Club Troppo

What Northern Territory communities need is a sense of community. We call them communities but I wonder about that. If they were then the disconnect caused by boredom wouldn’t be there. Boredom is the big killer and boredom happens when we are not constructively engaged. The destructive engagement with alcohol, drugs, petrol and associated abuses is an indication that a culture of constructive opportunity to act is missing in these places. Don’t underestimate the energy and focus that is required to get hands on substances for abuse – which leads me to think it has little to do with laziness. Strongly focussed projects work. The energy spent on the project of getting some petrol could become the project of fixing up a vehicle, or creating a childcare centre or writing a song in a band. A community is about constructive connections and needs and expectations and duties between people in the community. Having some expert people wandering around the countryside saying this and starting that and then disappearing never to be heard of again won’t create stability or security or allay boredom in the long term. If I was living in one of these places I would be expecting Pat Anderson or Rex Wild to kick things off and introduce me to the new government teams – I’d be curious about these teams and pretty interested as well and would feel the beginning of a connection if I was introduced to them by someone who knew them and me –as you do - I wouldn’t feel connected to them at all if I wasn’t introduced properly.

One thing that galvanises people together is work. Lots of times when people work together a great positive bond is formed. When strangers work their way out of a natural or unnatural disaster bonds develop between them. Project work that has strong beginning and end point can develop a sense of community and quite wonderfully that sense of community connects people after that project has finished. Project work has to do with the pragmatic stuff that constructively binds you as a group to a cause that has a beginning and an end point outside your own individual self.

(Continued)

If Noel Pearson is a man of integrity (and I think he is), he will be appalled by John Howard’s just announced “plan” for Northern Territory indigenous Australians. Certainly, Pearson’s plans also involve breaking the cycle of welfare dependency in Cape York by tying receipt of welfare benefits to children’s school attendance, maintaining their houses and the like. But it does so in the context of a carefully developed, comprehensive plan for basic health care, education, vocational skills training and enterprise development. Contrary to Mark Bahnisch’s view, I think Pearson’s proposals have a great deal of merit.

But there is no sign of any of those careful, considered elements in the “plan” John Howard announced today. Like Howard’s $10 billion water “plan”, it appears to have been hastily cobbled together on the back of an envelope aiming solely at electoral advantage by playing to the “Howard battlers” and wedging the ALP. It appears to be little more than a cynical, desperate, Textor focus group-driven grab for redneck votes, by targetting the poorest , most vulnerable Australians. Sadly it may well work, judging by the supine response of Kevin Rudd and other Labor leaders to date.

What difference to child sexual abuse, availability of drugs, alcohol and pornography will 10 additional AFP officers (or even 10 from each State, assuming all State Premiers agree that the NT’s needs are greater than their own) make across more than 60 remote Aboriginal communities?

How will taking federal control of 40 community town areas for 5 years make any difference at all to housing standards? The Howard government sent military forces into a few Territory indigenous communities during its early years in office, and it made scarcely a dent in the housing backlog. In many remote communities, people live 15 or 20 to each house. The cost of clearing the indigenous housing backlog in the Territory alone is generally estimated at more than one billion dollars. The current Commonwealth-NT Indigenous Housing and Infrastructure Agreement commits a total of well under $100 million per year, scarcely enough to keep pace with existing maintenance and repairs let alone make a hole in the backlog. There is no mention of any additional funding in Howard’s announcement today, without which it’s merely empty tokenism.

What effect will banning alcohol from all remote remote Aboriginal communities have? I can tell you immediately, from 24 years living in the NT. All the drinkers would immediately move into town in Darwin, Alice Springs, Katherine and Tennant Creek, where there is no way they could be stopped from drinking without restriction. The electoral effects of this urban social chaos would certainly be fatal for Dave Tollner, the incumbent CLP federal member for the Darwin-based marginal seat of Solomon. At least some Liberal advisers (notably Territory born and bred senior Howard adviser and policeman’s son Mark Textor) would be well aware of the practical effects of such a policy, which is why you can guarantee it won’t actually be introduced before the election and will be quietly shelved thereafter whoever wins.

What will happen if, as announced, all Aboriginal parents living in remote communities have 50% of their welfare benefits withheld to ensure that their children are fed? Well, apart from the repugnant unfairness of treating all Aboriginal people indiscriminately as irresponsible children when the majority are responsible parents and only a minority of them drink at all (albeit that those who do are disproportionately serious alcoholics), how could any such policy practically be enforced across 70 or more very remote communities, without employing a large army of additional bureaucrats to dispense the withheld proportion and ensure that it is spent on food? And what would happen if they did somehow find an effective way to enforce such a policy? Again, lots of people (especially the drinkers) would simply vote with their feet and move to the major towns, abandoning their children with extended family members. Any such policy would simply worsen existing social dysfunction.

Today is a day of shame in Australian politics. Everyone deplores the appalling incidence of violence and child sexual abuse in indigenous communities. But there simply isn’t any quick, magical solution. The policy Howard has just announced is worse, more racist and more wildly impractical and misconceived than anything Pauline Hanson ever spouted. Kevin Rudd’s meek, kneejerk endorsement of it is almost as disgusting, and marks him unfit to lead Australia. At least Howard has the guts to announce policies of his own, however repugnant and ill-considered.

Further thoughts - I should also comment on Howard’s announced cancellation of the permit system for entry to Aboriginal townships. Not only does this abolish one of the most central attributes of private property (and therefore take a major step towards what one suspects is a covert ideological aim of abolishing land rights), but it has nothing whatever to do with Howard’s professed objective of tackling child sexual abuse in indigenous communities. In fact it is likely to prove counter-productive in that regard. The recent Wild/Anderson report highlighted the incidence of sexual predation on young Aboriginal girls by white miners and others. Removing permit restrictions will create open slather for these predators to enter indigenous communities without restriction, not to mention others trying to peddle alcohol, illicit drugs pornography and so on. Removing the permit system will make it much harder for the handful of additional police Howard is supplying to enforce the new restrictions he professes to wish to impose.

Howard’s plans also involve a proposal to deliver school breakfasts/lunches to Aboriginal children, at parents’ expense. In fact, such schemes already exist in many indigenous schools, but are currelty delivered free of charge. Far from assisting Aboriginal families in need, this proposal is actually reducing existing programs and imposing a “user pays” system on the kids Howard professes to want to help.

His announced taking of control of Aboriginal townships also apparently involves a commitment to charge “market rents” for housing. That too will cause drastic financial hardship among the very people Howard professes to be trying to help. Most indigenous housing associations charge their tenants concessional rents, because not only are many of those tenants unemployed, but the cost of food, transport and just about all other necessities of life is vastly higher than in major towns and cities. While a significant hard core minority certainly squander welfare money on drugs and alcohol, increasing the cost of living indiscriminately to the poorest Australians hardly seems a sensible way to address that problem.

(another one of the Lost Files following the Great Server Crash)
“Exempting any group of people from criticism is not a blessing but a curse. — Thomas Sowell ”
It was reconciliation week once more last week, a good opportunity to debate some of the more thorny issues surrounding indigenous affairs. I apologise in advance for confusing you, because at the end of my mental journey I find myself in favour of native title rights, but leaning against reconciliation week.

The trickiest issue concerns native title rights. This issue is tricky in any country and the perennial question is how far back historical rights reach. Should the English figure out which Kelts were disowned by the invading Angels 1400 years ago? Should the South Africans figure out which Bushmen were disowned by the invading Bantus 500 years ago? Should the Arabs figure out which Berbers they disowned in North Africa in the Middle Ages? The practical answer to these questions is ‘no’ since the period is so long that it by now has become impossible to trace initial ownership and it would only lead to a war to rake up all these old rivalries.
Yet, land ownership does extend through the generations. Sons and daughters inherit from their fathers and if their fathers stole it from someone else, then in Western legal tradition, the surviving kin of the dispossessed do have the right to legal redress. This principle is not extended back into perpetuity, but within the laws we have adopted for ourselves, intergenerational rights do exist. Since we’re all supposed to be equal under the law, the principle applies equally to indigenous land rights.
(Continued)

At some point in the future, the Northern Territory will be admitted to the Commonwealth of Australia is a State. The Self-Government Act will be swept aside and replaced by a Constitution of some kind.

Before this august day arrives, however, I expect that every man, woman, child and greenie and their dogs will line up to try and write their pet cause into that Constitution.

Here’s one of mine; a modest proposal designed to balance the interests of tax payers and tax consumers:

Income and payments from the Government, or a vote: pick one.

(Continued)

Readers with an interest in NT politics might care to tune into the streaming audio version of  this morning’s ABC Local Radio morning program, where (among others) yours truly discussed a sudden outbreak of ill-discipline in the Martin government backbench.   A memo from indigenous MLA Matthew Bonson to his 4 Aboriginal colleagues  has been  leaked to the media, in which  Bonson reflected on widespread unhappiness with the Martin government in the Aboriginal community and  touted  a joint demand that Chief Minister Clare Martin hand over the Indigenous Affairs portfolio to an indigenous MLA.  

You can hear my contribution here (Real Player) or here (Windows Media Player), starting at the 9:30 minutes point of a 30 minute audio (the whole  program is worth listening to if you’ve got the time).   I also reflect briefly on federal Health Minister Tony Abbott’s  call in  an opinion piece in this morning’s SMH for a “new paternalism” in the administration of remote indigenous communities.

Update - News Online carries the predictable Pavlovian  federal Labor and Greens reaction to Abbott’s  ”new form of paternalism” remark.   Abbott would no doubt be pleased; the dog whistle worked again  (to mix a metaphor).   However, if we read behind the calculated cynicism of his “paternalism” rhetoric, Abbott’s  basic point is quite a sensible one.   Board or committee members of Aboriginal councils and associations frequently (maybe even usually) lack a clear understanding of their role, and in particular the fact that a board generally does not interfere in the day-to-day management of the enterprise.  

There are some whitefella organisations  I have advised that also don’t understand this principle (not to mention some blogosphere commentators about the ABC Board).   But it’s more serious in Aboriginal communities,  because voluntary community associations fulfil functions that  usually involve administration of  hundreds of thousands of dollars and the very basic wellbeing of a vulnerable community.   Boards or committees frequently oscillate between boredom and non-attendance at meetings (even when offered very generous “sitting fees”), and  interference in the day-to-day management of even relatively well run organisations.   This interference all too often  implements or perpetuates decisions involving cronyism, patronage and even outright corruption.   Employed managers usually have no viable choice but to resign or take the line of least resistance when subjected to such demands.   Some white managers are actively complicit in such behaviour or even initiate it.

I certainly wouldn’t have any problem with federal government imposition of  an accountability structure on Aboriginal communities  that ensured that boards and committees understood and adhered to their proper role of policy and overall budgetary  oversight, together with  decisions on hiring and firing employed managers, though with carefully designed protections to ensure that managers could not be sacked for refusing to facilitate cronyism and corruption.    Of course, what I’m talking about here is a form of protection for managers in Aboriginal communities  from harsh and oppressive termination of employment.   If that’s what Abbott has in mind,  it certainly involves an unintended irony.    

There would also need to be some form of systematic vetting of suitability for appointment as a community manager/administrator.   That would not necessarily involve undermining principles of indigenous  self-determination.    You would simply establish a licensing system for indgenous community managers/administrators, so that community councils and associations would be obliged to select from a field of only licensed candidates.   That should largely eliminate a phenomenon  I have sometimes observed where a manager known or strongly suspected of corrupt behaviour at a previous community nevertheless finds little difficulty being  employed somewhere else because the “bush telegraph” didn’t operate.   Such people are usually very  adept at manipulating and ingratiating themselves into the favour of community members.  

An apt cartoon from NT News cartoonist and Troppo blogger Colin Wicking

As Colin Wicking acutely observes, the debate about  responsibility for appalling conditions in remote indigenous communities has degenerated into a predictable  federal/NT slanging match

A similar divide is evident in the discussion about causation amongst op-ed pundits.   The right (e.g. Christopher Pearson in today’s Oz) emphasise the need for strong law and order policies and the malign influence of customary law.   They make some  good points.   I don’t share the latte left belief in the sanctity of customary law as an element of “self-determination”.   That especially applies to practices in relation to “promised” brides, but my objection is wider than that.   Even in  their original traditional guise, most forms of customary law “payback” “justice” were  dreadfully barbaric and contrary to basic norms of international law.   Degraded by alcohol and substance abuse as they are today,  these practices are  little more than licences for intimidation and indiscriminate mayhem.   Alcohol-fuelled violent crime followed by equally alcohol-fuelled “payback” often gives rise to an endless cycle of retribution and counter-retribution.

Left-leaning pundit Adele Horin makes an even stronger point.   She points to a recent joint Commonwealth/NT study into government spending at Wadeye/Port Keats which showed significant underspending per capita compared with the NT average. The most seemingly blatant example was education, where the NT government only spent 46 cents for every dollar spent on average elsewhere.

(Continued)

Time permitting, I intend writing a post on the current controversy about endemic child sexual abuse and extreme violence in Aboriginal communities.

In the meantime, one of the most eloquent testimonies I’ve yet heard about the virtual civil war  situation in the troubled community of Port Keats/Wadeye went to air yesterday on ABC Local Radio Darwin’s morning program.   Stand-in compere Leon Compton intereviewed Wadeye School’s co-principal Ann Rebgetz.   You can listen to the interview here (RealAudio) or here (Windows Media).   I urge you to take the time, because Ann conveys the seriousness, complexity and the dreadful everyday reality of living in such a community with a calm,  understated absolute conviction that brings understanding in a way that much more sensationalised TV coverage usually  fails to achieve.

A weekly wrap of what’s been happening across the Top End news-wise, which might be handy for former residents who really miss reading about this sort of thing. May contain cane toads and/or crocodiles.

DING DONG
Darwin military police are hunting for a serial flasher who is terrorising underwear salespeople. The supposedly well-endowed flasher, who wears army fatigues, has been nicknamed “Donkey Dong” by some city retailers. Several clothing and sporting retail outlets in the Mitchell Centre have been targeted over the past six months by the unidentified pervert, who calls shop assistants into the change room to see if his tight underwear “fits”.
Source: news.com.au
BOOZE NEWS 1
Almost half the road accident deaths in the Territory last year were caused by alcohol, the NT Road Safety Council says. There were 55 fatalities on NT roads compared with 35 over the previous 12 months. Alcohol was involved in 44 per cent of the crashes.
Meanwhile, in response to NT government plans to introduce ‘alcohol courts’ to combat anti-social behaviour the CLP opposition, obviously longing for the good old days, launched a policy that would re-criminalise drunkenness. As debate was proceeding in the Territory parliament police were clearing city streets of itinerants because a luxury cruise ship full of rich people was in port.
Source: NT News
(Continued)

A weekly wrap of what’s been happening across the Top End news-wise, which might be handy for former residents who really miss reading about this sort of thing. May contain cane toads and/or crocodiles.

SUPER TOAD
Cane toads on the rampage across the Top End are evolving rapidly, according to research published in
scientific journal Nature. The NT toads are bigger, stronger and faster, and are now moving into areas five times faster than their 1940s predecessors. This is due in large part to today’s toads having longer, faster legs. March 14 has been declared a ‘Not in My Backyard’ day of action, with locals being urged to check their properties and nearby parks for the toxic superpest.
Source: NT News

GROUND DOWN
Meanwhile, a Darwin company has been inundated with orders from around the country after trialling the production of cane toad fertilizer. The trial involved placing 200kg of frozen toads in a chemical brew that breaks proteins down into amino acids. Businessman Dean Walkley said he would need around five tonnes of toads to meet the demand. Mr Walkley urged toad hunters to take their prisoners alive to a detention centre - yes, you read that right - set up by Frogwatch NT. The centre can hold up to 1000 toads at a time. Another ten are in the planning stages.
Source: Sunday Territorian
(Continued)

I heard this program on PM the other day about the collapse into petrol sniffing of the aboriginal community at Uluru. In some ways a war zone would be better than this. Call it ‘disadvantage’ if you like, but I think that rather misses what is going on.

News Online reports that the Howard government has today announced that it is seizing control of approvals for new uranium mines from the Martin Labor NT government:

THE Federal Government has taken control over the future of the Northern Territory’s rich uranium deposits, declaring the territory open for business on uranium.

The NT Labor Government had promised to ban new uranium mines, despite fierce opposition from the Federal Government.
But the Federal Government sought legal advice, and today said it had taken over responsibility for the development of new mines, following a meeting between the federal and NT resources minister in Darwin.

It’s hardly a surprising move on either side of the political divide. Clare Martin had pandered to the Greens in the run-up to the recent election by announcing that her government would not under any circumstances approve any new uranium mines.

Moreover, “no new uranium mines” remains part of the ALP’s National Platform, still being an article of faith of the Socialist Left and even some otherwise more moderate and sensible types. It’s a fairly meaningless, if archaic piece of self-indulgent flummery in most parts of Australia. But the Territory has large, undeveloped uranium reserves at several locations, notably Jabiluka and Koongarra within the boundaries of Kakadu National Park (though formally excised from it), so the ALP Platform was always going to become a real life problem for a Labor government in the Territory.
(Continued)

Just returned from an evening at the central tallyroom in Darwin. I confess that I failed to disguise a quietly malicious joy at the crestfallen pain of all the old CLP apparatchiks who used to gloat without restraint during Labor’s many dark nights of the soul through the 1980s and 90s.

Latest figures suggest that Labor will probably end up with 18 seats (out of 25), with the CLP retaining just 6 and 1 Independent (although this is still fairly fluid at the time of writing). And CLP leader Denis Burke lost his seat as well as the election! I must admit that Pollbludger’s prediction, which I regarded as wildly optimistic for Labor, was much closer than mine.

In most senses, it’s humble pie I’m happy to swallow. And in any event, the CLP debacle was exacerbated by a major fiscal cockup in the last two days of the campaign, when Treasury unearthed a $60 million mathematical error in Burke’s calculation of the cost of his election promises, not to mention highlighting the fact that he refused to reveal where he would make $218 million worth of spending cuts that he claimed would pay for those promises. It just added to the picture of chaotic incompetence whose most egregious symbol was the $1.3 billion mythical power line from southern Queensland to Darwin.

Even so, such a smashing victory isn’t necessarily unalloyed good news even for NT Labor, let alone democracy in the Territory. Clare Martin will certainly end up with a large and fractious back bench which will include a substantial proportion of dead wood MLAs who wouldn’t normally have had a snowball’s chance in the tropics of getting elected.

The Party rank and file is also going to take a lot of convincing that there’s no choice but to persist in the cautious-to-the-point-of-intertia brand of semi-compassionate conservatism that has characterised the last 4 years of the Martin government. It’s an identical approach to the tried and true template of ALP state governments throughout Australia, but with extremes of poverty in a population that is 30% indigenous it’s rather more difficult to persuade impatient ALP members that a glacial pace of reform and a policy stance only marginally distinguishable from the Coalition is the only viable approach. Martin has managed (through ruthless factional manoeuvring) to avoid holding a Party Conference in the last couple of years, but it seems unlikely she’ll be able to stave off internal democracy for much longer. Still, with the budget already slightly in deficit and the highest per capita state debt in Australia, the grim fiscal reality is that there probably isn’t much room for bold social justice measures even if Clare and her minders were so minded (and they’re not).

The Martin government’s “lock up serial drunks” policy also creates a significant cloud on the horizon for the ALP. It certainly played well in Darwin’s northrn suburbs and undoubtedly contributed to the big swing to Labor, but there’s a fairly high probability that a significant number of indigenous leaders will now conclude that Labor in government is merely a whiter-shade-of-pale CLP, and decide as a result that the only sensible option for gaining some meaningful leverage in the political process is to establish a specifically indigenous political party and aim at achieving a balance of power situation in the Territory Parliament.

But still, any politician would much rather be Clare Martin right now than Denis Burke. And despite my silent bout of schadenfreude, I can’t help feeling just a little sorry for two time loser Denis Burke. Even though he’s a boofhead who ran a hopeless campaign, he doesn’t seem like a bad bloke and he mostly resisted the temptation to play the race card despite the fact that he would certainly have been well aware of the desperation of his party’s plight and would have been surrounded by minders telling him that a traditional black bash was the only way of salvaging something from the wreckage. There are worse political epitaphs.

Over the fold you’ll find my latest (and possibly last before Saturday’s election) obervations on the NT election. I’ve been lazy (because I’m swamped with exam marking), and have just copied my notes provided to CDU’s media people as part of my job as one of the University’s 3 designated election pundits (the others being historian Professor David Carment and political scientist Bill Wilson).
(Continued)

John Quiggin has undertaken a more detailed analysis of NT CLP Opposition Leader Denis Burke’s bizarre election campaign promise/proposal to build a power line from southern Queensland to Darwin. I discussed the proposal here. JQ’s analysis was published in today’s Australian Financial Review, but is reproduced here.

Burke’s power line promise seems to be an attempt to provide some vaguely plausible basis for his negative campaigning claim that electricity is “the most expensive in Australia” under the Martin Labor government. Of course that is true, but it was true under the previous CLP government as well. Both electricity and petrol have always been very expensive here, because of the remoteness and tiny population. In fact, the last significant rise in electricity charges was under Burke himself as Chief Minister in 2000! Presumably he’s punting on the fact that the NT population has a very high turnover rate, and hoping that with a bit of luck even some of those who lived here in 2000 might have forgotten! With just over a week until election day, we’ll soon find out.

This blog isn’t called Troppo Armadillo for nothing. There’s something about living in Australia’s Deep North that generates frequent bouts of bizarre behaviour, not least in our politicians.

The phenomenon was strongly underlined in the first days of the current NT election campaign, when Chief Minister Clare Martin announced a new scheme for the mandatory imprisonment of habitual drunks (despite having dismantled the former CLP government’s failed scheme for mandatory imprisonment of thieves soon after it was elected).

The evident contradiction involved in mandatory sentencing of drunks instead of thieves didn’t deter Ms Martin for even a moment. Nor, so far at least, has the revelation that NT prisons actually don’t have any space to accommodate large numbers of drunks. The outraged reaction of a number of indigenous organisations, who unsurprisingly see Clare’s announcement as merely adopting the tawdry old CLP trick of playing the race card, didn’t faze Clare either. Instead, she put the weights on prominent Aboriginal politician and outgoing Sports Minister John Ah Kit to make the supreme sacrifice for the Party and profess to support the policy.

Of course, the clincher is that, leaving aside all those factors, Martin’s announcement doesn’t even make sense in policy terms. Unless they’re going to lock up drunks and throw away the key, such a policy will simply create a revolving door situation, with as many itinerant alcoholics being released from prison at any given time as are being locked up. At least I suppose the “long-grassers” (as Territorians call itinerant, mostly Aboriginal alcoholics) will have a comfortable bed and good nutrition for the duration of their incarceration, but they’ll still be alcoholics and will inevitably go straight back on the grog as soon as they’re released.

Presumably Clare’s announcement was triggered by polling data showing that itinerant behaviour was a significant factor that might influence many northern suburbs voters, and presumably Clare’s advisers figured that being seen to do something about it (anything, however stupid) would be a vote winner.

Even more bizarrely, CLP Opposition Leader Denis Burke responded by condemning Martin’s announcement as draconian, and argued that alcoholism should be treated as a medical issue rather than one for the criminal law! He’s quite right, but it’s a spectacular reversal for both parties. It almost seems as if the respective leaders have accidentally swapped scripts. More likely, it’s a cynical (though probably forlorn) pitch by Burke for the preferences of any independent indigenous or left-leaning candidates in marginal seats.

However, in case you’re beginning to think that Denis Burke sounds like quite a sensible chap, don’t leap to any rash conclusions.
(Continued)