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Langton hides behind rhetoric of welfare reform trials
by Jack Wilkie-Jans 29 November 2015
A
boriginal academic, Marcia Langton, has been rolled out, away from her university pursuits to hit back at federal Liberal MP Warren Entsch in The Weekend Australian (28/11/15) in defence of the Welfare Reform Trials in Cape York. Langton, in usual, belated and growingly, unimpressive style, maintains the rhetoric that the Trials are indeed working and are welcome in the communities- this is of course at odds with much of the sentiment at the grass-roots level in Cape York, something Langton is far removed from in plush Melbourne. In Ms Langton’s letter she begins
Jack Wilkie-Jans claims Marcia Langton maintains the rhetoric that the Trials are indeed working and are welcome in the communities is at odds with much of the sentiment at the grass-roots level in Cape York, something Langton is far removed from in plush Melbourne. Image: ABC
by presumably rebutting Warren Entsch’s views on the governance of Cape York Partnerships, by stating her commitment to transparency. Later in her short piece she totally shuns Mr Entsch’s questions around governance and management yet, contrary to her initial statements, fails to provide any commitment on demonstrating to the readership exactly how Entsch is wrong. I challenge Ms Langton, as a director on the board of Cape York Partnerships, to push for a renewed independent review of financial and management processes within the organisation and to live up to her commitment to transparency. When a member of the Australian Federal Government
speaks of such a concerning issue the people of that electorate deserve more than a hastily penned letter to abate their concerns. In defence of the Welfare Reform Trials, one who has experience with the Trials on the ground will realise how selective Ms Langton was in her letter. Choosing only to speak in relation to school attendance records- while not presenting or directing the readership to any proof of the figures she referred to- is a narrow outlook. School attendance as we all know does not reflect school grade and learning outcomes. Ms Langton refused to touch on the controversies around the ‘direct instruction’ method employed by schools
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under the Cape York Aboriginal Academies (CYAA) or Cape York Girl Academies (which are the publicly funded, private schools in Welfare Reform communities). She also omitted allegations from the ground in Coen that the schools are teaching the imperial system of measurement and that the schools’ grades are sent to the United States for comparison. She also ignored the concernsa-plenty raised in a story by Sara Martin, The Australian, of 25 November ‘Welfare restrictions fail to reign in grog’ about the reforms in general and how they impact the town of Coen, compiled by a number of parents, former teachers and residents. Furthermore Ms Langton omitted from her letter the controversies around the Coen CYAA. To explain this let me first inform the readership that Coen, despite popular belief, is not actually an Aboriginal community. It is a mainstream, multi-cultural town under the Cook Shire Council area. This township lost their only public school for many hundreds of kilometres in favour of a CYAA as part of the rollout of Welfare Reform Trials in Coen- an element of the Trials the community maintain they were not consulted on. More serious concerns are that, and these are only alleged and what I’ve heard in my frequent travels through Cape York and Coen, that at the introduction of the school, the school’s enrolment department found it difficult to understand why and allow non-Indigenous children (who just lost their public school) to attend an Aboriginal
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Academy. The school now accepts non-Indigenous students and in fact one can understand the then staff’s alleged confusion as to why they should allow the enrolment of non-Aboriginal kids into, and as the name clearly states, an Aboriginal school. Ms Langton also refused to comment on the fact that elsewhere in Australia, and in Cape York communities (police records of arrests and incident reports will qualify my statement) that the Welfare Reforms, while able to curb spending due to the quarantining of Centrelink money, aren’t doing much to curb alcohol and tobacco consumption. If Ms Langton had looked to the failings, across the board of the Welfare Reform Trials and the state of the Trial communities such as Aurukun (which has most recently been rocked by alcohol fuelled rioting)instead of merely school attendance records- she would see how her little letter to The Australian is
hardly appeasing to people who live in these communities and know better. People such as the residents of Cape York including the local, federal Member of Parliament. One of the other key controversies of the Trials is the quarantining of an allotted amount per payment, per individual which is inaccessible for 26 years after their children have finished school and is only then accessible to predetermined items/purposes. The fact that these Trials are opt-in only, with participants unable to opt out, beg the question of their right to their money and why then the Trials are referred to as such. To leave my rebuttal of Marcia Langton’s rebuttal aside, let me discuss the philosophical stance against paternalism such as Welfare Reform Trials and welfare quarantining. One of the key objections to enforced and seemingly unending policies in Cape York such as the Welfare Reform [Long-term] Trials and Alcohol Management Plans- a policy which are, unlike Welfare Reform, inarguably failing due to the high rate of sly-grogging in communities- is based on the objection to apartheid laws. Apartheid is an emotive word and which sees pre-Zimbabwe Rhodesia spring to mind, however given that the Rhodesian-esque days of Indigenous Affairs policy under the Sir Bjelke-Petersen Premiership go back only 20-25 or so years, it’s no wonder the people of the Cape are resistant of much the same continuing today. Apartheid simply means rules/
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laws for some but not others based simply on location or race- or some other form of prejudice. Given the “discreet” (note how my deliberate use of the term ‘discreet’ differs to the government’s description of ‘discrete communities’) communities of Cape York are as remote as remote can be, the guiding principle of the introduction of Aboriginal mission towns as being “out of sight, out of mind” certainly is paying off when it comes to ascertaining the truth of the circumstances there on part of the residents, as opposed to the easily accessible “truth” of city based academics. As such reading about the success or not of Welfare Reform Trials in newspapers put together in capital cities is not going to provide a real education on the matter, just often contentious and contradictory opinion. Therefore I invite the readership to pack their caravans and venture on a road trip up to Cape York and see for yourself the poverty stricken standard of living which those, my countrymen and women, have to live under while the expensive Trials roll on and do nothing to lift them from despair. A road trip is a good idea, not to “gawk at the natives” but a trip up the Cape is just what we want more and more people to do (and are gradually doing). This will inject much needed tourism and revenue into the region and see businesses thrive and start up and will eventually see a future in a free economy be realised for those now dependent, not on welfare anymore, but on Welfare Reform. Welfare Reform, Alcohol Management Plans and other such paternalistic policies designed to “instruct” and “manage” as opposed to educate and empower, ignore people’s right to succeed and to fail- which inherently ignores and impedes their right to learn and grow and to challenge themselves; hence presuming the impossibility of such for “bush blacks”. They are
quietly racist policies. Welfare Reform never works and I believe was never intended to work in communities so remote and so void of economic opportunities due to the nature of land use and land tenure (a major impediment to freehold based free-market economic ventures like agriculture or cropping). Without something to wean people off of welfare onto there seems no point trying to wean them off of their only source of income. As for the controversies around the “nannying” and quarantining of people’s spending I think the previous paragraph to this one covers the sentiment around that absurd level of control over individuals. While the Welfare Reform
Trials are currently failing, there is hope. It is only if the Federal and State governments could align their respective policies for the region of Cape York Peninsula, cut red and green tape and let industry be diversified so as to grow employment opportunities and inter-regional growth in the long-term, that I can see Welfare Reform of any kind working as only then would an alternative with real empowerment be provided and available. Until then, the current state of things being as they are and with the current economic outlook for remote Aboriginal communities in the Cape being very limited, I see the Welfare Reform Trials as having no choice but to be ineffective in any real sense.
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