Family Forum / Parenting / Spanking / June 2007

We are having a 'save the Aboriginal children' blitzkrieg
By John Tomlinson - posted Friday, 29 June 2007
   
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=6046

The first Howard Government Budget 1996-7 removed $400 million from the
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission. In 2004 he abolished
the Commission in its entirety.

Howard claimed he was going to solve the practical problems which
prevented Indigenous people taking their place in modern Australia. He
claimed he would end “dependence on welfare”. Howard attacked those he
accused of promoting a black armband version of history. He refused to
say “Sorry” to the stolen generations. He consistently argued that
issues of symbolic importance to Indigenous people paled into
insignificance when compared with his determination to seek practical
solutions to the problems facing the Aboriginal community.

Confronted by the Wik High Court Judgment he launched his 10 Point Plan
attack on Native Title legislation in order to give pastoralists and
miners “certainty”. He eroded some significant autonomy promoting
provisions of the Northern Territory Land Rights Act. He has criticised
legal recognition being given to customary law and bilingual education.

He, assisted by his Minister Mal Brough, has coerced some Indigenous
communities to sign over their communally owned land to 99-year leases.
At the United Nations he has opposed efforts to recognise Indigenous
self determination. He claims to have set out to mainstream the
administration of Indigenous affairs.

In this, his 11th year in office and in the run-up to the next election
it is timely to review his progress towards practical reconciliation.
This is all the more relevant now as he has just launched his “save the
Aboriginal children of the Northern Territory” blitzkrieg. Soldiers and
police are being rushed into Indigenous communities as the vanguard to
doctors and child protection officials who will follow.
The reality on the ground

Indigenous Australians are dying on average 17 to 20 years earlier than
other Australians. And it has been like this during his entire period in
office. At every stage of life Aboriginal people experience more illness
and injury than other Australians. Indigenous Australians are
considerably more likely to live in over crowded housing than other
citizens: 15 or more people to a dwelling is the rule in many Aboriginal
townships across northern Australia.

Indigenous unemployment is rife throughout most parts of rural and
remote Australia. In the Northern Territory, there are 8,000 Community
Development Employment Program (CDEP) workers. This is an Indigenous
“work for the dole” program. The Howard Government has not had the wit
to create sufficient meaningful employment in these communities nor the
common sense to realise that without sufficient money to sustain
industry and commerce, widespread poverty is the only guaranteed outcome.

There are many jobs which need to be done in these communities. The lack
of sufficient housing is a major priority which could be addressed by
training local Indigenous people to build and maintain their own
housing. When I visited Yarrabah and Hopevale communities in 1963 all
the housing had been built by Indigenous workers. They had even
processed local timber in their own saw mill. I saw similar examples in
many parts of tropical Australia.

These days, much of the housing is built by white contractors without
involving local people. Indigenous involvement is not valued and,
consequently, houses often have a very sort shelf life.

There are many other important jobs which need doing in Indigenous
communities which could be done, and in many places are being done, by
local people: care for children and older people, supplying food,
running tourist enterprises and community stores, vehicle maintenance,
ensuring decent sanitation services, and so forth. The Government has
had 11 years to train people if that were necessary - it has not done
so. Surely this would have been a good place to start on its alleged
path to practical reconciliation.

Instead of attacking the teaching of children in local Aboriginal
languages, the Government could work to ensure that people become
literate in at least one language: if only because once people become
literate in one language, they can more easily learn to read and write
in other languages. English is certainly a useful language to learn in
Australia but, in many remote communities, English is not the lingua franca.

The Howard Government has not been able to end “dependence on welfare”.
It may have been able to impose harsh “mutual obligations” on many
social security recipients but to what end? “Mutual obligation” is a
self-defeating policy. The Government has denigrated Indigenous people
who have sought to build their self-esteem and to pursue issues of
symbolic importance to them and their communities.

If the present Government was not so mired in its celebration of western
capitalist contractual arrangements, it might realise that people
exercising autonomy have a far better chance to gain dignity and
cultural success.

Indigenous people may not want to celebrate the arrival of Captain Cook,
the achievements of Don Bradman and the Anzac soldiers - they might want
to celebrate Land Rights heroes, Elly Bennett, Cathy Freeman and
Indigenous service men and women. They might prefer to worship their own
language group’s Dream Time ancestors rather than celebrate mass. A
truly democratic, multicultural society would welcome such cultural
diversity.
The grog and sexual abuse

Australians are being told that the Federal Government has had to take
control of Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory because of
the “rivers of alcohol flowing through Indigenous communities”, the
neglect and sexual abuse of children and rampant pornography.

If governments fail to create sufficient meaningful employment while
denigrating attempts at self-help in communities and, on top of this,
impose “a nice white mutual obligation” regime, it is little wonder that
alcoholism is a problem.

Alcoholism won’t be cured by John Howard denouncing Aborigines for
failing to meet their “mutual obligations”. The impact of alcoholism
could be lessened by providing decent work, proper pay, adequate
housing, good health staff and alcohol rehabilitation services (see also
Tomlinson, J. (2005) Must be the grog can’t be the Government (PDF 235KB)).

Police and soldiers can’t, on their own, stamp out neglect and sexual
abuse of Indigenous children. Only the Indigenous community, working in
conjunction with children’s services and health workers (ultimately
backed up by police authority), can achieve that and this will only
happen when these services are available and the community has come to
trust the workers. However, while 15 to 20 people are crowded into one
house then domestic disputes, violence and inappropriate sexual
behaviour are an ever-present danger.
Howard has not learnt his history lesson

The old quip that John Howard preferred a white blindfold view of
history to a Black armband one might not be too wide of the mark. The
story of the stolen generations revealed in the Bringing Them Home
report showed again and again that at least some of the white families
who took the children, removed from their Indigenous mothers, thought
they were acting in the best interests of the children. It is a strange
view of family which allows people to believe that you have to destroy
one generation to save the next.

Throughout Australia, the various pieces of legislation used to control
Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders were commonly referred to as
Protection Acts and the people who administered them were “protectors”.

In Queensland, the Act was originally called the Aboriginals Protection
and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1897. By 1939, it had been
renamed the Aboriginals Preservation and Protection Act. The degree of a
misnomer such titles bestowed was noted by Professor Charles Rowley who
commented in relation to Section 36(3) of this 1939 Protection Act that
“An almost incredible provision was that if a person were charged under
the Queensland Criminal Code with carnal knowledge of an Aboriginal girl
under the statutory age of consent, ‘it is a defence to a charge of any
of the offences defined … to prove that such a girl had developed a
state of puberty’” (Outcasts in White Australia, Pelican, Harmondsworth).

The Protection legislation in all its various forms remained in place in
Queensland until 1975. The “protection” which such legislation afforded
Indigenous citizens was not sufficient to ensure the “protectors” or the
Department of Native Affairs paid Aboriginal workers the wages which
white employers of Indigenous labour, were required to pay to the
“protectors” or the Department (See Kidd, R. The Way We Civilise,
University of Queensland, St Lucia 1997).

In Queensland, the Beattie Government accepted that this was the case
and has made a paltry offer of partial repayment of up to $4,000 (Kidd,
R. Stolen Wages - A National Issue (PDF 56KB))
Conclusion

Howard’s failure to address the practical problems confronting
Indigenous people is a disgrace. Over the last 11 years the Government
he leads has not significantly improved the health, housing, sanitation,
employment, nutrition and even access to clean drinking water
confronting the majority of Indigenous Australians in most rural and
remote areas.

To rub salt into the wound he has denigrated those who have requested he
come to terms with the need for symbolic reconciliation. He has refused
to say “sorry”. He has demonised those who have sought
self-determination for Indigenous Australians.

Now, in the dying days of his government, he is again attempting to stir
up a storm of moral panic about the mess that confronts many Indigenous
communities in rural and remote areas of this continent. It’s time he
admitted that his government’s policies and actions are a substantial
part of the practical problems facing Indigenous Australians.

[[Adolf Hitler would have been proud!

Next the American Indian communities......

Oh!, I've forgotten the American Indians still have their GUNS!, unlike
the Australians.

I guess the U.S. government will have to do something about that soon,
for their own good of course!]]  FX

"The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us
tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second
will not become a legalized version of the first.": --Thomas Jefferson