The Glory of the Welfare State
(David P.)
Facing a Crisis, Aborigines Stage Interventions of Their Own
By NORIMITSU ONISHI: July 4, 2009
HALLS CREEK, Australia — Since Halls Creek recently
became the latest Aboriginal town in the Australian
outback to restrict alcohol sales, its doctors and
police officers have been getting more sleep thanks
to a steep dropoff in nighttime brawls.
The scores of Aboriginal men and women who milled
around the one liquor store in the afternoon and
proceeded, at dusk, to the pub across town are now
gone. Some have decamped for the nearest towns with
full access to alcohol, hundreds of miles away across
a flat, shrub-covered land where the monotony is
broken up only by the occasional giant baobab tree
and kangaroo roadkill.
Four decades after a constitutional amendment
guaranteed equal rights for Australia’s Aborigines,
including the right to legally drink, an increasing
number of indigenous towns and smaller communities
deep in the outback are curtailing the sale of alcohol.
Many Aboriginal leaders say the restrictions are
necessary to reverse the effects of a drinking culture
that has led to widespread alcoholism, violence and
child abuse.
The self-restrictions here in Western Australia and
other states reflect a tougher approach toward
Aboriginal communities taken by the federal gov't in the
past two years in the Northern Territory, a federal
region with the country’s highest concentration of
Aborigines. Called “the intervention,” it has angered
many Aboriginal people nationwide, especially older ones
with direct experience of Australia’s colonial-like
policies toward its indigenous people.
“We wanted to take control of the situation by speaking
out, whereas the intervention in the Northern Territory
was something that just came down on people,” said
Doreen Green, 65, a primary school teacher and one of
two Aboriginal women who led a campaign to restrict
alcohol here.
Until the 1960s, Australian governments tried to absorb
Aborigines into the larger, European-based culture. In
the most tragic policy of assimilation, state and church
officials removed tens of thousands of Aboriginal
children, often forcibly, from their families and placed
them with white families or in institutions.
But legal equality in 1967 — along, eventually, with
almost complete autonomy across territories ceded to
Aboriginal communities — did not translate into a better
life for most Aborigines. As equal rights gave Aboriginal
communities access to alcohol and semimonthly welfare
payments, health and education standards have continued
to decline over the decades. Life expectancy remains
17 years shorter than for other Australians.
In 2007, the conservative government of Prime Minister
John Howard took back a lot of that autonomy in the
Northern Territory, where it has greater authority than
in the states, by seizing direct control over alcohol
and welfare. That policy has been maintained by the
liberal government of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, and
applied by states.
Western Australia recently started controlling welfare
payments in some areas, including the heavily indigenous
Kimberley region where Halls Creek is located. Welfare
recipients suspected of child neglect can have 70 % of
their benefits restricted to paying for essentials like
food, rent and utilities, a strategy intended to reduce
their purchase of alcohol.
“Do we sit & watch another generation engage in alcohol
abuse and petrol sniffing,” said Robyn McSweeney, the
state’s minister of child protection, “or should we be
proactive and try and do something for the children now?”
But the intervention has also spurred Aboriginal leaders
outside the Northern Territory to curb alcohol on their
own. In the past 18 months here in Western Australia,
four towns and smaller communities have succeeded in
persuading state officials to restrict the sale of
alcohol or ban it outright, & four more have submitted
requests for prohibition.
More than 3,100 people live in Halls Creek, and an
additional 1,000 reside in outlying villages. Though
numbering only a few hundred, non-Aboriginal residents
hold most of the visible jobs in gov't, administration
and private businesses.
About half of the town’s population has alcohol-related
problems, including 300 to 600 people with serious health
issues like brain damage, said David Shepherd, a senior
doctor at Halls Creek Hospital. Young women born with
fetal alcohol syndrome are giving birth to babies with
the same illness.
Halls Creek has been on a gradual decline since the '60s,
Ms. Green said. “We know what life was like before
alcohol,” she said. “We had a proud race of people,
very together people. Then alcohol just took over.”
She and another indigenous woman who has fought for the
rules, Robyn Long, 51, said the Aboriginal work ethic
faded with the alcohol access and welfare payments.
Families crumbled because of domestic violence.
Ms. Long, an administrator at the Halls Creek Hospital,
said she regularly saw “women she grew up with coming to
the hospital with broken bones.”
Still, their efforts to restrict alcohol met resistance.
“Many wives were too frightened to speak out,” for fear
of being beaten by their husbands, she said.
Other people were reluctant to lose a right that had
come with their equality in 1967.
“We fought so long and hard for our rights to be able
to say this and do that,” said Jamie Elliott, 30, who
runs an employment training program for Aboriginal
youths and does not drink. “Basically, for us to just
hand those rights back, I thought, ‘Come on, surely,
there is an in-between.’ ”
Many felt this way because of the govt’s intervention,
which “traumatized” many older indigenous people, said
Peter Yu, an Aboriginal leader who led a government-
appointed board to review the policy. “People told us,
‘We thought the days of the white man controlling us
were gone,’ ” he said.
The intervention, however offensive to some, goaded
Aboriginal leaders outside the territory to take action.
“What we saw happening in the Northern Territory made
us think, ‘Well, we need to do something about our
situation as well,’ ” said June Oscar, an Aboriginal
woman who led the push for alcohol restrictions in
Fitzroy Crossing, a town about 180 miles west of
Halls Creek.
According to government reports, crime and health
problems have decreased in Fitzroy Crossing since it
started restricting alcohol in late 2007.
But opponents of the restrictions — led by Leadal, an
Aboriginal company that owns the town’s supermarket
and two hotels where alcohol was served — say the
numbers are down simply because the hard-core drinkers
have left town.
“The government has to be seen doing something,” said
Patrick Green, the chairman of Leadal, adding that
drinkers also spent more because they could now drink
full-strength alcohol only at the hotel pubs.
On one recent afternoon, the Crossing Inn pub in Fitzroy
Crossing was filled with a few dozen Aboriginal men and
women. Most grumbled about having to pay almost $5 for
a can of beer.
But one customer, Mick Benny, a retired rancher in his
late 50s, had more complicated feelings. Mr. Benny, a
member of the “stolen generations” who was raised in
a Roman Catholic mission after being removed from his
family as a child, hoped that the rules would change
his son’s behavior.
“My son takes too much of the grog,” Mr. Benny said,
referring to alcohol. “So my grandchildren go to school
once in a while. I’d rather see them go to school every
day. I want them to get the same kind of education I got.”
.
.
--
Rod Speed
> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/05/world/asia/05australia.html
> Facing a Crisis, Aborigines Stage Interventions of Their Own
> By NORIMITSU ONISHI: July 4, 2009
> HALLS CREEK, Australia � Since Halls Creek recently
> became the latest Aboriginal town in the Australian
> outback to restrict alcohol sales, its doctors and
> police officers have been getting more sleep thanks
> to a steep dropoff in nighttime brawls.
The reality is that alcohol is still available if you want it, just harder to get.
> The scores of Aboriginal men and women who
> milled around the one liquor store in the afternoon
> and proceeded, at dusk, to the pub across town
> are now gone. Some have decamped for the
> nearest towns with full access to alcohol,
So its just moved the problem, stupid.
> hundreds of miles away across a flat, shrub-covered
> land where the monotony is broken up only by the
> occasional giant baobab tree and kangaroo roadkill.
That mangles the story too, it isnt all that flat around there.
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=halls+creek+australia&sll=32.781078,-96.797111&sspn=0.610769,1.053314&ie=UTF8&ll=-18.348008,127.843094&spn=0.34477,0.526657&t=p&z=11
> Four decades after a constitutional amendment
> guaranteed equal rights for Australia�s Aborigines,
> including the right to legally drink,
That utterly mangles what happened too. That
wasnt the result of any constitutional amendment.
> an increasing number of indigenous towns and smaller communities
> deep in the outback are curtailing the sale of alcohol.
Plenty are relaxing the sales too.
> Many Aboriginal leaders say the restrictions are necessary
> to reverse the effects of a drinking culture that has led to
> widespread alcoholism, violence and child abuse.
While simultaneously grossly abusing alcohol themselves.
> The self-restrictions here in Western Australia and
> other states reflect a tougher approach toward
> Aboriginal communities taken by the federal gov't in the
> past two years in the Northern Territory, a federal region
> with the country�s highest concentration of Aborigines.
Like hell it does.
> Called �the intervention,� it has angered many
> Aboriginal people nationwide, especially older
> ones with direct experience of Australia�s
> colonial-like policies toward its indigenous people.
And the recent change in govt has seen most of the 'intervention' backed off from.
> �We wanted to take control of the situation by speaking out,
And that clearly hasnt worked for decades.
> whereas the intervention in the Northern Territory was
> something that just came down on people,� said Doreen
> Green, 65, a primary school teacher and one of two Aboriginal
> women who led a campaign to restrict alcohol here.
Pity about her history of alcohol abuse.
> Until the 1960s, Australian governments tried to absorb
> Aborigines into the larger, European-based culture.
That is a pig ignorant lie with great swathes of the north.
> In the most tragic policy of assimilation, state and
> church officials removed tens of thousands of Aboriginal
> children, often forcibly, from their families and placed
> them with white families or in institutions.
And that avoided them dying much earlier.
> But legal equality in 1967
Another pig ignorant lie. Nothing like that happened in 67.
> � along, eventually, with almost complete autonomy
> across territories ceded to Aboriginal communities
Another pig ignorant lie.
> � did not translate into a better life for most Aborigines.
What actually produced the utterly obscene result was
paying them the same wages as everyone else, which
saw hordes of them not employed anymore and THATS
what produced the most utterly obscene depravity,
murder and child sexual abuse and suicide rates.
> As equal rights gave Aboriginal communities
> access to alcohol and semimonthly welfare payments,
Utterly mangled all over again.
> health and education standards have
> continued to decline over the decades.
Utterly mangled all over again particularly with education.
> Life expectancy remains 17 years shorter than for other Australians.
And infant mortality is vastly higher.
And the suicide rate infinitely higher.
> In 2007, the conservative government of Prime Minister
> John Howard took back a lot of that autonomy in the
> Northern Territory, where it has greater authority than
> in the states, by seizing direct control over alcohol and welfare.
Utterly mangled all over again on that last.
> That policy has been maintained by the liberal
> government of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd,
Utterly mangled all over again.
> and applied by states.
Utterly mangled all over again.
> Western Australia recently started
> controlling welfare payments in some areas,
Utterly mangled all over again. Its not even a state responsibility, fuckwit.
> including the heavily indigenous Kimberley region where
> Halls Creek is located. Welfare recipients suspected of
> child neglect can have 70 % of their benefits restricted
> to paying for essentials like food, rent and utilities, a
> strategy intended to reduce their purchase of alcohol.
Thats a FEDERAL responsibility, nothing to do with the state.
None of the rest of this even more comprehensively mangled shit worth bothering with.
> �Do we sit & watch another generation engage in alcohol