Savage Racism

“This white-Australia is a savage nation where it concerns Aborigines, and it won’t change simply because some of our people (Aboriginals) assimilate.” ~ Jim Everett, Koori Mail, 29 June 2011

Jim Everett

MP calls for cuts to Aboriginal welfare

John Bowler, MP

Independent Kalgoorlie MP John Bowler has raised the prospect of withdrawing benefits to Aboriginals as the State Government admits it has no idea how to close the growing divide between WA’s indigenous and non-indigenous communities.

Mr Bowler, whose electorate takes in Kalgoorlie-Boulder and Laverton, said years of indigenous policies had clearly failed and the Government needed to look at a “tough love” approach.

“I don’t know if that’s the answer – it may make it worse,” he said. “But what’s happening now isn’t working.”

Mr Bowler’s controversial comments fly in the face of established tradition on Aboriginal affairs and suggest a radical rewriting of indigenous policy to cut welfare and make payments conditional on work in a bid to re-energise an Aboriginal population crippled by alcoholism and despair.

It comes after Regional Development Minister Brendon Grylls said that despite money being pumped into the growing crisis, the Aboriginal situation – including alcoholism, violence and sexual abuse – was worse than ever.

Mr Bowler said Aboriginal communities had fallen into a cycle of dependency which needed to be broken if there was any hope of improvement. “There is no incentive to work,” he said.

Mr Bowler said the indigenous crisis was getting worse at a time the State was going through a boom and there was unprecedented demand for semi-skilled and non-skilled labour.

“What’s going to happen when we eventually have our cyclical turn? What happens then,” he said.

Indigenous Affairs Minister Peter Collier said he understood the approach but it had to be looked at cautiously.

“There is an appetite across the community and in a number of quarters for that sort of punitive action,” he said.

“But you’ve got to be careful that if you do do that, you’re not throwing the baby out with bathwater because what that does is create a multitude of social issues that evolve as a result of that.

“In some instances some Aboriginal people in the community will respond accordingly, but you’ve just got to be careful that you’re not creating a rod for your own back and causing a further cycle of despair, particularly in communities that don’t have access to other forms of revenue or other support material.”

Child Protection Minister Robyn McSweeney said she supported income management. She said voluntary and forced income-management was operating in the Kimberley and parts of Perth and was tied to the welfare of a person’s children. Ms McSweeney said she would like to see it expanded to Kalgoorlie and the Murchison.

~ Steve Pennells, The West Australian, 11 June 2011

 

 

Despair in shadow of riches

Nowhere in Australia is the growing divide between Aboriginals and non-Aboriginals more evident than five minutes out of Kalgoorlie-Boulder, where a ramshackle camp of propped-up tin and rubbish sits next to a hole that produces 850,000 ounces – $1.2 billion worth – of gold each year.

“Welcome home,” says the sign painted on one of the tin shelters in this grim patch of third-world misery which sits in the shadow of a mammoth mound of tailings from the Superpit, the biggest open cut mine in the country.

The camp is mostly ignored by locals, as are the Aboriginals who stagger drunk through town – temporary visitors who come here via Laverton from the area known as the Lands and camp around the city.

“It’s genocide,” said Pastor Geoffrey Stokes, a big mountain of a man who isn’t prone to understatement. “Look at these conditions they let us live in.”

You just have to drive through the dingy camps around this rich Goldfields city and north to places like Laverton, where children are dumped by their parents and domestic abuse is rife, to realise that regardless of everything that has been done by successive governments, the plight of WA’s Aboriginal population is now worse than it’s ever been.

Years ago, several towns fell into an unofficial and unacknowledged form of apartheid – Aboriginals in one bar, white workers in the other – and there is a culture of resignation and acceptance about the massive levels of alcoholism and sexual abuse that is robbing a generation of Aboriginal children from any kind of decent future.

Boulder Camp ‘a disgrace’

Two months since the Federal Government announced a $100,000 commitment to Boulder Camp, a Kalgoorlie-Boulder pastor says he is still waiting to see the evidence the promise has been kept.

In April, Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin visited the city, where she announced $100,000 for improving sanitation and security at the camp.

Pastor Geoffrey Stokes called for evidence of the Federal Government’s commitment while examining Boulder Camp yesterday. “Where is it?” Mr Stokes asked.

But a spokeswoman for Ms Macklin said the toilet and showers were “now functional”, the tap washers had been replaced to stop leaks and the solar panel heater had been fixed to ensure there was hot water.

“Community members, along with Bega Garnbirringu Health Services, helped clean up the rubbish around the camp. The council has installed skip bins around the camp and a rubbish collection system has been established,” she said.

She said changes were also being made to make the camp safer.

~ Meera Nambiar, Kalgoorlie Miner, 10 June 2011