Indigenous Affairs

Nobody likes to look incompetent or inept. So it’s no wonder the Federal Government fought to keep secret a report that revealed the $3.5 billion it spends each year on indigenous programs has generated “dismally poor returns”. 

Close to two years after a 470-page Finance Department report slammed the Government’s management of indigenous programs and expenditure there’s been no radical movement, no overhaul of the Departments responsible, and none of the 115 recommendations adopted.

The report may never have even been made public save for a long-running freedom of information case brought by Channel 7.

Continue reading "Billions of government waste not closing the gap" »

A couple of months ago I was gallivanting around the UK on a holiday. One night I popped up to the apartment I was crashing at to grab my jacket when I heard a voice through the window from the road below.

“Come on darlin’, you don’t have to do this.” Across the road a woman had climbed up onto the third story of some scaffolding. She wasn’t particularly sober, she’d tied a noose around her neck and she was about to jump.

If today is a typical day, by the time you’ve hit the hay tonight nearly 178 Aussies will have attempted to end their lives. Seven would have gone through with it. It’s a national tragedy. And in some remote parts of Australia it’s just tragedy after tragedy after tragedy after tragedy.

Continue reading "In some parts of Australia, death comes far too easily" »

I don’t think anyone is that shocked to discover former Carlton president John Elliott is a bigot and no doubt Can of Worms let his comment air because of the publicity, but sadly it seems the sentiment behind his recent racial slur is echoed by a cross-section of Australians.

Some comments on the story included:

“Aussie is OK as an abbreviation, but Abo isn’t? I never knew that Abo was offensive?”, and “Why can’t we use the word ‘abo’ it is just an abbreviation.”

Continue reading "‘Abo’  is not just an abbreviation of ‘Aboriginal’" »

The health and welfare of our young people has been at the centre of many policy announcements made so far this election.

Childcare centres and chubby babies provide popular photo opportunities for campaigning politicians, and both parties are arguing over who’s paid parental leave scheme is best.

Focusing on our young people is important: they are the future of our nation, the next pillars of our community; but is it the role of government to tell us how to raise our children?

Continue reading "What indigenous society has to teach about raising kids" »

Good Government is about empowering people, creating a sense of community, facilitating change and giving people real choices.

Fifty years ago the people managed our communities, looked after employment, hospitals, policing and schools. Problems that occurred in the community were sorted out by the community.

However successive policies by both parties have moved Australia away from a community empowerment model towards a centralized control system with bureaucrats managing down on communities. The people with the power to help sort out problems with hospitals, policing and towns have been progressively removed from our communities, taking their power with them.

Continue reading "Indigenous people frozen out of deciding their futures" »

While some argue Tony Abbott has “opened up the culture wars” by declaring the practice of respecting traditional Aboriginal land owners at official gatherings as “out of place tokenism”, you can’t deny that though controversial, the Ab-Blaster has a point. These repeatedly enforced preambles for the Whatever Tribe Of Wherever grow ever more meaningless each ensuing shindig, and are at best, descending into farce.

It isn’t culture, it’s clutter. PCYC CEO Chris Gardiner has also picked up the dustpan and brush, declaring kicking off parliament with the Lord’s Prayer is not only intolerable, but “anachronistic at best… superstitious at worst”. The message is clear – it’s time for a clean out Australia!

This is a big, brown and far too dusty land, and there’s plenty more mouldy, moth-eared, curry-stained tokenistic traditions still loitering about the flat, in desperate need of either chucking in the wash, or just a good old chucking out.

Anzac Day marches:
This bizarre annual tradition of old blokes marching up and down city streets, blocking shopping access to discount fashion outlets and electrical goods warehouses, has surely done its dash.

Continue reading "Why stop at binning welcome to country and prayers" »

There is nothing more certain to generate cynicism than having to suffer political correctness in full force. When the experience is compounded by the paternalistic condescension of those who don’t really believe what is being said or done but in their generosity are reaching down to those they really see as simpler than them, it’s intolerable.

The idea that you must open your gathering and deliberations by paying lip-service through a ceremony or incantation demanded by vocal spokespersons for what amounts to sectional interests, should offend most citizens.

For many, when the ceremony invokes a cosmology or belief system that they consider anachronistic at best, or superstitious at worst, it is particularly galling.

Continue reading "Token ceremony openings must be brought to an end" »

Back in October last year, I promised a group of Aboriginal stockmen that I would soon return to observe progress in the re-establishment of an Aboriginal cattle industry in the Northern Territory.

It was not a promise that I considered I could break just because I now had a different job. The problems of indigenous Australia need to be taken seriously by Australia’s leaders and not just by the ministers and shadow ministers with special responsibility for them.

That’s how I came to be on a quad bike, low on fuel, following tyre tracks in the gathering dark earlier this week. That’s how I sampled a witchety grub and honey ants dug up by the women of an outstation called Ukaka.

Continue reading "Abbott: Why I journeyed into the dead heart" »

Anthropologist Peter Sutton has a long association with indigenous people.

In his new book The Politics of Suffering, he makes an observation that deserves quoting at length:

The first consideration must be to focus on those conditions that are conducive to the emotional and physical wellbeing of the unborn, infants, children, adolescents, the elderly, and adult women and men. It is remarkable how many people living in the comfort, affluence and healthy surroundings of Australia’s suburbia have, in the debates over indigenous policy and especially the Intervention, covertly promoted the view that respect of cultural differences and racially defined political autonomy takes precedence over a child’s basic human right to have love, wellbeing and safety. It is as if political feelings and political values are more important than one’s emotional feelings and moral values as fellows of those other human beings in the ghettos.

Continue reading "Putting do-gooder politics ahead of helping people" »

When the Indigenous All Stars run on to Skilled Park tomorrow night it won’t be just another game of football.

The game has been sold out for months and has been a dream of Indigenous league players and Indigenous people for decades.

For the indigenous players it’s about more than just rugby league – it’s a chance to represent and pay tribute to their communities and people. The game is a celebration of indigenous culture and has great symbolism, but equally important will be the profound effect it has on Indigenous youth.

Continue reading "Indigenous All Stars - more than just a footy match" »

When Kevin Rudd delivered an apology to the indigenous people in 2008, he committed himself and his government to a series of practical measures, designed to lift many aborigines from appalling conditions of poverty and abuse.

He promised a new bipartisan approach under the leadership of himself and the Leader of the Opposition. Subsequently, he promised the report on this great moral challenge on the first sitting day of each Parliamentary year.

Today these solemn promises can be seen for what they were: hyperbole from a Prime Minister who regularly makes grand statements but fails to follow-up on many of them.

Continue reading "The apology that turned out to be just words" »

Around this time of year, Aborigines are conducting ceremonial business in central Australia, including circumcision initiation rites.

News Ltd reported on Monday that three teenagers had turned up at the Tennant Creek hospital, 500km north of Alice Springs, bleeding badly from circumcision procedures that had gone wrong.

They had been circumcised in a makeshift bush camp just out of town. The boys spent three nights in hospital. It can be revealed here that a fourth teenager presented at Tennant Creek hospital on Sunday night, also with lacerations.

Continue reading "Black rite of passage may be an abuse of kids’ rights" »

The reputation of Western Australia as a frontier state received another unwelcome boost today with revelations that an Aboriginal man was set on fire after being shot with a taser gun while sniffing petrol.

At issue is whether the taser gun started the fire, or whether the man, who was violent and threatening to set himself and the police alight, started it inadvertently with his cigarette lighter.

But even before the case is investigated, it’s been declared case closed by the state’s top cop.

Continue reading "Out west, tasering petrol sniffers isn’t an issue" »

THE best thing about the mooted ban on climbing Uluru is that it gives slightly overweight, middle-aged white people who enjoy the occasional cigarette the perfect vehicle to forgo taxing exercise on the pretence of respect for indigenous heritage.

The worst thing about it is that it seems to be a bit of pre-ordained, politically correct posturing that will add to the nation’s ever-expanding collection of hollow symbolic gestures that do nothing to increase white Australia’s respect for, or understanding of, our Aboriginal history, and may actually work against it.

I have never climbed the rock and probably wouldn’t _ not just because I’m kind of lazy and would rather do the bus tour, sit down in front of the rock for a while, and get back for beers at sunset at the Yulara resort _ but also because it clearly distresses some Aboriginal people. It just seems kind of rude.

Continue reading "Banning the Rock climb a nice, futile gesture" »

Here’s my guilty admission. I sat through Samson and Delilah and I wanted it to end.

The violence, the petrol-sniffing, the exploitation – white and black, and the indifference were all confronting.

But it wasn’t my squeamishness that had me longing for the closing credits. What did me in and left me feeling completely bombed was that for much of the movie you are placed in the shoes of Aboriginal young people who have seemingly little to live for.

Continue reading "Finding love and salvation amid poverty and despair" »