Antinuclear

Fresh slogans and watchwords were heard in Canberra back then: there was much talk of combating remote community chaos through “shared responsibility agreements”, of increasing economic opportunity and freeing indigenous people from the passive welfare trap. But at the peak of the federal bureaucracy a new phase was dawning in indigenous affairs: one of increased control and surveillance, of close statistical monitoring and constraint, the better to effect social reform at the scale of an entire population group.

This deep, persisting mismatch between announced aims and actual methods defines the landscape of indigenous politics to this day. In place of self-determination and reconciliation, the rhetoric of recognition and empowerment now fills the air — but autonomy and institutional power have been withdrawn from Aboriginal groups and communities, step by relentless step.

A clear blueprint for the next stage in this process was unveiled with the release in late July of the artfully titled report by Andrew Forrest, Creating Parity, which in pursuit of its program of full equality of opportunity recommends blanket welfare income management and intensive oversight of infants and young children in “target” indigenous communities………

The basic dogma of the “new paradigm” in indigenous affairs holds that welfare reform measures are essential, and must be enforced with vigour: and the mixed results of such controls to date do not call in question the dogma, but rather prove that the measures in place have been too weakly or inconsistently imposed.

Hence the need for intensified controls, for more administrative reach. Hence the new proposals for limits on what welfare funds can be used for, and fines for families who fail to send their children to school. Cut and restrict entitlements to build a sense of responsibility. Mandate a set of social norms in order to create functional communities. A heady policy brew!

The drift towards this position has been gradual, and it has grad­ually enmeshed the federal bureaucrats who run indigenous affairs in the net of contradictions they now face………

The Northern Territory “emergency response” was pulled together by John Howard, his can-do indigenous affairs minister Mal Brough and a small team in the space of a few days, …….

Within six months the Coalition had lost power, and Federal Labor launched a review of the policy, and, in due course, brought in a watered-down version, “Stronger Futures”. But it was the secondary measures brought in at the same time as the headline Intervention that have cut deepest, and done most to drain away indigenous autonomy.

By chance, the “emergency response” unfolded at the same time as a wholesale restructuring of local government in the NT, with more than 60 councils being merged into eight large administrative bodies. At a stroke of the pen, in mid-2008, almost every Aboriginal community-owned asset in the remote Territory passed to the new “super-shires”.

Under a separate deal between the Darwin and Canberra governments Aboriginal community housing, long run by a set of locally controlled organisations, was transferred to the NT’s public housing arm, which promptly more than doubled effective rental charges. Over the same period, the federal government expanded its $80 million Outback Stores program, giving communities new store facilities on condition they surrendered management of their sole retail outlet to an outside group………

the combined psychological impact on the remote communities affected was devastating: they went from being small places with a high degree of control over their small, welfare-based economies to being small places wholly run by outsiders with agendas of their own.

This pattern extended across the board: services, housing, jobs as well. With the Intervention came the gradual shut-down of the locally focused, long-running and much-modified Community Development Employment Program………

Many communities are bleeding money and may not survive. Consider the Ngaanyatjarra region of the western desert, which has a population of about 2000, and ran a successful CDEP program with 640 participants: this arrangement brought the region additional income of $3.2 million on top of standard municipal and essential services wages, and was the effective drive-train of the local economy.

Under the new RJCP the region now receives $1.6 million, or half the previous total. Extra funds available from a “participation” account are virtually inaccessible to local workers: indeed, about one third of the adult Ngaanyatjarra population currently have no access to welfare payments because of the difficulties involved in dealing with distant social services departments.

Against this backdrop, the long-forgotten origin of the first, simple, independently managed CDEP scheme holds lessons. ……..http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/a-decade-after-atsic-was-axed-aborigines-still-have-little-say/story-e6frg6zo-1227071962303