Recognising kith and kin
24.08.2000
By: Peter Botsman
'Public and private spending should be contributing to the capacity of people to develop their own solutions'
IT'S taken 18 months for the southern media to catch up with Tony Koch, The Courier-Mail and Noel Pearson. In an article in Saturday's Sydney Morning Herald, Tony Stephens discovered that Pearson had gone beyond Mabo and native title and was searching for an antidote to the poison of welfare dependency in indigenous communities.
Stephens writes of Pearson as a shrewd politician seizing on the new flexibility of government and the popular notion of mutual obligation and social partnerships. What a breakthrough when compared with the articles written by Greg Roberts in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age only a few months ago suggesting there was something underhanded about the coalition of Premier Peter Beattie, The Courier-Mail, corporate Australia and Pearson working together on reforming and redeveloping welfare!
Some of the pure ideologues on the SMH are yet to discover that the welfare state is failing mainstream Australian communities in their own city. But at least they are now not editorialising against what is, in effect, a very fragile and difficult movement for change and development on the Cape.
Paul Kelly, writing in yesterday's Australian about the McClure Report, has also picked up the idea that participative welfare is a political winner and that Pearson has been one of its strongest advocates.
These articles signify that the southern press has reached the point that most Queenslanders, who have been following the issues, were at almost two years ago. It has been a slow and in some ways disheartening process to convince those remote from the Cape and white welfare communities that something different had to be done.
But as the southerners catch up, Queenslanders are at an even more difficult stage of creating new services and enterprises using traditional welfare and public sector dollars on Cape York.
Tomorrow, business and government leaders meet for a summit at Weipa. Arising out of the summit we will see the public sector do the job that it does well, compiling facts and figures about the problems of the Cape. Well-intentioned public servants and private companies will also sign on to support the Cape York Partnership.
However, to make a difference, the partners must realise that the way they do business, deliver services and funding must be fundamentally re-thought. The worst thing that could happen would be for government and business to commit to a huge injection of funding along conventional lines (more Toyotas and hospitals).
The most important change is about the way resources are delivered in partnership with the natural leaders of indigenous and rural communities. This is not just an indigenous community issue, it is also a lesson for the Australian community as a whole.
From an indigenous perspective, Pearson and his leadership team will be hoping for a number of things to emerge from Weipa. We need a serious understanding of the natural government of indigenous society that is derived from kinship and family.
We often portray indigenous families as difficult because they are big, extended, sharing, kinship groups. We need to recognise that the moral authority of family leaders within indigenous communities is a basis for building community strength, enterprises and rules.
Often, whether through an artificial ATSIC process, a departmental bureaucrat, a mining company or a politician, we kick sand into the eyes of the moral family leaders of indigenous communities who can make things happen, be they mothers, elders or heads of families.
We need creative ways to invest in the strength of the indigenous family structure. Public and private sector leaders also need to recognise that indigenous communities and, indeed, most rural communities, want access to tools and know-how to make their own solutions.
The profound problems of the Cape, including alcoholism, unemployment, domestic violence and lack of economic development, can never be solved by an army of highly paid professionals flying in from Brisbane or Canberra, nor from the creation of a shiny multimillion- dollar institution.
Every piece of public and private spending should be contributing to the capacity of people to develop their own solutions. The Cape needs a toolbox from the private and public sector that consists of experts, training packages, investment funds, equipment and know-how. The job of the tools is to work at the hands of the people. Public institutions and private operations often undermine the micro-economy of rural and indigenous communities. The worst offenders are hospitals but mines, schools, welfare offices, housing and engineering departments fit into the same category.
Many of these institutions suck resources out of communities rather than create opportunities for skills and development within them.
Small is often better than big. The old bush hospital is a model. It employed a highly skilled nurse practitioner who lived long-term in the community. She was capable of solving most general health problems and could quickly identify problems and incidents that required skilled back-up.
When it comes to the development of experiments and investments that need to be made over a 20-year period, it would be terrible if an electoral cycle put the initiatives and ideas of the Cape on hold. It would be equally terrible if the public sector were given the responsibility for entrepreneurial investments and strategies that lie beyond its capacity. Arm's length groups like Jim Petrich's Cape York Development Association and Noel Pearson's Balkanu have an important role to play in keeping things on track for the long term.
We need to see these agencies as the natural partners of government. Having got this far, let us praise reporter Tony Koch and The Courier-Mail for its investment in solutions and not just headlines, the Beattie Government and, of course, the indigenous statesman of the north, Noel Pearson. And let us all acknowledge that there is still so far to travel.
Peter Botsman is executive director of the
Brisbane Institute
