Mission & Justice

Patricia Karvelas; 10/10/08

The Wilderness Society has been forced into an embarrassing backdown, withdrawing a motion to a global conservation summit calling for Cape York to be World Heritage-listed following the objections of traditional owners. The environmental group had planned to ask a meeting of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature in Spain next week to support a resolution nominating the Cape York Peninsula for heritage listing. But Wilderness Society campaign manager Tim Seelig said talks should now be held involving the Queensland and federal governments, conservation groups and indigenous leaders. “Any misunderstanding about our intentions with the resolution is regretted as the Wilderness Society believes consultation and the consent of traditional owners on any World Heritage nomination is non-negotiable,” he said. “Any future World Heritage nomination can only happen, and will only happen, with the support of traditional owners.”

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Nicky Trup; 10/10/08

Singer-songwriter Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu cleaned up at last night’s Deadly Awards, taking home three gongs including artist of the year. The musician from Elcho Island, 500km east of Darwin, cut short a trip to China to attend last night’s ceremony and was well-rewarded with the top artistic prize, as well as single of the year and album of the year. The Deadlys, in their 14th year, celebrate the achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in music, arts, sport and the community. Gurrumul, as he is known, has been blind since birth and is famously shy and asked his producer and collaborator, Michael Hohnen, to speak for him.

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9/10/08; The Australian; Letters; http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/letters/index.php/ theaustralian/comments/a_long_time_coming/

Both the Rudd Government’s announcement (”Time’s up for Aboriginal work-for-dole”, 7/10) and your editorial (”Indigenous people need right to work”, 7/10), concerning the abolition of the Community Development Employment Projects scheme in all but remote areas, implicitly assume that the proposed employment and training regime will be for the betterment of indigenous people.
The reality is that, in remote areas at least, the abolition of CDEP will only be effective to the extent that there is something workable to replace it. CDEP pays for many essential services in indigenous communities and regional towns across the continent and I’m not optimistic about the likelihood of real jobs being created to replace those done under CDEP. A more likely outcome will be unemployed indigenous people receiving unemployment benefits rather than CDEP money.
The inevitable bureaucratic requirements which will go with training will undoubtedly meet barriers ranging from illiteracy to language barriers to lack of transport, not to mention plain lack of employability in some cases. Leaving aside the question of the capacity of the commonwealth and the states to deliver enough training programs, the notion that training will lead to employment in many regional areas is a pipedream.
Programs intended to eliminate indigenous disadvantage have been a long time coming, and we are not going to turn the corner until indigenous people are truly given the same basic rights of Australian citizenship as other Australians — such as community safety and access to decent shelter, power, water, education and health. The present situation comes from a long period of neglect, and addressing indigenous disadvantage requires a multi-disciplinary, bi-partisan, intergovernmental approach over decades.
Let’s make a start, but let’s also see governments truly held accountable for the delivery of those basic rights of citizenship as well as expecting indigenous people to meet the obligations being placed on them by both governments and by their own people. Tony Milln; Kyneton, Vic.

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Andrew Trounson; 9/10/08

There was a sharp outbreak of the history wars at a Senate inquiry in Melbourne yesterday as a Liberal MP and a secondary school teacher clashed over whether Aborigines suffered genocide and whether a freedom fighter could be a mass killer. At the inquiry, into academic freedom and bias, outraged Queensland Liberal senator Brett Mason seized on comments by Australian Secondary Principals Association national president Andrew Blair that genocide against Aborigines was a reality and should be taught. Speaking over Mr Blair as he sought to expand his comments, Senator Mason accused him of advocating biased teaching because the issue of genocide was contested by some historians. Mr Blair eventually said that although he believed that Aborigines had been victims of genocide, he agreed that the issue of genocide was contestable and in such circumstances it was incumbent on teachers also to teach the alternative view. “That is one of (history’s) beauties, to look at history through different lenses, and I think that is what schools should do,” Mr Blair said.

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Patricia Karvelas; 8/10/08

A delegation of indigenous leaders including former young Australian of the year Tania Major will travel to Barcelona to fight a push by the Wilderness Society to have the Cape York heritage listed. Cape York organisations yesterday told The Australian they were stunned and “yet again betrayed” by the Wilderness Society and some elements of the conservation movement after they stumbled across the resolution, being presented at a major international forum in Barcelona next week, that will have significant implications for the Aboriginal homelands of Cape York. The leaders will leave today to go to the International Union for Conservation and Nature in Barcelona to argue against the motion. The union sets the priorities for the international community in relation to conservation.

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Sara Hudson; 8/10/08

The federal Government has announced that it is reforming the Community Development Employment Program, an Aboriginal work-for-the-dole scheme. But there’s an air of deja vu. The Howard government axed CDEP in cities and regional areas just last year. As a result, the number of CDEP organisations dropped from 212 to 153 during the past 12 months. The Rudd Government’s proposal to halt CDEP in non-remote Australia is just a continuation of the previous government’s policies and nothing new. What is new, however, is that from July 1 next year new CDEP participants will receive income support or welfare payments rather than CDEP “wages”. This clarification is important. CDEP is welfare, not proper work. CDEP has been referred to disparagingly as “sit down” money, as many participants are paid for doing housework, mowing their own lawns or for doing nothing at all.

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8/10/08; http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/10/07/2384561.htm?section=justin

New research by the University of Tasmania has found more Indigenous Australians are living in cities and towns than remote areas, yet they remain isolated. The study found nearly one third of the country’s Indigenous population lives in major cities, while 75 per cent are based in regional or urban areas. It found Indigenous people were concentrated in disadvantaged areas and economically and socially separated from non-Indigenous communities. Researcher Rowland Atkinson says bridging that gap and increasing the visibility of Indigenous populations is a challenge for governments. “We found that the bulk of indigenous Australians live in cities and towns and I think that’s largely or possibly at odds with the kind of popular representation of Aboriginal locations which tend to be more focussed on remote areas and certainly we know that a lot of funding for example tends to be targetted at those areas,” Mr Atkinson said.

8/10/08

The spark was an autopsy report read to a crowd outside Palm Island council chambers. The result was a full-blown riot inspired by one man’s words: “Things are going to burn.” With those words, prosecuters allege, Lex Patrick Wotton helped incite a riot that left the island’s police station, courthouse, a police vehicle and a police residence gutted by fire.Mr Wotton denies the charge and has pleaded not guilty to one count of rioting with destruction. In his opening address, prosecutor Michael Cowen yesterday told Brisbane District Court that Mr Wotton also armed himself with weapons and threatened to kill police following the death in police custody of Mulrunji Doomadgee in November 2004. Doomadgee, 36, died in the island’s watchhouse after being arrested by Sergeant Chris Hurley.

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Patricia Karvelas & Padraic Murphy; 7/10/08

The indigenous work-for-the-dole scheme will be abolished in all regional areas, and Aborigines will no longer receive higher welfare payments to do community work, under a radical Rudd Government plan to toughen the welfare system and force 100,000 indigenous people into real jobs within a decade. The new regime will restrict the Community Development Employment Projects program to Aborigines in remote communities. The program will be changed into a work-readiness scheme to improve literacy and numeracy. The changes will force about 4500 indigenous people in regional communities into the mainstream job network to look for work. And for the first time, mainstream job agencies will be required to have a comprehensive indigenous employment strategy.

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Patricia Karvelas; 7/10/08

Three of the nation’s indigenous leaders have called on the Rudd Government to abandon plans to set up an elected body to represent Aborigines. In a submission to the commonwealth inquiry into the establishment of a national indigenous representative body, the chairs of the Indigenous Land Corporation, Indigenous Business Australia and Aboriginal Hostels Ltd have argued in favour of a seven-member advisory body that automatically includes them as members. The joint submission from Elaine McKeon from the AHL, Bob Blair from the IBA and Shirley McPherson from the ILC, argues that the model of an elected organisation has failed.

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