Facing the DEMON
24.11.2001
By: Tony Koch
(Noel Pearson
Extract from a paper delivered in May 2001.
"A very great proportion of the violence in our communities is associated with grog ...the court convictions and clinic records show this clearly.
If we get on top of our grog and drug problem, we will get on top of the worst of our violence problem. What we are doing now is creating the optimal conditions for our addicts who don’t want to change, to consume all of our resources and to disrupt our society. What abusive members of our communities experience is not a determined rejection of that behaviour, it is (i) unconditional financial support for nothing (ii) endless nonsense talk to give the impression that something is being done (iii) limitless understanding and care when the complications of abusive behaviour become annoying and (iv)ideology production for the defence of abusive lifestyles. The ‘progressive ’ response to illicit hard drugs in the wider community is not at all different to the response of our own community to grog abuse.")
A UNIVERSITY of Queensland graduate once told the story about how his group had been asked by their social sciences lecturer to write, in 10 minutes, the solutions to the ``problems'' confronting Aboriginal Australians.
The pens and paper flew. No one was stuck for words. The lecturer, Matt Foley, then asked the class to write down the names of every indigenous person they knew.
Some recorded the likes of Lionel Rose and Yvonne Goolagong. When pressed, each student admitted that they had never actually met an Aborigine. But every one of them knew how to solve their ``problems''.
A similar dilemma faced former Court of Appeal president Tony Fitzgerald when he accepted Premier Peter Beattie's proposal in August to examine justice issues in Cape York communities.
The brief also sought strategies to determine the link between alcohol and lawlessness, and how to protect members of the communities -- especially women, children and the aged -- from violence.
Intensive work has already been done on these issues, most recently by indigenous leaders Boni Robertson and her 50-strong team of women from the communities, and Noel Pearson.
So Fitzgerald had the advantage of being able to draw on the work completed by those people, and to interview them on the advances being made -- or the impediments they had encountered to any such advances.
The preliminary report by Fitzgerald's team was handed to the Government on Monday and released publicly (www.premiers.qld.gov.au/about/community/capeyorkreport.htm).
Initial criticism was that the report simply revisited ground covered by Robertson's team and that some recommendations -- those pushing for closure of canteens selling alcohol in communities -- were unrealistic.
Fitzgerald's study obviously took into account the Robertson report's excellent work. However, more specifically, he addressed the matters of justice, crime and its causes and effects, the human price being paid, and the extent and reasons for the chronic alcoholism and related violence.
He also outlined solutions which, after being discussed at community level, will form the basis for real government action.
After the report's release, Beattie told heads of relevant departments -- which will have the task of implementing recommendations -- that, historically, many such documents had been presented to government, and then selectively implemented.
The Premier said he would not tolerate a repeat of past bureaucratic tardiness over reform, and that any department that failed to properly implement its indigenous communities' budget would have the funding taken from it and given instead directly to the communities. He made it clear it was not just an idle threat.
In appointing Fitzgerald, Beattie was playing for high stakes. The debt owed by the Queensland public to Fitzgerald for his corruption-busting efforts of the late 1980s is such that his credibility is an unassailable part of the Queensland psyche.
After all, what other judge could get away with the gem he dropped a decade ago when told by a journalist he was regarded as ``the thinking woman's sex symbol''? His reply was that he was disappointed he appealed to such a small section of the community.
The appointment of Fitzgerald spoke volumes about how committed Beattie is to getting an honest outcome.
In reading the three-volume document, the realisation strikes that Fitzgerald has captured the mood of modern Australia -- where the population is more aware of the hardships faced by indigenous communities. We are thankfully in a society where the Aboriginal racist joke is largely a thing of the past, where schoolchildren now learn about reconciliation instead of reading the skewed history about how the ``brave'' settlers battled the ``savages'' to secure grazing land.
There is a collective will for change, and Fitzgerald challenges -- in fact, demands -- that government stop talking and now act.
He spares no one -- white or black -- in proposing what he sees as solutions to the most grievous problems, and states unequivocally that alcohol abuse is an issue ``that now threatens the very viability of communities''.
``Unless the epidemic of alcohol abuse is dealt with, no other development, including economic and educational reform, can occur,'' he wrote.
But, Fitzgerald has also pointed to the causes, particularly the ``emergence of the welfare economy'' in communities in the 1960s and 1970s, an issue addressed in work by Noel Pearson.
``Of the community `training wage' introduced in 1968 only $50 (today) was given as cash in hand, and this included a 15 per cent margin for encouragement, far less than even good money managers could survive on. While the rations system had entrenched poverty and deadened employment initiatives in the communities, the introduction of starvation wages dramatically altered community dynamics at the root -- it forced a reconfiguration of the social fabric.
``A working husband, wife and five children depended on the `wage' of $85 a week, while an unemployed husband with a wife and between two and seven children on supporting parents benefit received between $104 and $141 a week. A single unemployed male with a single unemployed partner each brought in benefits of $51.45, as did unmarried couples who did not live together openly.
``The effects were devastating. Most community households had no male figurehead, and middle-aged men were evicted with no home to go to, moving from relative to relative, a large floating population of aimless and rootless individuals, easy prey to alcohol and violence.''
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Facing the demon
From Page 27
``For the children, the break-up of the family unit was devastating. For many, father figures were no longer at home, young mothers were out drinking, older women were visiting for companionship. Children who had previously enjoyed a multiplicity of `mothers', `aunts' and `uncles' now lost this consistent network of carers.''
So, as has consistently been pointed out, alcohol dependency brought about by hopelessness and a directionless life leads to appalling violence -- with the victims most often being family members.
Indigenous leaders all acknowledge the problem, but differ in their ideas on how to combat it.
Rob Blackley, former chair of Palm Island Council and Queensland president of Young Labor, takes the hardest line of all -- including the immediate closure of all alcohol canteens in all communities.
He wants sly-grogging properly policed, and anyone involved in the practice banned from getting public housing or government benefits.
``This must occur immediately and in conjunction with the beginnings of a debate on freehold land tenure, economic development and alternative governance, as it is only through job creation, laws based on Aboriginal culture and home-ownership that we will see any lasting change to our communities,'' Blackley said.
Far North ATSIC Commissioner Murrandoo Yanner says prohibition cannot work, but sly-grogging can be stopped. He also advocates using ``traditional laws'' to deter those who sell alcohol illegally in the communities for vastly inflated prices. Those ``laws'' include such severe penalties as breaking the legs of anyone caught doing it.
Tracker Tilmouth, from the Northern Territory, has seen many of the problems alcohol has created in the communities combated. He said Fitzgerald has ``gone to the immediate relief of pressure points within the community''.
``In the Territory, we have night patrols and dry-out shelters. Every community should have a women's shelter,'' he said. ``These issues are not unique to Aboriginal communities, but they are Western-style solutions for Western-style diseases.''
Brisbane lawyer Andrew Boe, who regularly visits Cape communities to represent Aborigines, said federal and state governments had selectively implemented recommendations and overlooked changing policy identified as having failed.
``The time for examination has long been superseded by the obligation to act,'' he said.
``Any real change to the practical realities for Aboriginal people, particularly women and children, will only occur once all agencies look past their own agendas and correlate and co-ordinate their energy and publicly funded budgets towards practical changes. I am not Aboriginal but my wife and children are.
``I will attract my own criticism by saying those quick to be critical, particularly Aboriginal spokespeople, should get over the rather boring bleat that the Cape York Justice Study and similar government action further promotes paternalism.''
The real battle for Fitzgerald and Beattie is to get the bureaucracy to accept the final reforms.
Pauline Hanson made very few correct observations but she was correct when she identified the ``Aboriginal industry''.
There are thousands of public servants, black and white, who depend on the status quo in indigenous affairs for a comfortable existence.
Conversely, there are many who are genuinely committed to gaining proper outcomes.
