Grim reality of government moves to get Aborigines off their homelands
Aboriginal communities under threat Ft.com Jamie Smyth in Sydney December 26, 2014 Dickie Bedford was born in the 1960s at a time when thousands of aboriginal people were being evicted from pastoral cattle stations. Half a century later a new generation of indigenous Australians faces a similar fate as budget cuts threaten to close hundreds of remote communities.
“They will turn us into fringe-dwellers again if they go ahead with these closures,” says Mr Bedford, executive director of the Marra Worra Worra aboriginal corporation in Western Australia.
“Withdrawing municipal services from these remote communities will force people to move into overcrowded hub towns where they are much more likely to encounter drugs, alcohol and family dysfunction,” he says.
Western Australia has warned that 150 of its 270 remote indigenous communities may have to close as the state cannot afford to pay for road, power, water or waste services. A further 60 aboriginal communities in South Australia are under threat as the federal and state government argue over who should fund basic services.
About 16,000 indigenous people live in these remote communities, which have received federal government funding for more than 50 years. Tony Abbott, Australia’s prime minister, has decided to phase out federal funding and shift responsibility to state governments following final one-off payments of A$90m (US$73m) to Western Australia and A$10m to South Australia………
In May, the federal government unveiled the toughest budget in two decades, which included a A$500m cut in aboriginal funding programmes, to tackle a $48.5bn budget deficit. Western Australia, which is heavily dependent on taxes from mining companies, is selling state assets and considering spending cuts.
Advocacy groups say aboriginal people, already the most marginalised group in society, are bearing the brunt of the tougher economic climate. They say the threat to close hundreds of communities harks back to an earlier era when indigenous people were forced from their land by white settlers following a court ruling that they must be paid a basic wage.
“Forcing aboriginal people to move from their communities is a form of cultural genocide,” says Tammy Solonec of Amnesty International Australia………..
The National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples, an advocacy group, has written to Mr Abbott urging him to intervene.
A federal government spokeswoman said the issue was a matter for states to settle.
South Australia’s government is resisting the federal government’s decision to withdraw services, accusing it of using “gun-toting” tactics to force states to accept “insulting” final payments from Canberra. ………http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f12f376c-81ba-11e4-b9d0-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3N84itvYv
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