NEEDY SHOULD NOT BE SCAPEGOATS
17.08.1996
THE unconscionable action of the Howard Federal Government in cutting hundreds of millions of dollars from the allocation for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people is as heartless as it is shortsighted.
How will this assist in redressing the dreadful living conditions that are forced on these people or turn around the almost unbelievable health problems that beset indigenous communities in this country?
And why is there surprise and horror that indigenous people are responding by threatening to demonstrate to the international media at the 2000 Sydney Olympics that a section of the Australian population lives in conditons which could only be described as worse than those in a third-world dictatorship?
Two recent statements by representatives of ATSI communities in Queensland demonstrate the priorities that exist under current regimes.
Former state Liberal MP David Byrne, who has lived for the past 12 years with northern Aboriginal communities and works for their land councils, pointed out that Bamaga on the tip of Cape York has had a high school for more than 10 years _ and it has not produced a single graduate.
Land rights fighter Murrandoo Yanner illustrated the priorities of government when he pointed out that in the past year in the Gulf communities of Mornington Island and Doomadgee there have been two major capital works projects _ both police stations. That's right, the only constructions on the communities were new police facilities.
Yanner disclosed that in the two communities in the past two months there had been eight suicides _ one involving an eight-year-old boy.
Imagine if that statistic had come from a non-indigenous town of similar size _ say Gatton, in the Lockyer Valley. There would be inquiries held, panic, government assistance, you name it. But the dreadful statistics have not created a ripple in the Gulf.
There are any number of examples that are reeled off weekly showing how indigenous people in Australia have decades less life expectancy than non-indigenous; horrific infant mortality rates; and an over-representation in courts and jails that is quite incredible.
There are a whole lot of problems that have been there for decades, but the situation just is not improving. And how can it improve if available funds are to be cut?
What pride can Australia have in knowing that our Aboriginal
communities still have to fight leprosy and the incidence of sexually transmitted disease is almost beyond belief. Can anyone in this day and age accept that syphilis on some communities has affected more than half the inhabitants?
Abraham Lincoln told the American people at the height of their troubled times when the abolition of slavery was tearing the nation apart that governments in a democratic society existed to ensure that all people had equal opportunity to share in the freedoms, gifts and wealth of the nation.
No argument can be sustained that indigenous people in Australia are being afforded the opportunity equal with other Australians to share in what this magnificent country has to offer.
If they don't have basic hygiene and health facilities, access to health services, job opportunities, appropriate education _ how can they as a people cope with modern demands.
As a child brought up in a western Queensland town, I have vivid memories of two Aboriginal sisters who attended the local high school doing their homework. While the rest of us plugged away in our quiet rooms, this duo could be seen late into the night sitting in the gutter outside the local swimming baths, doing their homework in the glow cast
by the overhead street light.
Their home did not have lighting, or running water, or a constant wage, or equal opportunities.
What is obvious from the government's decision to slash the $450 million is that politicians see everything but notice nothing.
Sure, they go to communities and see the drunkenness, the houses with the broken windows, the mangy dogs in the streets, the children and women dressed in rags. They see the huge crowds at the bar of the canteen when the weekly dole cheques come in and they see the violence that ensues.
They see all that, but never notice that there are causes for this stupidity. The Queensland Government a decade ago gave a form of land rights and self-determination to indigenous people, but there were no means for councils to raise money for rates to run the communities.
So they were given wet canteens. That is their principal means of making profits _ selling grog that is killing off the communities just as surely as if the hundreds of kegs were laced with strychnine.
In seeing all that hopelessness, the politicians fail to notice that each house is home to up to 20 people. No septic system can cater for that number and it inevitably breaks down. The demand on water results in failures. With the adults drunk and fighting, the children can't sleep _ and certainly can't do schoolwork.
Nutritious food is not available because invariably the money has been spent on booze.
Independent MP Pauline Hanson has stated that the cuts are not deep enough. With every respect to the new Member of Parliament, her knowledge of the living conditions and needs of indigenous people could be inscribed on the side of a stamp with a crowbar.
She might have intimate knowledge, for instance, of the heat levels needed to deep fry flake fillets in her Ipswich fish-and-chip outlet, but her depth of understanding of indigenous issues is breathtaking in its paucity.
Federal Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Herron is stating the obvious when he says that the funds given to Aboriginal people have not got to most needy areas. He added that money had been wasted through ATSIC people going on overseas trips. As well, it is well documented that large sums have been squandered through mismanagement and apparent fraudulent activities in some legal services.
The answers lie in better defining spending priorities and managing the available funds.
Why, for instance, could there not be a plan to provide a safe, adequate supply of fresh water to every community within the next decade?
And, shorter term, why couldn't programmes be instituted to ensure that indigenous children have daily access to nutritional food? And, more urgent than anything else, why isn't something constructive done about the alcoholism?
A start would be to move the ATSIC headquarters out of Canberra and put it in Cairns or Townsville where commissioners would be forced to face up to the real problems every day and where the community of interest has access to them.
Australia does not deserve to be portrayed as an international embarrassment in regard to its human rights record at the time of the Sydney Olympics. But neither do the truly needy _ the indigenous people in this nation _ deserve to be further deprived or derided or misused
as political scapegoats just because they are easy targets.
