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July 3, 2007
Noel Pearson sails pretty close to the wind in his critique of social democratic welfarist governance of indigenous people. Take this op-ed in the Weekend Australian entitled 'Needless Misery', where he is addressing the trial concerned the alleged murder - amended to manslaughter - of a five-year-old white boy at the hands of his stepfather.
The Supreme Court of Victoria heard this evidence in the trial: “A five-year old boy allegedly murdered by his stepfather was found to have more than 160 bruises, a fractured skull and injuries to the abdomen so severe the force had ruptured the boy’s liver. The accused, 30, the disciplinarian of his household, told police: ‘I just see white’, when he lost control and beat his stepson.
Pearson comments on this domestic violence amongst indigenous people:
This boy’s death is a facsimile of many stories of child abuse and death in circumstances where one or more of the children’s supposed guardians are addicted to heroin and other drugs....The next day the Northern Territory Government belatedly released the report by Pat Anderson and Rex Wild into the neglect and abuse of children in indigenous communities in the Northern Territory, aptly titled Little Children are Sacred. This paper headlined its editorial even more aptly, “Little children are scared”.
He adds that my thought is this: what policies do we need so that all avoidable suffering is avoided in our society?
I am asking us to use our considerable human powers to escape avoidable suffering. And:
This is a question for social policy: are our policies maximising the avoidance of such suffering? My answer is no. There is too much misery - chiefly endured by the disadvantaged in our society, the lowest classes - that is avoidable.
Okay. That is fine. No problems. Pearson then addresses the reasons for this situation:
I believe that we do not have the optimum social policies to reduce suffering chiefly because of ideology and confusion. Australian policy analyses and strategic thinking are all mixed up when it comes to lifting the lot of the lowest classes. Strangely - but if you adopted an old leftist analysis it should not be surprising - the greatest impediment to the policies that are needed to relieve suffering is the confusion of those parts of the middle class who think themselves progressive. And it is particularly that section of the progressive middle class who are involved in the so-called helping industries who most contribute to the misery of those whom they believe they are helping.
Now I accept the arguments about welfare dependency. I accept Pearson's criticisms of the handout of welfare cheques-sit-down money-as having compounded the problems. His central thesis about passive welfare being soul-destroying, and destroying for Aboriginal communities, is entirely correct.
I concur with his point that there should be some reciprocity, they should give back to the community for what they receive, it's very important to get people to do something in return for the benefits they receive. I agree with his plan to send entrepreneurs into such communities to work with the people to build businesses which would give young aboriginal people the chance to become skilled and to take charge of their own destinies.
But the reason for indigenous suffering is the confusion of the progressive middle class? How about the failures of the Northern Territory or the Queensland governments to address the suffering? Or the inaction of the Howard Government of the last decade? Or the refusal by some indigenous people to take responsibility for their own social dysfunction communities ravaged by grog and violence? How about racist thinking that holds that it is Aboriginal to drink, and that it is somehow part of the identity of a people that they live in parks, that sit around in circles and drink, that they sit around and waste all of their money in gambling and stuff.
Pearson then adds:
We need to get our social policy thinking right. There is a connection between grog and child welfare among underclass black people. There is a connection between heroin addiction, stepfatherhood and child welfare in underclass white communities. There is a behavioural dimension to social suffering and we must face up to it. And so on.
Dead right. I can accept Pearson's argument that Australian social policy aimed at the distress of its black and white underclass produces thousands of programs, projects and initiatives that cost billions of dollars annually, the vast bulk of which are not at all decisive. Most of these initiatives miss the target; most are wasteful. Or that 90 per cent of the social policy interventions of John Howard, Peter Beattie, Morris Iemma, Steve Bracks, Mike Rann, Alan Carpenter, Paul Lennon, Jon Stanhope and Clare Martin, which are aimed at tackling the social dysfunction of those most in need, are useless.
Agreed. Pearson concludes:
The federal Government’s actions aimed at policing and tackling grog are decisive. Even the policy layperson can believe the welfare of children at risk can be improved only by an immediate attention to social order. Many unintended and negative consequences are likely to attend the federal Government’s initiatives, but these risks are not reasons to fail to act. Rather, the problems must be anticipated as best possible and acted on, and if they cannot be anticipated they must be decisively dealt with when they arise.
Agreed. Few disagree. So who is Pearson criticizing? The progressive middle class in the caring professions again?
He is sailing close to the wind as he is is buying into the culture wars and giving the appearance of aligning himself withe conservatives
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A link to a criticism of Noel Pearson---a NAIDOC address by NSWALC chariperson Bev Manton. She is concerned about Aborginal leaders having the gall to attack their own people and willingly offer the government a fig leaf of respectability for their misguided military adventure.She says:
Manton goes onto say:
She finishse by saying that she makes these comments mindful of the fact that media loves nothing better than a black upon black verbal dust up.