Mr Hagan is anguished because Peter Beatty has introduced Alcohol Management Plans (AMPs) into some Indigenous communities. He claims these Plans demonstrate 'discriminatory policies which have caused, and will continue to cause, anguish for members of Indigenous communities.' He correctly claims that the Qld Government is itself partly responsible for the development of the social problems which the AMPs are aimed at addressing. However he departs from reality when he claims 'they can’t think of alternative strategies to address social problems they helped create.'

Governments have been trying alternative strategies for many years, to no avail. Part of their culpability lies with their failure to admit earlier that there is clear evidence that their alternative strategies were not working. The problems of violence and alcohol related diseases have continued to escalate despite all the alternative strategies - de-colonisation, self-management, welfare support, education, CDEP, have been implemented to degrees, but have almost always failed to turn around the plummet of most remote communities into alcoholic oblivion. The reason for this is fairly straightforward, but difficult for us to grasp because we have been in denial about alcohol, and this prevents our brains from functioning properly: we think that alcohol addictions can be overcome without admitting that the addiction is the key part of the problem. It is as though we allow people to superglue themselves to the floor and then expect them to get up and go to work/school/counselling without first having to undo the glueing. At last Beatty, for all his sins, has clicked that the actual glue has to be dealt with before the oppressed victims are able to pick themselves up off the floor and take advantage of all the alternative strategies.
This might cause anguish to people such as Hagan, caught up in their one dimensional models of equality and discrimination, but it actually causes joy and relief to many people who have lived with their own or their fellow community members' addictions and abberrant behaviour for too many years.
You may not like it, but it's a fact.
Dan

Don't worry Hages, it's coming. Haven't you heard the wowsers sniffing out a new target? Smoking was it but next is drinking.

If you enjoy a drink, do it while you still can mate.

You really don't get it with indigenous people do you Hages? They don't want alcohol on their communities. Have you ever been to one? Have you any idea what it does to a community where there is no work and nothing to do, except drink and play cards? Men drink, women play cards.

If you had actually researched this issue you should know that these communities eject any drinker where and when they can. Look at Alice Springs. The people in the river bed and in the town camps are those evicted from both communities and white society. Neither lot enjoys drunks. Do you? I was one but gave up out of necessity otherwise I'd still be visiting the wards of depression they call pubs and clubs in this country.

The aboriginal population is constantly crying out that it be helped out of the mess it has sunk into from the abuse of alcohol, illicit drugs and petrol/glue sniffing. Yet as soon as someone comes up with a potential solution, it is decried as an outrage. I am far from suggesting that the proposed approaches are ideal, but they represent a wider communities attempts to extend help and assistance, and to limit access to substances that are a root cause of inability and despair. Ideally these should only be targeted at those communities that recognise that they have a problem - ie you cant help those that dont want to be helped.

As far as public housing goes, why the hell cant aboriginal people line up for public housing along with everyone else that qualifies?! Its this sort of reverse discrimination that I find appalling. I have no problem with providing public housing to those that need it, but dont want it to go to any particular group in preference to others.

The same goes for dole payments. Work for the dole is a limited program which once the initial skill-training is complete, does not serve to help people (of any kind) get jobs. There is no reason why aboriginal welfare receipients cant seek out jobs like anyone else. If they need extra training, then fine. Exactly like anyone else.

I just dont get the whole preferential treatment thing!

QUOTE: Alice Springs should have rules of conduct for visitors and those offending against them should be forcibly moved back to their communities.
This was claimed by MLA for MacDonnell Alison Anderson (ALP), a prominent Indigenous leader, at a meeting of of 70 "community leaders" last Friday.

Read the entire April 26, 2007 Alice Springs News article http://www.alicespringsnews.com.au/1412.html

Indeed the whole issue seems about related problems

Drinking is no more a "basic human right" than shooting up heroin. Its all very well to get up in arms about proposals like this, but can Hagan suggest some other course of action will which a) not be discriminatory or paternalistic, and b) will actually have some effect on the extreme rates of alcohol abuse (and therefore all the attendant social issues such as domestic violence which accompany alcohol abuse) in indigenous communities?

Australia's entire contact history is littered with cautionary tales of "well-meaning" interventions (and in some cases non-interventions due to not wanting to be seen as racist or discriminatory) that have at best been fruitless and at worst made the situation for Indigenous Australians even worse.

The disadvantages faced by Aborigianl people in Asutralia should be a cause of shame - why do we have a subsection of our population living in third-world conditions, with life expectancies 20 years less than the rest of the nation, high infant mortality, rampant drug and alcohol abuse etc? I don't claim to have any answers to this, it is a situation which does not inspire any optimism for a successful resolution. Mud-slinging and the blame-game is not going to be the answer, but i don't know what will be.

Alcohol should not be outlawed.

All Aboriginal women and children who wish to escape violent poverty stricken communities should be given the resources to do so.

This means finding and/or building secure housing for them in urban areas and assisting them in their move.

Strayan has missed the point completely: nobody has proposed outlawing alcohol.

Sorry, you lost me at the point where you said drinking is a human right. Codswallop. Alcohol abuse costs the community billions of dollars a year in all sorts of ways, and it is only because the grog lobby is so powerful that drinking is not better controlled across the board. I would be very happy for measures to be taken in the non-indigenous community to restrict opening hours, ban 'alco-pops' aimed at young drinkers, make grog manufacturers and sellers far mor liable for the damage grog causes etc. And no - I am not a tee-totaller, and I quite like a drink myself, but alcohol abuse just seems to get worse and more and more people are being hurt by it.

Until Aboriginals are treated as Australian by government and not another race, there will be no use in trying to turn the system around.
When Aboriginals have the same rights, the same responsibilities, the same mandatory education they will live in another world.
While government is talking of importing skilled immigrants, Aboriginal youth is uneducated, unskilled,unoccupied and spending a boring ,uncreative life with drugs and sniffing.
There are thousands of Aboriginal young people who should have trades,the hospitals are importing nursing staff, why not train Aboriginal girls?
Why let all these lives go to tragic waste because neither the governments nor their own people will lift a finger to help these young people.

Stephen,

Of course the same Law should apply to everyone. Moreover, a Law that discriminates on race can be and should be challenged. That said, drunks and criminals are often products of their family environments. Herein, good/poor parenting skills drive outcomes. This as behaviour issue not a race issue. Drunk WASPs should be treated, the same as drunk indigenous Australia's. Behaviour and consequence, regardless of race.

Cultural sociologist, Harry Triandis, studied the assimilation of Hispanics into US culture. The first generation "tries to assimilate" and the next generation finds its roots. This model works. Alternatively, Aboriginals brought up on a diet of in-family reinforced beliefs aimed in opposition to the mainstream culture is bound to fall.

The facts are these: The Scottish Clan is an historical artifact. So, is Australian aboriginality. Most Scottish Australians realise this fact; whereas, many aboriginals do not. The living culure has gone, along with the Mayans and Romans. Poof! Hence, remedy, assimilate first, then, appreciate the richness of one's "past" heritage. But,recognise, in the contemporary sense, it, that is, the kernel cultures are gone.

The Noble Warrior, Scottish or Aboriginal, is a memory.

Mickjo wrote: "When Aboriginals have the same rights, the same responsibilities, the same mandatory education they will live in another world"

So true, 40 years after the 1967 referendum substantive (not just formal) equality eludes our best efforts.

Aboriginals have same rights, responsibilities, and opportunities.

Problem is people refuse take advantages from opportunities available to them.

Refusal from plain ignorance, plain stupidity, sometimes being mislead.

Education purported as compulsory to ensure less ignorance.

At 40years after 1967referendum substantive equality eludes us.

This largely due racists, apologists and rorters refusing treat people equally, corrupting, blocking opportunities available to Australians, busy defending their racist ideologies or filling their pockets.

Education supposedly involved mandatory attendance since 1860's.

Post66 unless your home education policy demonstrates equivalent literacy and numeracy progress to achieve acceptable standards at home, your children should attend private or public education system... oh many of those we are concerned with are...

Racists, apologists and rorters long refused enforce compulsory attendance, rather than take people to court for denying their children attend school and get educated, these "sympathetics" wandered around mumbling excuses...

Similar racists, apologists and rorters corrupted BiLingual education programs, turning them into monolingual non-english language education programs, children after years of school still neither able speak english well enough, nor literate enough, to get centrelink forms completed...

Easy to see around Alice Springs just how truly rotten is Australia's heart with "deemed acceptable" determining rights, responsibilities and living standards firstly by race, then if lucky by needs....

Government forms demand people accept racial identification as a basic requirement before considering rights, responsibilites and opportunities available to them with all to popular welfare claim is being done to help you...

Purported solutions of racially graded assistance is the problem.

Australian government, Parliament and so many of our politicians support practices such as separation of families on racial grounds, even when these families are Australian citizens.

So many (even here) accept professed claims such seperate treatment is necessary, necessary on racial grounds, so segregation is necessary... same excuses as created the stolen generation !

We really have two stolen generations pre67 and post67.

Example, from millions of dollars spent on Aboriginal Housing, why not include giving secure titles to these people they supposedly are constructed for... instead keep administrators employed..

Read www.alicespringsnews.com.a

"Government forms demand people accept racial identification as a basic requirement before considering rights, responsibilites and opportunities available to them with all to popular welfare claim is being done to help you..." - polpak

This is bad news. I thought it illegal. Metaphorically, giving one "race" greater opportunities based on that "race", is no different than saying, where one can sit on the bus. The Deep South in the Middle North? Disadvantaged folk deserve help. but, it must be non-discriminatory. Access to a level assistance should be based lvel of need and level of personal responsibility, not race. Else, one risks a racism industry, as in the US, with the Revered So n' So, deriding his country, while driving a Lincoln and wearing a Rolex.

In NSW jobs are sometimes advertised, except from anti-discrimination provisions. One can understand this provision for social workers or interpreters, buy clerical positions?

Moreover, building-on my earlier comment of assimilation, and, aboriginal Australia regarding the rest of us as an out-group. What possible connection is there between a second genartion Vietnamese Aussies and the treatment of Aborigines by the British Crown in 1820?

Stephen suggests govenment loans made to communities. Micro-loans have worked in African countries. Australia is wealthy, it can give even larger loans. But, if money is lent, the borrower needs to accept responsibility for the debt, and, devise a workable business plan, and, act entrpreneurally. Even outside of govenment, there are venture capitalists and development banks, that will lend on good ideas and sound business plans, in return for equity, where the proposer is not well-financed. Recipients must realise wealth doesn't rain from the sky, it is cultivated from the soil [ Trust the metaphor is not lost on the Guardians of the Good Earth.].

RELEVANT NEWS NOTE FROM YESTERDAY'S "THE AUSTRALIAN";

In the Australian it was stated that government would stop paying for repairs on the highly price discounted houses provided to indigenous Australians. Funding would re-routed to rural communities.

HOUSING

Stephen mentions access to low-cost housing. I have an aboriginal friend, who now owns a million dollar property in Cronulla (Sydney beach surburb). Back circa. 1970, when he and his non-indigenous wife purchased the place, I am sure he said that he received some special government help. Not Housing Commission, rather, actually to buy market property.

MYTH? -- IS BELOW TRUE OR JUST MADE UP? Stephen do you know?

-1- Indigenous communities "often" have been known to strip their houses of wood for fires? True/Lie?

-2- That the Government offered to clean-up the houses in Redfern's "The Block". The residents wanted it keep things looking shabby to show others how bad-off folks were/ are? Besides, the people in Redfern have Clan relationships and other properties in Wagga Wagga?

IF lies, these [false?] idea are certainly common community perceptions, which need to changed.

[Aside: I have noticed there is a broken down shack, as often the backdrop to millionaire George W.'s range shots.]

Stephen?

I think Hagan makes some interesting points. Why do governments make laws only for Indigenous people. THe AMP's are a perfect example. If the same laws were applied to a predominantly non-Indigneous town then the public would protest.

Why blame to whole community for the ills of a few. Does every person in a city get blamed if it has the highest reported cases of alcohol related injuries?

Indigenous people are moving away from communities in large numbers, according to ABS over the past 40 years, there are now more Indigenous people living in regional and urban communities than in Indigenous communities.

Most have moved to access the basics, housing, employment, health and other services. This AMP is just another way of deconstructing the INdigenous identity and a means of destroying land and country links.

Sad to see that people cannot put themselves in the shoes of Indigenous people.

2deadly: you are sadly ignorant. If non-Indigenous towns experienced similar levels of alcohol-related harms, including very high murder and serious assault rates, as existed on Cape York communities pre-AMPs, then the population of those towns would be up in arms demanding similar alcohol restrictions (the way Tennant Ck, Alice Springs, Katherine, Groote Eytland and Nhulunbuy - all majority white towns - have demanded similarly restrictive plans lately). 13 years ago I did a research project for Indigenous organisations in Cairns, interviewing people who were living in the parks. The majority gave as their main reason for leaving their communities on Cape York the fact that there was too much alcohol-related violence in their home communities. In other words, Lockhart River, Napranum, Pormpuraaw etc were much more dangerous places to live than the public parks of Cairns, if you were a heavy drinker anyway. They still felt this, even though they were occasionally attacked by hooligans wielding baseball bats in the Cairns parks. So in a sense you are part right: these people moved away from the grog-soaked hellholes called communities (in 1994, pre-Alcohol Management Plans) to take advantage of the better services (well maintained parks & clean ablution blocks, better policing and security, free breakfasts from St Vincents de Paul, free beds in wet weather from another church charity doss-house) provided in Cairns. I have lived on some of these Cape York communities, with their wet canteens, and they were like scenes from the most wretched sections of Dante's Inferno. It is ridiculous to say that the AMPs are "just another way of deconstructing the Indigenous identity and a means of destroying land and country links." In fact, they are the exact opposite. They are attempting to help halt the downward slide in safety and life-expectancy and capability in these remote communities, by enabling more people to be sober enough for long enough not only to practise their culture but also to take advantage of the myriad of programs that are available to them to assist them to cope in the contemporary world - education, housing, health, recreation, employment etc.

Stephen,

What is the role of the family? Why don't parents povide better familial models to their children

Stephen,

Hope you are about read this on time. I do appreciate that you have the opportunity of spending a great deal of time trevelling overseas telling people about mistreatments.

Would youe please address the matter of familial responsilities, as mentioned in my previous post, if you are still in contact and not off another indigenuous persons conference.

Perhaps, you could make four or five suggestions directed towards the dysfunctional family.

Thanks.

I've been pondering the central premise of the article.
The government probably would not place a similar ban on urban whites but then the problems seem to be different. They do fiddle with nightclub curfews to try and alleviate the problems experienced in the hot spots. They do ban alcohol consumption in specific places and times if the risk of not doing so seems unacceptably high.

Some years ago when I worked in the field we were banned by our employer from having counter lunches (drinking or not). The view was that some would drink if in a pub so none of us were allowed to be there. At the time a good counter lunch was often cheaper than a lunch sized take away.

I'm required to be on standby regularly for my current job and am not allowed to get intoxicated whilst on standby. I never drink much anyway but the restriction applies to those who "like to have a few" as well.

If I understand the restrictions relating to some indiginous communities correctly they apply regardless of race. Whites passing through the area have to take measures to ensure they don't have alcohol with them or they can face hefty penalties. Those most hurt by alcohol abuse in indiginous communities would seem to be indiginous people.

Is this thing a racial issue or an attempt to manage a problem where the current strategies happen to fall out primarily along racial lines? I suspect the latter. Are there better solutions? Probably.

How do we move forward? I think we would do a lot better if people such as the author stopped trying to see everything in racial terms and started working on solutions.

He seems to have a confirmation bias, determined to find white racism under every gum leaf. Racism exists but so do people trying to find answers to difficult problems who may not always find an ideal solution.

How about a few articles from the author outlining what he would like to see done to resolve the issues which concern him.

R0bert

Governments make racial laws for Indigenous people because our politicians really support racism.

Politicians see racial division as a handy political tool, presenting voters ideology of either you are one of us or against us...

Many academics see racial divisions as academic career building tools, they can present ideologies requiring you support racial identification or claim you object to human rights... despite so obvious contradictions.

Such tactics particularly effective where presented to people lacking good education, people with little wider world understanding and most importantly people who are earning so little income they can hardly escape the day to day worries of whether can feed, clothe and shelter their families near to equal the wider community standards as presented to all by media.

Few really want to live the "noble savage" life, and far to many confuse living standards as portrayed on TV as living standards of ordinary people in the real world.

Even with a good education the social pressure such approaches place upon individuals is extreme...

eg "Do you want to live with your family or not ? IF you want to live with your family you must join us... "

Many people who previously opposed racial laws and behaviour usually muffled into silence after surrendering to accusation "you are not one of us..."

As parents we all provide family models for our children, problem is parental models usually based upon memories, experience, learning from our growing up more than our understanding and seeing what is needed for ourselves and our children next year... People who survived on subsistance lifestyles need see value from efforts to plant, to cultivate, to grow, to harvest.

R0bert asked how we can move forward, certainly unlikely advance far whilst people encouraged to see problems as related to racial groupings and discouraged from seeing problems as problems common to people everywhere.

Until people concentrate on the problems without racial grouping they are part of the problem not the solution.