BY BILL MASON
BRISBANE — Indigenous organisations and leaders in Queensland have cautiously greeted the state ALP government's plan to take control of alcohol-serving canteens away from elected indigenous community councils in Queensland's far north. Indigenous leaders have warned that the reforms would not work without proper consultation and government funding.
The government's April 10 decision follows the February release of the Fitzgerald report into violence in the Cape, which controversially recommended that control over the canteens be given to a dedicated public service office based in Brisbane. Premier Peter Beattie has stopped short of this, instead placing the canteens into the hands of a government-appointed committee of three local residents.
Alcohol sales from the canteens are a major source of revenue for many of the desperately poor communities. Beattie claims that this results in community councils being reluctant to reduce alcohol abuse. He has not, however, proposed an increase in funding to reduce communities' dependence on the canteens.
While a few individual community councils have endorsed Beattie's proposals, their peak body, the Aboriginal Coordinating Council, has rejected the plan, claiming it will rob communities of their independence.
The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission has called for urgent talks to be held between the government, the opposition and elected Aboriginal leaders. North Queensland ATSIC Commissioner Jenny Pryor said the plan failed to address the causes of alcohol abuse.
Pryor called on the government to direct funding to infrastructure, housing, education and job creation to boost self-reliance and reduce alcoholism within the indigenous communities.
Indigenous academic Boni Robertson — the former chair of the ATSIC Women's Taskforce on Violence — supports the proposals, but warns they will be "futile" without proper funding.
"If you don't do this properly the potential for increasing the violence and harm is very high", she said. "If you don't involved the whole of communities these reforms will not work."
From Green Left Weekly, April 24, 2002.
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