Macklin presses APY over $25m housing plan
John Wiseman; 13/8/08
Jenny Macklin will today face down Aboriginal leaders on remote homelands in South Australia, telling them the time is almost up for them to sign a new federal housing agreement. On her first official visit to the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara lands, the Indigenous Affairs Minister has delivered an ultimatum to the communities to accept the $25million housing deal. “I want the agreement and we just can’t take any more time about it,” she said after visiting Amata, near the Northern Territory border. Ms Macklin and state counterpart Jay Weatherill will today meet members of the APY executive, including chairman Bernard Singer, who has resumed his position after being told to stand aside pending criminal proceedings for assault, alcohol and driving offences.
See: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24172475-5013404,00.html
Aboriginal school attendance policy ‘ineffective’
Justine Ferrari; 13//8/08
Linking welfare payments to school attendance in indigenous communities is destined to fail because it ignores the underlying reasons children stay away from classes: health problems and a lack of basic facilities. Leading indigenous researcher Larissa Behrendt argues that the approach is simplistic, “extraordinarily expensive and inevitably ineffective”. In a paper commissioned by the Australian Education Union and released yesterday, Professor Behrendt says quarantining welfare is poor public policy and inherently contradictory in that it tries to promote responsible behaviour yet takes away responsibility and hands it to government. “And it does so in the absence of sufficient resources and strategies to provide information or support to people to enable them to overcome drug or alcohol addiction and to become better parents,” the paper says.
See: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24172471-5013404,00.html
Indigenous students find maths is a good yarn
Jill Rowbotham; 13/8/08
Annette Baturo and Tom Cooper teach deadly maths, but not as in deadly boring. Rather, the two Queensland University of Technology academics have spent years working out ways to make the Queensland high school maths syllabus relevant, even appealing, for remote indigenous students. In 1999 the principal of the primary school in the indigenous community of Woorabinda, a former student of Professor Cooper, asked the pair to help with apparently intractable maths difficulties and in 2000 they kicked off a continuing association with indigenous schools. Professor Cooper and Dr Baturo’s academic home is QUT’s school of maths, science and technology education and the Centre for Learning Innovation. But these days they travel widely and their commitment, made in 2000, to work one week each term in Woorabinda has grown. They spend most of their time between 12 communities as far-flung as Thursday Island and Mount Isa.
See: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24170854-12332,00.html
Tags: Aboriginal, Australia, Drugs, Education, Housing