Too often children are rendered as mere commodities or the end result of a chance and fumbling encounter...wanted to a degree but not really the focus of many parents lives.. it has been that way for a while.

Parents have never parented in the classic neoconservative sense of the Leave to Beaver, whitepicket fence myth - isolated totally self sufficient families are a thing of the past if they were ever a thing at all.

Children have been trusted to communities, extended families defacto foster parents since the first little bugger was born.

Parents have sexualised their children for a variety of vicarious reasons or see them as a burden .. I dont suggest this is the case universally in the 21st century - but enough bad things happen to suggest children are some what of disposable product or a vehicle for unrealised parental aspirations or worse still objects of lust and exploitation.

Where once kids were lost to dyptheria, small box, polio , snake bite or worse - we now lose them to drugs sexual predators or an insurmountable sense of anomie' -

and these days we dont have that many so those we do have need to pretty mickey mouse or they tend ot get overlooked - some times the runt of the litter represents the entire litter and a great dissapointment to mum and dad - we are an intrinsicaly selfish bunch.

If I were a kid and had a choice I suspect I would choose not to be born until us adults get our act together.

Administration and a breakdown in cultural provisional purpose at ground levels. Fly-in's are not building on natural community support mechanisms.

Administrations are lacking in funding development strategies at ground level. Exclusive work practices dominate focus rather than building on community productivity base.

Local elites just as those in development case studies oversea's lack policy directives and hinder greater process. Regional staff reproduce the senario. It is a Dead-End Culture within administrative practices. And, so it continues!

Dysfunctional families/communities (in any diverse culture) rarely have the resources to humanly make the best choices when there is a lack of resource education on issues regarding their daily civic wellbebeing. ie: crime prevention projects and programs associated with integrated health education engaging the "whole" community, are lacking everywhere in Cape York. INCLUSIVE GLUE networking at ground levels.

Community education and development vs Social Disorganisation. The plan must be with local multi-sector civic partnership, provisions and long-term.

The 1978 Declaration of the Child stated that to look after CHILDREN, you need to take SPECIAL CARE of MOTHERS.

"TURN THE LENS BACK ON TO COMMUNITY" (Maria Altmann- "One Step at a Time": Development Study in Community Development through Crime Prevention.Cooktown.2004)

It is not Rocket Science!

I am sure with a perspective on COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT and strategies ("whole approach") LOCAL GOVERNMENT PLANNING (through civic community services) support platform, Australia could match the best value for funding economic community structures, beside the best comparitive studies in other countries. (Look at village primary health data)

Given my own experience at GROUND LEVELS, I find it is the administive functions that miss the beat. I find them short-term and often distruptive by there design.

Organisational Culture is everything if the target of benefits is aimed at building real capacity at ALL ground levels. (Alm Ata)

I find the communities burdened by a lack of resources. This includes HUMAN RESOURCES. They do not seem able to build or support a constructive long-term community support network. Mechanisims and practices are Ad Hoc. The blame becomes deeply multi-directed, each capped with complex denial.

www.//:www.miacat.com

Muriel Bamblett,

As you rightly point out, the existing model of foster care is a false dichotomy. I very much like the idea of the third way - supporting foster families to raise children in collaboration with the birth family - not shunting the birth family out of the picture. That gives both the foster family and the birth family an opportunity to do their best for the child and maintains the connections of kin.

And I like your proposition that this model could work with all families in need not just Indigenous families.

At the macro level, you're right to be suspicious of the motives of Howard and Brough for
introducing changes to the land permit system and land tenure and the appointment of administrators to manage Aboriginal communities. These were never part of the Little Children Are Sacred report and they have no relevance to child protection.

I look forward to significant changes to the intervention strategy under the new Government especially with regard to working with Indigenous communities, not just on the immediate tragic issue of child abuse but on the underlying issues of providing access to good quality education (including early childhood) housing, health, employment, policing, transport and communication services.

It really is time for a new deal.

First I admit my ignorance and confess to no direct experience or knowledge of these communities. So I am writing as an intelligent and caring (I hope) layperson.

I think the author of the article advocates a very important thing. She asserts that the existence of these remote communities ought not be discussed merely behind closed doors but should be open to debate.

I would like to hear more. Why should we expect that a remote community have full educational, health, transport, and other "essential" infrastructures? Many small country towns have closed down over the last century of change. Not enough kids to justify a viable school. No doctor available for such a small community. No viable economy to provide jobs. Bank withdraws its branch. Trains no longer stop at the station. People move somewhere else. We see no big need to prop up these settlements. So why do we want to advocate full services in indigenous remote communities? Notice I am not saying that we ought allow them to fade. But I would like to hear some rational argument about why they are good things.

May I ask as a layperson - what happened to RESPECT within our society. RESPECT for elders, RESPECT for children. It doesn't matter if you are white, coloured or brindle, or what religion you aspire to? A CHILD is a CHILD who should be loved, nurtured and cared for. A child (any child) didn't ask to be born. A child (any child) should not be exposed to "free game" from predators. Our children are our nation's future.

Fencepost

I take it you are a serious person with a genuine question: "Why should we expect that a remote community have full educational, health, transport, and other "essential" infrastructures?"

There seem to be two aspects to the question you ask.

First there are the retention issues. Why stay? Indigenous people have spiritual attachments to place which white people find hard to understand because, as you say, when the going gets too tough, we walk away from the land, from the place we find inhospitable.

Indigenous people say: "It is my father's land, my grandfather's land, my grandmother's land. I am related to it, it give me my identity. If I don't fight for it, then I will be moved out of it and [it] will be the loss of my identity" (A plaintiff in the 'Mabo' Case, 1990).

Land has special importance to Indigenous people. As custodians they have a duty to care for the land of their ancestors. Each country has its sacred origins and sacred places, its sources of life and its sites of death. For Indigenous Australians, the earth is the ultimate origin of the life of country.

Many white people dismiss this as 'primitive'. But value judgments are cheap.

Second, there are the opportunity issues. What are their options? Where would these people go? How would they be relocated? How could they form new attachments to the land? How would they earn a living in a hostile new environment? Who would lend them a helping hand?

FrankGol, multigenerational farmers tend to feel the same sort of connection to the land. It goes beyond a business and even beyond a way of life. For many there is a deep emotional connection that tears apart those that are forced to leave. Yet, as a society we recognise that where these farms/farmers become unsustainable they should not be supported (a slightly different story if they look like being sustainable in the long term). Why should remote aboriginal communities be seen as any different? If they are sustainable, or have the chance of becoming so, then great, lets pour resources in to help them achieve this. But where not, are we really doing them a favour by keeping them out there (yes on their land) in a second-class world, forever separated from the other opportunities within this country? Its a hard question, yes, but we need to ask the hard questions in order to actually achieve any outcomes.

The best and only way to deal with child protection matters is have a complaint handling process that is fair, consistant and that works. At the moment the complaint/allegation 'handling system' used by our Government is corrupted and children are as a result not protected and at risk of harm.

This intervention is a joke. All they would need to do is to process and deal properly with complaints and allegations of child abuse and one by one the child abusers would be outed and as a result stopped. They avoid focusing on the problem and that is those who are doing the crime and those who are turning a blind eye.

It makes you wonder who they are protecting?

Education - Keeping them Honest
http://jolandachallita.typepad.com/education/
Our children deserve better

Frank Gol and Country Gal.
Thank you for illuminating responses.

Frank, with respect to your second point about the opportunities for people whose attachments to old ways of life no longer seem viable, I think it is a Commonwealth responsibility, for all people who are structurally displaced, to create pathways to a new way of life. The means available are pensions, education, positive discriminations. That we have not done very well at this is a shame, and new policies need to be implemented - and for textile workers, car industry people, as well as indigenous folk. That doesn't imply trying to prop up things that are no longer practical though.

On the your first point, about attachment and responsibility to the land, that is a deep, emotional, and religious matter. But does it follow that those who are so committed have a right to all the basic infrastructures of a westernised society, especially when the deleterious aspects of the latest culture, porn, grog, quick food, consumerism seem to be diametrically opposed to stewardship over the land? I think Country Gal made a useful connection with other landholders who have farmed for generations.

I am sick and tired of hearing this rubbish about keeping children in situations where the child is in physical/moral danger and is not removed because of the childs Indigenous culture.

Muriel has remained unchallenged on this issue for far too long, and it seems both major political parties have avoided the issue for fear of being labelled racist. Muriel has been very succesfull in claiming that the situation of forced removal of a child "on the basis of neglect" can somehow be compared with the forced removal of half white children in the so called stolen generation.

This has made mostly Labor governments very nervous for fear of being labeled racists and the children in our communities have been the ones that have paid the price.

This second stolen generation nonsence she is peddling in the media and on her VACCA web page is a disgrace, because she and the rest of her mob continue to be paid by the taxpayer without having to answer to anyone on their activities.

Its high time she and people like her were closed down and the matter of Indigenous children in danger given over to "qualified" trained social workers. Many people that I know have looked after children for VACCA and been horified by the incompetence of the agency that Muriel runs in Victoria.

Imagine raising a baby for two years as a foster parent with no children and being the only parents that the child knows, then have VACCA remove the child from you because your white and then watch as the childs parents or extended family get hold of the baby. These extended families Muries talks about usally have up to ten people living in a house can hardly afford to feed themselves let alone a baby with needs and mostly live on the dole. Yeah makes real sense Muriel.

Yindin,
qualified 'real' social workers are not immune from incompetence. The latest fiasco in NQ was caused by real proper qualified social workers. Like any profession some social workers are better than others and some people who have not jumped through the western education system have considerable ability as social and welfare workers.

I suggest that if you have a personal issue with Muriel and or the organisation she is part of, that you put your view forward and maybe become involved. I am sure that they will appreciate learned and heartfelt support.

I believe that child welfare needs to keep the needs of the child as central to the whole practice. At the moment 'a child centred approach' is merely empty rhetoric, where as Muriel offers a model that keeps as central the wellbeing of the child.

NQ Indigenous Grandmother

Yindin,

You are obviously nursing grievances that do not relate to Muriel Bamblett's article.

Your characterisation of her position is quite different from what she wrote in her article.

You call for Muriel Bamblett to be sacked and her organisation closed down. This is a very serious matter to raise on OLO without the appropriate evidence or rational argument.

I presume you have a documented case that you have presented to Ms Bamblett and to her organisation, so that they may know the full particulars of your complaint against her and so that she may have a reasonable chance to respond to your allegations.

Those are the basic requirements of natural justice or procedural fairness.

I presume that "Yindin" is a pseudonym and that, therefore, your character and reputation have not been attacked publicly on OLO in the same manner as you have attacked Ms Bamblett's character and reputation.

I thought at the time granting land tenure was s good idea. All it seems to have achieved is isolation and freedom for child abusers to commit incest.
This should surprise no one on reflection. Corruption of systems, even when primitive, is rife in history.
To have allowed the powerful, in this case elders, in a broken primitive society was a mistake promoted by guilt. Good intentioned whitefella's that gave them the power.
Since one must ask permission to travel visit and learn of these societies it is reasonable to expect exclusion, when the power is with the corrupt
Isolation has little chance of progressing a society.
With collapse of the male leadership, salvation is hoped for from the the female leader, some of whom have already stepped to the plate, I wish them well for it won't be easy.
They first must open their society to the scrutiny of the world, not
close the gates to those who would assist them in the long road back.
I don't mean the officials who spend their lives in universities and bureaucracies who comprehend only the learning passed to them by lecturer's hoping for acknowlegement, but ordinary people with their innate respect for difference. Sometimes rugged learning inspires, or maybe men like me are out of date?
fluff4

fluff4
can you please tell us what particular racial/cultural aspects the 6 internet predator who were arrested share. Just recently wasn't a police prosecutor in NSW recently jailed for child sex related crimes. Is there something uncivilised/genetically deficient in these people - like their race (oops sorry but they come from non-indigenous Australia and others were caught overseas).

You might find it useful to follow up on the many times and ways in which Aboriginal peoples have documented these issues and pleaded for help. I suggest that you start at the SNAICC and HREOC websites.


Muriell wrote a strong paper to promote greater thought and sensitivity in child welfare. How about you add something constructive that relates to the article?

I would like to hear what others think of the third way and how it might be possible to maintain family contact/identity when there is geographical distance to contend with

Aka
I did make the suggestion "take down the fences" and by the way we were not talking about internet abuse but physical child abuse by adults who are probably related, with elders involved, if that is important.
I have no grievence to air, just an interest in a problem that didn't start last week, but has become almost as familia as it was fifty years ago when I was in Nwest Australia.
I can't help, but I wish the women who are trying, success.
fluff4

MERRY CHRISTMAS FLUFF4
I note in your last post you stated, you couldn't help, but are interested in the issue.

Yes, you CAN help, we can all help. We put our pens to papers, we can all write to our various Ministers, (State and Federal) including your local MP who will normally refer your issue on.

It's called people power, if enough people get behind issues they believe in - we can all make a difference.

Most people don't write to Ministers etc as they believe their grammar is not correct or they can't spell correctly.

My comment being - don't worry about the odd spelling or grammar error, it's the content and issue of the matter you are trying to get across that is relevant.

Not everyone is a scholar ...... go with your heart, do your research and start writing.