ABC Radio

The World Today - Thursday, 10 May 2007 12:14:00
Reporter: Jane Cowan

ELEANOR HALL: The international aid organisation Oxfam has described this week's budget as a disaster for Aboriginal Australians. Oxfam says the $30 million set aside for Indigenous health is a mere fraction of what's needed each year in the sector. And few of those who work in the field are expecting tonight's budget reply from the Labor Party to deliver much more in the way of well-funded initiatives for Aboriginal people. Now an Independent MP is warning that Aboriginal affairs will be a no-go area in this year's election campaign. As Jane Cowan reports.

JANE COWAN: If Aboriginal people were expecting big things from Tuesday's budget, they were disappointed.

James Ensor is a Policy Director with Oxfam Australia.

JAMES ENSOR: Overall the budget is extremely disappointing for Indigenous Australians.

JANE COWAN: Particularly disappointing, he says, when it comes to the health of Aboriginal people.

JAMES ENSOR: The Australian Medical Association and a range of others have estimated that the funding shortfall for the basic, primary health care that ordinary Australians take for granted is in the order of $460 million per annum. This week's budget delivered only, less than 10 per cent of that, a $30 million increase to address the indigenous health crisis.

JANE COWAN: This budget came one day before the release of an independent report that criticises the Federal Government's response to the Bringing Them Home report into the forced removal of Aboriginal children. The social research consultancy Urbis Keys Young found the Government's response was "insufficiently documented, poorly coordinated and insufficiently targeted to meet the needs of the Stolen Generations".

JOHN BOND: Well, the unmet need is very large and it's a need which could be met.

JANE COWAN: John Bond from the Stolen Generations Alliance says the counselling services set up to help those affected by the removal policies are
desperately under-resourced.

JOHN BOND: The average mental health worker has a caseload of 25, whereas these people are working with caseloads in some cases of more than 80. One friend of mine who is a caseworker said to me, “I went to a community the other day because I'd been asked to come and before I left I had 14 new names on my books.” He said, "I just can't cope".

JANE COWAN: The Independent MP Peter Andren says both sides of politics are now showing their true colours when it comes to Aboriginal Australians.

PETER ANDREN: Well we see an ideologically driven change to housing policy, talk of failures in programs by the Minister and here we have 200 and what was it, about $30 million dollars in a $236 billion budget, $30 million in additional annual health funding. That's about $10 a day for every Indigenous Australian on top of last year's budget reaction. So, this is a measure of just how unimportant to both major parties Indigenous wellbeing is.

JANE COWAN: Do you think there's any reason to believe that Labor if they won government at this year's election would handle Indigenous Affairs any better?

PETER ANDREN: No. Well I suspect that Aboriginal Affairs so to speak, is a no-go area during this campaign. It's been put in the too-hard basket.

JANE COWAN: It's a criticism the Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough rejects.

MAL BROUGH: You can always spend more money but the reality is that we've tried to tackle the biggest issues. There's more than $800 million of new money for existing programs being expanded and new programs. The biggest reform is the one that people know is needed the most - housing. Housing goes to every aspect of your life. A child can't study if they're not in a good house. If you haven't got a clean house, then you're likely to have greater access or propensity to disease.

JANE COWAN: But it's that housing funding that the Federal Opposition has singled out for criticism. Labor's Indigenous Affairs spokeswoman Jenny Macklin says at most, it would fund about 700 new houses in remote areas, far short of the 7,500 needed. But a spokeswoman for Jenny Macklin said she was in no position to say whether Labor would do any better in its budget reply.

 

National Indigenous Radio Service, 27 April

THE STOLEN GENERATIONS

Mr Fraser attacks Indigenous affairs 'regression' and says the two major parties do not differ significantly on Indigenous affairs.

Former prime minister Malcolm Fraser says the Federal Government has ignored most of a major report on the removal of Indigenous Australians from their families. In the lead up to next month's 10-year anniversary of the 'Bringing Them Home' report, Mr Fraser has attacked the Government's handling of Indigenous affairs, saying it has regressed. Mr Fraser says neither the Federal Government nor the Opposition is showing any real interest in Aboriginal affairs.

He says more money needs to be spent on health, and education has gone backwards. Mr Fraser, who is a co-patron of the Stolen Generations Alliance, says there is no stark point of difference between the two major parties on Aboriginal affairs. He says the Federal Government should follow the Canadian Government's example. "The Canadians have shown a very real interest in resolving these problems," he said. "The kind of interest that hasn't come from Canberra, [from] either party. "I don't really believe has come from either of the major parties in the state arena."

Former Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) chair, Lowitja O'Donoghue, has supported Mr Fraser's stand. She says this is the worst time in Aboriginal affairs history. 

 

ABC Radio National

  The World Today - Ten years on, little change for Stolen Generation

The World Today - Thursday, 26 April , 2007 12:42:00
Reporter: Jane Cowan

ELEANOR HALL: It's 10 years since the Bringing Them Home report brought politicians to tears on the floor of the Federal parliament with its descriptions of the forced removal of Indigenous children from their families.

So what effect has the report now had for Aboriginal people?

Many members of the Stolen Generations say they're still waiting for an apology from the Howard Government and for compensation.

The former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser is patron of the Stolen Generations Alliance and he's delivered a scathing assessment of the Federal Government's performance on Indigenous policy.

Mr Fraser says many current policies represent a return to the paternalism of the past.

In Melbourne, Jane Cowan reports.

JANE COWAN: When the Bringing Them Home report was tabled in Federal parliament in May 1997, it was a landmark moment.

But a decade on, Aboriginal people say more than two thirds of the report's recommendations have been ignored.

MARK BIN BAKAR: Now stolen generation people feel like they're the second, second, second poor cousins and it's kind of like, really sad.

JANE COWAN: Mark Bin Bakar is the Chairman of the Kimberley Stolen Generation Aboriginal Corporation and the man behind Mary G, a character based on the experiences of Stolen Generation women.

His own mother was taken as a three-year-old when she never returned from a visit to hospital, sent instead to an orphanage.

MARK BIN BAKAR: Now they're becoming elderly people in our community and there's a consensus there that the government and governments have just been sitting there, waiting for Stolen Generation people to die away.

JANE COWAN: Mark Bin Bakar says the Bringing Them Home report was important and very accurate as a document but it's failed to make much difference for Aboriginal people.

MARK BIN BAKAR: It's failed in a big way because everything to do with the Stolen Generation Movement had been mainstreamed, meaning that Stolen Generation people themselves have missed out, have continued suffering after delivering their pieces to the report and nothing's come out in positive for them.

JANE COWAN: What sense do you make of all of that? Why hasn't the right policy flowed from a report that got it so right?

MARK BIN BAKAR: I think. I honestly believe that there's ignorance involved in this, there's the fear of having to pay out compensation.

JANE COWAN: The former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser is now a patron of the Stolen Generations Alliance.

His assessment of the Howard Government's performance on Indigenous policy is blunt.

MALCOLM FRASER: On a community level, I believe there's been progress. On a government level, I believe policies have regressed.

JANE COWAN: He says there are now fewer Aboriginal students at university than there've been in the past.

MALCOLM FRASER: Well I think ABSTUDY has been made much harder to get. There's been a philosophy that you shouldn't have programs designed quite specifically to overcome some of the problems or disadvantage of Aboriginal people.

JANE COWAN: And Malcolm Fraser says ATSIC's failure was a reason to reform it, not abolish it altogether.

MALCOLM FRASER: I think we're the one western country now with an Indigenous minority that has no elected representation of any kind.

I don't think that's something to be proud of, I mean, there's a committee the government's appointed, I know that.

That leaves Indigenous people feeling that, well alright, our views don't matter, we're being pushed to the side, we're being told what we must do, it's the old fashioned paternalism once again.

JANE COWAN: Malcolm Fraser also criticises moves to stop funding remote communities.

MALCOLM FRASER: In some of those policies, the government is challenging a traditional way of life for Aboriginals and again, if these kinds of changes are to be made or put in place, they ought to be undertaken after consultation, agreement, not just handed down from on-high.

JANE COWAN: For Mark Bin Bakar in the Kimberley though, everything must start with an apology.

MARK BIN BAKAR: The apology was the most important factor because it was about healing and allowing people to go forward and you know, in unison with the nation as saying that, we made a mistake, we're sorry, it was a big mistake and we're moving on as a country.

JANE COWAN: How much faith do you have now that an apology will happen?

MARK BIN BAKAR: Look, I personally think. have faith in the nation one day apologising, and it's what, 20 years since the referendum.

So we're talking 200 years after colonisation that Aboriginal people were given rights. Even though it took 200 years, it happened.

And somewhere down the line on the journey of life in time, that someone is going to stand up, some great leader of this nation and it's going to fix it all.

ELEANOR HALL: Mark Bin Bakar, chairman of the Kimberley Stolen Generation Aboriginal Corporation speaking to Jane Cowan.

The minister for Indigenous affairs Mal Brough was not available to respond to that criticism from Mr Fraser or the Stolen Generations Alliance.