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September 8, 2007
I often wonder about Noel Pearson. Where does he stand on the Howard/Brough NT intervention, given that Pearson's Cape York model of quarantining welfare payments only when recipients are demonstrably irresponsible, and only after they have received financial counselling, is very different from the federal government's heavy-handedness in the NT.Yet Pearson gives the impression of appearing to support Howard's Northern Territory intervention.
In his more recent column in The Australian he writes:
I have previously talked about the Government's failure to rise above the sense in indigenous policy that it is mean and pursuing a traditional, punishing negativity. The Prime Minister's line at Hermannsburg this week about the "thugs and bullies" sheltered by the permit system, and the assimilationist emphasis of his policy articulation, underscores how the Government simply cannot transcend the prism of cultural war in which it conceives policies concerning native Australians.
In the 1930s there was a general commitment to the concepts of advancement and assimilation. Advancement referred to poverty and the lack of access of indigenous people to opportunity in a discriminatory society We know that the white Australian emphasis on assimilation met with an Aboriginal desire for equality and advancement.
In the 1960s there was a general commitment to the concepts of self-determination and advancement, and a banishing of assimilation. The idea that Aborigines, particularly in remote areas, should be able to choose to pursue a more or less traditional lifestyle became dominant, but the basic capabilities necessary for true choice (such as good health and a good education) were neglected such that life in remote communities was in no sense a matter of choice: it was the only option. Since the 1990s there has been a return to the concepts of advancement and assimilation.
Pearson distinguishes between integration and assimilation.
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