November 27, 2006
Anthony Smith in Indigenous development--Without community, without commerce in the Australian Review of Public Affairs sums up a debate about indigneous development:
Most participants in the current debate about Aboriginal development believe that government policy has failed. Indigenous policy is now generally viewed as both permissive and powerless. Government handouts are seen as passive welfare or 'sit down money', which perpetuates Indigenous joblessness--and so permissive. And many Indigenous communities have been unable to combat self-destructive alcohol and substance abuse as well as criminal and violent behaviour--and so powerless.
There is much discussion about policy alternatives, but the growing separation between the commercial aspirations of Indigenous business and the need to deal with the negative effects of economic development remains largely unexplored. On one hand is a call for Indigenous business interests to be released from responsibility for solving community problems and administering government welfare and employment programs. In other words, Indigenous business needs to be set on a more equal footing with mainstream business. On the other hand is a call for greater focus on law and order to combat lawlessness. How these divergent policy goals might be reconciled is not clear.
Both the policy pathways to free Indigenous enterprise from the shackles of welfare responsibility, and the demand for draconian law and order, take as a starting point a shift away from the 1970's idea of 'community'; one based on concepts of traditional culture and ethnicity and aborigines agents or trustees for their community's development.
|