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July 17, 2007
Last night I watched The Cape Experiment, a look at Noel Person's welfare reform approach to the rivers of grog and welfare dependency, on the ABC's Four Corners. program. The program graphically showed the effects of these problems in Cape York and then explored Pearson's approach.
Pearson argues that his governance approach provides a pathway to aboriginal futures:
the fundamental structural and behavioural reforms we propose to implement in Cape York Peninsula will turn around the situation in our communities in a matter of years. Our remote communities can be transformed into strong home bases for Cape York people, safe and peaceful places where children receive a primary education that does not disadvantage them, and large numbers of adults learn to re-engage with the real economy instead of depending on passive welfare.
Pearson holds that welfare payments – sit-down money - have encouraged irresponsibility, facilitated a hand out mentality in indigenous communities and produced a passive people. His proposed reform is mutual responsibility and if people don’t take responsibility then his organization is able to step in. So indigenous people can lose their freedom if they don’t abide by the conditions of mutual responsibility.
Pearson's the pilot program--Cape York Partnerships-- involved teams working in the towns of Aurukun, Coen, Mossman Gorge and Hopevale to engage them on welfare reform by building trust over time, and to gently shape the conduct of the people in these towns so they would articulating the welfare reform principles as though they were their own. According to Philip White, who was a member of the team in Arukun, this would involve:
asking people living with 20 family members in one broken-down house about the provision of housing, asking people who had never had a real job about what sort of training services might help, asking parents with illiterate 12-year-old children about schooling - while reminding them of the role sit-down money played in producing such mealy outcomes.Similar research was undertaken in the towns of Coen, Mossman Gorge and Hopevale. The plan was to eventually build this feedback into policy before sending it to Brough. We were told this process would take at least a year and more likely two. But this real research conducted with real people is barely cited in the From Hand Out to Hand Up report.
The 4 Corners showed indifference and resistance to the Pearson/Brough plan amongst councillors in Hopevale, strong support amongst councillers in Mossman Creek. The teams were rejected twice in Aurukun. Why this happened was never explored. No indigenous criticism of Pearson's plan were aired, and there were no alternative indigenous voices.
Pearson's welfare programme has becomethe blueprint for the federal Government's intervention into the Northern territory.
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I thought it was an OK report. I would of like to of seen a bit more of the discussion between Pearson and the land holders that were opposed.
My comment about no tomatoes or crops shows that the community isn't thinking past the next Wednesday but that was obvious.
To be honest I thought they were a lot further along the journey of Pearson's plan up there.
From my experience living in remote areas the conditions and problems are at least twice that level in the N.T of what we saw last night.
But its a positive air and if ever there was a bloke truly committed its Pearson.