Aboriginal men hold key to fate
31.05.1997
THE time has come for Australia's Aboriginal community to answer Pauline Hanson and other critics with action and not words or demands for further apologies or declarations of shame.
At this week's reconciliation conference in Melbourne, leaders such as Patrick Dodson said if Aboriginal and white Australia could not achieve co-existence, reconciliation could not be achieved. And they rightly demanded that the commitments be real _ action not words.
What was not said was that ATSIC and the Aboriginal men of Australia should hang their heads in shame at what they had allowed to happen to their own people. The conference was told that Aboriginal babies had a fearfully worse mortality rate than other Australian children.
The Governor-General, Sir William Deane, said that reconciliation would not occur until that dreadful statistic was erased.
And that is true. But where is the response of the Aboriginal men _ the ones who, according to culture, are the heads of their communities?
That Aboriginal babies _ and adults _ in these days have the worst incidence of fatal diseases, illness, unemployment, alcoholism, members in jail, suicides and domestic violence is not something to be waved about like a badge of honour.
No government, no amount of goodwill, can stop Aboriginal people being the architects of their own genocide.
And that is precisely what is happening on Aboriginal communities, just as surely as if they were poisoning their own flour. Governments cannot stop the appalling domestic violence, the incest, the abuse of children and women that occurs mainly because of the alcoholism. It is not ``cultural'' in any society in the world to bash, kick, rape and abuse women and children.
And the men are responsible. Should there be any doubt whatever, I invite the doubter to visit any of the communities on the day social services payments are distributed and witness the near-riots that occur every week.
I have seen it on many occasions and it is not exaggeration to say there were hundreds of drunken people shouting abuse, fighting, passing out _ while women and children cowed in fear of the beatings they knew were in store for them. And they knew also that the only money available to provide food for the next week was being squandered on grog _ being sold at exorbitant prices.
Aboriginal Australia has tremendous support in this nation. They have their own great leaders such as the Dodson brothers, Lois O'Donohue, Noel Pearson _ and non-Aboriginal people such as Jesuit priest Father Frank Brennan _ a collection of some of Australia's finest and most committed people. Church leaders such as Anglican Archbishop Peter Hollingworth and politicians such as Brisbane Lord Mayor Jim Soorley give tremendous support.
But there comes a point at which Aboriginal Australia must help itself.
Take other areas of criticism _ such as the dozens of drunken Aboriginal people who congregate on malls, esplanades and in parks in Cairns, Mt Isa, Brisbane and other centres.
These are unfortunate people who need help. Other citizens should not have to put up with the harassment and begging that goes on in these public areas, and it should not be up to police alone to put up with the ensuing abuse when they take action.
WHY cannot local Aboriginal communities look after their own? Why can't they collect their brothers and sisters, take them to some appropriate facility where they receive medical treatment and comfort? It is a small example of self-help but one which would answer a huge criticism.
It is true that in the past 13 years, ATSIC _ with its 400 employees _ has been funded to the extent of $13 billion.
A significant percentage of that goes on work-for-the-dole schemes but many of these are token gestures. Community residents have to complete three days' work to get the money but it's a slip-shod system under which few do not qualify.
And with the hundreds of able-bodied men and women on the communities involved in local projects, is it too much to expect that facilities will be hygienically kept clean and tidy?
Of course not. An ``emu parade'' of school children would have the townships tidied up in half an hour a day.
Babies on communities suffer from malnutrition because not enough wholesome sustenance is provided to them. A major reason is because so much of the family income is spent on grog.
Sexually transmitted diseases such as syphilis are rampant. They are treatable but, according to medical staff on the communities, the men refuse the treatment because it involves painful needles or it is not ``culturally appropriate'' for female nurses to treat men for sexual matters.
What rot. It is not culturally appropriate in any society to go around continually infecting other human beings.
Babies are born of parents with syphilis. A report recently showed there were eight cases in Cairns hospital. The babies are usually stillborn.
How can members of ATSIC swan around Canberra and the casinos of this country while this devastation continues? How can they demand that Australia give more and more compensation when it is obvious that the money is not getting to the areas of need.
If Aboriginal Australia was serious about accountability, they would publicly declare that any person _ Aboriginal or non-Aboriginal _ who was found guilty of misappropriating funds would never again have access to taxpayer schemes.
Too often those involved with ``failed'' schemes just move to another _ until it goes broke through inefficiency and theft.
I have interviewed dozens of Aboriginal people affected by the policy of the ``stolen generation'' and I feel enormously sorry for these people.
But that emotion does not go near the sorrow and anger I feel when I see the current generations of Aboriginal children crying in fear as they wait for their parents at the bars on the communities. And the women who know they, too, are in for abuse.
The Aboriginal men of Australia hold the key to reconciliation. They can show the rest of the world that they are indeed leaders of a culture, that they are masters of their own destinies, that they no longer will tolerate the drunkenness, waste, abuse and denigration that goes with all those things.
Self-pride is something that can be achieved only by individual effort.
Australia's greatest cheer signifying reconciliation will come when Aboriginal Australia says: ``Look at what we achieved for ourselves.''
