Education is key for Aboriginal Australia

Three times in as many weeks the surprise of elite education for Aboriginal kids has made the news: A Tony Abbott staffer demoted for allegedly threatening to ‘cut the throat’ of funding to the Australian Indigenous Education Foundation (which funds such scholarships); an Aboriginal Scots College boy front-page in The Australian; and an SBS World News Australia special ‘An Indigenous PM: This Can Happen’, with private-school Aboriginal boys.

This month a new book will be launched around Australia. As stated on the back-cover: ‘In black & white: Australians All at the Crossroads seeks to illuminate the issues through perspectives of concerned blackfellas and whitefellas, both, on root causes, how issues play out on the ground, and what needs to be done. It is the hope of the editors that experiences and ideas, from the community base to the heights of policy, may reveal the common ground that is sine-qua-non to working out real answers and practical programs that will make a difference.’

In our technological age it is so obvious that life prospects depend absolutely on education. As such, education is one of the key issues covered by contributors to In black & white, a number with links to the CIS: Helen and Mark Hughes, Sara Hudson, and co-editor Dr Anthony Dillon. Alison Anderson MLA writes with feeling on real education for real jobs for her people in the most remote areas, too often ‘out-of-sight-out-of-mind’. Warren Mundine tells where he comes from: hard work, the recipe for success. Bess and Dave Price discuss ‘good and bad culture’. My chapter with Professor Rhonda Craven, ‘Together We Can’t Lose’, looks at how research can identify ways to seed Aboriginal success and, together, achieve what Australia can be.

In contrast to the ‘doom-and-gloom’ of most Aboriginal affairs discourse, In black & white is positive, with a confident focus on how we can make a difference, and in particular on how the talents and the potential of Aboriginal Australians can be realised and harnessed to make Australia what we always should have been:

‘As the subtitle’s reference to our National Anthem suggests, all Australians – that’s all of us – must put an end ‘one-time’ (right now, once and for all) to the wastage of Aboriginal talent and the denial of the real Australia that has diminished our nation far too long.’

Nigel Parbury is attached to the Centre for Positive Psychology and Education at the University of Western Sydney and co-editor of In black & white, available from Connor Court Publishing and select bookshops.