Helen Hughes writes on Lands of Shame

The pernicious permit system that censors reporting about remote ‘homelands’ has been sufficiently broken into to make Australians aware of the appalling conditions in these areas. It is a national point of shame that within this land of plenty most of the 90,000 Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders in so called ‘homelands’ exist in shocking Third World overcrowded and derelict housing and that their expectation of life is some 20 years shorter than that of other Australians. Non-numeracy and illiteracy has condemned them to joblessness and welfare dependence.

Ethnicity is not the cause of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander deprivation. A third work in mainstream jobs, own their own homes and live mainstream lives in major cities and regional Australia.

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 shameful conditions in the ‘homelands’ have been created by well meaning separatist policies associated with the Coombs socialist experiment 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. The CDEP system of ‘sit-down’ money was introduced to top up welfare because Aborigines were said to be unable to compete with other Australians in real jobs. CDEP payments also substitute for funding for local government services. As most ‘homelands’ are located in remote areas, CDEP is the principal form of so-called employment. It prevents men and women from accessing mainstream jobs even where ‘homeland’ settlements are located near to labour short tourist or mining areas. The resulting welfare dependence has resulted in family and community dysfunction. Alcoholism is endemic and leads to violence, particularly against women and children. ‘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. Young girls are still being given in marriage to older men so that children are bearing children, accounting for maternal and infant death statistics akin to developing countries. Illiteracy has led to the loss of many Indigenous languages. 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 by a policy of ‘practical reconciliation’ with Shared Responsibility and Regional Partnership Agreements to enable Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander settlements to improve their living standards. Education, health and policing have received additional funding. Ninety-nine year leases have been introduced in the Northern Territory to stimulate private home ownership. The CDEP system has been abolished outside the ‘homelands’ to get people into jobs. But these initiatives are not working because there has been little or no support 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.

The lack of a response from the Northern Territory and States is only partly ideological. A small Aboriginal elite benefits from the hundreds of land council, housing, health, local government, corporation boards and senior bureaucratic positions that have been set up to control communal Aboriginal life. Incomes of $250,000 a year plus expenses are not easy to give up. Most of the administrators, service providers and consultants in the ‘homelands’ are not Indigenous. In addition, Northern Territory and State bureaucrats benefit from the $3.3 billion plus that the Commonwealth Government spends annually on Aborigines. Contracting firms supplying communal houses costing $400,000 to $450,000 instead of $120,000 to $150,000 are happy with the status quo.

Education Departments that have dumbed down the syllabus for primary schools in the name of cultural appropriateness and deny Aboriginal children the phonetics and grammar essential to teaching English as a second language are a key reason for low school attendance and abysmal achievement levels. Most ‘homeland’ children to do not reach Year 6 levels and few go on to the high schools that are necessary for entry into work or further education.

Mining corporations have taken steps to set targets for Aboriginal employment. They are recruiting Aboriginal workers for skilled, well paid jobs even though it means that they have to start with remedial numeracy and literacy before skills training. Other industries, notably horticulture and tourism, should be following in these footsteps. Foundations, service clubs and corporations are helping remote settlements to help themselves. But reform will continue to be painfully slow until the Northern Territory and the States commit to reforming their discriminatory policies. Until Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders have the same social indicators as other Australians, Australia cannot hold its head up as a country that has a fair-go for all.

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.au) where she is a Senior Fellow.