It couldn’t make it as an issue in the federal election campaign, but the Howard Government is now embarked on radical change in Aboriginal affairs. Though some of the early proposals, or their source, might seem calculated to raise suspicions, some of the germs of what is on offer could make more difference than 30 years of failing welfarism. The aim is to cease merely sustaining Aboriginal communities in what, for too many of them, is a slide towards oblivion and to begin rewarding policies that work, programs that actually make a difference and, particularly, to require individuals, families and communities to be more active in the matters which affect their fate.
The current proposals involve coercion and some differential, and, perhaps, discriminatory treatment of Aboriginal Australians. They involve less active Aboriginal participation in the planning, organisation and delivery of services than ever before. But for anyone in despair at what is happening in Aboriginal affairs, it may well do more for the alarming disadvantage that others—particularly children—suffer, and do more to make governments, as well as Aboriginal people themselves, responsible for making a difference. There’s a good argument that some of the hand-wringing about paternalism, discrimination and social engineering it involves has at its root a complete unwillingness to accept that Aborigines themselves are the primary actors in their own liberation—from poverty as much as anything else. One of the major reasons why things are going backward is that Aborigines have been too passive, not only about their own fates, but those of their children.
A decade or so ago, I wrote in these columns that the stolen generations we should focus on were the current crop of children. As things were, their fate looked far worse, in material, spiritual and psychic disadvantage, than most of the children snatched by the welfare authorities until a generation or so ago. A decade on, it is impossible to say that their prospects have improved. Indeed, we may be moving to a stage where, in many areas, there will be or already is intervention in Aboriginal families, primarily to protect children, at a greater rate than ever before. What will change is that it will be at the instance of the welfare state rather than the old native affairs bureaucracy.
This will not happen because the kids are black but because the children are neglected, and subject to physical and sexual abuse at rates