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October 3, 2006
Noel Pearson, the Executive Director, Cape York Partnerships, in his 2002 SEN Conference Dinner speech on the welfare state as safety net and passive welfare highlights the difference between white and black experiences of welfare. He says:
The predicament of my mob is that not only do we face the same uncertainty as all lower class Australians, but we haven't even benefited from the existence of the Welfare State. The Welfare State has meant security and an opportunity for development for many of your mob. It has been enabling. The problem of my people in Cape York Peninsula is that we have only experienced the income support that is payable to the permanently unemployed and marginalised. I call this "passive welfare" to distinguish it from the welfare proper, that is, when the working taxpayers collectively finance systems aimed at the their own and their families' security and development. The immersion of a whole region like Aboriginal Cape York Peninsula into dependence on passive welfare is different from the mainstream experience of welfare. What is the exception among white fellas----almost complete dependence on cash handouts from the government ---is the rule for us. Rather than the income support safety net being a temporary solution for our people (as it was for the whitefellas who were moving between jobs when unemployment support was first devised) this safety net became a permanent destination for our people once we joined the passive welfare rolls.
Life in the safety net for three decades and two generations has produced a social disaster for indigenous people. He adds that though the indigenous experience of the Australian welfare state has been disastrous that does not thereby mean that the Australian welfare state is a bad thing. It is just that indigenous people have experienced a marginal aspect of that welfare state: income provisioning for people dispossessed from the real economy.
This means that indigenous people have largely not experienced the civilizing features of mainstream life in the Australian welfare state - public health, education, infrastructure and other aspects which have underpinned the quality of life and the opportunities of generations of Australians. Though government money has been spent on Aboriginal health and education the people of Pearson's dysfunctional society have struggled to use these resources for our development. As he says ' our life expectancy is decreasing and the young generation is illiterate.' Our relegation to the dependence on perpetual passive income transfers meant that our people's experience of the welfare state has been negative. Indeed, in the final analysis, completely destructive and tragic.
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