Banjo

Some small communities composed mainly of one extended family or clan group, and which have leadership capable of enforcing standards (such as school attendance, no drugs, no alcohol) tend to be much more orderly and safe.

One such is Wallace Rockhole, 115 km west of Alice along the Larapinta Drive.

Areyonga, another 125 km west along the same road, is another.

Utopia Station's clutch of small communities, and Ampilatwatja, 320 km north east of Alice along the Sandover Highway (it's an unsealed dirt road with some gravel) and its outstations are other examples.

These are somewhat isolated from grog outlets and drug dealers, and happily have honest reliable hardworking outsiders working for them in their Council offices, health clinics and stores. Some vestiges of traditional authority structures still function in these places. They have effectively kept petrol sniffing at bay by taking direct action which would horrify the human rights fundamentalists.

They are not perfect, but they are relatively healthy environments.

Titjikala, on Maryvale Station about 100 km south of Alice along the old South Stuart Highway, also has some excellent staff and solid local leadership.

However all these places are underfunded for their management, administration and service delivery, particularly in relation to education, policing and community development processes, and their populations fall far short in terms of the education levels needed to survive in a self-managing way in the contemporary world.

Health and poverty levels remain very bad, even inplaces such as these.

Thanks Dan,
I am gratefull for those place names and would like to receive more to add to the list. No one expects any place to be perfect except Utopia! I'd love to tell people my home town was Utopia. The reaction would be; "What the bloody hell are you doing here then"

Seriously, I want to know of any aboriginal community, large or small, that functions well. i.e. Good school attendance, generally orderly and safe where the local copper,if any, has not a lot to do. No one expects perfection anywhere.

I think it is important that the public is informed that such places do exist and there are many good aboriginal parents, despite what the media portray and that the government is pressured to look to these places as a guide. Unfortunatly the academics and expert advisors often get it wrong. That accounts for the present situation.

So I would like to hear of more. I am no expert with quals, nor have much political influence but I will bring these places to public and government attention. If we all did similar, or put forward positive ideas, then the situation can only improve.

Please note an article which was brought to my attention
"While there are examples in the report of specific cases of abuse, the report is not laced with examples of such abuse. It puts its fact finding in a sensible context: “Sexual abuse of children is not restricted to those of Aboriginal descent, nor committed only by those of Aboriginal descent, nor to just the Northern Territory. The phenomenon knows no racial, age or gender borders. It is a national and international problem.”

If there had not been a history of this government misrepresenting intelligence reports, the prime minister’s slant may have been dismissed as a slip. But there was the weapons of mass destruction report relied on by Howard to send Australia to invade Iraq, and the children overboard scam.

I am not disputing the existence of social problems in Aboriginal communities. I am concerned the prime minister is being selective about using material to convey a state of emergency in those communities."
The Australian people agree that Government should have acted at least a decade ago not just before an election