Grey nomads to step up to the plate?

On October 10, 2006 Mal Brough, Federal Minister for Indigenous Affairs, was a member of the panel at a forum on reconciliation held by youth organisation ReconciliACTion. While responding to a question from the audience, the minister briefly discussed a then forthcoming policy. Although these comments were not recorded or reported (the summary below is based on my own notes), they are worth recounting now.

The issue of remote communities and violence had been raised. On this subject Brough wanted to share a story of a letter which he had received. The minister described how the letter was written in longhand, and how the young woman who had written it had gone through and corrected her punctuation as best she could. The young woman had grown up in Papunya.

Brough recounted carefully what she had written: “I have known violence, I have known rape, I have known suicide. I left Papunya when I became pregnant because otherwise my child would not grow up.” As it turned out, this young woman now lived near Brough’s electoral office, and so his wife went to visit her.

The way that this young woman talked had clearly made an impression on Brough - and led him to ask whether there were any international students present, surmising that they would know what he was talking about. This young woman talked like someone from a war-torn country, “like a refugee”, he told the audience. She talked about all the good things in “our” society - of our freedom and our safety. Brough was shocked that someone could be talking “like a refugee”, yet be “escaping” not from another country but from the middle of Australia.

In fact, Brough said, the government would soon be announcing what he thought would be a very “exciting” new program, one that would be regarded as a leading initiative. This program would enable non-Indigenous Australians, people who have never been to an Indigenous community, to stay in a remote community for a short time, and to learn about Indigenous culture.

In return, they would be able to “give something back” to the community, using their trade or skills. For example, Brough explained, a plumber might do some plumbing work, or train some local people.

This new program, Brough told the audience, would also become like “a highway for escape” for people like this young woman from Papunya. It would help them to escape, he said, not to “fringe towns” like Alice Springs or Cairns or Tennant Creek, but to places where there are “people who care” about them.

That “exciting” program was launched on Sunday, November 26. Entitled Senior Volunteers for Indigenous Communities, it will “provide opportunities for senior Australians to use their significant expertise, skills and life experiences to provide practical assistance to remote Indigenous communities”, according to the Minister’s press release.

“Remote Indigenous communities have been isolated for too long from interaction with mainstream Australia. They are starved of information and they need access to skilled people”, the release said. As well as combating the lack of skills and services in remote communities, the program will encourage “long-term, lasting relationships” between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, and hence “it is about practical reconciliation”.

Brough repeated the “escape” theme in an interview on Channel Ten’s Meet the Press that Sunday:

If you’re in a remote community, then the way out can seem very daunting. The rest of Australia can seem something quite difficult to attain. If you’re having Australians from Sydney and Melbourne … going to a locality year after year … building up a relationship, then you’re also building up a group of people who have a connection with that community now in a city. Should a young person decide to go to school, university, then they have someone and a group of friends, … as a support mechanism.

It seem, then, that the Senior Volunteers for Indigenous Communities program is not intended to simply foster cross-cultural understanding, also to foster personal ties which will enable people who wish to leave remote communities to do so.

The freedom to move, the capacity to choose where and how one lives is certainly important. The problem, however, with the minister’s description of his new initiative is that it implies that living in a remote Indigenous community is inherently threatening, and that “escaping” to a metropolitan area is the only possible solution.

Certainly, some communities have unacceptable social problems, including violence, but that does not mean that the only solution is for victims to move to - or to “attain” - “mainstream” metropolitan communities. It is not possible to delineate geographic areas of Indigenous suffering and Indigenous refuge: to try to do so is to ignore the many challenges which affect the lives of the many Indigenous Australians living in regional and metropolitan areas.

The existence of such widespread disadvantage should suggest that the multifaceted problems faced by Indigenous people are not simply a consequence of living in a remote area.

Regardless, advocating “escape” to “mainstream” metropolitan communities only solidifies and institutionalises the lack of choices available. No-one should be required to choose between, say, harsh poverty or illiteracy or violence and losing contact with family, friends and country.

Many advocates and commentators have already cautioned that Senior Volunteers for Indigenous Communities should not be regarded as a long-term solution to the poor provision of services in remote Indigenous communities. When nursing, education, maintenance and skills training are given as prominent examples of areas in which volunteers might contribute, there is good reason for such caution.

Remote community services certainly constitute a difficult policy area, but the temptation to transfer the responsibility for some portion of services to voluntary programs or other non-binding structures should be resisted.

If we accept that access to basic health care, to basic housing and food, and to education, is necessary to ensure that all people can have access to some opportunities in life, then those services should be extended to all. The offer of such support, from society as a collective, is premised on fundamental respect for the autonomy and worth of every person.

The way that Brough discusses this new program is most concerning because it tacitly suggests that government obligations should be reduced and juxtaposes this suggestion with a negative image of remote Indigenous communities.

The way that Brough talks about a “highway for escape” conjures up the sensationalised template of “Indigenous violence” circulating in public debate. The current focus on the problems of a small number of Indigenous people, especially given the context of ongoing and historical prejudices, raises powerful connotations of immorality and even “degeneracy”. These connotations can make all people in remote Indigenous communities seem unworthy of empathy.

Thus, evoking the image of “Indigenous violence” quietly implies that some Indigenous people are fundamentally undeserving of simple support. That implication makes it easy for non-Indigenous Australians to accept - or just ignore - the extreme disadvantage of many remote Indigenous communities.

Mal Brough may not have been trying to imply that some Indigenous people do not deserve access to basic services. Yet the way that government figures are talking about Aboriginal people - assuming that customary law justifies sexual abuse, labelling remote communities “cultural museums”, or arguing for a “new paternalism” - and the way that they are talking about Indigenous policy - saying that “we won’t just throw more money at the problem” and “we need more accountability first” - makes it very easy to hear that message.

And that is very worrying.