South Australia’s homelands have only a small proportion of Australia’s 500,000 Aborigines…

South Australian "homelands" have only a very small proportion of Australia's 500,000 Aborigines, but they include some of the most dysfunctional settlements, with appalling health, overcrowded and derelict housing, and high levels of illiteracy, joblessness and welfare dependence.

Australians in London on May 17, 2006, were horrified when headlines in The Times summarised the evidence of child abuse that Dr Rogers, the Public Prosecutor in Alice Springs, had presented on ABC's Lateline program to wake Australians up to what was going on in their country. A month later, the Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Women's Council added its voice to the story of the sexual exploitation of girls and young women that was beginning to leak out of the "homelands" despite the pernicious cover-up attempts of the permit system.

In SA, journalists can only visit "homelands" in the company of an approved "guide" who they have to pay.
Ethnicity is not the cause of Aboriginal deprivation. A third of Aborigines work in mainstream jobs, own their own homes and live mainstream lives. But few of these are in SA.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men are not inherently more violent than other men. Nor is violence against women and children sanctioned by traditional Aboriginal culture. If today's dysfunctional practices had prevailed in hunter-gatherer times, whole tribes would have been wiped out.

The conditions in the "homelands" have been created by well-meaning separatist policies that have continued the more than 200-year tradition of treating indigenous Australians as being different from other Australians. Communal land ownership means that "homeland" Aborigines cannot own their own homes and benefit from rises in real estate values as other Australians do. Communal health services deny them decent health care, and the lack of decent education makes it impossible for them to get jobs.

The Community Development Employment Programs (CDEP) system of "sit-down" money was introduced to top up welfare because Aborigines were said to be unable to compete with other Australians for real jobs. CDEP payments also substitute for funding for local government services. The resulting welfare dependence has resulted in family and community dysfunction.
"Customary" law protects assailants against their weak victims.

Traditional culture has been stultified and degraded so that it has not moved from sorcery to the rule of reason, from polygamy to the equality of women with men, and from "pay-back" to the rule of law. In contrast, Aboriginal art, because of its link to mainstream markets, has been able to evolve and develop to become admired worldwide.

The Commonwealth Government has responded to the widespread embarrassment that any Australians should be living in shocking Third World conditions in the midst of Australia's plenty, with a policy of "practical reconciliation" through shared responsibility and regional partnership agreements that enable Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander settlements to improve their living standards. Education, health and policing have received additional funding.

But these initiatives are not working because there has been little or no response from the Northern Territory and state governments that are responsible for the underlying separatist health, housing, local government and, above all, education policies, that make it impossible for Aborigines to move to mainstream jobs and hence, to decent living standards.

Treating Aboriginal children separately so that they do not become fully numerate and literate in English and join the mainstream labour force is at the heart of Aboriginal deprivation. Dumbed-down curriculum content bores children so that they do not attend school regularly.

Mining corporations are committed to employing Aborigines, but they first have to provide remedial basic numeracy and literacy in English before they can train for the skills needed in mining, making recruitment costly.

Other SA industries, notably horticulture and fruit canning, have not yet, despite labour shortages, responded to Aboriginal labour supply problems. Fruit picking has proved to be a successful introduction to mainstream work for Aborigines.

The SA Government should follow the NT in providing for 99-year leases on Native title land to enable Aborigines to break away from public housing.

Commonwealth subsidies for Opal fuel have substantially reduced petrol sniffing. Trachoma and "glue ear", which prevent children from seeing and hearing at school, must be eliminated in the Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara lands as health standards are raised overall. Aborigines, on average, live 17 years less than other Australians and in the "homelands" the gap is probably 20 years.

Education reform is the key to ending Aboriginal deprivation. The number of "homeland" Aborigines in SA is so small that providing decent, mainstream education would not be a financial burden.

But it would require overcoming philosophies that have led to today's "homeland" Aborigines being less well educated than their fathers and grandfathers who missionaries thought were destined to be unskilled domestic and bush workers.

Until no social or economic indicator shows a lower standard for Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders than for other Australians, Australia cannot hold its head up as a country where a "fair go" rules.

Emeritus Professor Hughes' Lands of Shame, discussing the deprivation of Australian Aborigines and the policy changes needed to give them the choices and opportunities of other Australians, is published by The Centre for Independent Studies ( www.cis.org ) where she is a Senior Fellow.