Noel Pearson: The dangers of mutual obligation

http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/index.html

December 15, 2004

A number of Aboriginal leaders, ourselves included, have decided to combine our energies to advance the situation of Aboriginal people from an abysmal state of social and economic inertia to a circumstance more closely approaching the reality of non-Aboriginal Australians.

People who see themselves as advocates of Aboriginal rights have accused us of everything from political opportunism to purveying denial of the inherent rights of Aboriginal people in this country. On the other hand, when one or other of our group criticises the Federal Government's indigenous policies, our commentary is interpreted as a death blow to the new "indigenous accord" that gives priority to the struggle against passive welfare and abject dysfunction. It is probably also seen as a sign of division among us and of Aboriginal leaders' inability to find common cause.

All Australians should be on notice that the commitment we have given to the "war on welfare dependency" is not a cause from which we will be diverted merely out of sensitivity to those who would confine Aboriginal people to the status of victim forever.

In our search for social and economic equity for our people we have created a "coalition for the future" and, as in any alliance, there will be differences in emphasis and even in strategy, but our vision remains the same and the members of this coalition will not be afraid of robust debate among its members.

We are a "coalition of the willing" but we are also an alliance of equals, and we will have the courage to challenge one another as equals with common cause in the fight for the future of our people.

We have challenged the leaders of the community-controlled Aboriginal organisations to reinvent themselves and re-engage with their communities to find the solutions for justice and equity among and within ourselves.

However, there is a risk that public opinion will place most of blame for the present crisis on Aboriginal people. It must therefore be noted that the Federal Government's "practical reconciliation" agenda is at present not sufficiently well developed and funded.

Aboriginal people and those community leaders who are charged with engagement between the community and governments have a responsibility to ensure that in the negotiation of the new relationship between Aboriginal people and governments, they obtain the resources needed to sustain their culture, language, physical wellbeing and other aspects of their lives for the future of our people - but not at the expense of the basic human rights of those whom they represent.

It is also very important that the notion of "mutual obligation" is not trivialised.

Government and indigenous communities who no longer wish to sit on their hands while blindness is caused by trachoma, kidney failure is caused by scabies and deafness is caused by unresolved ear infections, should be supported. But they also need to think carefully about how they institute mutual obligation through "shared responsibility agreements".

"Social engineering" is unavoidable when governments attempt to influence social and economic behaviour through their programs and policies. Great caution needs to be exercised when social engineering is proposed.

The mutual obligation agreement struck with the Aboriginal community at Mulan in Western Australia has been supported by the community's leadership, and should therefore be supported by the wider Australian community. However, the Federal Government and other community leaders who are considering mutual obligation, might bear in mind our advice.

The aim must be to normalise obligations between Aboriginal parents and their children, between family members, and between individuals and their communities.

First, we need to ask how mutual obligation or, in Aboriginal terms, "reciprocity", works normally in functional societies. We believe that mutual obligation is a natural principle of human society, where people give and take, where they enjoy rights and exercise responsibilities in a more-or-less balanced way. When people are active participants in economic life, whether as hunter-gatherers or as employees in the modern economy, mutual obligation is a natural principle. You work, you get paid. You hunt, you eat. Each has a responsibility to contribute, and each has rights.

When people are actively engaged in whatever their economy may be, it is not necessary to socially engineer mutual obligations. People take personal responsibility for themselves and their families. They don't need their leaders or their government to tell them what to do about basic things - such as to care for the welfare of their children - because these responsibilities come naturally. They do so because of their natural love and regard for their own.

But of course the community leaders of Mulan, as elsewhere in Aboriginal Australia, are having to deal with a legacy that has ruptured the natural reciprocity and responsibility that underpinned their traditional society. This legacy includes the economic and social depredations of their history, and the social corrosion caused by passive welfare dependency.

So it is understandable that the Mulan leaders, and the Federal Government, have decided to take action for the welfare of their children.

Second, the question needs to be asked: who owes the obligation to whom? The obligation to attend to children's hygiene is primarily an obligation owed by parents and adults to their children. It is not an obligation that, in the normal course, is owed to government, so careful thought must be given to what government can do to restore this natural obligation between parents and their children.

Third, we must also ask why some parents have failed to attend to their children's personal hygiene so that they can avoid serious health problems. There are a couple of possible explanations.

One is there has been a failure of awareness on the part of the Aboriginal people, and so it may be necessary to undertake what is often called "health promotion".

A second and more likely possibility is that there has been a failure of expectation - that is, poor hygiene has become so entrenched that no one is expecting parents to fulfil their natural responsibility to attend to the hygiene of their children. Other community members have long held no expectations, schools hold no expectations - everyone has become used to expecting parents not to fulfil their responsibilities.

Because attending to the basic welfare of children is such a natural responsibility of parents and adult relatives, it is more accurate to talk about a failure of expectation when it comes to children's hygiene rather than a failure of obligation. Our point is that it shouldn't even be a matter of obligation that parents attend to their children's hygiene.

Given the collapse in expectations, we believe government has a role in assisting Aboriginal communities to restore responsibility through mutual obligation. However, it does not make sense to reward parents for doing something for which parents normally need not be rewarded. What message is the government sending: that if you look after your children, you will be rewarded? And when the rewards end or the incentives lose their attraction, can parents then revert to their previous irresponsibility?

One of the unanswered problems with the Mulan agreement is: what is the logical connection between the obligations that the government wants the community to commit to, and the incentives that it is offering in return? It is hard to see the natural connection between children's hygiene and the more convenient provision of petrol.

The Federal Government must restrain its bureaucrats from playing at social engineering, otherwise the important principle of mutual obligation will be discredited - and that would be a tragedy.

Pat Dodson and Noel Pearson are Aboriginal leaders.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/index.html

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When welfare is a curse

By Noel Pearson

The Age

23 April 2004

Centrelink is a major contributor to the drug problems of Aborigines.

Bob Collins, the co-ordinator appointed by the Rann Labor Government in South Australia to tackle the problems in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Lands, has cut to the chase: automatic and unconditional welfare payments must end to encourage young indigenous people to seek work.

Rather than just alluding to problems of "welfare dependency", "boredom", "hopelessness" and so on, Collins says unconditional welfare payments are a problem "that's got to be addressed at the Commonwealth level".

That is, we can't just all agree that passive welfare is a problem, we have to do something about it.

John Howard and Mark Latham: you know Collins is right. Your challenge is to decide how this piece of public policy is to be structured.

We can keep talking about welfare reform, but the time for reform that will turn around the social disaster in remote Aboriginal communities is now.

We will not get on top of the serious problem of substance abuse without confronting the issue of unconditional payments to able-bodied people.

The measures taken by Peter Beattie in Queensland to limit the supply of alcohol are a necessary part of the solution. Beattie has had the courage to tackle the hard question that is within the state's policy domain.

But if we don't tackle unconditional money supply, our progress will stall.

Money to purchase grog and drugs, and idle time to use them, are the key factors that must be confronted, in addition to supply. This is the Commonwealth's policy domain.

A host of counter-arguments will be immediately raised against Collins's bottom line, such as the lack of jobs in remote areas.

Yet in most remote communities there are scores of jobs manned by non-indigenous people, many of them not requiring particular expertise or expertise that could not be readily attained by local people.

How is it that we are unable to convert the more than $2 billion allocated by the Commonwealth to indigenous programmes into jobs performed by indigenous people?

The answer is that there is no firm bottom line in the welfare system that young indigenous people enter as they approach adulthood. As long as that system does not say "there is no alternative to work, education and training", all the youth programs and interventions will come to very little.

There needs to be both help and hassle.

At present the welfare system provides unconditional income support to young people once they leave school. It immediately provides an easy option to young people: you don't have to undertake further education or gain skills or work, because you will receive an income regardless.

This path of least resistance becomes the road well-travelled. Young people have free money to purchase grog, cannabis and other substances. They soon become addicted. Thereafter the welfare system pays for their addiction.

A major contributor to the weekly drug habits of young Australians is Centrelink.

This may be an outrageous thing to say, but it is the truth.

If we want to ameliorate the tragic situation that Bob Collins is talking about in remote indigenous communities, then we have to end unconditional welfare payments.

The Federal Government has talked the talk on welfare reform, and a program was devised around "Community Participation Agreements", but nothing has emerged after four years. I do not know of one CPA being implemented in any community across the country.

The Commonwealth Department of Family and Community Services has given us strong support on the help side of income-support reform. It has worked with us, in partnership with the Westpac Bank, to implement Family Income Management facilities for families to budget their income.

But another reform on the hassle side of income support, which we in Cape York Peninsula have attempted to pursue, has gone nowhere. Too many of the "mutual obligation" and "shared responsibility" policies skirt around the real needs, and the mainstream bureaucracies end up putting off reform for another day.

Bob Collins's suggestions appear self-evident against the background of social collapse in central Australia. Unfortunately, indigenous welfare reform is hostage to the lack of progress in mainstream welfare reform.

But if Australia is truly empathetic to the waste and suffering of young indigenous people, and of those who love them, then we must take Bob Collins's plain advice as the starting point.

Noel Pearson is director of the Cape York Institute for Policy and Leadership, a joint initiative of Griffith University and regional organisations in Cape York Peninsula.

Further reading.

"On the Human Right to Misery, Mass Incarceration and Early Death" (PDF) Dr Charles Perkins Memorial Oration
Noel Pearson Cape York Partnerships 25/10/2001

Noel Pearson Priority Papers

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