'Aboriginals' taking -up on Queensland Premier
Premier Mr. Peter Beattie
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21120086-5006786,00.html
Aboriginal leaders flay Beattie plan
January 26, 2007
QUEENSLAND Aboriginal leaders yesterday scoffed at Premier Peter Beattie's announcement that a ministerial name-change was all that was necessary to fix problems with indigenous people.
Brisbane-based indigenous activist and author Sam Watson said Mr. Beattie's effort, announced on his first day back at work after holidays, was "tokenism at its most sickening".
"So, Mr. Beattie abolishes the Department of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Policy and announces that indigenous issues would be mainstreamed, and now the minister responsible gets a word or two added," Mr. Watson said. "Pathetic."
Riots at Aurukun on Cape York and the tense situation on Palm Island off Townsville after the failure to charge a policeman over the 2004 death in custody of Mulrunji Doomadgee have also contributed to tensions between the Government and the indigenous community in the months since the September election.
The Australian revealed last week that in April last year an internal Queensland government report was completed spelling out the dreadful statistics for indigenous people - from child mortality to school completion, unemployment, alcohol addiction, violence and crime.
The Baseline report was kept secret and not acted on, but yesterday Mr. Beattie brandished a copy and announced that, in the light of its contents and following the subsequent anger of Aboriginal people, he would expand the title of his Communities Minister, Warren Pitt.
Mr. Pitt, who is recovering from cancer, will now have the workload responsibilities of Minister for Communities, Disability Services, and seniors, Youth and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Partnerships.
Asked about the name change yesterday in a radio interview, Mr. Beattie conceded that it meant very little in practice.
"I understand the criticism from indigenous communities in relation to some of the changes recently," he said. "As a clear sign of good faith, I am prepared to give to Warren Pitt the title of Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Partnerships because we do want to advance indigenous Queenslanders. We had a stand-alone department for the first eight years of my government and it didn't deliver."
Mr. Beattie cited figures in the Baseline report and stated the new title would involve a partnership between the Government and indigenous leaders to tackle the problems of alcohol abuse.
"Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders are still more likely to be charged with a crime, and indigenous people are 10 times more likely to die by suicide," he said, quoting the report. "But one of the biggest problems that concern me is that there is too much violence, black on black, which is alcohol-related."
North Queensland activist and senior Aboriginal nurse Gracelyn Smallwood said it was insulting to suggest that a ministerial name change meant any change at all and she fired a broadside at the Beattie Government's fixation on violence.
"This Government introduced alcohol management plans on remote communities and thought they had solved everything," she said.
"No rehabilitation, no medical help, no assistance to people that their policies had encouraged to drink for decades - no, they just turned their backs on that.
"Change the name is not the answer. Perhaps change the Government is what is needed."
