DAWN OF HOPE
01.05.1999
`Give our children a chance' is the plea of prominent Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson, who has written a discussion paper _ Our Right to Take Responsibility _ explaining how to break the cycle of dependency that he says is killing his people. He spoke to chief reporter Tony Koch
NOEL Pearson is passionate in everything he does or says, but particularly so when debating issues concerning Aborigines.
He speaks with pride of his parents and his upbringing on the Hopevale community north of Cooktown in far north Queensland. In those days, Hopevale was a mission, run by a Lutheran pastor. Alcohol was banned and adults were expected to secure what work was available _ usually on pastoral properties at slave-labour pay rates.
This, he says, was the ``traditional economy'' in which everyone had rights and responsibility. The philosophy was if you didn't work, you starved. But the reward for honest toil was satisfaction, and a realisation that the money earned _ though little _ meant something.
``This has all been replaced with a welfare economy that is killing our people,'' Pearson says. ``I liken it to the cycad zamia palm nut that is a food source for Aboriginal people. Before it can be ground into flour, the nut must be washed in a stream and the poisons leached out. Welfare is a resource that is laced with this poison and that poison is the `money for nothing' principle.
``As long as we continue to get resources that are laced with this poison, the body of Aboriginal society is inevitably going to break down. That is exactly what we are seeing now.''
Pearson, the lawyer, is in full swing. His eyes and hands add to his argument.
He knows his speaking-out will draw flak, probably as much from his own people as those on the Right.
Speaking on the tendency to analyse Aboriginal society, he says the Right of politics is about ``responsibilities'' and the Left about ``rights''.
``The Right are those with inherited wealth. They are most assured in their rights, self-serving, and that's why they preach to others about taking responsibility. In general characterisation, the Left talks about rights _ of the individual, against the government, legal rights, land rights. The Left abandoned social discourse about responsibility and gave that entirely to the Right to run, but the fact is that rights and responsibilities have to be in balance to be a successful society.
``Aboriginal policy debate has been about our rights but there has been no discussion about our responsibility. There is a defensiveness.
``The third ingredient needed for a successful society is resources. People need access to resources to be successful and society needs to guarantee individual access to those resources. The Right never speak about resources for Aboriginal people. The view is that Aboriginal people should pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, yet the most decisive resource government can provide is education. When you empower people through education, they solve the problems themselves.''
Pearson is as quick to anger as he is to laughter. And when he speaks of the lifestyles of community Aborigines, the frustration and anger bubble.
The referendum of 1967, which acknowledged the equality of human rights for Aborigines, has in his view been taken by Aborigines as ``the right to drink''. He speaks of the destruction this has visited on his people _ how men and women have ``joined the drinking coterie _ given up and become part of this parasitic circle _ basically parasites on Aboriginal society''.
The corollary is that no one looks after the children. They are neglected, unattended, unfed, or it falls to the very elderly to care for them.
``We live in a society that is individually structured in a way that puts tremendous pressure on community members to provide resources to this parasitic drink-and-gamble coterie. The core of this is male _ now joined by young women,'' Pearson says despairingly. ``Old men and old women who don't give money get punched or beaten up, or the next step is they get raped. There were never any incidents of young people assaulting elders even 10 years ago.
``The poison is progressively destroying us. I don't think life expectancy is going to get better. It will get worse because we are coming into this stage where the people who started their adult lives at age 16 or 17 completely inside the welfare economy _ they are the ones who have spent their entire adult lives drinking. They are mid to late 40s and they are shot to pieces. They are fucked.''
In Pearson's words, ``sacred cows'' have to be put aside if Aborigines are to rebuild their lives. Human rights, privacy, discrimination should be of secondary significance to saving a race and culture. His view is that by instituting responsibility and reciprocity in economic relations, social problems, including grog and associated violence, will be ``normalised''.
He advocates ``breaking some of the welfare taboos''. If a child misses school, his mother will be told she misses out on family allowance until she ensures that her child gets to school each day.
Education is the great saviour of black (and white) society, says Pearson, and health is the next major component.
``We have world standard diagnostic services on the Cape, yet our people do not avail themselves of even basic treatment courses,'' he says. ``The work-for-the-dole (CDEP) payments could be linked to an obligation to all people attending all necessary health checks and subsequent treatments.''
ABORIGINAL communities rely on welfare for up to 98 percent of their income.
This is the biggest hurdle for Pearson and other indigenous leaders _ how to break that dependency and get the majority into meaningful work.
``The current black leadership of this country see themselves in the servant/saviour model of leadership _ similar to the well-meaning missionaries of the past,'' he says. ``We see it as an obligation . . . We are serving them, saying `Don't worry. We are not going to demand any responsibility from you. We will slay the white dragon. We will take on the governments. Your calamitous conditions are entirely the result of this colonial oppression. Your ultimate salvation relies on us going out to take on those bastards'.
``This idea has slowly crept on me. I have resented the idea of being a servant of my people in the Cape, or even my own family. I have encouraged the approach to leadership that I am, at most, a partner with ideas, but the best I can do is put my shoulder behind you.
``We need a new Aboriginal style of leadership that is post-welfare, and is a partner with government whose function is just to be a provider of resources.
``We have to stop being seen as victims. A victim implies a person is incapable of helping himself. Aboriginal leadership has seen it politically useful to portray our people as victims. It is a politically powerful position to carry an argument publicly. It is a very tricky business dealing with people who have been victims. But it is a terribly bad thing to perpetuate. The view that people are victims is very disempowering.''
Pearson elaborates, referring to the discussion paper, Our Right To Take Responsibility, he has just completed.
But inevitably he returns to concerns about Aboriginal children and enabling them to escape the choking lifestyles in which they are exposed to alcoholism, violence and despair.
``The Cape York Health Council studies have shown that kids are most in danger of harm on the days the government sends money to the community for their benefit _ Wednesday and Thursday nights. That is when the injuries occur,'' he says. ``That is the most graphic illustration of the poison in this resource. If government wants to help those kids, they probably should stop the payments.
``This leads to the conclusion that welfare should be stopped entirely, but that is unrealistic. No, the nature of the resource has to be changed. Reinstitute reciprocity. No blackfellow in the community should get one cent which is not without some kind of reciprocity being demanded from them.
``One of the most fundamental things is to encourage acts of reciprocity in education. Why don't we pay people the CDEP to go and get educated? In terms of returns to society, getting educated is the best start.
``There is a very clear relationship between the economic system and social behaviour. There is no bottom line in our community. You can be utterly passive _ do not one skerrick of work _ yet you still live. You enter into a system where people think their livelihood is something that comes in the mail _ gets plucked off a tree and comes in an envelope for you . . . Welfare is never enough to live on, but it is enough to kill your initiative to get more.''
Getting Aboriginal communities involved in the ``real economy'' is the biggest hurdle their leaders face.
He says that whenever projects are promoted for Aborigines, they embrace rural pursuits _ cattle grazing, crocodile farms, emu farms. Remote Australia is not an easy place for economic enterprises. The predicament is that the least skilled, least-resourced people are living in areas of Australia where it is hardest to develop projects.
``None of them ever succeeds,'' he says. ``If white people can't make money from cattle, how can our people do it? We need the autonomy to invest in pursuits that give a genuine return.
``Given proper structures and specialist support, proper returns could be gained from investments and the money used, for instance, to send our young people away to university.''
He advocates a body involving federal and state governments, and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, which would control all funding coming into Cape communities, and no one who did not earn it would be paid.
He says local communities could come up with numerous worthwhile projects.
``The first and most important responsibility is to take care of oneself. Self-improvement through education and the personal acquisition of skills, knowledge and training is usually the most powerful contribution an individual can make to society. The second responsibility is toward one's family.
``The third kind of responsibility is to contribute to the community.
``One of the problems with state and national governments attempting to institute mutual obligation principles is that they are too remote from the citizens. Citizens usually see this as a form of state compulsion.
``There is therefore no acceptance of the moral basis for the demand. This is especially the case when citizens can legitimately ask governments why they are not creating jobs and cutting unemployment; why are the rich getting richer; why governments don't crack down on corporate tax evaders.
``Social change ultimately requires the citizens to be engaged in the solution of their own problems, that of their families and of their communities.
``This is now a truism, well understood by government but, in Aboriginal Affairs in particular, never practised. We have to stop being fobbed off with the promise that ``inter-agency co-ordination'' or ``multi-lateral agreements'' between governments are going to produce a change. They haven't and they simply won't.''
