Finally, a plan to give Aboriginal kids a future
21.07.2008
COMMENT
ALL the intellectually stimulating broad canvas reforms of Noel Pearson and the mission statements of governments about addressing indigenous disadvantage will amount to nothing unless practical means of delivering the services and programs eventuate.
To that end, the paper prepared by doctors Richard Heazlewood and Lara Wieland from Cape York provides many avenues for government to act and achieve what every Australian wants to see happen to redress this appalling situation.
In 1987, Bob Hawke recklessly declared that by 1990 no Australian child would be living in poverty. Twenty-one years later, thousands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children have the most appalling lives of neglect and abuse.
What this latest document does is to make practical suggestions, based on giving a child good pre- and post-natal health, a well-nourished infancy and childhood, and protection from physical neglect and abuse.
The authors have spelt out a recipe that gives the most disadvantaged in society a decent shot at life -- something few indigenous babies have at the moment.
If they can be born healthy and be provided with adequate nutrition and medical supervision, the children will at least have some chance of coping once they enter the education system.
They will then have a decent shot at becoming adults with the ability to cope with life's challenges -- including parenthood, when that comes around.
If it means that taxpayers have to pay the suggested $100 a week for the first four years of the life of an Aboriginal child to ensurehe or she is properly fedand healthy, that is a small price to pay.
Whether the $5000 baby bonus should be used to subsidise the scheme is a matter for debate ... but there is no argument that can sustain any longer a system that sees innocent children suffering needlessly in this land of plenty, and these times of great prosperity.
