Doing something doomed to fail if it's doing anything

M EMO to John Howard. The situation is appalling, a national emergency. Check. It involves children being sexually abused. Check. No one is doing enough about it. Check. Previous programs, with which we have persisted despite our ideological doubts, have clearly failed. Check. Other governments with responsibilities are sitting on their hands. Check. We've gotta do something. Check. Even more, we have gotta be seen to be doing something. Check.

Political aspects? Not strictly important since doing something is the right thing to do. But as it happens, Labor would be vulnerable if they criticised, first because they control the states and territories, whose performance (like ours) has been lamentable, and, second, because anyone who criticises can be accused of being in favour of the sexual abuse of children, or of being willing only to wring hands about it. And the usual bleeding hearts, and the usual Aboriginal suspects (which is to say everyone but Noel Pearson ) can be sidelined by being accused of being unconcerned or complicit in the appalling situation, or wedded in their ignorance to just the sort of systems which are permitting or perpetuating it. Check.

Extra bonus points. We can tack on a whole range of things we would like to do especially over Aboriginal land tenure which have been hard to get going because of entrenched opposition and suspicion of our motives. Those who resist it can be accused of being hostile to attacking child abuse.

We can build up the Minister, Mal Brough, as being the first person who has cared, and the minister with the guts and determination to do something. The no- nonsense ex-army guy who recognises bullshit and completely unacceptable behaviour when he sees it. By riding on his revulsion and exasperation, we can avoid some awkward arguments about the lateness of our conversions, the fact that our knee-jerk responses do not fit together, that they have not been discussed with experts and interested parties, including Aborigines themselves, and that they set us, or future governments, up for virtually unlimited expenditure and responsibility without much prospect of success.

Some good lines: ''What we have got to do is confront the fact that these communities have broken down. The basic elements of a civilised society don't exist. What civilised society would allow children from a tender age to become objects of sexual abuse? What responsible government anywhere in this country can allow that to happen within its jurisdiction? That is really why we have decided to act.

''There is a problem. It is a national emergency. Nothing is more important than protecting vulnerable children. This is a crusade to help the vulnerable and the young and the children who've been denied what every child should have and that is some years of innocence and care.'' Who could dare to disagree with that? ACTUALLY, I do not doubt John Howard's sincerity, his feeling that something has to be done. The evidence for doing ''something'' something new and something dramatic to show he means business and that this is the start of a new era is pretty overwhelming. But I do not believe his latest plan will save many children from abuse. If it saves some now, it may well expose others to more and more sustained abuse in the future. Child abuse is abhorrent, and never excusable as a response to the physical or social environment, but while those environments persist, it will not go away. And the Howard plan back to 1890s protectionism, back to 1930s assimilation, and lots of good old fashioned coercion will make the problems persist.

On Wednesday, I wrote in the op-ed pages of the stacks of reports on Aboriginal affairs: piling up hundreds of metres. I complained that we would commission more reports yet. But that there was little point, because we never implemented them, or, if we pretended to, we stopped long before the energy and the resources necessarily involved had been expended. The child abuse report the latest one looked set to be just another in a long list to be ignored, I said.

Was I proven wrong just the next day, with the announcement of perhaps the most fundamental shift in Aboriginal affairs in 30 years? Not a bit of it. John Howard has not read the report, and the decisions he has announced do not implement the thoughtful recommendations of two people (and a back-up task force). John Howard has read only the headlines, and its graphic (and largely accurate) synthesis of its description of the problem. The decisions are his solutions, not the inquiry's.

His instinct to do something is noble; but it does not follow that any something will make a difference. Some will make things worse.

They may appear, at first, to make things better. Make welfare payments conditional on the kids being fed and going to school, and, at least while the policemen, the truant officers and the welfare apparatus is ticking things off, it will probably happen. Line up every child for an intensive medical examination, inter alia, for evidence of physical or sexual abuse or neglect, and one may well incidentally be able to tackle any of the wards-full of conditions in every body. Put more policemen on the streets, and intervene more actively against drunkenness, drug abuse, fighting and lack of care for children, and one may make people safer, and help some survive. Make alcohol harder to get (actually alcohol is already banned in most remote communities, but not in the towns) and, with a great deal of police work, one may reduce drinking, while they are on guard.

One will also make an already deeply depressed and dysfunctional community more frustrated, sullen, more angry; more stripped of any autonomy or self-respect. That's a guarantee of more child abuse. We knew 40 years ago that one could cure some things by lining people up and forcing them to take a shower. Likewise, we can deal with social problems by requiring classes of people to be in particular places at particular times. But only rarely can its effects last beyond the regimen, least of all when it is surrounded by petty tyrannies, arbitrariness and a big dose of angry imprecations that ''I do not care what you think: this is for your own good''.

In assimilation days, there was a deliberate point to some of the petty tyrannies. In theory, Aborigines were to be free to leave the reserve system and make life in the wider community, where they would be subject to no more restriction than anyone else, albeit at the cost of being no longer able to depend on the protection, the supposed cosiness and the communal spirit of old. It didn't work and indeed, signs of emancipation, such as the disgusting dog tags which allowed people to buy a drink in a hotel became embarrassments but at least there were prospects.

Does the new deal mean that the Government means to get serious about housing? Right now, in the 61 settlements taken over, the shortfall in housing stock runs to about 4000 houses say $800million dollars worth if it was efficiently organised. The program to catch up is so behind that by the time these houses are built (on whatever system of ownership, rental or land tenure) another 4000 houses will by then be necessary, just on population increase alone. Is this planned? In such reasonable housing as there is, average occupancy is almost invariably more than two to the average bedroom, and the household services (toilets, water supplies) are in breakdown from the load placed upon them. That very overcrowding is a potent source of the sexual abuse. What's the plan? Or are we making it up as we go along? Can we afford to fail again?

Jack Waterford is Editor-at-Large.