Aboriginal Health
Sometimes it seems that the more race-based laws and government schemes we have in Australia, the worse the outcomes that persist for people on the receiving end. Should we really be surprised?
Such schemes necessarily assume that Aboriginal people are, by virtue of their race, dependent helpless victims of circumstances beyond their control, unable to satisfy the ordinary standards of responsibility that apply to all other human beings. This notion is both plain wrong and offensive. It should be rejected and condemned.
But ‘he who robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul.’ Similarly, the ‘experts’ who owe their comfortable middle-class existence to these schemes can be expected to solemnly intone that the solution is more and more governmental action of the kind that just happens to chronically coincide with the problem.
Many of the rural Aboriginal communities marked by disadvantage of every kind are the remnants of nineteenth century religious missions and twentieth century government control centres. Their tribal economy and prospects are no more. Being remote, the people there have little or no opportunity for gainful employment or business. The main reason the people are there is because the welfare state continues to subsidise them to live there, in a condition of isolation and dependence.
What you subsidise, you get more of, and what you tax, you get less of. The welfare state actively subsidises unemployment, relationship and family breakdown, and poverty. It is not a coincidence that many people with a drug and alcohol lifestyle live on welfare. Work would restrict the option of living like that. In the overwhelming majority of cases, welfare is what makes it possible.
On the other hand, the welfare state, by taxation and regulation, actively discourages employment, savings, and business, as well as legal or de facto marriage.
At the same time the state brags from the roof-tops about how it is promoting indigenous ’self-determination’. The millions and billions of dollars poured into these schemes never seem to decrease the problem.
The reason is because the welfare state actively destroys the only sustainable system of social security solution which erodes and exploits, and has nothing to put in its place.
The way forward is the increased health and happiness that come from gainful employment (not fake government make-work schemes), legal or common law marriage and family (not subsidized relationship and family breakdown), savings, home ownership, business, and the dignity and personal independence of private property. That is why middle class Australia has better health outcomes than Aboriginal Australia – not because they have more welfare services!
‘There is no future in the past.’ The current race-based welfare schemes will in time come to be regarded as official abuse on a vast scale, as the Stolen Generations are regarded now. the time is coming for all Australians to realise that race-based schemes and certificates for Aboriginal people, however well-intentioned, are destructive, and are the modern equivalent of infected blankets and ‘King Billy’ nameplates.
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Multi-culturalism and neo-Marxism offers the same ends (rampant poverty) through much the same means (victimization) the world over. Here is another great piece regarding:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/02/cultural_marxism.html
Three commonalities remain constant: rapture them with guilt; human nature is immoral (i.e. capitalism or self determinism) and therefore, must be squelched; and, persuade the masses to walk in, with eyes widely shut, to self inflicted suicide.
It’s a pernicious but very successful formula.
It would be interesting to investigate public opinion on proposals to give Aborigines in remote communities freehold title in order to encourage economic development. In a 1981 Gallup poll 58.1% agreed with the freehold sentiment. There might be something more recent but I haven’t come across it. However, if getting rid of useless Crown land and giving it to Aborigines (accompanied by weaning off welfare, abolishing minimum wages etc.) is what the people want, that’s pretty encouraging.
Even if we continue to keep the minimum wage (which we likely will) then it should be set locally according to local economic conditions.
Yes Sukrit, I happen to believe that freehold land is actually psychologically very beneficial! It would be interesting to compare the rates of use of mental health services comparing
1. freeholders
2. leaseholders, and
3. licensees.
I bet there would be significant correlations.
Actually, I think the idea that people who take drugs and alcohol excissively also tend to live on welfare is not correct. This is because (a) some of the causation goes from drugs->welfare, and, much more importantly, (b) this is just a worn-out stereotype. It costs a lot of money to be drug dependent — much more than you can get from welfare. Thus the average drug/alcohol abuser has more, not less, incentive to work than the average non-abuser, since they need to pay for their habit — I could live on the dole somewhat happily, for instance, but if I had to spend $400 a week on drugs I couldn’t. If you think the average alcholoc/drug user doesn’t work, please provide the statistics versus what logically must be the incorrect stereotype. You might also actually like to look at the groups with the highest rates of alcholism just out of interest — In Victoria, for instance, women > 50 in the Buroondoora district have one of the highest prevelances (think bored women with rich husbands).
As for the rest of the argument, I basically agree. Just giving Aboriginial communities “help” is neccesarily going to help them.
sorry, that should say
_not_ neccesarily going to help them.
Drug addicts do have more incentive to work, but welfare gives them good reason not to. With their rent and food paid for, that’s so much less they have to provide for themselves. They also then have an additional 40 hours a week to devote themselves to getting the extra money they need for their habit. Plus I think the habit itself, ie being drug-affected, would tend to interfere with the ordinary requirements of work. Welfare lets them be drug-affected when everyone else can’t be because of work.
I don’t know what the statistics are. But if you or anyone else would bother to look ‘em up, I’ll bet a bottle of bourbon and two hits of crystal meth that people with a significant drug habit are on welfare out of proportion to their numbers in the population.
I don’t remember the stats for drug addicts — I just base the observation on the price of drugs and the amount you can get from welfare. Also the idea that drug addicts can’t generally function well enough for the average job is yet another false stereotype people have. You need to get to know some well paid smackies, and you’ll find out how well many of them can function, let alone someone that just drinks a few bottles of wine every day.
As for the bet — I will see if I someone I know has the alcoholic stats lying around. WIthout remembering well (aside from the fact that many of the high incident groups were not the type of people you see in the gutter) I’ll take the bet, although I don’t drink much and don’t take crystal meth, so it’ll just have be a gentlemen’s bet, or a ladies bet, depending on how you happen to feel for the day.
LOL.
Yes I knew a couple of people who had heroin habits and both were well able to function. Through my work now I meet quite a lot of people with drug habits and they are all on welfare. And the kind of things they do to make money don’t have any tax taken out: drug dealing, prostitution, and stealing.
I don’t think there’s any question that the the so-called ‘Aboriginal communities’, which are better understood as fiefdoms of the welfare state, have drug and alcohol problems out of proportion to the rest of the population, if we are to believe the official line.
If ever we made a treaty with the Aborigines, one of the conditions should be that they have to apologize to each other for what the tribes were doing to each other before we arrived. Read the book, ‘The Red Chief’, by Ion Idriess, and you’ll know what I mean- wife-raiding parties, kidnapping and raising children as your own, and small-scale genocide of other tribes.
Another point would be a buy-back scheme. If we don’t give back any lands to tribes, then we pay the tribe a one-time payment, based on the real value of the land, and deposit it in a bank of their choice, and we then never pay them anything again, except as we might pay any ordinary citizen. Their fate would then be in their own hands. The buy-back might be stretched out, one ‘tribe’ a year, until all of Australia has been ‘redeemed’. It would take a while, but all parties would benefit.
The tribes who had their lands given back, would get a title deed in the name of the whole tribe, and they could then do with it what any ordinary land-holder could do.
A final point- Many Aboriginal languages show similarities, so it might be possible to create an artificial Aboriginal language for all of Australia, which could become a second language, to be taught in schools alongside English. This would give them some pride back, and would give us an advantage in logic- learning another language always expands the brain, I’ve heard. If English does become the world tongue, perhaps Aboriginish could help Australia to stay unique.
[...] in the process. Meanwhile Justin Jefferson at the Australian Libertarian Society blog has a meaty philosophical post about the problems with race-based laws and its implications for Aboriginal health policy. Steve [...]
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Cool! kabababrubarta
O.K., I’ll confess to a slight bias here- when I suggested that someone create an oboriginal language, I had already done so myself. I was thinking that I might be able to write some fantasies based on Aboriginal legends, and made up a plausible language, which just kept growing. I have about 1000 words. Any Aboriginal libertarians prepared to carry on the good work?
Justin
What do you think about the ‘paternalistic’ approach favoured by indigenous community leaders such as Noel Pearson? For example, he is proposing alcohol licences for Aboriginal communities in the NT. Only those who remain crime-free would be issued an alcohol licence.
Or that welfare checks only be paid to those who have a good record in sending their children to school?
I know the question was directed at Justin but I will offer my view. Of course Justin is closer to the coal face and I’ll be very interested in what he had to say.
Firstly I have a great deal of respect for Noel Pearson in terms of breaking the mould on the pervasive political correctness that previously surrounded the issue of disfunction in some aboriginal communities. Also he makes lots of good points about the destructive nature of passive welfare.
Secondly I think Noel Peason is usually talking about communities in Cape York which is in North Queensland not the Northern Territory. A minor point only.
There is certainly a strong utility argument in saying that welfare receipients should allocate their expenditure according to their own wants, needs and desires. However as I don’t see welfare as a basic right I think it is not entirely unreasonable to sometimes have strings attached to welfare payments. My general view towards government funded welfare is that when it is tied to a specific need (unemployment, disability etc) it should in general be administered at the lowest level of government that is possible and the aim should be to redress the need so that people can ultimately achieve independence from welfare. In some instance the need is not purely material but entails some necessary adjustments in outlook (ie the world does not owe you a living). Ideally this activity would be a function of state or even local government rather than federal government. This is basic to notions of subsidiarity. In a perfect world it would be done by civil society without government involvement.
I am not opposed to denying welfare cheques to parents who don’t send their kids to school or who are routinely intoxicated and socially disfunctional. In particular I think that such approaches administered from within the community itself are not an unreasonable measure to try out. One thing is certain, the current approach of welfare without strings and the current trend in some communities really needs to change in some fashion or other. Experimentation at the local level (where people can more readily vote with their feet) is in my view an entirely respectable position to adopt.
I do think minimum wages are a major problem in remote communities with low economic skill sets. Price is often about the only economic advantage that such labour forces have to offer. The more entrepreneurial in such communities can make jobs for themselves below the minimum wage by selling arts and crafts however there is no legal scope for more organised low wage work.
Prohibition rarely works and I doubt that aboriginal communities would prove the exception. However the idea that people with criminal convictions should have a good behaviour bond that excludes the right to buy alcohol is certainly a deprevation of liberty. However it is surely a better option in many instances than reflexively chucking such people in jail. If you do crime against your community you should lose liberties, it is just a question of which ones.
I do reject the notion that such measures should be applied on the basis of race. However I accept the idea that the measures adopted within a given community may be different to the measures adopted in other communities.
Please excuse the poor grammar, I chould have edited that a bit better.
Terje
I do reject the notion that such measures should be applied on the basis of race. However I accept the idea that the measures adopted within a given community may be different to the measures adopted in other communities.
I agree with most of what you say. But isn’t this statement something of a contradiction? With regard to Aboriginals, race and community are the same thing.
I like the sound of Noel Pearson but i’m not sure i could be comfortable with different rules for different communities. Thin end of the wedge? Would Muslims not then ask to live under Sharia Law?
However, whilst welfare is bad, unconditional welfare is even worse.
oh, and apologies but my Ozzie geography isn’t up to shape yet.
In practice that is often true. However my point is that any policy should be based on a time and place (jurisdiction) not the race of the individuals involved and to the extent that it is unique to that juristiction it should be formulated by the community within that jurisdiction.
For example if grog was going to be completely prohibited in Cape York during December then it should be prohibited for everybody in Cape York during December. The idea of having different laws in different jurisdictions is hardly radical stuff and we already have different criminal codes in each of the states and each of the local governments also have different regulations. There is a public park near my house in Sydney where drinking is prohibited by order of the local council but this is not a racist law (even though most people living around the park are Korean) because it does not discriminate based on how you look. They also ban golf and archery in that park.
I don’t think that we should have separate laws for separate regions imposed by central government but I am pretty sure the constitution prohibits this in any case. Constitutionally we can have different laws for different races but I think that this is a deep flaw in our constitution and inherently wrong. See the following:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_referendum,_1967_(Aboriginals)
If a community within a local government area was dominated by Muslims that wanted to ban public drinking then they could already do that to a significiant extent. However local government in NSW has no sovereign rights and they are ultimately beholden to state law. So the local Muslim community can not introduce beheadings or additional compulsory public clothing standards or such things.
Pommygranate
To answer your question, I personally am against paternalism both on moral grounds and because I think it doesn’t work. I groan with weariness when I hear the pious meddlers come up with schemes like withholding welfare monies from parents for poor school attendance records. By the internal logic of paternalism itself, the parents can hold the children to ransom simply by being irresponsible. The more irresponsible the parents are, the more entitlements the welfare state gives them. The welfare state can’t inculcate responsibility – it is built on actively eroding and destroying responsibility.
The problem with the paternalistic approach is its premise: that people are incompetent, and government (which is made up of people) knows better, by virtue of… what? A legal monopoly of force? It doesn’t make sense.
However, if there is to be welfare, I think people should have rights because they are human beings, or because they have needs, not because of their biological race. It is said that race-based programs are needed to deliver particular services. This is just nonsense. For example, if there is to be a program for people with glaucoma or low literacy, that’s one thing, but there can be no legitimacy to inclusion or exclusion by biological race, which is the situation we have now.
As for race and community being the same thing with Aborigines, that is no more true for Aborigines than it is for other races. There is enormous variation in Australia. In a few areas race and community are much the same thing, such as in Arnhem land. But in most of the rest of the country which was settled in the nineteenth century, the ‘Aboriginal’ people are, racially speaking, far more European than they are Aboriginal. (I’m not into weighing up racial scruples, mind – I’m against it.)
Most of the ‘Aboriginal’ people of Australia speak English and do not know any Aboriginal language, except maybe a few words, just as I know a few words of Celtic origin. They live in the money economy, they live in houses, drive cars and go to the doctor like everyone else, and they have virtually no knowledge of any cultural fact that is distinctly Aboriginal. (For example, many think that calling elder members of the community ‘auntie’ or ‘uncle’ is a thing of Aboriginal culture. Of course, this is merely a facet of rural Australian culture, which displaced the earlier traditional Aboriginal culture of very detailed and prescriptive rules about what kin relations were called.) Such people may have knowledge of their original tribal lands, just as I have knowledge, through my father, of my original tribal lands in Scotland. But that doesn’t make me a highland Scot, does it, far less confer exclusive race-based rights on me – nor should it. A number of my friends at work are these official Aborigines. They are virtually physically indistinguishable from non-Aboriginal people. If you weren’t told, you wouldn’t know, although a couple are slighty darker. We all have ancestry as a fact, and necessarily identify with some ethnicity, because it is a mere fact. But apart from that, the Aboriginality of most ‘Aboriginal’ people in Australia is almost entirely an artefact of the welfare state, and if it wasn’t for the raft of exclusive rights that attach to it, there is no obvious reason to attach any particular significance to it.
The problem of chronic hopelessness and dysfunctionality that is perpetually associated with Aboriginal people is a function of the intensive colonisation of Aboriginal society by the welfare state, not some kind of inherent racial defect.
What we have in Australia’s race-based welfare laws is simply insulting destructive nonsense on a grand scale.
From my own experience and observations the following statement rings so very true.
Justin
Thaks for your reply.
It’s all well and good to blame welfare for the mess that exists in many Aboriginal communities. And it is undoubtedly true. However, welfare is not going to be abolished in our lifetime. Hence i would be interested in a more practical idea of how to ween some communities off welfare.
Justin – it seems to me that making school attendance of children a pre-condition of parenting welfare payments is not a reform that rewards irresponsible behaviour. I’m inclined to agree with it just as I agree that those that get unemployment benefits should lose them if they are not looking for work or are not making themselves work ready. Perhaps you could expand on your objection to this particular reform both in moral and practical terms.
I believe that one way out of this welfare mess we’re all in (whilst they are trapped in welfare, we pay for the trap), would be for some sort of treaty, as explained in my first comment here. A formal treaty might be only a feel-good gesture, but at least it would get it out of the way, and we could insist on things like Canberra’s word being law for all Australia; i.e. over-riding traditional laws and customs. We might also be able to get rid of special welfare- ANY poor Australian should have the same rights to welfare as any other poor Australian, no more, no less. If we make it one package, we might be able to solve many problems in one go!
Terje
If parents don’t make their children go to school, the welfare state cannot and will not cut off parenting payments, because then the children would face hardship. The parents hold the children to ransom. This underlies the existence of parenting payment itself. There is not and cannot be any negative consequence for irresponsible behaviour in the welfare system, because it would go against the very rationale of welfare, which is that people are not responsible for their own decision and actions. The only answer they have to personal irresponsibililty is to try to provide more special rights and program for those who are more disadvantaged, thus adding to the original problem.
Pommygranate
I generally start with the ethics, and then work out from there to the technical matters, rather than the other way round. Otherwise one is liable to find oneself in the position of trying to work out the technically efficient way of doing something that is wrong – fine-tuning the gas-chambers as it were.
Unless we are to believe that Aborigines have some kind of inherited race-based defect, which I reject out of hand, then the much greater long-term involvement of the welfare state in Aboriginal society must be a prime suspect in their unequal condition. It needs to be borne in mind that Aborigines were herded off their lands onto missions, there to be kept in a state of ‘animal farm’ dependence starting starting in the mid nineteenth century. By contrast, it didn’t start with mainstream society until about 1930. The colonisation of Aboriginal society by the welfare state is both more intensive and more extensive.
If we are resigned to accept the continuance of the welfare programs, we are resigned to accept the continuance of the problem.
Traditional Aboriginal society was of course non-literate. To the extent that Aboriginal society has succeeded in handing on traditional ways and values, we should expect that it might also tend to perpetuate low literacy. And it is precisely the low-literate and low-skilled that the minimum wage relegates to unemployment. This one misguided welfarist policy alone is probably responsible for generations of unemployment, poverty, marginalisation, and degradation – all at the hands of the pious meddlers motivated by a desire to force change for the good of the poor!
We may think that welfare is not going to be abolished in our life time. However maybe that view is mistaken. The major welfare programs, including old-age and parenting pensions, are unsustainable. They arise from the same belief system – socialism – as did the Soviet Union, and we may find that, like the Soviet Union, their inherent moral and financial bankruptcy bring them, against the will of their proponents, to an earlier end than everyone suspected.
If there is one thing that will tend to perpetuate the welfare system, it is the general belief that, rightly or wrongly, it should or will continue. Instead of humouring it, we should condemn it at every step.
Interestingly enough, I have had very positive support for the above post (which appeared as a letter to the editor in the local news) from my Aboriginal co-workers, all of whom are welfare state officials.
One guy and I were railing against the vain destructiveness of the welfare state. I said, if it was up to me, I would abolish 80 percent of government. He surprised me by saying ‘Mate I’d abolish a hundred percent. Wouldn’t ‘ave no government.’ He then went on to describe a happy state of affairs without government. This guy has no university education. Should we be all that surprised to hear such a view coming from the Aboriginal contingent?
Another woman is the Aboriginal Domestic Violence official feminist. I was surprised that she gave me a big pat on the pack, said she couldn’t agree more. She told me ‘I go into these meetings and hear them all go on, and I just have to bite my tongue.’ She described how, if you use crystal meth and bash your girlfriend, it’s considered a drug and domestic violence problem, but if you’re Aboriginal and use crystal meth and bash your girlfriend, it’s call a ‘cultural issue’. What an insult!
Another guy has been up on special welfare program to a mission that is a veritable depressing wasteland. He is very well aware that the welfare problems are only digging the Aborigines into a deeper hole.
All of them expressed their ethical concern that they too are being co-opted by the good salaries paid, into participating in programs that they can see very well are destructive.
But what can they do? The welfare state, with all its hostility towards business, free trade, and risk, is itself keeping them from pursuing more productive vocations.
There is no solution by way of fine-tuning the welfare state. Much of the problem would quickly fix itself by abolishing the minimum wage, abolishing occupational licensing, and greatly reducing tax.
Nicholas Gray
A treaty is an agreement between sovereigns. The Aborigines had no sovereign when Europeans arrived, and don’t have one now (apart from the Federal government). The Federal government cannot constitute a sovereign for the Aborigines, because the sovereignty of the Federal government would form a necessary constitutive part of the Aboriginal sovereign. Even if they tried, there would be an irreconcilable conflict between the constitutive values (or standards) of the Australian government, and that of the Aboriginal sovereign or sovereign body. That’s why ATSIC failed. ‘Two kings can’t wear the same crown’.
Also, it is not clear why the Aboriginal parties to a treaty would enter into it if its outcome would require the extinction of remaining Aboriginal laws or customs. Such a process would in any event give more power to the Federal government, ironically because it had fucked up so badly with the power it already had in that area.
In any event, a treaty is a symbolic measure which all parties agree would, in itself, have no practical consequence. It probably would give rise to expectations that Aborigines have special status and therefore should have special race-based rights, thus adding to the original problem.
A Treaty is something that Aborigines have called for , so they must have some belief that it will help them.
As for extinguishing native laws and customs, doesn’t Canberra already claim that Commonwealth law over-rides all other laws?
And I am not all hot for a treaty myself, as it seems to cater to the feel-good element in us, but if a treaty were to be proposed, then I would look for these ideas to be incorporated with in it, as well as a commitment to abolish special welfare for them.
A treaty is something that *some* aboriginals have called for, in the same way that some white people have called for the Kyoto protocol.
Aboriginal Australians are not a monolithic entity. The needs of the Nyungars in southern WA are very much different than those of Aboriginal communities in the far North, for example.
A lot of Aboriginal people are quite happy to just be left alone too.
This is why race-based policies are never a good idea. Myself and Brad Pitt are both white (just ask any Japanese girl), that doesn’t mean we both want the same thing.
Justin – thanks for the expanded version. I have some further questions but I’ll hold off for the moment and reflect on what you have said thus far.
p.s. I agree that there is no case for a treaty. And a treaty is not necessary in order to have a recognition of history.
And sometimes a treaty can be very devisive- look at NZ. Their treaty has not led to peace and Universal Brotherhood.
Still, my Buy-back compensation scheme might be an idea that could be used, and it is heartening to hear that a lot of Aborigines have a libertarian outlook- now, if only we had an explicitly libertarian magazine to leave lying around wating rooms, we might be able to convert a lot more of Australia!
Hey, Americans!! Don’t you have a Libertarian Newspaper? Is that still going? Does it get people interested in our views? Do any native Americans belong to our cause?
The treaty of Waitangi is quite different to what any modern Australian treaty would be. The Waitangi treaty was signed by most of the chiefs that had the relevant authority to make such agreements. It was not a treaty between one two nations but effectively a treaty between many Maori nations and the British crown. Who would sign for Aborigines in Australia today and under what authority?
If we are resigned to accept the continuance of the welfare programs, we are resigned to accept the continuance of the problem.
No arguments from me. That welfare encourages dependency, destroys responsibility and self-pride, and is more addictive and destructive than crack cocaine is not news (though sadly not to most Australians i fear).
But i take issue with your solution of abolishing the welfare state. It cannot be done, not in the next thirty years anyway, and nor should it be. There has to be a safety net for those genuinely deserving of it. For me this is fundamental.
The next step has to be conditional welfare. For example, the unemployed only receive benefits if they are actively looking for work. In the meantime, they are paid to do public works in exchange for their benefit. The genuinely sick must be helped, the old must not be left to die. i.e benefits must become a two-way street. We’ll help you but you must help us in return.
I’m not convinced that the logical result of conditional welfare is automatically a move in the right direction. This logic gave us high EMTRs which create an even bigger poverty trap for people to get stuck in. I think that a better move is to go towards a universal and unconditional form of welfare. The LDPs 30/30 tax proposal essentially takes the conditionality out of welfare and removes need as a criteria.
Aboriginal groups legitimacy claims are inherently problematic. The same piece fo surplus Governemnt land (formerly privately owned by a white settler before Crown ownership) can have multiple native title claims, by the local language group, rivals within that group and others that have been transferred from elsewhere. There is a property just like this where I live.
Terje
True. Certainly a lot easier to implement.
Native title claims are not any more inherently problematic than other claims in law. There is a need in any given case, in any branch of law, to bring evidence to show the facts that are in issue. It is no different with native title claims. Various people might claim that they have native title rights. It will then be a question of whether they can show the facts of their past use, etc. The fact that different parties may claim different facts is no different to the situation with the law of crime, contract, property, equity, etc.
And the whole point of native title is of course that, before the ownership of the white settler who was before governmental ownership, the ownership was with the Aboriginal people, and no-one ever paid them or legitimately obtained a transfer of their ownership rights. So there is a legitimate point of justice involved there, even from the minimal-government point of view of libertarianism – in fact, especially from the property-rights-protecting point of view of libertarianism.
Does anyone have a better idea than my proposed buy-back scheme? After all, when we revolutionaries take over society, we’ll need to have thrashed all this out before we can instantly implement it to create paradise here on earth.
Justin,
The spirit of native title is indeed very just. The process on the other hand is awful. Such a process also highlights the unworkability and practical problems with a treaty, even if every tribe or language group is represented, it is still a fractious affair and does not respect individual preferences.
I have a lot of support for a kind of buy-back scheme. My only caveat is that private persons engage in the purchase and sale of land or other resources.
Under Corporations laws, collective entities can act as a single person. We sell to, or compensate, the whole class of peoples in one tribe, and let them sort out the ownership details from there. They could all be listed as Tenants in Common, a current legal term used here in the Lands Department. It would be like having equal shares in a company. What that group of private people did with the money is no longer our concern.
I take it the idea of the buy-back scheme is to arrive at a final settlement of all outstanding claims in cash? I’m for it. I think it’s the only way to go, and the only alternative is endless race-based welfare.
There was a thing on the news last night about Aboriginal health. Oxfam is running a program called ‘Close the Gap’. Various grand high poo-bahs of government were solemnly showing how humane and concerned they are, by calling for a greater concentration of political power and uniformity of action (what else?) to fix the problem.
A welfare tragic literally called on the government to ‘do something!’. That should do it.
In the paper another welfare tragic pointed out how baby products cost more in remote communities. (Well, yeah. If you choose to live in the middle of the Great Gibber Desert it does tend to affect the costs of supplying goods that are made in Sydney or China. Duh.)
Not one of them questioned the assumption that achieving parity of health outcomes was something that government could or should do. Oxfam certainly wasn’t proposing to close the gap using funds that were obtained voluntarily.
The way they were going on, you’d think this is all something new.
But if this is something that government can and should do, then what happened to all the billions upon billions of dollars that have been spent on precisely this purpose over the last 30 years? When can we expect the apology for having mis-spent all that money?
Of course, the pious weeping pope-holimost poo-bahs and pretenders of all those past thirty years are sipping their cappuccinos at Noosa. They’ve got their benefit out of their pious pretence. It only remains for the current crowd to get their snouts as deep into the trough as our credulity will let them.
Yes, my ‘Buy-back’ plan is an attempt to do away with a separatist welfare system- if Government offers anything, it should never be race-based. And we should encourage all individuals to support themselves. And I also think that before Nonabs sign any ‘treaty’ with Abs, the Abs should first make peace between the tribes, and apologise for the wars and wife-raiding and general disharmony that was their lot before the Nonabs came along. Let them say ‘Sorry’, to each other, first!
The problem with aboriginal health is that too many aborigines don’t care about their health. The government can spend all the money it likes but until aborigines realise that personal health is about personal choices it is so much wasted money. The situation of aboriginal health is tragic but that is the fault of individual aborigines. What we need is some differentials here: study aborigines who don’t use drugs, who do pay attention to hygiene, and who do look after their health. Simply grouping all the data together gives a very misleading impression because with such high rates of alcoholism and drug abuse there is too much skew in the results.
There there is no such thing as “Aboriginal health” then is there?
Not a problem that we can do much about Mark. That’s the real tradegy, if we could find a way to help, and let’s be honest here many people have tried and failed, then we would have succeeded by now. If I as a caucasian do things that threaten my health then I am held accountable, if aborigines have poor health then the government is accountable. Go figure.
From the office of a federal politician :
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Apologies for the delayed reply. If you are still looking for an answer on this one – when the legislation is proclaimed Katherine will be able to invite anyone to come to her house without a permit, just like any other place in Australia.
So, when the legislation is proclaimed Katherine’s husband will not require a permit to live with her in her house in Kintore, at her invitation.
When the main permit system changes become law (on a date to be proclaimed but no later than 18 February 2008) there will be public access to common areas of community land and related access roads / airstrips / barge landings. It is important to emphasise that the changes are not yet law.
Community land is generally communities of over 100 people and includes Kintore.
The public will be able to enter or remain on premises on community land with the permission of the occupier. This will apply, for example, when people have been invited into residences by the occupiers, or when there is indication that shops or art centres are open for sales.
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