Source: The Age December 2 2004
John Howard is planning a return to discrimination and
paternalism, writes Kim Carr.
Consider this scenario: you live in a remote desert community,
in a house owned by the Commonwealth. Fifteen people share the
house, including six school-aged children. Water pipes to the house
are broken and the toilet is blocked. The closest working tap is
100 metres away.
There are not enough beds and so family members sleep four to a
bed, or on the floor. You have no washing machine; your clothes are
washed in a bucket.
Electricity supply is by means of a generator, which sometimes
breaks down. When this happens, any fresh food in the refrigerator
is spoiled. In any case, fresh produce has to be air-freighted in,
for sale at the community store, and is prohibitively expensive for
those on low incomes and benefits.
The family tends to eat bread and canned food, as these are
affordable and will keep without refrigeration. Some of the adults,
especially the older ones, don't enjoy good health. The lack of
fruit and vegetables in their diet contributes to chronic
illness.
You want the house's plumbing fixed and the broken windows
replaced. You ask your landlord, the Commonwealth, to fulfil its
responsibilities for household repair and maintenance. But the
Commonwealth refuses to help. It won't help because your community
has signed up to one of the new "Shared Responsibility Agreements"
(SRAs) saying that, unless the kids go to school 80 per cent of the
time and are bathed every day, there will be no maintenance for the
house.
It's Catch-22.
Something like this will soon be the reality for many thousands
of indigenous Australians. According to advice contained in leaked
cabinet documents, government services and welfare benefits will be
dependent on "behavioural change" on the part of indigenous
clients. The "incentives" will reportedly include "carrots and
sticks". "Carrots" might include a pool of bikes that children can
ride after school, or a film screening (with Commonwealth-supplied
DVD players) for children who have good school attendance.
Of course, the sticks as well as the carrots will be justified
by the Commonwealth as freely entered into, mutually agreed
arrangements.
But the question is this: how is it possible for the Government
to coerce indigenous citizens into Shared Responsibility Agreements
in return for the provision of basic services and welfare benefits
that are their rightful due? How can it do this while not also
placing similar conditions on service provision to other
Australians?
These proposals smack of blatant discrimination and paternalism
at their very worst.
Only 30 per cent of indigenous Australians live to 65 years,
compared with 87 per cent of non-indigenous Australians. Sixty per
cent - twice as many - people in Bangladesh can expect to live to
that age. Bangladesh, of course, is one of the world's poorest
countries.
The world's highest rate of the eye disease trachoma occurs
among Australia's indigenous people - and this is the only
developed country where blinding trachoma remains. Other countries
where trachoma is prevalent include Ethiopia, Burkina Faso,
Afghanistan, Iraq and Vietnam.
Deaths from cardiovascular disease among indigenous people are
about five times the rate of those for all Australians. Indigenous
people are far more likely to die from accidents, violence or
suicide. They have high rates of diabetes and obesity. Aboriginal
babies have a significantly lower average birthweight than
Australian babies generally.
Infrastructure in many indigenous communities is poor, due to
distance, climate and maintenance problems. Employment and training
opportunities are often non-existent, and many isolated communities
can provide no secondary schooling. Despite the Government's
rhetoric about entrepreneurial individualism, there is no genuine
talk about economic independence for indigenous people.
And yet the Howard Government apparently blames indigenous
people themselves for the ill health, poverty and lack of education
that prevail in their communities. They are to blame, and so they
must undergo "behavioural change" to remedy their situation and
overcome their disadvantage.
Support should be given to all genuine, locally forged
partnerships between government and indigenous communities and
groups that aim to improve lives and opportunities. In fact,
without community support, genuine social change won't happen. We
can't have a top-down approach. There are many proud examples of
achievement by indigenous Australians working together with
government and non-government organisations. We should all want to
see indigenous Australians participating in an economy that
genuinely includes them.
But that is not what the new Shared Responsibility Agreements
are all about. These new-style agreements will be imposed upon
people who are not in a position to withstand bureaucratic
coercion. They are not about respect, reciprocity or mutual
action.
Australia is the only colonising country not to have apologised
to the indigenous people who were dispossessed. Many indigenous
people still suffer directly as a result of that dispossession. Now
our Government, on top of its refusal to say sorry, wants to
humiliate its indigenous citizens by denying them services unless
they conform to behavioural standards that many, because of their
disadvantage, cannot possibly meet.
John Howard believes in the freedom of the individual in a free
market: yet in this area of public policy he would prefer,
apparently, to adopt an authoritarian, coercive stance that denies
the freedom of indigenous people to determine their own lives.
From what we have seen so far of this new approach to indigenous
welfare, it runs the risk of shaming Australia in the eyes of the
world.
Senator Kim Carr is Labor's spokesman on indigenous
affairs and reconciliation.
