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Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, pictured speaking at the United Nations earlier this week.
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THE POINTED VIEW: No evidence of research-based policy
Issue 150 - 03 Apr 2008
Issue 150, April 3, 2008: It takes more than just 'sorry' to solve the problems in Indigenous communities, writes PROF LARISSA BEHRENDT*.
Everyone knew that Kevin Rudd was going to be better than John Howard on Indigenous issues. He was, after all, coming off a very low baseline.
After the failed policies of 'practical reconciliation', shared responsibility agreements and most of the Northern Territory intervention, it wasn't going to take much to be an improvement.
And in fact, as the historic day of the national apology showed, Kevin Rudd was able to show leadership, even statesmanship, when it comes to Indigenous issues in ways that Howard could never have even contemplated.
Howard's poor track record on Indigenous affairs was fuelled by his ideological stance on how best to deal with the "Aborigine problem", which was shaped by the ideologies of mainstreaming and assimilation, mutual obligation and shared responsibility, the unlocking of Indigenous-controlled land for non-Indigenous use and the idea that all the "real" Aboriginal people live in the north.
With this failed world view guiding the Howard government, it was refreshing for most of us to hear Kevin Rudd say that his government was going to be guided by "research-based policy".
This would be a welcome change, spending money on what has been shown to work rather than continually pumping money into policies that, like "assimilation" and "mainstreaming", actually have been shown to fail before.
So the question is this: if Rudd and his government are committed to "research based policy approaches", why have they continued to support the intervention in government and further rolled out the quarantining of welfare payments?
The only clear evaluation of the linking of welfare payments to school attendance was undertaken with the Halls Creek Truancy Trial.
At the time the trial was announced, the then Shadow Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Senator Chris Evans supported the evaluation process by saying that government must ensure that "there is proper evaluation of the trial and the lessons learned are passed on to other communities facing similar difficulties".
The Halls Creek School trialled a program that linked welfare payments to school attendance in 2005, but it was never independently evaluated and the scheme was stopped when concerns were raised about the legality of the process. From February to July 2008, a further scheme - the Halls Creek Engaging Families trial - was introduced on a voluntary basis.
The evaluation of the trial, undertaken by Professor Robyn Penman, found that:
• school attendance of the children did not improve over the course of the trial, noting three factors;
• lack of parental insistence that children get to school in the morning;
• teacher attendance (one teacher showed a 20 percent greater attendance rate than some of the other teachers); and
• bullying and teasing.
• the voluntary method used in the Halls Creek trial worked some of the time when very high levels of support were provided;
• it became apparent that the parents of Aboriginal children were only one of the factors that affected school attendance. The evidence pointed to the pivotal role that teachers and the school culture itself plays in a community where children decide their own time-use patterns at a very early age; and
• the housing situation in Halls Creek is unlikely to provide an environment where families can be "school ready".
The data also showed that poor or good attendance did not necessarily run in families. In one family of five children, attendance ranged from 14 percent to 88 percent. There is no evidence that shows linking welfare to behaviour reforms is effective. In fact, there is evidence to suggest that the imposition of such punitive measures in an already dysfunctional situation will exacerbate the stress in a household.
And what the evidence does show works in getting Aboriginal children into schools are the following:
• breakfast and lunch programs;
• programs that bring the Aboriginal community, especially Elders, into the schools;
• Aboriginal teachers' aides and Aboriginal teachers;
• Curriculum that engages Aboriginal children; and
• Programs such as that developed by Aboriginal educationalist Chris Sarra that marry programs which promote self-esteem and confidence through engaging with culture with programs that focus on academic excellence.
This shows that there is much that the schools can also do to engage children with schooling. It suggests that, rather than simply punishing parents for their children's non-attendance, the government should be providing schools and teachers that meet the needs of the Aboriginal community.
It should be noted that it cost the Australian taxpayer $88 million to make the initial administrative changes in Centrelink to facilitate the welfare quarantining, but not one dollar was spent in the intervention on any of the types of programs that have been proven to engage Aboriginal children in schools.
All this in communities with chronic government under-funding and spending.
A punitive measure placed on families to ensure their children come to school is hypocritical from any government that neglects the same children by failing to provide adequate funding for a teacher and a classroom.
It is deplorable that the government has made too many Aboriginal people who have been long deprived of basic funding for health, housing, education and policing in their communities receive these resources at the expense of their basic rights.
They have finally seen long needed resources coming into their community, but they have been made to surrender their rights under the Racial Discrimination Act, the Trade Practices Act and the Northern Territory Land Rights Act.
The provision of basic services should never, NEVER, have been intertwined with the stripping away of fundamental rights in this way. Nor should the provision of funding for basic services and infrastructure be given in circumstances that includes the clawing back of their human rights.
No government would dare offer basic assistance to other sectors of the community on the condition that they give up basic human rights.
As Australian citizens, Aboriginal people are entitled to adequate housing, adequate funding of teachers and provision of enough classrooms and an adequately funded and appropriate police service.
They are entitled to these things without having to give up hard won rights to land and to forgo the protection against racial discrimination and unfair trading practices.
That governments are finally putting resources into basic health checks and providing police into communities who have had to weather the absence of any law and order infrastructure does not justify or give them the right to, at the same time, take away the protection from racial discrimination, the protections of the trade practices act, prise control from Aboriginal hands over their land and infantilise Aboriginal people by quarantining welfare payments regardless of their parenting skills.
It makes them beggars in their own land.
Rudd might have delivered on the promise to say "sorry" but he has a long way to go before his government delivers on their promise to deliver "research-based policy".
Tipping the scales of justice the wrong way
Joel Gibson's report in The Sydney Morning Herald that Aboriginal legal services are facing further cuts in funding is disappointing. Rudd had promised during his election campaign to increase funding to the essential service that had weathered funding decreases over the last 12 years.
Gibson reported that the Attorney-General's Department was offered approximately $41 million over the next three years for Aboriginal legal aid, a decrease of $13.2 million in real terms.
This cut comes after a 2004 Senate report and a 2003 report of the Office of Evaluation and Audit both found that the annual nationwide shortfall for funding of Aboriginal legal aid was $25 million. And that was over four years ago and there have been no increases in real terms since.
Over the period that Howard was in power, funding to the service has been cut by 40 percent in real terms, making the system almost unworkable. Rudd's government had been petitioned for a 30 percent increase.
The continual under-funding will have devastating effects on already scarce resources for Aboriginal legal services.
Trevor Christian, the director of the NSW/ACT Aboriginal Legal Aid Service indicated that this would mean that the real impact of these further cuts will be the loss of a hot-line for Aboriginal people in police custody, loss of domestic violence counsellors and loss of representation at Supreme Court bail hearings and parole board hearings.
Salaries for ALS staff are only 65 percent of the salaries paid to those working for mainstream legal aid organisations, leading to low morale and high staff turnover.
It will come as no surprise, then, that over the period from 2000 to 2006 the imprisonment rate for Aboriginal people rose to 31.9 percent. We make up just over 2 percent of the general population but over 23.6 percent of the prison population.
It is not just the lack of funding for the important work of the Aboriginal legal services in providing many of the mechanisms that were recommended by the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody as necessary in reducing the over-representation of Indigenous people in the legal system.
State and Territory governments have consistently run "law and order" campaigns to show that they are tough on crime. This means making it harder to get bail and tougher sentences.
But at the same time as the system treats the accused more severely, the resources given to Aboriginal offenders to defend themselves are lessened.
Working in the legal profession, I continue to be asked by judges, barristers, solicitors and bureaucrats alike why we cannot seem to bring down the rates of over-representation of Aboriginal people in the criminal justice system.
The explanation that cannot be escaped, despite the fancy rhetoric of all governments, is that there is no sincere attempt to change the situation and the failure to adequately fund the ALS to do such simple things as support a hot-line for Aboriginal people taken into custody highlights the lack of firm commitment to address the situation.
We see initiatives like circle sentencing, but much like employing more Aboriginal people in the police and prison services, such programs are just tinkering around the edges when there is no-one available to represent an Aboriginal accused.
pointedview@nit.com.au
* Larissa Behrendt is a Professor of Law and Indigenous Studies and a fortnightly NIT writer and columnist.
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