- Worldwide, people strive to educate their children, to work, to own or rent a decent dwelling, to enjoy family and friends and to participate in social, political and cultural activities of their choosing. When work is done, they may take pleasure in a glass of beer or wine in pleasant surroundings.
- While most Australians enjoy these basic rights, they are denied to almost all the Aborigines in the Nhulunbuy hinterland. These Aborigines have been deprived of education and jobs, relegated to welfare dependence and to overcrowded, derelict communal housing. Their squalid living conditions lead to such poor health that they probably live some 20 years less than other Australians. It has been argued that such deprivation is necessary to their preservation of their culture. But hunting and gathering life-styles inevitably degenerated into welfare dependence, followed by alcoholism, other drug abuse and family and social dysfunction. At the margin, traditional culture has been perverted, characterised by endemic violence, particularly against women.
- Instead of providing mainstream education to the Nhulunbuy hinterland Aborigines, so that they can have access to jobs, and thus the life-style choices that other Australians enjoy, the Northern Territory sought to mitigate the violence engendered by alcohol abuse by supplying kava, a traditional Pacific Island stimulant. Drinking kava is followed by a brief period of mood elevation, but soon, particularly if drunk in large quantities, it has an anaesthetic effect. Thus, unlike excessive alcohol consumption, it is rarely followed by violence.
- The Northern Territory Government’s Kava Management Programme linked kava sales to income for deprived settlements. With this incentive, kava consumption grew until some settlements became incapacitated for several days each week. High kava consumption, typically of more than 240–400g a week, has had significant ill-health effects, often contributing to early death.
- The Commonwealth Government had no option but to end the import of kava in June 2007. Not surprisingly, those who had benefited from the Northern Territory’s kava import programme have objected to its demise. Incongruously, they claim that, among other social costs, ending kava sales will affect the ability to fund women’s night patrols against violence! At the grass-roots level, however, there is quiet satisfaction among remote settlement leaders, and particularly among women, at the ending of debilitating kava sessions and the potential release of perhaps $90 weekly to family budgets.
Helen Hughes is a Senior Fellow at The Centre for Independent Studies.