The Quest For Lasting Change

The Age

Saturday February 9, 2008

Russell Skelton - Russell Skelton is an Age senior writer

One of the Rudd Government's biggest challenges will be how best to shape the contentious and ambitious indigenous intervention policy inherited from its predecessor.

IN THE central desert community of Areyonga, Theresa Nipper wonders when the benefits of the historic emergency intervention are going to flow through to her people. "My heart is crying out for the young kids. Who is going to train them and educate them so they can get jobs?"

Nipper, the chairwoman of the community council, says many Areyonga children have never been to school, have little comprehension of work and smoke too much marijuana (it is easier to conceal than alcohol, which is banned) for their own good.

Sitting at the bottom of a picturesque canyon in the MacDonnell Ranges, flanked by red escarpments, Areyonga is a tiny community of about 250 Pitjantjatjara people. Welfare payments have been quarantined as part of the intervention brought in by the Howard government, and a business manager has been appointed, but there is no permanent police presence.

"Income management has worked, people are buying food for their children and they are spending less on grog. But the ganja is making the kids lazy," Nipper says. As for the permit system, she says she wants it back. "We don't want a lot of people coming in here gawking at us."

Nipper, like a number of community leaders and CEOs in the central desert region of the Northern Territory contacted by The Age this week, supports the intervention and its aims of eradicating violence, sex abuse and substance abuse, and putting children back into school. But she says she is yet to see significant benefits for children.

At nearby Hermannsburg, CEO and council chairman Gus Williams also backs the intervention. "People were frightened when the assessment teams first came. They thought they were going to have their children taken away, but the results have been generally good. We don't want any more changes."

The biggest social issue facing Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and his Indigenous Affairs Minister, Jenny Macklin, is how best to shape the Howard government's contentious and ambitious intervention in the territory, now costing the nation hundreds of millions of dollars - not that anybody seems to be counting. The emerging emphasis is on jobs, education and closing the life expectancy gap, rather than punitive measures.

For the new Government, there is much to come to terms with, including the acrimonious divisions within indigenous Australia over the more troubling aspects of the intervention. Next week thousands of indigenous Australians and their supporters will converge on Canberra to celebrate the landmark apology. They are also demanding the Rudd Government roll back emergency intervention legislation that Labor voted for.

Adroit and influential figures such as Professor Marcia Langton, who holds the chair of indigenous studies at Melbourne University, and Noel Pearson, who heads the Cape York Institute, see the Commonwealth commitment to indigenous communities as a breakthrough worth getting right. They believe the unprecedented chance to combat endemic violence, alcohol and substance abuse, plus a vast range of chronic health conditions including heart disease and diabetes, should not be lost.

Macklin, a shrewd ALP veteran and former deputy party leader, remains committed to the intervention in its present form until midyear - the point at which it was going to be reviewed by the Howard government. Unlike her predecessor as minister, Mal Brough, who traded on his blunt-talking, top-down approach, Macklin has listened to the critics and navigated a cautious course through the unpredictable waters of indigenous politics. She committed the Government to a number of reforms that do not erode the core of the intervention but go some way to placating a largely pro-Labor indigenous establishment.

Under pressure from indigenous groups, she agreed to reinstate the permit system, which will impose restrictions on social and business visits to communities already isolated by geography. Power to restrict entry into communities (journalists and government employees and contractors are to be exempt) will be returned to elders and clans who dominate councils. (Although history confirms they do not always act in the community interest.)

This week Macklin defended the decision, in an interview with The Age, saying child abuse had taken place in communities on Cape York where there were no permits. "The problem is, and I really agree with Noel Pearson here, that we have had a breakdown in social norms. That is the problem we need to address rather than saying that once you remove the permit system, abuse will disappear," she says.

Macklin's decision to reinstate community employment schemes with strict new guidelines to ensure people are, in the minister's words, "work ready" was widely endorsed by communities. A fundamental flaw with the old system that provided work for 8000 people, and was thrown out by Brough, was a lack of accountability that led to rorting.

Despite these highly symbolic concessions, Macklin is caught in the eye of a gathering storm over the direction of indigenous policy. The first big internal challenge she faces will come in the form of a report from Tom Calma, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social justice commissioner and acting race discrimination commissioner. His report, yet to be tabled in Parliament, is believed to put forward a 10-point plan to "unscramble" the intervention. Among other things it calls on the Rudd Government to make existing legislation comply with the Racial Discrimination Act and all international treaties.

Under the Howard government, Calma had been studiously ignored, even isolated. After initial talks, Brough refused to meet him. Macklin, on the other hand, has been consulting closely. Calma's report presents the Government with a conundrum as it reflects traditional ALP thinking and appeals to much of what Rudd has campaigned on, including the need for Australia to comply with international treaty obligations. But the report is likely to provide fodder for the activist left within the ALP and the federal Labor caucus to press for a comprehensive roll-back.

Langton alluded to this looming clash in her essay Trapped in the Aboriginal Reality Show, published last month, in which she warned of the danger that old-left thinking was taking hold.

"I believe that those opposed to the intervention are morally and politically wrong. I fear they represent the small, comfortable white clique in the Territory whose cars bear stickers declaring 'I fish and I drink and I vote' and the 'big men' in Aboriginal communities who harvest votes for their Labor mates," she wrote.

Macklin says Calma's report, which she is yet to read, would only be considered as part of the 12-month review. She pointed out that the ALP in opposition had unsuccessfully moved amendments to ensure the Racial Discrimination Act applied. Such a change could complicate measures such as the quarantining of welfare payments, which affects some 5000 people in 24 communities.

But for the mostly urban-based activists opposed to the intervention and preoccupied with the erosion of land and human rights, there may be little to celebrate. Much has changed since the Rudd Government was elected. The new Northern Territory ALP Government of Paul Henderson (he replaced the hapless Clare Martin) has pledged to work with Canberra to make sure the intervention works. So too has the Central Land Council. Council chairman David Ross says he has had fruitful discussions with Macklin and is keen not to "throw the baby out with the bath water".

This week Marion Scrymgour, the Northern Territory's Deputy Chief Minister and the nation's most senior Aboriginal parliamentarian, who had virulently criticised the emergency, said she was working closely with the Rudd Government. "Kevin Rudd and Jenny Macklin have brought a new, dramatically different and refreshing approach compared with what we saw with Mal Brough and John Howard's . . . I am confident we can achieve results through a new co-operative partnership with the Commonwealth."

She supports the quarantining of welfare payments so widely criticised by activist groups.

Macklin's most profound task will be achieving lasting change in a bleak and constantly changing social landscape. She has a difficult, complex task that has defeated most of her predecessors. Fred Chaney, director of Reconciliation Australia and a former Aboriginal affairs minister in the Fraser government, says: "Brough and Howard had the easy part, Rudd and Macklin actually have to make it work, and that will be tough. But I am yet to see any signs of backsliding. Sue Gordon (chairwoman of the intervention taskforce) is happy with what she has heard," he says.

Macklin concedes there is much to do. Despite all the initial hype, an acute shortage of police has meant the first objective declared so emphatically by Brough, to make communities safe, remains a distant goal. Places such as Docker River, Titjikala and Finke are still without a permanent police presence.

Other emergency measures, including the quarantining of welfare, have been logistically difficult and hit serious administrative problems in communities where people are constantly on the move. Some 200 Centrelink employees are devoted to the task. Macklin says she will persist with the existing measures until the midyear assessment is complete. During this financial year she expects to put an extra 40 police on the ground.

The quarantining of welfare payments - regarded by many, including Pearson, as unfair because it punishes families who do the right thing - will continue because many see the benefits of having more money for food and other essentials. The Government will also increase expenditure on the recruitment of 200 teachers and on health programs to close the 10-year life expectancy gap between indigenous and non-indigenous Australia.

But Pearson and Chaney argue that along with money, policies and commitment, there must be flexibility. The Government must be ready to modify policies to meet changing circumstances, and to break down the rigidity of centralised decision-making from Canberra. Pearson says that when alcohol management plans were introduced in Queensland, for example, they were initially successful but the situation deteriorated as grog runners discovered holes in the system.

He compares the problem to a bunch of lumbering dinosaurs trying to deal with a bunch of cunning, resourceful rats. "The rats will win every time," he says.

Bringing children back into the school system might also present problems. There would be claims of success when the numbers were up but when those who had never seen a classroom proved too disruptive, a new response would be required.

Pearson, like Chaney, believes a new, responsive indigenous leadership must be nurtured and encouraged to make decisions in changing circumstances. "There has to be indigenous ownership of problems, and we are not getting enough of that in the Territory." Leaving it all up to politicians will lead to "death by 1000 qualifications", he says.

Chaney argues that Canberra's three-year political cycle has always militated against finding long-term solutions to indigenous disadvantage. "The present set of policies is about as good as you will get, but who is going to deliver on it, because it is a 20-year program?"

There is, perhaps, an encouraging sign that Macklin may be headed in a new direction. Her senior adviser is Michael Dillon, an experienced observer of indigenous policy and co-author of the book Beyond Humbug, which lays down how the approach advocated by Chaney and Pearson might be achieved.

But nobody expects it to be easy.

Dillon, who warns that Aboriginal disadvantage may worsen in the short term, sets out a rational framework for future constructive engagement with Aboriginal people. His strategy may provide Macklin with a crucial road map.

Russell Skelton is an Age senior writer.

© 2008 The Age

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