David,

Thanks for your comment. 'Different opportunitis' ? No, I don't think so: all people are asking for is to be able to access the same opportunities.

First, let's remember that social policies have very long legacies, and solution may have very long lead-times. In almost all of Australia until the fifties, primary schooling was dumbed down so that kids could never really finish and go on to secondary school. Why ? Because secondary schools were in towns and cities, and Aboriginal people were not allowed to live in towns and cities, on the whole. A move down here in Adelaide in 1950 to set up a hostel for Aboriginal women in the city was knocked on the head, and Dr Duguid had to fight like hell to be allowed to set up a home for Aboriginal kids at Eden Hills, in those days outside the city, but now in the south-eastern suburbs.

So, apart from the Lutherna school system here, no Aboriginal kids could get any secondary schooling until the early to mid-fifties. The Lutherans had their mission schools in the far west andthe north, and their own boarding schools in the city, Concordia and Immanuel, but I wouldn't mind betting they also had trouble getting permission to bring kids into the city, which they were doing from theearly forties.

So, no mystery, almost no Aboriginal kid had finished secondary schooling before about 1962. Even through the sixties and seventies, those who did usually werefostered out to white people during their secondary years. The upshot was that very few kids, even into the eighties, had parents who could advise them about secondary education, let alone successful completion of secondary education, let alone going on to tertiary education. Those decisions had to be made by the person alone, with no real encouragement, usually quite the reverse.

[TBC]

[cont.]

Well into the nineties, most Aboriginal people enrolling at university came from families where successful school completion was rare, where they were striking out very much as individual and lonely pioneers - often not just the first in their family to go to uni, but perhaps the first to finish secondary school.

In SA, Year 12 completion numbers have massively improved over the last ten years, up about five or six times, partly thanks to the efforts of independent schools, especially the Catholics.

Yes, inequitable policies have long tails: the people who left the missions in the forties and fifties, usually dragging their kids with them, often from town to town, to work at whatever they could find, with few skills thanks to a dreadful education system, and their kids who stuck it out whatever it took, can rest in their graves in the sure knowledge that their grandchildren and great-grandchildren are now tasting the fruits of equality. Three or four generations later. Yes, for some, it has been the lucky country.

So where, on that time scale, are the people in remote communities ? I fear that they are not even on it. There are many exceptions but on the whole, they have hardly begun the journey, or perhaps have been persuaded - often by the Left, to its eternal shame - that they don't need to take it. Meanwhile, the train is moving off into the distance. Is it too late ? I don't know. Perhaps not for some of their kids.

Joe

"So where, on that time scale, are the people in remote communities ? I fear that they are not even on it."

Well, they are starting to get onto it, but in a different direction to the ones who live in urban areas. There are, in the Northern Territory, many cattle stations whose leases to white settlers have not been renewed and these properties have been handed over to the local Aboriginal community. Some of these seem to be successfully training their people how to manage cattle and run the the property. There are often a few thousand head of cattle to be looked after, in some fairly rugged areas so it isn't an easy job, but the kids seem to be taking up the challenge. As in the white community, there are a lot of non academic jobs which need to be done and the fact that these jobs are local bodes well for the future.

On our recent trip to Darwin we were also intrigued by the fact that in many of these places there was a restriction on the sale of alcohol, surely a sign of people taking more responsibility for their lives.

David

Joe,

With respect I reckon your criticism of the TAFE system skirted around the question I was asking, but maybe someone else has an answer. Here it is again,

"What many would most likely want to hear about is the number of men and women successfully undertaking trade apprenticeship and other trainee programs, where all levels of government and private industry have assisted opportunities in place, along with a the usual range of mentors that one finds in Aboriginal education. To quote from a government source, skills shortages continue to occur where there is a mismatch between available skilled people and the current and emerging needs of industry, resulting in critical short term and long term problems for Australia's economic health and the quality of life for Australians."

Thanks, David, but how does that square with your comment that:

"I have just come back from a trip visiting some of my old haunts in the hinterland and believe me, the real aboriginals still actually exist and they are still squandering our taxes."

I had faith in community development, primarily economic development, for close on forty years, studied for it, planned for it, day-dreamed about it. Even when we lived in one community for four years udring the seventies, we remained true to the illusion that it would blossom and strengthen: instead, it went down the drain as the Aboriginal council to decided to stop wheat production, sell their sheep, pull out their grapes and stone-fruit, dig up their lucerne, and replace the lot with almonds, employing two men instead of eighteen and owing the ADB a million dollars. Oh, and a $ 5 million yabby farm, now deceased.

When we had a chance to go back to another community in 2003, one with amazing potential on 12,000 cultivable acres, we were frankly disgusted that so few people wanted to actually either work or study. A brand-new dairy had to be staffed by a couple of old f@rts, me and my brother-in-law. It lasted five years before being dismantled. Successfully dismantled, I should say, since any viable enterprise threatened the security of CDEP income. That community now has nothing but a bit of cattle-raising, again for two people, a white manager and his mate. Many times, we made the comment that 'if only you could get a thousand Vietnamese to work here, they would transform those 12,000 acres in a year.' Make of that what you will.

So I wish those remote communities good luck with their cattle raising, but I'll reserve my applause until I hear about sustained effort.

Joe

Joe, "So I wish those remote communities good luck with their cattle raising, but I'll reserve my applause until I hear about sustained effort."

Joe, that is spot on from my experience on the land and as an observer through regular travel.