- or part-time work
• Whether filled by a local or an outsider
• Number of positions in category
• Community or government
• Qualifications required
• Amount of training carried out
• Details of succession plan in place over the entire period.

A skills audit of the community members should be attempted at the same time. How often have you heard, variously, that 'Aborigines are not skilled up to the task', and then the contradictory remark 'that if the payment of training subsidies over the years is anything to go on, then Aborigines must be the most trained people on earth'? My own experience is that of regular surprise about the extensive work histories of older people, both in the range of work they have undertaken in their lives, and the amazing geographic scope of that work. I think they must inwardly smile about the earnestness of the passing parade of public servants all trying to make their mark.

Second, an attempt might be made at the same time to identify all of those small-scale enterprises that once existed, and ascertain why they failed. We know that the availability of welfare benefits is a strong contributor, but if there are other easily identifiable reasons, they could be factored into solutions. Again, the delicate question arises whether people should be permitted to simply down tools and draw welfare benefits instead. When collecting these thoughts on 11 June 2002 I read, as usual, Peter Forrest's excellent weekly story in the Northern Territory News 'Looking at our History The way we were'. The article was about the Australia Day Honours conferred on missionaries Ruth and Russell Beazley, who worked throughout Arnhemland from the 1940s to the 1970s. Peter quoted Russell, and I repeat the passage here:

The boys were taught farming. We used horses in those days, no tractors. Fruit like coconuts, paw paws, bananas, pineapples, custard apples, sweet potatoes, cassava, peanuts and mangos were very successfully grown. We had a beef cattle herd too. We used to fell timber on the mainland and the island had a sawmill to mill the cypress pine, which was in demand... The older girls used to look after the smaller children, and bake and do the housework, and shepherd and milk the goats. And school was a part of everyday life for them all ... We were milling timber for all the mission stations, building staff and Aboriginal housing, schools, hospitals and clinics. Any surplus timber was exported to Darwin. Many houses built in Darwin in the 1950s and 1960s feature characterful floors of cypress pine.

Third, is the issue of contracting, whether it be roads construction/maintenance, house construction/maintenance, school or health clinic or police station building or maintenance work. I am not criticizing the current contractors by any means. I applaud them, and their preparedness to seek out work in remote, hard places. But turning back to Senator Newman's words, can the nation afford an outside contractor, with higher overheads like relocation costs, doing the work at a higher price, and also pay welfare benefits to the locals? Doesn't this mean that the taxpayer is getting stung twice? Is it beyond the wit of Governments to devise a scheme of Procurement Guidelines which required that the work go to a local contractor, provided the extra costs involved were not greater than the savings to the Commonwealth of the welfare benefits of those that had moved from dependency into work? As things stand, each of the States could be expected to resist a scheme where they spend more on contracts in order to achieve savings for the Commonwealth on welfare outlays.

A modified set of mutual obligation principles for the bush could have the following features:

• Connecting the availability of community employment and training opportunities to job search allowances with a view to increasing the local take-up rate of jobs
• Grubstaking the revival of small-scale enterprises like fishing, bakery, and vegetable gardens. The emphasis should move away from economic viability to import substitution. If the economic rationalists insist on economic viability, then I insist that all costs be factored in, including the onwards payment of welfare payments and the attendant social costs of that!
• All Governments paying serious attention to Procurement Guidelines to accommodate some higher costs in local take-up rate of contracts to the level, say, of the Commonwealth funding the States 50% of the saved welfare outlays
• Governments making it a condition of grant that those funds for new houses and house maintenance in remote communities are expended through local building teams only.

Some Other Suggestions

A few years ago, a regional development study for Central Australia produced a report titled ALICE IN 10, which attempted to focus minds on the development opportunities that abound, but don't emerge until you unfocus your eyes and stare at the landscape for awhile. In an attempt to address some of the social negatives in the town, a suggestion was made that the Commonwealth consider making welfare payments available only at the beneficiary's home community. The idea was that the fringe dwelling and anti-social behaviour problem in Alice Springs would be relieved, a boost given to the economies of remote communities, the recipients removed from harm, and their dependants better off. The social libertarians howled in chorus.

In my monthly Departmental newsletter at the time, I tried to give the debate an electric prod. I proposed doing a study on who the clients of the protective custody shelters were, whether there were repeat offenders going around in a revolving door so to speak, where they were from, whether they had family responsibilities back home, if so whether the extended family needed to stretch their meagre income further to accommodate neglected wives and children, whether Centrelink splits payments between the male, and mother and the kids, and if so the extent of this practice, whether the person's peers knew what their countryman was up to. (On revisiting this issue, I now think it would be useful to also make enquiry about the extent of embarrassment and resentment amongst Aborigines who are permanent residents of the town). I did this because preliminary work had shown that 80% of protective custody placements were people who normally resided in communities outside Alice Springs. Let me put a scale on this. Around 20,000 were taken into protective custody for the year to April 1999 (perhaps the figure has since dropped). I said that a welfare net that provided grog for one member of a family, but nothing for the other members, is not a net at all. As I said earlier, you cannot simply process a payment and then pay no attention to whether the measure is hitting the target. If anyone wants to introduce the human rights argument here, let them first tell me what they believe the rights of mum and the kids to be!

Some remote Aboriginal communities themselves have come up with a novel suggestion, that payment of Family Allowance be tied to school attendance. It is this sort of response that rekindles my hope for the future, and another reason why I take on the aggravation when I am supposed to be retired.

Government agencies must be compelled to report across a full range of performance indicators, not just the ones they themselves select in order to portray themselves in the best possible light. Only when truth is outed can the necessary focus be attracted and work on remedies begin. For instance, before the report by Bob Collins, Learning Lessons, how many parents of kids in remote schools knew that their kids were being condemned to a life of being second-class citizens, on leaving the school system with attainment levels equivalent to 8-year-olds in the big towns and cities? I'm quite sure that they hadn't read an earlier report by a Parliamentary Committee to learn the sad truth, and I'm certain that the teachers of the Department of Education didn't tell them. It is worthwhile quoting here in its entirety a small article from the Northern Territory News on 25 June 2002:

On the outer

Joy and sadness for Collingwood coach Mick Malthouse during the Pies' trip to the Top End last week. He writes of Barunga, near Katherine, in The Australian: I was spellbound watching the skills, incredible natural athleticism and instincts of some of the seven- and eight-year-olds running around in the dirt. But for all the positives, there's an overwhelming sadness. The day Collingwood came to town, the local school recorded its highest attendance figures in more than six years. Hardly anyone works at Barunga, and you get the impression people are bored and directionless. We're told 80% of the youngsters will leave grade six without having acquired basic reading or writing skills.

Slim Dusty is on the same wavelength, much to my surprise. In an interview on the TV programme 'New Dimensions With George Negus', on 5 August 2002 he said that attendance at his concerts in the bush in the 1970s dropped off with the arrival of the Handout System. Whereas he might have got, say six ringers from a station, he then got only two.

Government, and Government agencies, must also develop the strength to cross the barrier of political correctness, or the privacy of individuals, and deal with some sacred cows. I get a little tired of being told that Governments are responsible for the ill health of Aborigines because of the allegedly inadequate health services provided. It may not be well known that the greater contributors by far are lack of exercise, poor nutrition, tobacco, alcohol, kava, hygiene, and injuries. (These are matters that only Aborigines can effectively deal with. Others can carp all they like, but in the end individuals must take the responsibility for themselves.) I suspect that Aborigines themselves do not fully understand the root causes of ill health. It is difficult for outsiders to invade privacy, to invade personal space, but that is unavoidable if preventative measures are to be given a real shot. We will need to talk to people about their shopping habits, dietary intake and nutrition, about dental and bodily hygiene, about washing their clothing, bedding, crockery, cutlery, and of course about transmissible diseases. We will need to talk about tea towels, bath towels, toilet soap, and toilet paper. This isn't about treating adults as children; it is about treating them as responsible adults by not shielding them from unpalatable truths. We ought to be big enough to admit that European migration has introduced many of their diseases, had an irreversible impact on Aboriginal lifestyles, and finally to do something very frank and intrusive about it.

Then there is alcohol. No discussion paper of this kind, making the sort of claims that it does, can skirt mentioning alcohol, the number one scourge of Indigenous peoples. The problem is, whilst I have a pretty good idea about its contribution to family violence, dysfunction, health, offending, and all of the rest of it, I am not so sure about what should be done. One sound argument holds that by having wet canteens in every remote community you would halt the exodus to townships, allow better control by peer group pressure, while reducing the anti-social problem in the townships. I have seen some of those wet canteens, and they can be an unedifying spectacle, and you will not find me supporting the proposition that a democratic vote of the community be overturned and mum and the kids have grog foisted on them. As it is, while the townsfolk cop the brunt, mum and the kids are getting some respite. And overwhelming evidence supports the connection between grog and family violence.

Can a caring society sit idly by and watch the welfare money for the food of children being spent on grog? Again, I pose the question whether to intervene is a violation of human rights? If so what about the rights of the child? Difficult questions indeed. They lead directly to the issue that Governments avoid like the proverbial plague: "Should welfare take the form, in some cases, of food vouchers, rather than cash?" What is the answer?

And how is it that the advertising of tobacco products has been banned, yet breweries continue to be the prominent sponsors of high-profile sport? Surely it is utterly ridiculous that during the Rugby Union Test in Brisbane at the Gabba on 27 July 2002 the South African team jumpers advertised a brand of beer, and the Stadium itself a brand of rum! (as did the Stadiums in Tests in Sydney before and since, and in Perth last year). Union is not alone in disgracing itself; both the Australian Rugby League, and the Australian Football league, also dip into brewery sponsorship. Sorry, but I am not aware of the situation in relation to soccer. Then there is the Northern Territory Tourist Commission's efforts to promote our recreation fishing, on beer cartons! Excuse me. Have I been wrong all this time about the horrendous cost of alcohol abuse? A cost that I understood to far outstrip the harm caused by tobacco?

Then there is the inescapable issue of customary law, which will not go away. The advocates, apart from calling for its recognition, provide no details of how it might be done (I assume they have none). Questions like how to deal traditional capital punishment repugnant to International Conventions, like who would be subject to which laws in a multi-tribal community of varying degrees of traditionality, who should be delegated the power, how you would overcome the perception in the wider community of two laws, what should happen if the delegated authority fails to deal with a case. The Office of Aboriginal Development has tried to progress thinking by advocating the enactment of a Community Justice Act (call it what you will), which could define the scope of a by-law making capacity by specifying a range of offences, define the prerequisites of a body to which the power might be delegated (properly constituted Community Government Councils?), and require a draft of the by-law to be approved by the responsible Minister, who would be obligated to table his decisions in the Parliament. The new Northern Territory Department of Justice is well placed to develop new policy approaches here.

As it is, traditional authority and the wider law are now in competition, with traditional law always giving way. This encourages abdication from responsibility and self-policing, police are regularly put in the position of having to resolve difficulties that are really customary law issues, and youth thumb their noses at everybody. As I said earlier, there is solid evidence that, for some, a term in a correctional services institution is a necessary rite of passage into adulthood. A flight in a flash aircraft, three square meals a day, a rainproof roof, dry bed, colour television, well equipped gymnasium, are strong attractions for disaffected youth for whom there is presently no worthwhile activity at home. Return home looking like Mike Tyson and suddenly all of the young kids want to follow. I'm all for giving hoary older men the responsibility to run boot camps in the bush, with hard labour and basic tucker, and no comforts other than a swag, say like building cattle yards in the bush well away from the lights. There are many Aboriginal people who hold similar views.

Finally, and concurrently with all of the foregoing, work must continue apace on rewriting all of the policy guidelines on the myriad of programmes that have sprung up over the last thirty years, to put individuals (and families) as the central focus for development support---in other words, abandon unambiguously the failed experiment of the communal approach, that terrible destroyer of initiative.

I am pleased to report that such pragmatism characterises the language of the new Northern Territory Government. Language like 'partnerships', 'shared responsibility', 'outcome driven', 'individuals and families to take greater responsibility for their own lives'. Frank, direct, pragmatic language also used by Indigenous members of the new Government like Marion Scrymgour MLA, Member for Arafura, and Chairman of the Committee on Substance Abuse, and the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee, and by the Hon. John Ah Kit, Member for Arnhem, Minister for Community Development, Sport, and Cultural Affairs, and Minister Assisting the Chief Minister on Indigenous Affairs. This new language is also coming out of Canberra, and indeed Heads of Government Conferences, so hopefully the overdue changes may already be on the way.

Conclusion

More of the same is out of the question. We need now to be even more radical than those who preceded us 30 years ago.

I hope I may have helped.