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Australia's brash move to abolish race funding
Australia's brash move to abolish race funding
24.04.2004
By SELWYN PARKER
What Don Brash is suggesting should happen in Maori affairs, Australia has just done - or, more accurately, will do on July 1. That's when Prime Minister John Howard's Government abolishes the principal body for Aboriginal welfare, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (Atsic), and moves to a "mainstreaming" system that treats all Australians equally.
Howard's move ends a 15-year
programme that gave Aboriginal people about A$1 billion ($1.17 billion) a year of federal funds to manage their own way out of their troubles.
And their troubles are many, including
ed
cational under-achievement, low life expectancy, unemployment, alcoholism
, child abuse, and high levels of crime, particularly in the Northern Territory and Queensland.
According to the Prime Minister, that programme has been a failure. And a very expensive one.
The burying of Atsic marks a watershed in Aboriginal affairs that has echoes across the Tasman. Howard's comment was: "We believe very strongly that the experiment in separate representation, elected representation, for indigenous people has been a failure."
The new word is mainstreaming. The Government has promised that Aboriginals will get just as much federal money as before, but it will be channelled through the same organisations that provide assistance to all Australians.
Atsic will be d
ismantled with indecent haste. Its regional councils will be eliminated by the middle of next year, which will take 400 regional black politicians off the federal payroll.
The imm
edia
te r
eaction to
the axing of Atsic is revealing. Those most affected, namely members of the Atsic board,
have predictably complained bitterly, calling the Prime Minister a "redneck" and a "cold-hearted prick" among other things, and forecasting that mainstreaming "will make things worse".
But others who might normally be expected to attack the decision have been remarkably quiet. One respected Aboriginal leader, Warren Mundine, brother of the boxer Tony, observed that Atsic had given the Government plenty of reasons to abolish it and "Aboriginal people are quite sick of it".
The leader of the Labor Opposition, Mark Latham, had last month also promised to legislate Atsic out of existence.
Geoff Clark, Atsic's first elected chairman, hasn't hel
ped. There is almost universal agreement he has shot himself in the foot.
Clark, who likes to think of himself as the Aboriginal prime minister of a black parliament,
spends m
uch of h
is time in court f
ighting off published allegations of date rape from his youth. He was also recently convicted over a pub brawl that forc
ed his suspension eight months ago from his A$240,000 ($281,000) a year job, and has instituted separate court proceedings to get it back. And he fell foul of his federal minister over unusually high expenses.
His deputy, "Sugar" Ray Robinson, has been embroiled in allegations of financial irregularities in several Queensland companies.
Robinson has been quick to bite the hand that feeds Atsic. Last week he criticised Aboriginal Affairs Minister Amanda Vanstone, who has been in the job only six months, for making "less than a handful of trips to see for herself the state of Aboriginal communities</
b>". For a minister with other demanding portfolios, "a handful of trips" in such a short time might be good going.
Clark still thinks he can save
Atsic from e
xtinction. &
quot;We will fight by our
every means necessary to get it back," he promised last week.
That won't happen. The Government has irrevocably decided that Atsic wasn't improving the lo
t of Australia's Aboriginals despite its enormous budget.
Most of the evidence suggests that Atsic and Clark lost sight of their purpose and didn't want to get their hands dirty fixing problems in some of the dysfunctional far north communities.
For example, the organisation's latest corporate plan considered its main achievements to be in its advocacy role, "representational activities" at forums including the United Nations, and its "consideration at the local level of governance structures".
Although Clark had A$1.2 ($1.39) billion at his disposal eac
h year, he constantly complained that the Government had not come up with solutions to "growing unemployment, high incarceration rates and a life expe
ctancy at least
20 years less th
an white Australia ... "
According to him, the situation was getting worse and it was the Government's fault.
Yet dealing with these very problems was why Atsic was established in the first place.
But will mainstreaming work
? The Prime Minister thinks so. He appears to have decided that Aborigines' best chance is to move into the wider community while preserving traditions.
In fact this appears to be happening. Historian Keith Windschuttle quotes statistics showing the large majority of Aborigines in Sydney, for example, are not alcoholics, criminals or unemployed. They hold down fulltime jobs and live comfortably in the wider community. In short, they are part of the mainstream.
Australia's brash move to abolish race funding
Australia's brash move to abolish race funding
24.04.2004
By SELWYN PARKER
What Don Brash is suggesting should happen in Maori affairs, Australia has just done - or, more accurately, will do on July 1. That's when Prime Minister John Howard's Government abolishes the principal body for Aboriginal welfare, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (Atsic), and moves to a "mainstreaming" system that treats all Australians equally.
Howard's move ends a 15-year
programme that gave Aboriginal people about A$1 billion ($1.17 billion) a year of federal funds to manage their own way out of their troubles.
And their troubles are many, including
ed
cational under-achievement, low life expectancy, unemployment, alcoholism
, child abuse, and high levels of crime, particularly in the Northern Territory and Queensland.
According to the Prime Minister, that programme has been a failure. And a very expensive one.
The burying of Atsic marks a watershed in Aboriginal affairs that has echoes across the Tasman. Howard's comment was: "We believe very strongly that the experiment in separate representation, elected representation, for indigenous people has been a failure."
The new word is mainstreaming. The Government has promised that Aboriginals will get just as much federal money as before, but it will be channelled through the same organisations that provide assistance to all Australians.
Atsic will be d
ismantled with indecent haste. Its regional councils will be eliminated by the middle of next year, which will take 400 regional black politicians off the federal payroll.
The imm
edia
te r
eaction to
the axing of Atsic is revealing. Those most affected, namely members of the Atsic board,
have predictably complained bitterly, calling the Prime Minister a "redneck" and a "cold-hearted prick" among other things, and forecasting that mainstreaming "will make things worse".
But others who might normally be expected to attack the decision have been remarkably quiet. One respected Aboriginal leader, Warren Mundine, brother of the boxer Tony, observed that Atsic had given the Government plenty of reasons to abolish it and "Aboriginal people are quite sick of it".
The leader of the Labor Opposition, Mark Latham, had last month also promised to legislate Atsic out of existence.
Geoff Clark, Atsic's first elected chairman, hasn't hel
ped. There is almost universal agreement he has shot himself in the foot.
Clark, who likes to think of himself as the Aboriginal prime minister of a black parliament,
spends m
uch of h
is time in court f
ighting off published allegations of date rape from his youth. He was also recently convicted over a pub brawl that forc
ed his suspension eight months ago from his A$240,000 ($281,000) a year job, and has instituted separate court proceedings to get it back. And he fell foul of his federal minister over unusually high expenses.
His deputy, "Sugar" Ray Robinson, has been embroiled in allegations of financial irregularities in several Queensland companies.
Robinson has been quick to bite the hand that feeds Atsic. Last week he criticised Aboriginal Affairs Minister Amanda Vanstone, who has been in the job only six months, for making "less than a handful of trips to see for herself the state of Aboriginal communities</
b>". For a minister with other demanding portfolios, "a handful of trips" in such a short time might be good going.
Clark still thinks he can save
Atsic from e
xtinction. &
quot;We will fight by our
every means necessary to get it back," he promised last week.
That won't happen. The Government has irrevocably decided that Atsic wasn't improving the lo
t of Australia's Aboriginals despite its enormous budget.
Most of the evidence suggests that Atsic and Clark lost sight of their purpose and didn't want to get their hands dirty fixing problems in some of the dysfunctional far north communities.
For example, the organisation's latest corporate plan considered its main achievements to be in its advocacy role, "representational activities" at forums including the United Nations, and its "consideration at the local level of governance structures".
Although Clark had A$1.2 ($1.39) billion at his disposal eac
h year, he constantly complained that the Government had not come up with solutions to "growing unemployment, high incarceration rates and a life expe
ctancy at least
20 years less th
an white Australia ... "
According to him, the situation was getting worse and it was the Government's fault.
Yet dealing with these very problems was why Atsic was established in the first place.
But will mainstreaming work
? The Prime Minister thinks so. He appears to have decided that Aborigines' best chance is to move into the wider community while preserving traditions.
In fact this appears to be happening. Historian Keith Windschuttle quotes statistics showing the large majority of Aborigines in Sydney, for example, are not alcoholics, criminals or unemployed. They hold down fulltime jobs and live comfortably in the wider community. In short, they are part of the mainstream.