All Indigenous communities need a wide range of skilled people, with a huge range of trades and professional expertise. Paradoxically, the smaller a community, the more skilled individuals need to be, since all manner of functions and services have to be provided no matter how large or small they may be. Those services need to be either on-site or easily accessible.

Every Indigenous community needs to develop an economic base to be viable in the long-term, otherwise they risk becoming, in time, not much more than pensioner villages. Given how difficult devising an economic base in many communities may be, this will take imagination and, inevitably, people, ideally Indigenous people, with a wide range of expertise.

I could be wrong but I suspect that not too many Indigenous people qualify these days in all those essential trades that every community needs. One hears stories, perhaps completely untrue, of plumbers flying in hundreds of kilometres, and costing a huge amount, just to change tap washers. So TAFE/VET, perhaps on-site, has a huge role yet.

But there are currently more than forty thousand Indigenous university graduates, overwhelmingly in mainstream areas - and overwhelmingly in urban areas. total graduate numbers are growing by around 6 % p.a., so a target of fifty thousand will be reached before 2020, and a hundred thousand by 2030-2032. Yes,some of them have graduated in fields which are completely useless to communities, and there are nowhere near enough graduates in some crucial fields, such as agriculture, agribusiness and genuine conservation management. And of course, most will understandably seek to remain in the urban areas that they have been born and bred in.

But some will want to work in more remote communities. One problem though is that they may have the precise skills which a completely-welfare-oriented community may need, but not many will have the skills, nor may there be any development plans, that may be essential for any genuine economic growth, in infrastructure and enterprises, to help people move away from lifelong welfare, to viable enterprises and genuine economic self-determination.

[TBC]

[continued]

Ultimately, it may be that many young people in communities will need to take the long road to essential trades, and the longer road to professional skills.

Ideally, university Indigenous support programs should be actively and exhaustively reaching out to work with community organisations and schools, including those at remote communities, to devise step-by-step innovative programs to assist young people to develop their learning skills step-by-step, year by year, to the point when they can comfortably enrol, and ultimately graduate, across the full range of university courses. Then, if they wish, they can return to communities and apply those skills, provided communities have developed appropriate and realistic development plans.

But just as an aside, I think that day-long visits to universities by groups of kids from remote communities are utterly useless and probably very counter-productive. Those sorts of 'programs', easy to 'run', with kids wandering aimlessly around huge and alien campuses, should be a long way down the track, after many other career information and inspiration programs in environments more congenial to potential students, are thoroughly embedded in communities.

So, many agencies have different and vital roles to play, even if some of the difficulties that the author has eloquently described seem insurmountable. But what do we do: forever curse the darkness or light a candle ?

Joe

So, what else is new? Doing what you've always done while expecting a different result? Is an apt description of insanity.

Or what would be on the table as reform, when the inmates had taken over the asylum?

We really are going to miss John Clark and his cut through satire, which he managed so adroitly as to have the targets forced to chuckle at themselves!

What we need here is tough love and getting folk to see that their stone age culture and customs are no longer relevant as is the BS activism and humbugging of urban blacks and their messages of eternal dissatisfaction/hate!

And their obsessive willingness to play the disenfranchised victims and simply obstructing for the sake of obstructing?

No one alive today played any role in any of that and bear no more responsibility for the past than recent migrants whose skin is snowy white!

There is a gap and an ever widening gap that can only ever grow wider as one disenfranchised group is played off against the other, with the willing consent of the loaded and aimed instruments!

Time for a change we can not only all believe in, but most importantly, completely unite behind!

United we stand, divided we fall! We get nowhere fighting ourselves for the spoils of defeat! Time to forgive the past and stop being tools for never ever satisfied activists!
Alan B.

Commonwealth claims right to apply racial discrimination to qualify legal rights and legal responsibilities of Australians.

Commonwealth claims right to segregate Australians using racial tags.

Commonwealth claims rights to support, to promote, to practice, to commit racial discrimination upon Australians.

Commonwealth already seeks Australians answer their racial identification on forms, soon perhaps a requirement we wear NAZI or other racial-ID tags ?

We directly challenge Commonwealth's claim of legality for its racial discrimination upon Australians.

Commonwealth's CLC after acknowledged rights of my wife, my children, even our grandchildren to return to Kintore as "Traditional Owners", then rejected any right to live in a house, rejected any protection from being subjected to racist apartheid segregation of our family.

Commonwealth still practices apartheid in Australia.

Required is interpretation of true purpose of Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act's s.51(xxvi) and s.128.

Constitution s.128 sets amending our Constitution as reserved legislative action for Australian voters.

As specifically reserved power, interpretation concerns whether the purpose of Australian voters is superior to purpose of Parliament.

Establishing Commonwealth Australian voters sort their Constitution to ensure NO racial discrimination between Australians who previously were Irish, Scots, Aborigines, Saxons, Chinese, Arabs, any other ancestry.

In 1967 Australians per s.128 legislated re s.51(xxvi) to correct interpretation failings which resulted in racism upon Australians, the Australian voters' purpose was to ensure eliminated ALL legislative racial discrimination between Australians.

Thus Commonwealth's racial segregation, Commonwealth racial qualification of our rights as Australians is unlawful.

Sort is High Court declare until Commonwealth seeks&obtains clear authority to qualify Australians' legal rights using racial identification, all such qualification is unlawful.

Attorney-General's office defends Commonwealth racism and apartheid using ongoing denial of legal assistance.

Any Solicitors, Barristers, Senior Counsel prepared pro-bono legal representation to resolve this ?

.

Hi Polpak,

Are you saying that you and your family went back to Kintore, but that you were knocked back on a house that you wanted to be provided by some government agency ? And that all of that means 'Apartheid' ?

If you stand back a bit, it's possible that you may perceive that any provision of facilities in remote communities where there is no work now, and none in the foreseeable future, anything that locks people into a future remote from opportunities, is very much like Apartheid on a much grander scale.

Is that what you are complaining about ?

Cheers,

Joe

Yes, the waste continues.

Kinda makes you feel all warm and fuzzy, knowing your taxes just continually go down the drain.

The Government's 'Closing the Gap' program has seven target areas, six of which are not being met. The one target being met is the rate of completion of Year 12 and my bet is that it is being met entirely in the big cities and not elsewhere, give or take.

It seems that Year 12 is as high as any government dares to think for Blackfellas. Yet there have been more than forty thousand Indigenous university graduates, with around 2,500 more each year (and that growing at about 8 % p.a.), overwhelmingly in degree-level and PG courses, mainstream and not Indigenous-focussed courses, urban and female. Indigenous women are commencing university study at a slightly higher rate, for their respective populations, than non-Indigenous Australian-born men.

Yes, it's probably true that many of those graduates have studied fields which would be useless to Indigenous communities, and too few in fields which would be extremely useful to Indigenous communities. But that's changing too, with commencing numbers of Indigenous students in STEM courses more than doubling since 2005 - in engineering, more than tripling, to 145 in 2015. But improvements in numbers in Agriculture- and Environment-oriented courses remain pathetic, with barely an 80 % improvement in ten years.

So why isn't university participation one of the government's 'Close the Gap' target areas ? Surely every community needs highly skilled people, so why not - if THEY wish - Indigenous graduates ? Or are Blackfellas to remain forever merely recipients ? Is 'Closing the Gap' solely the prerogative, and competence, of whitefellas and their benevolence ? isn't that as racist as buggery ?

Joe

Re: Posted by Loudmouth, Tuesday, 11 April 2017 2:22:14 PM

Yes, it is Apartheid, promoted by Commonwealth.

We lived as a family in the community we helped to establish, until ordered to depart in 1992 by the Central Land Council, purporting to act on instructions of "Traditional Owners".

In 1995 the Central Land Council finally acknowledged rights of my wife, and our children to be at Kintore as "Traditional Owners".

My refusal to answer racial question, other than to say Australian by birth, is claimed to extinguish our otherwise held right to live together in our home.

Aim of campaign leading to 1967 referenda was to eliminate, to extinguish, any and all legislative claims of authority to qualify our rights as Australians using racial identification as the measure.

All Australians share equality of rights and responsibilities, or our nation promotes apartheid.

IMHO Commonwealth unlawfully promoting apartheid, ordering segregation using racial identification.

Need High Court resolve TRUE MEANING of 1967 Referenda amendments as passed, either it was:

(a) Australian voters exercised their RESERVED AUTHORITY to amend THEIR Constitution with THEIR acknowledged purpose being to eliminate, to extinguish, ALL claim of lawful qualification of Australians rights and responsibilities using racial testing as the measure;

Or

(b) Commonwealth's claim as Parliaments purpose for Referenda was to enable Commonwealth practice of wider scale racial discrimination of Australians legal rights and legal responsibilities;

IF (b) Commonwealth defeats reserved authority of Australian voters, is it time for revolution ?

Commonwealth, States, Territories, pre-1967 and post-1967 discriminated using racial identification.

Who amends Australian Constitution, Parliament or Australian Voters ?

.

Sorry, Polpak,

Are you saying that, because you were married to an Indigenous woman (like I was), you were entitled to benefits accruing to indigenous people in remote communities ? I would never have dared to ask for that :)

Joe

Yes it is Apartheid.

Yes appears few provisions for conventional work in many remote communities, particularly full time paid employment.

Without reasonable leases is this really a surprise ?

Challenge is to assist each individual in some lawful means to add something to their Centrelink income, more importantly to their individual self-worth - whether in dollar or reputation.

Obstructing individuals keeps them remote from opportunities, or requires they remote themselves from their communities.

Lack of rational conventional leases is serious obstruction hindering individuals from developing their own ideas, own small business, own legal self-rewarding activity in these communities.

The internet offers considerable opportunity for self-education, even remote employment and self-investment.

Politicians incorrectly seek full-time employment in smaller rural and remote communities thus obstructing creation of more part-time employment.

Consider each full-time position with several part-time trainees, each to undertake long distance training until obtain qualification for full time position, whether within community or elsewhere.

Employment in such part-time positions viable where it adds to the income of Centrelink payments, before punitive deductions occur.

Employment in such part-time positions creates a pool of assistants suitable and available when required.

Working to achieve qualifications, adds to reputation whilst in training, opens opportunities within even outside qualifications sort.

Single greatest reward comes from encouraging individuals to look at where they are, what they do, how to improve themselves, find and develop their own interests.

Financial rewards often limited yet they can add to Centrelink payments, before punitive deductions occur.

Support and assistance to promote learning, volunteering, and most of all self-improvement contributes greatly to improved sense of well-being amongst individuals and community.

Without self-worth, injury and death rates rise.

.

Hi Polpak,

Logically, simply because there are people in one place, there should be work that needs to be done to maintain the group. The problem here is that those services are either being done by outsiders, or the sorts of goods which could be produced on-site are being brought in at great expense. Growing fruit and vegetables, for example. Hmmmmm, what's wrong with this picture ?

Hunter-gatherers historically found it extremely difficult to shift over to being cultivators: it seems, from DNA studies, that the concept of cultivation, farming, growing things and raising animals and chooks, took many thousands of years to spread across Europe - and not because of some diffusion of ideas, but actual physical diffusion of farmers, slowly, slowly, out of the Middle East, across Europe and along the Mediterranean coast. Most people in Britain were still at least part-time hunters and gatherers barely a thousand years ago.

It's probably far easier to move from a foraging economy/society to a totally welfare-oriented one - and then not move onto any other form of economy or society. Hence the problem: communities have running water (check out the most remote one you can think of and look it up on Google Earth: there are the sewage ponds a mile or so out of town. Plenty of ground, too. So why no vegetable gardens ?

Here's a silly question: why are people prepared to pay huge prices for fruit and vegetables (or consume very little of it, instead favouring fast foods) rather than grow their own ? Is it that money is not a particular problem ? It comes every fortnight, so why worry ?

But as long as communities don't initiate even the simplest, and most appropriate, and essential, project like this, don't even think about more complex projects, not if they have to involve actual perceived effort anyway. Been there, done that.

Cheers,

Joe

Closing the gap will remain out of reach as long as it is treated as something the non-indigenous people (or the government) should be doing about, to, or for indigenous people.

There are things individual indigenous people might consider towards closing the gap (as many are doing already as we see from the above very interesting posts).

Incarceration rates. Remedy: obey the law. Obeying the law is a doddle. Just don't commit crimes. Stealing stuff, assaulting others, that sort of thing.

Education gap. Remedy: Go to school every day and pay attention.

Poverty. Remedy: Leave isolated welfare-dependent communities.

Health inequality. Remedy: Follow healthy lifestyle and elect not to self-poison with booze and narcotics and other avoidable poisons.

When indigenous people are seeking to take these gap-closing measures, non-indigenous people through government (with indigenous participation) might ensure that public facilities for doing so are at least as freely available to all indigenous people as they are to non-indigenous people

Hi EJ,

Yes, I always thought, in my naivety, that 'self-determination' meant, first and foremost, ECONOMIC self-determination, building up an economic base, building up the skills needed to completely staff a community. It didn't mean, I thought, relying forever on other people. It certainly didn't mean living on welfare for life, when potential economic resources where all around.

As well, there seemed to be a lot of negatives associated with life-long welfare: boredom, for on thing. A complete absence of goals, except to keep doing nothing. That 'goal' seems to sap the will from one generation and the next, and the next. It's not as if people continued to forage, to hunt and fish and gather, and used the features of the outside world, like money, as a supplement to their traditional life. Let's be honest - they abandoned their traditional lie, but didn't take up the necessary challenges entailed in changing over to a non-traditional life. A bit of hunting here and there became what other people might call 'a weekend' or a 'holiday'.

It's not as if people are in poverty either (except maybe the kids): I wish someone would do a thorough income study of a remote community, because I think they would find that weekly income there is not much different from, say, a weekly income in Sydney's western suburbs or Adelaide's northern suburbs: the only difference might be the complete absence of effort needed to get it. Frankly, if this is roughly correct, there is something racist about it: an assumption, as Noel Pearson has maintained, of the 'soft expectations of racism', an assumption that people didn't have to, or couldn't, be expected to do what other people elsewhere took for granted that they had to do.

Meanwhile in the cities,

[TBC]

[continued]

Meanwhile in the cities, where Indigenous people have experienced, if anything, far more colonialism than people in remote communities, they get on with life. People work, their kids go to school and university - and probably at similar rates to other Australians in those outer suburbs. Indigenous women commence university, for example, at slightly better rates than NON-Indigenous Australian men. More than forty thousand Indigenous people have graduated from universities, and another ten thousand may graduate before 2019.

That's where the 'Gap' is. Urban people are making the effort, so it's primarily up to Indigenous people in rural and remote areas to 'Close' it. How is the problem, and it will take a qualitative shift in perceptions of the world and its requirements to do it, even to make a start.

If they don't, then they may disappear from history, with little trace. It's as crucial as that.

Cheers,

Joe

They won't disappear from history, not when they are accorded the respect as individuals - and not as homogenised "communities" or, at worst, tribes - that most of us can take for granted. Tribal structures may be lost, but that happens everywhere in the world with no loss to individual people. If tribal traditions are worth retaining they'll attract enough individuals to keep them alive.

Hi EJ,

Yes, you're right. We respect individuals if they meet their existential respo0nsibilities, if they do what they can to contribute to their own welfare when they can. It's more difficult to respect anybody who seems to skive and loaf and dodge responsibilities.

When we lived in a community for a few short years, it struck me that people there had developed what you might call a 'third culture': not traditional in any observable, concrete way, and although accessing all the benefits of the outside world, not being a part of that either. And parents passed that 'third culture' down to their children, and so on, generation after generation.

Time passes, and the pre-school kids that my wife taught there are now grandparents, if they are still alive. As far as I can tell, even though that community was surrounded by farming and fruit-block towns, almost nobody from the community has finished secondary school in that time: the 'third culture' is alive and reproducing.

So, no, I'm sorry, I don't have much confidence that those sorts of communities will survive: in fact, that particular community has indeed withered away, from around 150 people fifty years ago to only a couple of families now. And I'm told that a great many 'homelands' (why does so much jargon about Indigenous communities have a South African-Apartheid ring to it ?) or out-stations, are now, if not abandoned, hardly ever occupied.

Meanwhile in the cities, those forty or forty five thousand university graduates represent one in every seven adults, one in every five adult women. Something's working.

Cheers,

Joe

Exist structural problems created by Commonwealth, also state or territory governments.

Ongoing refusal by Commonwealth to resolve these structural problems makes it extremely hard to motivate people in communities to work towards longer term improvements and benefits.

Enthusiasm for gardens can be found, as can enthusiasm to do other things, however it remains hard to have a garden, hard to try your hand at business.

Others help themselves to crops pre-harvest, others demand service be provided for free, this makes every effort hard to develop without property rights without reasonable leases.

Many residents in these communities still lack conventional tenancy leases for homes they live in, this diminishes accountability and responsibility.

The relevant corporate land trusts expect to be regularly paid money for use of the land for public housing, while they refuse to provide tenancy rights.

Leases for commercial ventures far more difficult to obtain.

Where are the reports of land value in these communities, where reports of lease incomes such values can be calculated from ?

Without reasonable data, without reasonable leases, it is closer to extortion upon anyone trying to make conventional use of land.

.

Good points, Polpak,

Yes, why aren't the Indigenous hot-shots in 'leadership' positions working harder to make it possible for community councils to lease land for enterprises run (I mean, REALLY run) by Indigenous people, worked by Indigenous people, for the ultimate benefit of Indigenous people (i.e. for Indigenous residents to pay market prices for goods produced), such as something as elementary as a bloody vegetable garden. It would probably have to be a mile or so out of town, to 'encourage' people to pay for the produce they consume.

Almost all remote communities have running water, flush toilets; and therefore sewage ponds, with usually one or more drying out; that effluent can be treated and used to fertilise ground which, perhaps a year or two later, can be used to grow vegetables and fruit orchards. That's how they do it in many countries.

In the old Mission days, fruit and vegetables was sold at standard city market prices. At Pt McLeay, in addition to the gardens and orchards, the Superintendent (in about 1896) asked his agent in town to send out cherries: the people were sick of oranges, he said. To be sold in the Mission store at city market prices.

So why not now, in 2017 ?

[Mind you, I remember older community members complaining about how they used to have a big fruit orchard: but nobody remembered to water the trees after the community control was installed in 1973.

One thing, Polpak: at least in SA, land is valued on its sale value. All land vested in Aboriginal communities is not saleable, so it has no rateable value - in SA, Aboriginal communities do not pay rates on their land. The dairy farms and wheat farms and fruit blocks next door do. So there's a bonus right at the outset for any enterprise. So why not enterprises like vegetable gardens, orchards, chook yards for eggs and meat, dairy cows, a flock of sheep for meat, in remote communities ?

I think we know the answer.

Cheers,

Joe

Payment of rates provides the core of community government funding for basic municipal services and improvements.

Payment of reasonable rent provides basic R&M funding, as well contributing to improvememts and funding for new buildings.

Aware how these problems remain in SA also in other areas outside the NT.

Not sure recent election of % more women candidates will assist the AP areas, more workable perhaps if requires two separate board meetings, with requirement both agree