"Little children are sacred"

I've been thinking over John Howard's weekend declaration of a 'national emergency' in remote aboriginal communities. While I read about the issues facing aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia when they appear in the media (more often in the British media than in Australian, it seems), and touch on it occasionally in the course of assignments for uni (usually from a community health-nutrition perspective), I haven't done any significant amount of study on aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander issues and I'm largely coming from a position of ignorance; this despite the fact it's one of the areas I'm interested in studying further and perhaps working in some day.

Speaking from my position of relative ignorance, however, my gut feeling is that John Howard is pulling an election stunt. He's been in power for over a decade, and the appalling conditions in remote aboriginal communities have been largely ignored by his government. I received some insight into the lack of willingness of politicians to speak the 'A-word' when I read Mark Latham's The Latham Diaries a year or two ago; in it, Latham essentially says that no politician wants to mention aboriginal people unless it's in the context of dog-whistle politics and abo-bashing and stirring up community 'outroige' about how much money is spent on them. Perhaps John Howard has detected a change in the wind and is trying to get one up on Labor and the Greens by being seen 'doing something'.

With regard to the plan to quarantine welfare payments to ensure they're spent on food and other necessities for recipients' children, I've mentioned before that I don't give a rat's arse about whether an action constitutes 'paternalism' when inaction results in harm to a child. But I'm talking about individuals. On a collective level, once applied to a certain group of people and only those people, ignoring the fact that the exact same problem exists in other groups to which the measures are not being applied, it's racist. I don't think it's racist or paternalistic to insist that money received from the government to care for a child be spent on the child. In fact, I think it's a good thing that the plan looks like being extended to all welfare recipients, not just aboriginal families. Not applying the same standard to all families in receipt of welfare payments would be racist, not to mention downright stupid.

When it comes to spending money on food, however, I have heard no mention on how the Howard government plans to improve access to food in aboriginal and TSI communities. There are huge problems with higher food prices and lack of availability of healthy food choices in these communities, and Howard's Great White Plan for the Black Man doesn't appear to have any measures in store to address these problems. Nor does it appear to have any measures in store to address the issue of massive overcrowding in housing in remote aboriginal communities.

With regard to the ban on the sale of alcohol in aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory, and the prospect of problem drinkers merely shifting to the city, where alcohol will remain available, I'd like to know why John Howard didn't just ban all sales of alcohol in the Northern Territory. If the situation really does constitute a 'national emergency', surely white people can do without their grog until the emergency is cleared up? Of course, no matter how great the problem, John Howard is never going to restrict white peoples' access to alcohol, let alone in an election year. This despite the fact that anyone, black or white, who simply can't cope without alcohol for any length of time by definition has a problem with the drug. Alcohol is most certainly not just an aboriginal problem. In fact, from what I recall of some recent reading on the dietary differences between Australians of different socioeconomic groups, the phenomenon in aboriginal communities of a low percentage of people who actually drink alcohol, but very high levels of excessive alcohol consumption among those who do, is something reflected among people of lower socioeconomic groups in Australia regardless of ethnicity.

It should also be noted that the liquor outlets in and around aboriginal communities had to be approved by government in the first place (state or territory government, I presume, but I could be wrong). These approvals were granted even in the face of the long-standing problem of alcohol abuse. These outlets were profiting from the misery created in the community by the problems associated with excessive drinking, and no-one cared. Why were they even approved?

Summary of the report

Full report (via BBC)

Other posts on this topic (I don't necessarily agree with everything said on this topic, but all the posters have something worthwhile to say):

Mikey 1 & 2

Anonymous Lefty (a much more comprehensive look at Howard's proposals)


Miss Politics

Harry Clarke (an articulate look at the problem from a non-left perspective)

Larry (sums it up in a succinct and rather humourous manner)