Not the whole story

Welfare is not the key - Opinion - theage.com.au

Philip Martin writes here about the recent riots in the remote aboriginal community of Aurukun. He knows more about the place than the average commentator:

The research I collected over six months living in Aurukun while working for Pearson's Cape York Partnerships showed that Aurukun is chronically under-resourced in infrastructure and services. This is a source of major community frustration and a key factor in its social breakdown.

As it happens, I know a little about the place as well, due to having relatives who have worked there up to very recent times.

Martin lists the ways in which the community is under-resourced, and concludes with the line that "If there was so much infrastructure missing in Sydney, there would be public insurrection."

This is disingenuous, I think, as the whole resourcing issue has cultural aspects too, and devolved into a bit of a chicken and egg unresolvable problem.

I believe, for example, that the community had a brand new pool and sports centre built some years ago. (Great idea: aboriginal communities with pools have cleaner kids, and less disease.) I am not sure how long it lasted, but I understand the place was trashed and has not been in use since.

Martin notes the chronic over-crowding in some houses. He doesn't mention the custom there that if someone dies, the house has to be left vacant for a number of months and have a special ceremony before it is re-occupied. I don't know how many houses this may affect at any one time, but it surely would account for at some of the cases of over-crowding in remaining houses.

He also notes the lack of trademen to fix things such a broken pipes. He says there is no Centrelink office there to help people get "real jobs".

Well, just how many "real jobs" are ever going to be available there, I wonder. I don't know anything special about this for Aurukun, but it does puzzle me as to why remote communities cannot at least invest enough money in training a few locals to be able to do relatively straight-forward housing maintenance work (and pay for a basic supply of repair material).

Martin mentions packs of wild dogs roaming the streets. I do know that a white council worker's house got stoned after the council paid a vet to come in and put down some of these dogs. The locals can be very attached to their dogs, no matter how sick and scrangy they are.

The health clinic has had 50% drop in permanent staff. Yes, but of course it is hard to get staff to agree to work in a community that seems to be permanently on the edge of a riot, and does not show signs of appreciating the white staff who do work there.

Martin says the community needs 16 full time police. This is for a community of about 1,100 people! I think he should acknowledge that the huge disproportionate number of police that such communities need compared to white communities, as this helps account for the difficulties State governments have in providing such staff.

My relative says at the core of the problem is the complete breakdown of respect of young people towards their parents and elders. I don't know how that is cured, but there is no real indication a big influx of resources is going to cure that chronic problem.