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November 3, 2006
In this speech to the 2006 Economic and Social Outlook Conference Dr Ken Henry, Secretary to the Treasury, speaks very forthrightly about the plight of our indigenous people. He says:
Far from the mainstream, indigenous disadvantage is a dull glow on the periphery, capturing our attention only fleetingly, usually when presented to us as salacious. Most Australians know there is something wrong because they see images of substance abuse and domestic violence in indigenous communities. But that is about all they see. And it might be all they want to see; for the most part preferring the mental image of the indigenous community as a sheltered workshop for the permanently handicapped.
Well, indigenous communities are not sheltered workshops. They are a constituent component of mainstream Australia. But it has to be said that the life experience in that part of the mainstream is rather unusual...Indigenous Australians have a dramatically lower life expectancy ---17 years less than the Australian average, dramatically lower rates of year 12 completion, substantially higher unemployment rates and substantially higher rates of imprisonment. Indigenous disadvantage diminishes all of Australia, not only the dysfunctional and disintegrating communities in which it is most apparent. Its persistence has not been for want of policy action. Yet it has to be admitted that decades of policy action have failed.
The good news is that there is a growing level of support---significantly, including among indigenous community leaders---for innovative approaches. Many of these new approaches are being targeted to local circumstances, with high rates of indigenous participation in design and implementation. Some of the indigenous development initiatives being undertaken by mining ventures in the West and the North are producing impressive results. And the work undertaken at the Cape York Institute under Noel Pearson's leadership, which has led to the development of several pilot projects that take a fresh approach to welfare and service delivery, is equally impressive. There is reason for hope.
You don't often hear that kind of truth telling from the Canberrra bureaucracy do you.
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