Community breakdown
29.12.2007
Tony Koch calls for real responses to real problems and for fellow Australians to face up to the reasons for dysfunction in some Aboriginal communities
A FENCE 2m high with the gate chained and padlocked symbolises what is wrong with remote Aboriginal communities in Queensland, particularly in Cape York. It is the protective barrier behind which public servants -- police, nurses, medical staff, teachers, welfare workers -- are expected to live, to be safe from the local inhabitants.
It seems incongruous that people of goodwill who travel thousands of kilometres from their homes and families to help enhance the wretched lives of Aborigines have to live like prisoners because of the abuse and threats many of them suffer daily.
Such treatment is in direct contrast to the manner in which Australian aid workers are welcomed and even celebrated in developing and disaster-stricken countries, but it is accepted as everyday fare in Aboriginal communities. Union representatives of people who go to work in those settlements predict that, unless something is done soon by the communities to ensure these workers can do their jobs without fear of assault, car-jacking or robbery, there will be a refusal to send members at all.
The revelations in The Australian in the past few weeks of the dreadful gang-rape by nine men and boys of a 10-year-old intellectually impaired girl in Aurukun, and the subsequent court decision not to jail any of the attackers, all of whom had pleaded guilty, have again brought to the fore debate about how such atrocities could possibly occur.
It is time the truth is told about communities because nothing has been achieved through decades of pretending things are much better than in reality.
A medical expert told the committee investigating the rape of the little girl that Aurukun was ``a war zone where you don't see guns''. Geographically, most communities are in fantastic locations. But they are not idyllic seaside resorts where noble warriors battle to keep alive and pass on their centuries of proud culture; where happy, healthy children dance at corroborees and spend evenings at the feet of elders listening intently to the wonderful tales of their ancestors and the Dreaming.
And, possibly saddest of all, the elders in the communities are no longer the revered and respected, loved and cherished senior citizens whose word is law.
Instead, after several decades of alcohol and drug abuse, of people not being expected to work for a living, or even to care for their children or send them to school, these are disease-ridden, violent localities where alcoholism and hopelessness have shredded the fabric of society and plunged living standards to pitiable depths.
The church and government-driven policy of bygone years, where children in communities were taken from their parents and placed in dormitories where they were taught Christianity and the white man's work ethic, is at the root of much of today's problems.
Young girls who are now mothers and grandmothers learned nothing about mothering because they were never mothered themselves. They were never put to bed with a kiss and a cuddle, invited to share in the upbringing of siblings and to learn those things mothers the world over pass on as one of the most basic aspects of human life.
So we have mothers in communities, not all of the mothers by any stretch, who don't know how to care for children and are unable to do so anyway because they are caught up in the madness of alcoholism and drug-taking.
In an increasing number of cases, the mothers cannot physically look after newborn babies because they do not have the available nourishment. Often the baby is born with fetal alcohol syndrome because of the alcohol addiction of the mother who refused to stop drinking during pregnancy. So the baby has to go on to formula immediately and that is available only if the household budget is not spent on grog or lost in the gambling rings.
The section of each and every community that is not trapped in this way fights hard for normality, but to succeed is almost impossible because they have to put up with the sleepless nights due to noisy parties and brawling. And they are the ones the drunks bully for money that is wasted on gambling and grog.
How repulsive is it to see a young mother, baby at breast, smoking dope and blowing the smoke into the baby's face to make the child sleep? And where in the world other than in these communities would teachers have to put up with their youngest preschoolers being dropped at the school with maggots in their nappies? What mother or father could consider themselves a responsible parent if they are constantly prepared to see their children go without food, to be deprived of sleep because of the drunken, violent orgies that go on in many of the community houses, and refuse to send them to school?
The communities are not happy places. People wander around the rubbish-strewn streets looking downcast or angry. Dogs by the score lie around or occasionally gang up and fight one of the mob, or growl and threaten the unwary pedestrian. These are mange-ridden, starving mongrels that are known as pinkies because the itch and neglect cause them to rub their hair off.
It is the grandmothers, formerly the respected elders of the communities, who suffer abominably. They were never part of the drinking culture that they see their daughters and granddaughters caught up in, and they are the ones who have to look after the children, feed and clothe them from their meagre pensions, while recalcitrant, hopeless parents sate their alcohol addiction.
The uncaring attitude extends to housing that is provided by the state government. The average life-span of a home in a Queensland community is seven years. This compares with 50 years for public housing in cities.
The homes are mindlessly wrecked, windows smashed, walls kicked in, mostly through vandalism and as a result of drunken brawls. The response of government to date has been to dutifully send in work teams and repair and replace the residences.
It is mind-boggling to try to comprehend why this significant proportion of Aborigines in communities think that they can live their lives without taking responsibility for anything: not for their children, their spouses, their homes or their own health. Why do they think that they alone have a God-given right to be paid welfare money every fortnight and not have to work for a living?
There are dozens of examples of jobs available -- for instance, for yardmen at the local schools -- but none apply even though there are hundreds of able-bodied men collecting the dole and sitting around, staring vacantly as they wait for the pub to open.
Perhaps the greatest farce of all is the cry that culture is being maintained. Where in the world is it cultural to spend a life in a drunken fog, to bash your women, to neglect and rape children, as happens in hundreds if not thousands of cases on Cape York every year.
Most farcical is the need for relatives to arrive from across Australia for a funeral. So often it is the case of a woman who has spent her life being bashed and flogged by her drunken husband, and finally he pushes it too far and she is killed. There is the outpouring of grief, the school is closed down, the house in which she died is vacated and a spiritual smoking ceremony is held and nobody can re-enter the house for a year or more out of respect. But where was this respect and care when the woman was suffering the miserable life she had? Where were the men of the community coming to her aid when one of their brothers was flogging and kicking her to the brink of death?
To go to a community and look into the faces of the women is one of the saddest things a person can do. Few do not exhibit the scars of violence perpetrated on them: the flattened noses, scarred eyebrows, marked cheekbones. And this is culture. People such as Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson and others advance proposals to lift the communities from this despair, but they admit that nothing can be done if the Aboriginal residents are not prepared to help themselves.
Two issues are clear and cry out for government attention. One is the grog, a pastime that has become occupational instead of recreational.
Queensland Premier Anna Bligh has signalled in the wake of the Aurukun scandal that she is prepared to consider prohibition because restrictions on alcohol supply have not worked to the degree thought necessary.
The sober members of communities, particularly the women, are crying out for grog to be banned. They see it as the absolute starting point, and few could disagree.
The nay-sayers then predict that sly-grogging would flourish. That practice could easily be stopped in a couple of weeks. The power resides within Queensland legislation for courts to confiscate the means of conveyance of grog illegally brought into a community, but none will do so. It would not take many cases of the boat, four-wheel drive or aeroplane being forfeited for word to get around that it is not cost-effective to try to smuggle in a couple of hundred dollars' worth of alcohol.
The other serious issue to be addressed is education. There has never been a genuine university-ready graduate from a Cape York high school, despite the incredible efforts of hundreds of dedicated teachers. The children just do not attend regularly enough to achieve the standard required and they do not have the support or resources in their homes to be thoroughly educated.
Educators say that every high school on Cape York should be closed immediately and all students sent away to quality boarding schools. They would return at the end of semesters in the normal way, but at least they would be made to attend school, would have safe accommodation, and would not be annoyed or sexually abused by drunks and predators at night.
It is then proposed that, on a graduating scale, all children would eventually be educated away from the communities.
It is not a repeat of the stolen generations, as some who hear only the thrum of the didgeridoo and the whispers of the Dreaming would have us believe, but a sensible response to a pressing need to provide for children desperately in need and to give them the opportunity to live decent lives with the ability to make their own decisions.
The time has come, as is evidenced by the repeated rape of the 10-year-old in Aurukun, whom nobody moved to help, for real responses to real problems.
And when those responses become real, and the 2m fences are torn down because they are no longer required, then and only then will normality have been achieved. That would become the starting point for providing proper lives for Australia's original inhabitants: the least they should expect, especially the innocent children.
