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May 08, 2006
As it is budget week, with Canberra dominated by the Costello Budget, I want to turn back to this post about a speech entitled The End of Ideology in Indigenous Affairs given by Senator Chris Evans, the Shadow Minister for Indigenous Affairs, on aboriginal wellbeing.
This speech is an important one, as its purpose is to reposition Labor in the debate and to deal the ALP into the central challenges of our time by dumping ideological baggage and embracing the work of Noel Pearson.
Senator Evans says:
In supporting self-determination and attempting to be positive about Indigenous aspirations and achievement, Labor has been guilty of failing to engage sufficiently in the debate over the dysfunction of many Indigenous communities. There are notable exceptions and State Labor Governments have more recently been forced to confront issues of drugs, violence and child abuse. Our desire to be supportive of Indigenous people and not to continually focus on the negative must not lead us to political correctness or a refusal to engage in finding solutions to these difficult problems.
He says that he is not afraid to join the debate about the effects of welfare, violence or grog on Indigenous communities, as these are real problems that ruin Indigenous lives, and so they must be confronted. He adds that he personally struggles:
... to see how removing an individual's welfare benefits helps them to overcome the alcohol, drug or petrol addiction that drives their behaviour. But I am willing to debate these issues. When we have this debate it should be not be in a politically charged atmosphere. Labor has to do better than a knee-jerk response that labels political opponents as racist and paternalistic. Conservatives have to do better than accuse us of excusing violence and abuse.
So how do we move forward?
Evans turns to Tom Calma's 2005 Social Justice Report, which suggested some goals for Indigenous health --- ensuring that equality of health status and life expectancy is achieved within 25 years, and equal "access to primary health care and health infrastructure" is achieved within 10 years. He adds:
To achieve national goals we need to set up programs and measures that are grounded in the evidence of what works and what does not work. Pragmatism should guide our approach...To assess what works and what does not we need agreed benchmarks and performance indicators, and regular, transparent evaluation of programs. One size does not fit all but success can be replicated. ....While coordinated effort by governments seems blindingly obvious, and removal of silos that prevent bureaucracy acting as one seems logical, we need to test these approaches. Claims of success without clear evidence of fulfilled objectives should be treated with caution.
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