BY SIMON BUTLER
Last week's National Roundtable Forum in Canberra was billed by the federal government as the start of new drive to seriously tackle the poverty, discrimination and social dysfunction endemic to many Aboriginal communities.
Of course, it was nothing of the sort. Rather, it provided significant publicity and an ideological platform for the Howard government to further advance its racist agenda, all under the guise of championing Aboriginal "independence", "responsibility" and "self-help".
Upon the forum's conclusion on October 25 it was declared that substance abuse, domestic violence and, in particular, "welfare dependency" in Aboriginal communities were priority issues to be addressed. The 20 forum delegates, chosen by John Howard, called for a new approach to dealing with these problems which promoted Aboriginal "self-reliance" and "independence".
Yet the forum was remarkable for what it did not discuss — the racist mandatory sentencing laws in the Northern Territory and Western Australia or concrete plans for overcoming barriers for Aborigines' access to education, health services and employment. It was silent on the issue of an apology and compensation for the stolen generations, and ignored the issue of native title rights and a treaty to legally protect indigenous rights.
All of these issues are incompatible with the Coalition government's agenda of "practical reconciliation". By this term, the government means resisting any changes to its discriminatory policies while arguing that the problems Aboriginal people face are the consequence of their failure to escape "welfare dependency".
The forum resulted in no concrete solutions or immediate policy changes other than the allocation of $20 million from the government's "stronger families strategy". But it served a useful propaganda purpose for the government in its bid to convince voters that restricting the right to welfare for Aboriginal people in order to provide "incentive" is the only solution to Aboriginal poverty.
Under the pretence of combating Aboriginal disadvantage and seeking "reconciliation", the government is seeking to further absolve its responsibilities. It has as its chief ideological ally the new darling of the establishment media and the far right, Noel Pearson.
Pearsonism
Pearson was heavily profiled in most major newspapers on the day of the forum. Rupert Murdoch's Australian (October 24) printed an edited version of the paper Pearson was to deliver as a hand-picked forum delegate.
As in the past, Pearson argued that "passive welfare" policies had "created and perpetuated dependency and eroded the responsibility of Aboriginal families". According to Pearson, the small welfare payments available to unemployed Aborigines on Cape York Peninsula have caused "our outrageous social problems and our current widespread unemployability".
Pearson seemed to rule out increased spending on Aboriginal health, saying, "Poor health is automatically seen as a product of Aboriginal disadvantage. But our material circumstances have improved greatly at the same time as our life expectancy has decreased."
"What [Aborigines] need most of all is not an expansion of the health care system, it is an immediate dismantling of the passive welfare paradigm and an end to the permissive drug policy", he added.
Indeed, the abolition of this "passive welfare paradigm" is held to be inseparable from "a relentless, active intolerance of illicit drugs (including so-called 'lighter drugs') until the last molecule is confiscated and destroyed". Pearson advocates mechanisms that ensure that use of illegal drugs will cause the users "immediate discomfort" (such as economic loss).
But the most striking thing about Pearson's paper is that it offers absolutely no solution to the problems faced by Aborigines.
Welfare is a right which must be defended for all those who are excluded from paid employment. A substantial number of Aborigines have been systematically excluded from the work force as a result of racially discriminatory policies imposed upon them by successive Australian governments. As long as the federal government continues to implement racist policies and fails to create the conditions in which they are able to have access to meaningful employment, Aborigines have an unconditional right to not be destitute.
The poverty and social dysfunction in many Aboriginal communities is not a product of meagre welfare payments — the situation continues and worsens despite them. So while welfare must be defended as a right, it can never be enough to tackle these problems.
The government's obligations, therefore, do not stop with welfare provision. A strategy to truly begin to reverse the situation in depressed Aboriginal communities would involve, among other things, preferential treatment in education, health services, public housing, employment and job training; the full control of government funds by elected Aboriginal community councils; and strictly enforced anti-discrimination, native title and Aboriginal heritage protection legislation.
Pearson correctly outlines the real deprivation and alienation that exists in many Aboriginal communities. But it is important to recognise the catastrophic and reactionary consequences of what he simplistically advocates as a "solution".
Rather than agitating for concrete measures to eradicate Aboriginal unemployment (e.g., jobs, education), Pearson implies that Aboriginal people themselves are to blame for their poverty. It must be up to them alone, therefore, to lift themselves up by their bootstraps, to show initiative, to take "responsibility".
Rather than demand concrete alternatives and programs to counter drug addiction, Pearson fantasises that the problem can be solved by tougher law enforcement, a "zero tolerance" approach where alienated Aborigines face greater punishment (severe discomfort). Considering that the Aboriginal people are already one of the most punished and incarcerated racial groups in the world, it is difficult to see how Pearson's preference for more punishment will be a solution.
A further indication of Pearson's ideological outlook can be found in his ominously titled paper "Our Right to Take Responsibility", which he published himself earlier this year. Here he redefines "the right to self-determination" as "the right to take responsibility".
"We do not have a right to passive welfare", he contends. "We have a right to a real economy, we have a right to build a real economy."
But what does Pearson's idealised "real economy" consist of, and what opportunities will it provide indigenous people? Pearson explains that Aborigines' "traditional economy was a real economy and demanded responsibility (you don't work, you starve)", adding, "The white fella market economy is real (you don't work, you don't get paid)".
So Pearson is not demanding decent living standards and the right to work for Aboriginal people. He is demanding that they fit in with the "white fella market economy".
Pearson ignores the fact that Aboriginal poverty today is the result of the destruction of their "traditional economy" by the "white fella market economy", which has relegated them disproportionately to the impoverished "under-class" — the reserve army of permanent or semi-unemployed people — that is an essential feature of every capitalist economy.
"The resources of passive welfare are fundamentally irrational", continues Pearson. "The irrational basis of our economy has inclined us to wasteful, aimless behaviour ... We do not see opportunities that arise. There always comes another day and another cheque."
Ultimately, Pearson's argument reduces to the contention that by restricting welfare payments, by turning off the tap, Aboriginal people will have no alternative but to "rationally" build themselves a prosperous "real economy". Freed of the supposedly oppressive burden of their paltry welfare payments, and aided by the invisible hand of the market, employment and social cohesion will simply materialise out of thin air.
It is tempting to label Noel Pearson a neo-liberal "economic rationalist" as he shamelessly borrows so many of their ideas. But, as he himself admits, "I do not propose, indeed do not have, any economic policy for the country". He is all too happy to leave economic policy to the Howard government.
Shifting the debate
Pearson was not the only indigenous delegate to decry Aboriginal welfare provision. Two other indigenous delegates, Evelyn Scott and Joseph Elu, strongly backed Pearson's claims. Scott, the government-appointed chairperson of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, blamed welfare for "almost destroy[ing] my culture" and argued that "there has got to be an educational process to say the world won't collapse around us if we don't get the welfare system".
Pearson, Scott and Elu were invited to the roundtable forum because the politicians knew they would, as the ATSIC deputy chairperson Ray Robinson put it, "do their bidding". The voices of conservative, middle-class Aborigines are extremely valuable for a federal government desperate to shift the public debate away from abuses of human rights, such as mandatory sentencing and deaths in custody, to Aboriginal "welfare dependency". Dissenting indigenous leaders, however, were not allowed a voice.
A group of 10 Aboriginal activists entered Old Parliament House where the forum was being held to protest that the forum was unrepresentative of the indigenous leadership. Craig Ritchie, the head of the body representing Aboriginal-controlled health services, labelled the forum a sham and pointed out that those with expertise in tackling substance abuse were deliberately excluded from the meeting.
The NSW Aboriginal Land Council also strongly criticised the roundtable forum, claiming it was a waste of money and did not represent Aboriginal people.
Following intensifying international and domestic condemnation of the government's racist policies towards indigenous people, the roundtable forum was especially designed, and suitable delegates handpicked, to portray the problems faced by Aboriginal people as their own fault and their own problem. For instance, minister for Aboriginal affairs John Herron remarked before the forum began that "Aboriginal leaders have not thought enough about ... how to get off welfare dependency".
The irony of the government's strategy is that the wretched conditions that many Aboriginal people are subjected to is the result of decades of government neglect. Now this situation is being presented by the Howard government as an justification to further repeal, rather than extend, Aboriginal rights.
We can expect to hear more from right-wing ideologues such as Pearson. The government will use him and others like him to buttress their campaign to absolve themselves of responsibility for their racist policies.
BY SIMON BUTLER