Warren Mundine has a whine today about how money spent on aboriginal housing still hasn't made a difference and he'll see that cuts to "failed programs" and "eliminating waste" will make a difference.
It is amazing that cost effective aboriginal housing programs just never seem to happen.
But let's face it: there have been decades of talk of the need for a different approach to providing appropriate aboriginal housing in remote areas; surely at least some of the new ideas have been tried and failed. In light of this, I am very skeptical of anyone who comes along and suggests, like Mundine, that he can see where it's all going wrong and something new must be tried and wasteful administration must stop and it'll improve.
In fact, it's hard to avoid the feeling that the problems with housing arise from some very fundamental issues which are near intractable unless there were to be pretty major movement towards changing these things: settlements which exist in areas with next to nothing resembling an economic attachment to the rest of the nation; chronic drug and alcohol problems in those places, and the dire effects that has on child raising as well as engagement with what slim economic opportunities which may be nearby; and family arrangements which can led to overcrowding of housing and maintenance needs well beyond those of, say, the Western nuclear family.
None of these problems are easily addressed, and some suggestions (educating children in towns away from family) have sensitivities due to past aboriginal treatment.
So Warren's complaints and proposed actions are rather unlikely to represent any major change to what has gone on before, is my bet.
And see - for once I got through this topic without mentioning yurts. Well, nearly.
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