Bennelong Society Conference 2005:
Remote Aboriginal Communities: Where are the Jobs?

Remote Communities: Where are the jobs?

Paul Madden

Let me say at the outset, that unlike many of you, I do not have extensive experience in working in remote communities nor do I have experience in shaping policies that impact the daily lives of Aboriginal people. My experience, for the most part, has been drawn from my work over the past 20 years in running welfare agencies delivering city and regionally based welfare and development services to people experiencing homelessness, addiction, mental illness and unemployment. Most of these services are mainstream services that are also significantly used by Aboriginal people---particularly the inner city homeless services. I have also been involved in the formation and delivery of some services focussed specifically on the needs of Aboriginal women and children.

It was not uncommon for those coming to the city based homeless services to be from remote communities. They came for all sorts of reasons---to visit friends, get medical assistance and sometimes they came because they escaping the violence and dysfunction they were experiencing in their communities. Whatever their reasons, inner city services aimed at assisting people who were homeless were not the ideal place for them to be assisted.

It was the case that among the people using inner city homeless services, whether indigenous or not, that family dysfunction, drug abuse, mental illness, child abuse and domestic violence were rife.

As many of you have looked upon the remote communities with which you are so familiar and despaired in thinking about how to move forward, I have looked at inner city gatherings of homeless and marginalised people---I don't call them communities as some romantically do because to do so implies a level of functionality that serves the common good and I have not found that to exist---and also asked myself how we move forward from here.

Last year, I was commissioned by the South Australian government to develop a model for the delivery of substance misuse services for Indigenous people in the city. This involved a research project and the face to face meetings with hundreds of Aboriginal people---the families of drug users, service providers, government agencies, treatment services and the drug users themselves. The extent of drug use I found among the urban Aboriginal community shocked me. While I was not surprised to find that the use of alcohol and cannabis was widespread, it was the prolific intravenous drug use I found so disturbing. The impact of widespread hard drug use among urban Aboriginal communities is devastating in its consequences not only for the individual, but particularly for the wider family and community.

In one service I was involved in establishing, the Karpandi Women's Centre based in inner city Adelaide, the staff were involved in supporting more than 80 Aboriginal grandmothers who had the primary care of their grandchildren. A generation was missing, lost in a drug induced haze, abdicating all responsibility for their children to their parents and caught up in the domestic and criminal violence that accompanies drug use.

In exploring where the jobs are in remote communities---or urban communities for that matter---we cannot be blind to the levels of dysfunction presently existing. Engagement of work brings disciplines and demands that the disciplines and demands of addiction preclude and a chasm exists between the dysfunctional life to be found in many remote and urban communities, and the requirements of the workplace in Australia today. It will take one almighty leap if this gap is to be bridged.

As is well known, about a quarter of all Indigenous Australians (ABS 2001)---about 108,000 people---live in 1200 discrete Indigenous communities. Over half of these communities are in the Northern Territory (632) while Western Australia (283), Queensland (142) and South Australia (96) are home to most of the remainder. Nearly three quarters of communities have a population of less than 50 people and only 145 have populations of more than 200 people.

On the employment front, (ABS 2001) Indigenous people in the labour force are three to four times as likely as other Australians to be unemployed. In almost every age group the proportion of Indigenous people who were not in the workforce is about 20 points higher than for other Australians. This is a very significant difference particularly when over 35,000 of those participating in the indigenous labourforce are working in subsidised employment through the Community Development Employment Program (CDEP) and counted as employed. While it may be no surprise, it is important to note that participation of Indigenous people in the labour force declines with increasing geographic remoteness. (ABS 2001)

In many areas of national life the participation rate for Aboriginal people is low. This is particularly so in those areas which hold the best prospects for advancing their interests, namely, employment, education and capital formation. When people have no work, whether through the economic incapacity of their environment, the remoteness of their location, the dysfunction of their lifestyle, the availability of passive welfare or arbitrary workplace restrictions, we lead them to believe that their contribution is not needed and that they are not needed. Not much is expected of them and next to nothing is demanded of them. It is a terrible form of social exclusion.

The leap from welfare to work though is, in my view, compounded by the constraints to employment in our current labour market and these are felt most where economic conditions are weakest. The awards that govern the Australian workplace are blunt instruments that do not, and cannot, take account of the full range of employment possibilities. While they seek to protect the interests of those in work they effectively hold many out. In particular, they are incapable of taking account of the relationship between the cost of labour and the value derived from the application of labour. They are also unable, in any significant way, to take account of individual circumstances, location differences or the personal desires of employer and employee to reach an agreement that meets each of their needs. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand that where the cost of labour exceeds the value derived from the application of that labour that job opportunities are lost or incomes have to be subsidized from a source external to the real economy.

Let's be clear though---in Australia, just as in the rest of the world, there is no shortage of work! There is, and always will be, a limitless amount of work to be done. The issue however is not the availability of work but whether or not work is available at the arbitrarily pre-determined price. This is where it becomes extraordinarily difficult. In rural and remote communities there is often a lack of economic capacity to create employment at a level that will sustain remuneration at regulated levels.

In seeking to understand where the jobs are in remote communities we also need to think about how jobs are created. Jobs are not created simply by the presence of a large, available or even skilled labour force---they are the product of entrepreneurs, those individuals, groups or corporations who generate an income by providing a service or product that others want and are willing to pay for. In modern economies that 'something of value', is usually, but not always, money. Entrepreneurs first create jobs for themselves and when the demand for their product or service exceeds their capacity to deliver they look to the employment of others as a means of expanding their enterprise.

On a regular basis I travel to India and while there I often spend time in poor villages or inner city slums. One of the things you notice when you go to these places is the intensity of micro economic activity---everyone is doing something or selling something. In a society where there are no unemployment benefits, no pensions, no sickness benefits, few community or health services, and public schooling only assured at a very basic level, (mostly year 5) there is little choice for all but the most incapacitated but to work for what ever small income can be derived.

In places like this, and in many other parts of the developing world, organizations like Opportunity International founded by David Bussau AM, have had exceptional success creating employment through micro-credit programs which back local entrepreneurs in developing small and micro-businesses. In fact, such has been the take up of this approach in finding a working solution to poverty that this year, 2005, has been declared by the UN the International Year of Microcredit.

The clear intention of groups like Opportunity International, who provide more than a million loans of this kind a year, is to advance the initial loan to establish the micro-business but then to advance further loans to provide the capital for expansion as the business grows. Loans typically average around US$200 and the default rate on these millions of loans is less than 3%. With interest charged at local commercial rates, and such a low default rate, the fund is continually replenished and re-lent to foster new businesses. Opportunity International, and others in the microcredit field understand how jobs are created. They realise that as businesses grow they create employment opportunities for others. They also realise that not everyone has the desire or capacity to develop a business so they focus on backing the entrepreneurs, the greater number of whom, by the way, are women.

While this approach is being tried among Indigenous communities in some parts of Australia, and there has been some enthusiasm to roll it out in a bigger way based on some early indications of success, the question of whether this approach can be used to create significant levels of employment in remote communities is yet to be determined. One suspects that these approaches will have their greatest chance of success in places where communities are large and close to a robust real economy.

The reason I temper hopefulness with caution relates to the critical differences between the areas in the developing world where this strategy has worked well and our remote communities. Remoteness, regulation and the presence of the welfare 'safety net' will make transference difficult.

Remoteness is clearly a barrier. In nations like India, Indonesia and the Philippines small and micro-business have a large and proximate market. That is not the case for Indigenous communities in Australia where isolation, transport costs, tiny local populations, communication difficulties and lack of local infrastructure makes the cost of doing business outside the immediate community extraordinarily expensive.

Regulation is also a barrier. Regulated wages of more than $12 an hour (around $20 an hour by the time on-costs are applied) make employment in small scale, low turnover markets unviable whereas in the developing world the remuneration is directly connected to earnings of the enterprise. As an aside, I have always been perplexed by the notion that to pay a person something less that the regulated minimum wage is to perform work is considered exploitive whereas to pay them significantly less to not to work is considered just!

The welfare safety net is a further barrier. In the developing world there is no safety net. The need to survive provides a powerful incentive to making the most of whatever resources are available. The safety net of welfare payments in Australia, whether in remote communities or cities, whether for Indigenous Australians or for other Australians, diminishes the sense of urgency that might otherwise exist in relation to making an enterprise work. The big problem with safety nets is that while they hold some people up they hold many others down.

I want to weep when I think of many I know trapped beneath the heavy weight of the welfare net.

Now, lest you think that I am advocating the life to be found in a remote Indian village to be a model for Australia then let me assure you I am not. However, I am saying that the model for micro-economic development that has generated jobs so successfully in some parts of the developed world holds promise of limited work opportunity in some remote communities. But we must be careful. So hungry are we for answers, that is our wont as a society to latch on to anything that holds promise, roll it out everywhere, proclaim the breakthrough then take years to realise we got it horribly wrong!

We have a number dilemmas.

While we have a great desire for real economies and not welfare economies in remote communities we are confronted with the reality that for most there is not the slightest chance of the critical mass or marketable resource necessary for that to occur being attained.

Likewise, we want people on Aboriginal communities to have real jobs, jobs that are not subsidised or propped up by welfare payments or other government subsidies, yet the gap between the cost of employment in these areas and the value derived from the application of that labour is so great as to make real job creation in remote communities nigh on impossible. This is not to say that work cannot be created in an informal trading micro-economy, it can, but it cannot be created or sustained at the income levels we take for granted.

And finally, as much as we have a genuine desire for Aboriginal people to fill key paid and funded service delivery and management positions within remote communities, rather than non-indigenous people filling these positions, we are forced to acknowledge that shortcomings in the education of Aboriginal children over the past decades and the growing technical and social demands of these jobs are in making them less appealing and less accessible to local people.

The road to self-reliance begins with a strong foundational education. It doesn't matter whether you live on the north shore in Sydney, a remote community in outback Australia or in a village in India. Without a good foundational education you cannot make the steps forward necessary to transform your circumstances. If we cannot deliver the strong foundational education required in remote communities then we have to open the doors to that opportunity through boarding schools in cities and regional centres or through other educational alternatives so that those who seek a better life can grasp it.

In the work I am involved with in India the focus is on getting kids through to completion of year 10 and enabling them to become proficient in English. These are roads to work that will offer genuine opportunity to move from the harsh reality of a future breaking rocks, or motherhood in early teens, to paid work that will liberate them and their families from poverty. I have to tell you, when I ask the kids from quarry villages who attend the school I am involved with what they want to be in the future they have big aspirations---doctor, teacher, police officer, pilot, computer engineer---and for some reason that escapes me entirely lots of the girls want to be engineers. They are imbued with hope that the learning they do today will transform their lives tomorrow. Is that how the kids in our remote communities feel?

I believe the jobs that will bring sustained and transformative change for Aboriginal people who live in remote communities will, for the most part, not be found in remote communities but be found within the mainstream economy. All over the world urbanisation is on the march fuelled by the prospect of a better standard of living to be found where economies are at their strongest, namely in cities and regional centres. We cannot expect that an economically richer life and greater opportunity is to be found in a remote community or small rural centre though we respect the right of people to live where they choose and recognise that economic value is not the only thing that counts.

Finally, I believe that homeownership is critically important. People who own their homes have a greater stake in their communities, whether they be in urban or remote locations. The freedom and opportunity to own a home brings many benefits and for most people it is the principal means through which personal wealth is accumulated. The benefits of home ownership are well documented but also intuitively known. Better health, greater security, better educational outcomes for kids, lower levels of community crime, less transience ... the list goes on. Most importantly though, homeownership provides the resources to enable people to make choices---it is a symbol of self reliance that helps people say, 'I am not a kept person---I look after myself.'

Throughout Australia people of all persuasions are agreed that welfare dependence is destructive to Indigenous and non-indigenous people alike. We must, therefore, concentrate our energies on those things that build self reliance and it is my belief that education, employment and home ownership are the foundation.

I must confess that when I was first asked to address the question 'Remote Communities---where are the jobs?', I wondered if it was a trick question. While there may be some jobs in remote communities, and there may be some prospects of developing micro enterprises that will give people greater independence, an enhanced income or lifestyle, I believe the real prospects for jobs and for advancement for Aboriginal people lies in a full engagement of the mainstream economy and life of the nation.