Taken between 1932 and 1934, when John Perkins was Minister for the Interior.

“I like the little girl in the centre of group, but if taken by anybody else, any of the others would do as long as they are strong.”

I get a terrible sense that we are marching back in time with the latest Howard moves on the abuse of children in Aboriginal communities. That he fails to understand the impact of power, and powerlessness, and arbitrary authority in some truly monumental way, as if he has a gap in his brain where that understanding is supposed to be.

I am talking about Howard’s instant emergency about Indigenous kids:

“In response to the national emergency confronting the welfare of Aboriginal children in the Northern Territory, the Australian Government today announced immediate, broad ranging measures to stabilise and protect communities in the crisis area.”

The saga has been covered well by Larvatus Prodeo, with important links and comments. John Quiggin, on Crooked Timber, attracts an international perspective and deploys his usual casual but penetrating sanity. On Club Troppo, Ken Parish has done a great post on Howard’s Indigenous child protection plan with that measured fury I enjoy in his writing.

“Today is a day of shame in Australian politics. Everyone deplores the appalling incidence of violence and child sexual abuse in indigenous communities. But there simply isn’t any quick, magical solution. The policy Howard has just announced is worse, more racist and more wildly impractical and misconceived than anything Pauline Hanson ever spouted. Kevin Rudd’s meek, kneejerk endorsement of it is almost as disgusting, and marks him unfit to lead Australia. At least Howard has the guts to announce policies of his own, however repugnant and ill-considered.”

Others argue with his assessment of Rudd; on the political level we are trying to transcend on this issue, it would have been strategically better if he had responded quickly and proposed a broad-brush alternative which had some concrete elements. He could, for instance, have addressed the public order issue with something more than a pathetic band of sixty extra police who don’t know the situation or the language. (This proposal leaves me feeling particularly queasy in the same week as Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley got away with splitting Mulrunji Doomadgee’s liver in two in the floor of the Palm Island police station).

Ken doesn’t mention petrol sniffing, which is said to be more dangerous and more widespread and sustains itself on smuggled fuel, on trails that will probably carry the sly grog trucks across the homelands in the next six dry months.

But Ken figured that Noel Pearson, charismatic Aboriginal leader, would be appalled. On the nineteenth, before Pearson knew what Howard was planning, Pearson released a report by the Cape York Institute. The Australian described it like this:

“A report by Mr Pearson’s Cape York Institute, released yesterday, recommends the establishment of a Family Responsibilities Commission (FRC) to take control of the welfare payments of parents or guardians in Cape York who abuse or neglect their children or allow them to miss school.”

Here is how the report describes its objectives:

“Because of the extent of the social and economic problems affecting Cape York communities, reform must be comprehensive and holistic. The objective of the Cape York Welfare Reform Project is the development of reformed incentives and appropriate enabling supports which catalyse the restoration of social norms. The future which is
envisaged is that the people of Cape York Peninsula rebuild vital social norms, which mandate personal responsibility for work, education and the welfare of children, so that they become free from dependence on passive welfare and child neglect and abuse cease.”

The report advocates a pilot program, which can be evaluated and extended if it works. Surely a sensible approach.

Here’s more detail:

The report… “calls for an overhaul of the Aboriginal work for the dole program, CDEP, under which 35,000 Aboriginal people work in return for welfare.

He suggests abolishing the program for anyone younger than 21, and placing them under “conditional income management” if they do not begin a traineeship or find a job within three months of finishing school.

The report also calls for an expansion of private home ownership, with a subsidy for families who want to construct houses in remote communities.”

Jenny Macklin, as shadow Minister, voiced the ALP’s support for Pearson’s approach. After all, CDEP has been in action for twenty years, and was supposed to encourage a real economy in the bush, with actual work with genuine productive outcomes. There is not a lot of that around; maybe the idea was a fantasy anyway – how are communities deep in the Tanami Desert going to participate in the modern economy? Industrially farmed witchetty grubs?

But other members of the Indigenous community were not supportive:

“While Ms Macklin gave cautious support to Mr Pearson’s plans, Labor federal vice-president Linda Burney, the first Aboriginal cabinet minister in the NSW parliament, expressed her concern.

“It really is about playing god with people’s lives,” Ms Burney said. “It feels a bit like a rerun of punitive practices in the past that proved fruitless.”

On Queensland’s Palm Island, which has unemployment of more than 90 per cent, the proposal for a community-based “cop” with power to withhold welfare payments was also universally rejected. “There are other reasons kids don’t go to school other than parental neglect,” said Mayor Delena Oui-Foster, who said the proposal smacked of racism.

School attendance on Palm Island is high, largely because an increasing number of parents, such as Nazareth Foster, place enormous value in education.

Her children, Mia and Teri, have not missed school this year: “I want them to have a good education – these days, you get indigenous people getting certificates and degrees, and that’s what we’ve got to aim for here.”

While the Cape York Institute was working on its pilot program, the Board of Inquiry Into the Protection of Aboriginal Children from Sexual Abuse, provoked by horrendous stories about life in Aboriginal communities was preparing the Wild/Anderson report. It was released on April 30th.

It presented 97 recommendations. Spend money, build infrastructure, co-ordinate government services. In all areas, provide workers on the ground. At every stage, consult and support local power structures. Here, for instance, is the section on Community Justice:

“Community Justice
71. That, as soon as possible, the government facilitate dialogue between the Aboriginal law-men and law- women of the Northern Territory and senior members of the legal profession and broader social justice system of the Northern Territory. That such dialogue be aimed at establishing an ongoing, patient and committed discourse as to how Aboriginal law and
Northern Territory law can strengthen, support and enhance one another for the benefit of the Northern Territory and with a specific emphasis on maintaining law and order within Aboriginal communities and the protection of Aboriginal children from sexual abuse.

72. That, based on the dialogue described in the recommendation above above, the government gives consideration to recognising and incorporating into Northern Territory law aspects of Aboriginal law that effectively contribute to the restoration of law and order within Aboriginal communities and in particular effectively contribute to the protection of Aboriginal children from sexual abuse.

73. That the government commit to the establishment and ongoing support of Community Justice Groups in all those Aboriginal communities which wish to participate, such groups to be developed following consultation…

You will notice that Pearson and the Wild/Anderson report are running on parallel lines. The insistence on autonomy and consultation is shared; they re-analyse many of the same programs. Pearson is suggesting more radical bureaucratic change, while the NT report calls for much more money and people in place. But Cape York is just one region, with specific problems, while the NT is much larger.

The Howard government read and parsed the Wild/Anderson report. It claimed

“The immediate nature of the Australian Government’s response reflects the very first recommendation of the Little Children are Sacred report into the protection of Aboriginal children from child abuse in the Northern Territory which said: “That Aboriginal child sexual abuse in the Northern territory be designated as an issue of urgent national significance by both the Australian and Northern Territory Governments….”

All action at the national level is designed to ensure the protection of Aboriginal children from harm.”

A day after the Pearson proposal, Howard announced his new approach, to
- ban the grog on Aboriginal land for six months
- quarantine fifty percent of all parent’s Centrelink payments for “food and other essentials”
- put families off the dole if kids don’t go to school
- compel five year leases on land and buildings
- ban porn
- set up a sexual abuse reporting desk
- end the permit system which enabled Indigenous communities to determine who comes onto their land and
- subject all children to a compulsory medical examination.

There’s not a lot of Wild/Anderson in here. And the land and access provisions don’t have much to do with “he protection of Aboriginal children from harm.”

Lest you think the provisions are a teeny bit racist, the SMH added this detail:

“Mr Brough said cabinet would consider conditions on which measures requiring welfare payments to be devoted to the benefit of indigenous children would be extended to all other welfare recipients.

He said that particularly applied to the family tax benefit, but included all payments intended to assist children.

“The Australian population has a real desire to see that money only spent on the welfare of children. That has been our clear objective,” he said.

“In addition to that is of course school education. You shouldn’t have a black or white boundary. Every child should be going to school and if this can help do that, then they are two areas we are current examining and we will have further to say after the cabinet.”

In some ways, Pearson is a bit ambushed by the federal government, which is taking a) his insistence on a crisis and b) notions of responsibility and c) the feeling that something decisive has to be done, and running with it like a goanna up a stockman’s body. Trouble is, the reptile ends up sitting on a head with nowhere else to go.

How are they actually going to do all this? Patrol these communities, organise to split welfare payments, manage outsiders who can now trample through these communities, damp down the miners who are allegedly preying on the local people by trafficking in grog and porn, and assaulting children.

Was he outraged, as Ken thought he would be?

On the 23rd, an op-ed piece by Pearson appeared in The Australian.

“While the plan is a necessary development, there are risks associated with the bold line of attack announced by Brough and Howard. My assessment is:

* The focus on grog and policing is correct, but as well as policing there must be a strategy for building indigenous social and cultural ownership.

* Making welfare payments conditional is correct, but the Howard-Brough plan needs to be amended so responsible behaviour is encouraged. Responsible people shouldn’t just be lumped in with irresponsible people.

* The land-related measures are clumsy and ideological, but they are not an attempt at a land grab, and the problems with the land measures are nowhere near as high a priority as action for the welfare of children.

* There is a huge implementation challenge. Based on the performance of the federal and provincial bureaucracies up to now, I am not confident they are up to it. The Council of Australian Governments trials in the past five years have not delivered meaningful results.”

Does that seem consistent to you? He goes on to point out that critics have no alternative plans, and that the immediate safety of women and children demands action now. But the proponents of the scheme are just as uselessly vague if they can’t deliver on the ground.

That is no longer quite true – the Wild/Anderson report is pretty detailed, and lays down many extremely sensible improvements which can take advantage of existing infrastructure, such as it is. The report has been attacked for claiming it will take 15 years to build change, but critics are disingenuous to say this means it makes no difference now. What is more, the federal government is taking this short term shotgun approach despite these more patient recommendations.

Pearson won’t say what we want him to say, to articulate our own urban, educated, middle class dread about this position. We all know that Howard is playing politics, but both Pearson and Macklin are effectively challenging us to look beyond that problem – and they are surely right.

But Pearson won’t call the government as paternalistic, and racist, and authoritarian. He won’t say it uses exactly the same mindset as all those bureaucrats stealing children “for their own good” away from “bad families”. No wonder now that Howard would never apologise for this.

So does he have no problem with this? He goes on to continue his own contradiction:

“The Howard-Brough plan to tackle grog and to provide policing is correct. However, the plan needs to be amended so that there is a concerted strategy to build indigenous social and cultural ownership.

We are afraid they want the opposite. What is that permit stuff about? Why is tenure so important? Why do they want White mortgages on Black land?

“Howard and Brough need to understand the challenge is this: we must restore Aboriginal law in these communities. We must restore Aboriginal values and Aboriginal morality in our communities.”

Have Howard and Brough ever, in ten years, said anything supportive of Aboriginal law, values and morality? Do they understand what it is?

“Aboriginal law, properly understood, is not the problem, it is the solution. When I say Aboriginal law, I just do not mean the laws that prevailed in our pre-colonial classical culture, I mean our contemporary values and expectations about behaviour. The old law did not deal with grog, drugs, gambling, money and private property.

These new things have represented a fundamental challenge for Aboriginal culture. Many communities have struggled to apply the values that underpinned their traditional law to these new challenges.

We have not met this challenge successfully. We desperately need to. We need to develop an Aboriginal law that deals effectively with these new challenges: grog, drugs, gambling, money and private property.

Some communities have articulated an Aboriginal law that deals with the new challenges as well as the old. Many communities have strong social and cultural norms dealing with the old challenges, but they are hapless in the face of the new challenges. What does Aboriginal law have to say when relatives want money for binge drinking?

Pearson surely knows what he is saying. He is maintaining hard-won lines of communication with the government, in which I suspect he sees little difference between Liberal and state Labor. He won’t move into opposition, but his statements confront their values.

“Howard and Brough will make a historic mistake if they are contemptuous of the role that a proper and modern articulation of Aboriginal law must play in the social reconstruction of indigenous societies. I support their determination to end the suffering.”

But what if the communities get no more than the hysterical use of authoritarian power, and a fraction of the resources that are really needed on the ground?

Ten years ago, Howard put the army into Arnhem Land to deal with public health. It was no more than a gesture, which had no infrastructure or financial support, and led to no permanent presence of Army field hospitals.

Pearson is certainly a different politician to the man who turned his back on Howard in public over the apology. There is no evidence that Howard has changed in his turn. Permits and tenure and depowering. Oh yes.

I think Pearson is hoping that bad people can do good things for bad reasons. But thuggery destroys all it touches, because it breaks the spirits of the very people who need to be empowered. After all, this is all about power, and the strength to be autonomous, and develop supportive communities.

“I like the little girl in the centre of group, but if taken by anybody else, any of the others would do as long as they are strong.”

——————-

If you get a chance to see it, there is a short film called Nana by Warwick Thornton which has a lot to say about all this. And by implication, the pretentions of White know-alls who smash up whatever they touch.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 24th, 2007 at 11:17 pm and is filed under Austrapolitics, ideas and society. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.