Matters Indigenous -- a new story please
The proposed federal interventions in NT indigenous communities, and the responses to them, give me strong feelings of can't we get out of this story?, it is so tired.
The first old story (and much the older) is white politician has brain snap, decides something has to be done and announces this will be done. I may be being unfair, but I get the strong impression that Howard's proposed interventions in indigenous communities are very much grounded in his preconceptions. A case of this is what a social conservative would do. Terry Lane in The Age has a similar feeling.
One of the abiding problems in indigenous policy, going back to the beginnings of British settlement ("white" settlement is a simplification, since the original settlers were a moderately multi-racial lot; it's just that the modern concept of race hadn't really developed even in 1788, so folk didn't make a big deal of it) is policy ideas just being "dumped" on indigenous Australia. Such has, more or less invariably, been a disaster. The only case I am aware of, of an Australian politician basing his indigenous policies on prolonged experience of, and thought about, Aboriginal Australia was Sir Paul Hasluck. And he supported assimilation, so is by definition wrong: all the appropriate authorities have agreed so.
As Terry Lane notes in his article, reading the original report may well have sparked a certain level of sheer exasperation. And there is the not small point of what horrors would occur while one discussed and analysed (something Barry Cohen very much picks up on). But the policy wonk in me can't help but (1) note the pattern of failure that has come from preconceptions not grounded in indigenous experience and (2) want the "cross-tabs" (the careful analysis of causes and responses).
Which are all but will it work? concerns. There are also the but the interventions are illiberal concerns. These I have even more mixed feelings about.
Part of me would very like to say "just the same rules for everyone". The problem with that is: who developed said rules and in what context? After all, "just the same rules for everyone" was precisely the justification for perhaps the single greatest disaster in indigenous policy: the Cattle Station Industry Award decision of 1965 when a form of employment (permanent full-time work) which indigenous Australia had had no role in developing, and which had no analogue in Aboriginal cultures, was imposed on the pastoral industry, devestating indigenous employment in outback Australia.
While I am a universal values sort of person, I mean that in a certain basic sense. I am not sure how much I want to require the same set of rules for everyone when dealing with folk with wildly different circumstances and preconceptions.
This is even more so when I read Noel Pearson's comments. Apart from providing a very amusing reminder of the Keating style (do we really want to claim that J.Ho is a more intimidating figure than PK-u-all?) he makes some very blunt comments about failures of responsibility and advocacy ineffectiveness. And he quotes Marcia Langton to put J.Ho's interventions in context: Langton cut to the chase: the non-conservative indigenous and non-indigenous peoples' failure to take sufficient political and practical responsibility for social functionality in indigenous communities made the recent intervention by conservative leaders inevitable. Of course the conservative leaders would ultimately intervene, Langton explained, and it is hardly surprising that their plan is shaped by their conservative ideology.
As Pearson points out, somebody with the power to act is finally acting: merely standing on the sidelines and yelling "No!" is not an adequate response. Criticising the response as illiberal is simple naysaying unless one is prepared to offer a plausible (as in we-have-good-reasons-to-think-it-might-work) alternative.
Pearson also points out that much of what Howard is proposing to do, Qld Premier Beatty has already done some version of.
My other can we have a new story please, this is so tired response is to the it's racism! response. I have already taken aim at this. But it is worth noting just how pathetically silly it is in this context. Yes, of course, being publicly horrified by the abuse of black children, saying this is awful, a national disgrace and must stop, calling for doctors to volunteer to serve indigenous communities; yes, of course, that's just what a racist would do.
There really is such a thing as having your head so far up your arse you can't see daylight. J.Ho's intervention plan is authoritarian, it is paternalistic. It is not, in any useful sense of the term, "racist". Such tone deaf obsessiveness is precisely what is not needed.
So, will it work? What, if anything, would work better?
Simple, "obvious" questions. But a debate on indigenous affairs based on those questions and grounded in indigenous life and experience: that would be a new story.
The first old story (and much the older) is white politician has brain snap, decides something has to be done and announces this will be done. I may be being unfair, but I get the strong impression that Howard's proposed interventions in indigenous communities are very much grounded in his preconceptions. A case of this is what a social conservative would do. Terry Lane in The Age has a similar feeling.
One of the abiding problems in indigenous policy, going back to the beginnings of British settlement ("white" settlement is a simplification, since the original settlers were a moderately multi-racial lot; it's just that the modern concept of race hadn't really developed even in 1788, so folk didn't make a big deal of it) is policy ideas just being "dumped" on indigenous Australia. Such has, more or less invariably, been a disaster. The only case I am aware of, of an Australian politician basing his indigenous policies on prolonged experience of, and thought about, Aboriginal Australia was Sir Paul Hasluck. And he supported assimilation, so is by definition wrong: all the appropriate authorities have agreed so.
As Terry Lane notes in his article, reading the original report may well have sparked a certain level of sheer exasperation. And there is the not small point of what horrors would occur while one discussed and analysed (something Barry Cohen very much picks up on). But the policy wonk in me can't help but (1) note the pattern of failure that has come from preconceptions not grounded in indigenous experience and (2) want the "cross-tabs" (the careful analysis of causes and responses).
Which are all but will it work? concerns. There are also the but the interventions are illiberal concerns. These I have even more mixed feelings about.
Part of me would very like to say "just the same rules for everyone". The problem with that is: who developed said rules and in what context? After all, "just the same rules for everyone" was precisely the justification for perhaps the single greatest disaster in indigenous policy: the Cattle Station Industry Award decision of 1965 when a form of employment (permanent full-time work) which indigenous Australia had had no role in developing, and which had no analogue in Aboriginal cultures, was imposed on the pastoral industry, devestating indigenous employment in outback Australia.
While I am a universal values sort of person, I mean that in a certain basic sense. I am not sure how much I want to require the same set of rules for everyone when dealing with folk with wildly different circumstances and preconceptions.
This is even more so when I read Noel Pearson's comments. Apart from providing a very amusing reminder of the Keating style (do we really want to claim that J.Ho is a more intimidating figure than PK-u-all?) he makes some very blunt comments about failures of responsibility and advocacy ineffectiveness. And he quotes Marcia Langton to put J.Ho's interventions in context: Langton cut to the chase: the non-conservative indigenous and non-indigenous peoples' failure to take sufficient political and practical responsibility for social functionality in indigenous communities made the recent intervention by conservative leaders inevitable. Of course the conservative leaders would ultimately intervene, Langton explained, and it is hardly surprising that their plan is shaped by their conservative ideology.
As Pearson points out, somebody with the power to act is finally acting: merely standing on the sidelines and yelling "No!" is not an adequate response. Criticising the response as illiberal is simple naysaying unless one is prepared to offer a plausible (as in we-have-good-reasons-to-think-it-might-work) alternative.
Pearson also points out that much of what Howard is proposing to do, Qld Premier Beatty has already done some version of.
My other can we have a new story please, this is so tired response is to the it's racism! response. I have already taken aim at this. But it is worth noting just how pathetically silly it is in this context. Yes, of course, being publicly horrified by the abuse of black children, saying this is awful, a national disgrace and must stop, calling for doctors to volunteer to serve indigenous communities; yes, of course, that's just what a racist would do.
There really is such a thing as having your head so far up your arse you can't see daylight. J.Ho's intervention plan is authoritarian, it is paternalistic. It is not, in any useful sense of the term, "racist". Such tone deaf obsessiveness is precisely what is not needed.
So, will it work? What, if anything, would work better?
Simple, "obvious" questions. But a debate on indigenous affairs based on those questions and grounded in indigenous life and experience: that would be a new story.