James R said:
Who's asking them to change against their will?.
Australian Aborigines become first target for “welfare reform”
By Mike Head
16 November 2004
Leaked cabinet documents reveal that the Howard government intends to make Australia’s indigenous people a test case for a sweeping assault on the welfare system. The new regime involves intensive monitoring and control of the unemployed, disabled and other welfare recipients in Aboriginal communities, designed to
force them off benefits and into low-wage jobs or small businesses.
Among the measures are electronic “smartcards” to record and restrict what indigenous people buy using government-funded payments. “Work for the dole” and other “mutual obligation” programs will be extended to
require individuals, families and entire remote communities to perform certain activities—including rubbish collection, crackdowns on school truancy and health checks—to qualify for government assistance.
In the 1970s, the Community Development Employment Program (CDEP) imposed forced-labour requirements on jobless Aboriginal workers, long before they were widened by the Keating Labor government’s “Working Nation” scheme in the early 1990s and the Howard government’s current Work for the Dole program.
Under the proposals, parents will be obliged to ensure that children attend school and have regular health checks in exchange for parenting, rent assistance and other family payments. Those who fail to abide by such behavioural contracts will suffer sanctions that will only worsen their situation. Public housing tenants will even be punished by being denied repair work on their homes if their children do not go to school regularly.
Council leaders also pledged to ensure that every child is showered daily and attends school, and that chronic eye, skin and worm infection rates are lowered. In return, the federal government would fund two-thirds of the cost of installing fuel bowsers at the community—a basic facility that all settlements should have in any case.
Proposals include a “no school, no pool” system to reward school attendance by stopping children from visiting the community swimming pool if they do not attend classes. This will be reminiscent of the days, up until the 1960s, when Aboriginal children were barred from municipal pools because of the colour of their skin.
Likewise, the “smartcard” plan smacks of the ration card and voucher systems formerly used to control indigenous people and confine them to cattle stations and other locations where they were employed, often on a semi-slave basis.
Michael Sands, a local Aboriginal councillor at Yarrabah, south of Cairns, told journalists:
“They are dictating to people what they can and cannot have and are more or less controlling your life for you. They are dictating to us how we can spend our money. It’s like the voucher system.”
Just as the old paternalistic schemes were justified as beneficial for the well-being of Aborigines, who were depicted as primitives,
today’s plans are presented as necessary to protect children from parental neglect and tackle alcohol and substance abuse.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/nov2004/abor-n16.shtml
James R said:
No. I'd like to see indigenous peoples get the same opportunities non-indigenous people get in Australia.
Can they get the opportunity to live life as they see fit for themselves?
