Dr Ros Kidd
Historian - Consultant - Writer
State Controls of Aboriginal Families and Finances
For most of the twentieth century Aboriginal Queenslanders have been
subjected to the most intensive state controls ever imposed on any
sector of the Australian population. Most of the communities on Cape
York began in the nineteenth century as missions managed by church
authorities, and a range of government-run settlements was established
in the southern sector of the State. All these institutions, since
1897, were subject to State government control. To understand present
conditions it is necessary to understand how those controls operated.
The state’s bureaucracy dictated every aspect of personal and social
life: right to marry, care of children, place of living, employment,
supply of food, safety of water, provision of medical attention,
schooling, housing, community amenities, policing and justice. As wards
of state, Aborigines taken under government control – numbering around
half the state’s indigenous population – lost all rights to manage their
own lives.
This brief historical background cannot do justice to the skill and
determination required to maintain family life and transmit social,
language and cultural traditions. Nor can it adequately portray the
will to prevail over personal and community adversity resulting from
both well-meaning and prejudicial supervisory personnel and systems.
Today I’ll start with a brief overview of government controls, and then
divide the information into two broad streams, firstly looking at life
on the communities, and then conditions for people living in rural
areas. Please keep in mind that what you learn today about conditions
in the 1970s and 1980s were the realities of life for many of the
parents and grandparents of children you are teaching today.
Government controls
By 1897 around 2000 men and women were working on stations and towns
around Queensland. Most rural areas – including outback towns – would
not have been developed without this labour force. Payment was commonly
in cast-off clothes, food scraps, or alcohol or opium dregs, dependency
ensuring a captive, malleable workforce. Support through the hunting
skills of extended families was vital to survival. Because of blatant
abuses of existing laws Aboriginal individuals remained exposed to
attack and exploitation.
Rather than enforcing or amending existing legislation, in 1897 the
government enacted The Aboriginals Protection and Restriction
of the Sale of Opium Act which targeted only the Aboriginal
half of the equation. Now any person of Aboriginal descent, except
mixed-race males over 16 years and living as Europeans, could be
declared a ward of state and exiled to a reserve, losing rights and
responsibilities regarding movement, marriage, children, education,
employment and finances. Without consultation or explanation, people
found themselves ‘removed’ by local police to distant missions and
reserves, or contracted out to employment.
The life of every Aboriginal Queenslander was now entirely dependent on
official decree. A network of police ‘protectors’ was appointed to
monitor and record the actions and conduct of all families in their area
and these records formed the basis of official interventions and
detentions. There was no due process and no right of appeal; in fact no
knowledge of what was being written or why actions were taken. This
evidence remained secret into the 1990s. It was officially conceded
that in the dual police role of enforcement and protection, the second
was frequently subordinated to the first.
By the time of the 1939 Aboriginals Preservation and Protection Act
the department’s empire extended over 3000 settlement inmates, 3500 on
missions, 3500 in the Torres Strait and 7000 in ‘supervised camps’ on
country reserves. New legislation in 1965 supposedly liberated all
Aborigines from these suffocating controls, except for those living on
reserve communities who were deemed in need of continued State
‘assistance’ and were accorded permits to reside there. By 1970 nearly
all the northern communities were run by the government; and several had
been peremptorily relocated, disregarding people’s determination to
remain on their country.
The Aborigines Act
of 1971 dropped the ‘assisted’ category but strengthened the permit
system to cover visitors and residents, which the director still granted
or cancelled. The cash ‘training allowance’ – a standardised wage first
introduced on reserves in 1968 – was now formalised, although
deliberately excluded from any industrial award provisions. Beer
canteens could be established on reserves, and for the first time state
police could be permanently stationed where necessary. Only now, after
almost 70 years, could these government-controlled workers have access
and control over their property and savings accounts, unless, of course,
a magistrate upheld an objection by the director as to their capacity to
do so.
The 1984 Community Services Act empowered councils to make
by-laws for ‘promoting, maintaining, regulating and controlling…the
peace, order, discipline, moral safety, food supply, housing and
welfare’ of their communities, although all by-laws required government
approval and pre-existing by-laws (set by the department) were not
revoked. The Governor in Council – effectively the Cabinet – could
overrule by-laws or dissolve the council, in which case an administrator
was appointed and all his administration fees, allowances and expenses
became a charge against the council.
During the late 1980s land on reserve communities was progressively
transferred to control of community councils under Deeds of Grant in
Trust (DOGITs), which are managed by them under the 1984 Community
Services legislation. It is this legislation – with a series of minor
adjustments – that regulates the management of Aboriginal communities
today.
Life on the reserve communities
The remedial intent of all government reserves – whether church-run
missions or secular settlements – was compromised from the beginning by
extreme under funding for the most basic necessities – food, shelter,
medical care, clothing and amenities. For their whole history hunger,
drought, disease and destitution characterised these institutions which
were, as chief protector John Bleakley conceded in 1919, ‘starved and
crippled for want of adequate funds.’
In the mid-1920s a delegation from Mapoon mission complained to Bleakley
that their children were starving because the superintendent would not
allocate rations to seasonal workers during the off-season, even after
their funds were exhausted. The superintendent was forced to admit:
‘I have no means of buying tea, sugar, jam and medicines that are
necessary for growing children.’1
Despite drastic shortages during WWII, the state government refused to
allow Aboriginal citizens to be part of the national ration coupon
system, thus intensifying wartime privation. With the threat of
invasion only a few people remained on the northern missions, others
were dispersed to live ‘in the old ways’, and the superintendent
reported that the children were fatter and healthier living ‘their own
accustomed life.’ In 1946 conditions at Mapoon were described as
‘nauseating’; there were just 45 huts for 280 people.
By the early 1950s most of the church-run government institutions in the
north had operated for between 50 and 70 years, yet a medical specialist
reported that all mission diets (except for Doomadgee) were deficient,
and housing universally deplorable, with families and animals commonly
sleeping together on earthen floors. Huts were so decrepit they were
officially condemned, food shortages and contaminated water were the
norm, especially at Aurukun where people were eating the cash crop of
coconuts to survive. Speaking of Aboriginal institutions generally, a
visiting doctor said2
the habitual overcrowding was to be condemned. Noting that often four
or more people shared a bed he said it was miraculous that babies and
toddlers survived infancy and childhood, especially given the noxious
standard of nutrition. In fact the two missions of Aurukun and Mapoon
held in trust nearly $30,500 from levies from workers’ earnings, but the
department refused to permit its use, except for development.
It is clear from documentary evidence that government
controls have had a devastating impact on family life. Since 1915 there
had been an accelerated uptake of women and children into government
control on missions and settlements, often because husbands and fathers
were absent at (contracted) work; because of pregnancy, illness or
hunger; or because, due to sex and age, they were considered at risk
from assault. Extended family networks or welfare support at the point
of need, as for struggling white families, were not considered.
Separated from local families and country, children and women were
separated again, and from each other, in the dormitories divided by age
and sex. Lockhart River did not operate this detention facility, and
for a period in the late 1950s neither did Mapoon.
By the 1950s several generations of indigenous people had been ‘through’
the dormitory system. For all of their history these were notoriously,
sometimes fatally, deprived institutions – dilapidated, pathologically
overcrowded, inmates underfed, poorly clothed, over-disciplined, barely
resourced. For decades the department accumulated evidence that
children’s development was stunted by lack of stimulation and lack of
purpose. In the mid-1940s a State Health officer3
deplored the internment of girls without useful pursuits ‘to occupy
their time and minds’, apart from cooking, sewing, cleaning and
babysitting for other inmates or working in white staff houses. Allowed
only occasional visits to families, there was little or no experience of
family bonding, family socialisation, family responsibilities; boys were
simply evicted from the age of 14 ‘to live with anybody who will have
them’. ‘The system is wrong’, he reported, ‘and responsibility must be
accepted [by the state] if these children become criminals.’
Tuberculosis specialist Dr F M Macken also abhorred the social
perversity of the system:4
‘…the dormitory system is a thoroughly pernicious one, which must be
broken down if these coloured women are to become properly adjusted to
normal life. It is completely futile and artificial and unnatural to
enclose, or rather encage, women, and to expect any sort of normal
psychological balance on their release.’
This institutionalisation was the only preparation available, from
generation to generation, for girls who moved from the dormitories into
mission communities through marriage. Marriages had to be sanctioned by
superintendents and these unions were often arranged by them. On many
communities the dormitory system still operated in the 1970s.
These girls and boys who were institutionally excluded from normalising
family environments in their formative years had, as teenagers and
adults, to survive in social conditions which precluded the most basic
requirements of the domestic and familial normality which authorities
insisted they attain. Huts were rotting, dilapidated, not weatherproof,
lacking running water, sanitation, fridges, stoves, cupboards, beds,
tables and chairs. Rundown shacks with leaking roofs and without
ceilings or bathrooms often averaged over eight occupants, and were
serviced by open, overflowing drains. In any other situation these were
precisely the conditions which would have prompted state intervention to
remove children ‘for their own good’.
So
deplorable was the sanitation, and so inadequate and frequently unsafe
for consumption was drinking water, that all Aboriginal reserves during
most of the twentieth century were subject to appalling levels of
parasitic infestation, gastroenteritis, skin infections and diseases of
malnutrition. Even after 50 years, community ‘hospital’ facilities were
commonly so inadequate and overcrowded that cross-infection, even to
maternity patients, was frequent. Qualified medical staff was so
uncommon and fatalities so entrenched, that families labelled these
places as places of death, and maintained their own medicinal routines.
Yet from the late 1940s it was a punishable offence to fail to send
children for medical attention, fail to report ‘any sickness in the home
or camp’, fail to report any disease or injury. And always, in these
institutional environments of abject destitution and neglect, there was
the fear of having your children taken from you and put in the
dormitory.
Successive reports acknowledged that mothers had no income with which to
purchase utensils and cleaning products, and their husbands’ wages were
under control of superintendents, subjected to multiple deductions by
both the state and the mission. Since 1942 the commonwealth had paid
child endowment for all except ‘nomadic’ mothers. This was intended as
a supplement to optimise conditions for mothers and children, but the
Queensland government intercepted these pensions, as they had done with
maternity allowances since 1912, passing only a fraction to mothers and
using the remainder to cover basic needs which were government
liabilities. This pension, which for all other Australian parents was
a supplement to other income, became a substitute for state funding: the
government simply slashed its annual grant to missions by an equivalent
amount, reducing state input on some missions to only one-tenth of child
endowment revenue, insufficient to cover basic rations and clothing
needs for mission dependents.5
Until the end of the 1960s, many community residents had no access to
their savings nor cash for purchases. They were commonly given vouchers
to use at community stores – until they were told their savings were
exhausted, and then it was onto rations. Even before aged, widows and
invalid pensions were made available to Aboriginal people in the early
1960s the government was anticipating how they could be ‘diverted to
revenue’,6
again planning to simply reduce state operational funding by an
equivalent amount. The full pension of around $83 (today) was several
times greater than the current ‘wage’, so it was planned to pass on only
around 12%, although people from the Presbyterian missions of Mapoon and
Weipa demanded, and eventually received, 33%.
In this
context of intercepted benefits it is sobering to read that when
federally-funded Queensland Institute of Medical Research (QIMR)
personnel made a detailed survey in 19697
of infant mortality on Aboriginal communities, they recorded death rates
six times greater than for the rest of the state. Malnutrition was
identified as the key factor in the deaths of 85% of infants under 4 and
50% of all children between 6 months and 3 years; it underlay chronic
ear and chest infections, diminished antibody response, and impaired
school and employment performances. Half the deaths of neonates, and
47% of all child deaths between 1 and 16 years, resulted from
gastroenteritis and/or pneumonia. It was found that many mothers had no
knowledge and few means of properly feeding young children; indeed
malnutrition suffered by mothers was identified as a prime factor which
‘had surely contributed towards the deaths of children before 3 months
of age and the lower number of mothers able to breast feed their
babies.’
Further surveys in the mid-1970s confirmed the link between increasing
fatalities and defective social indices: gastroenteritis, pneumonia,
malnutrition and diarrhoea are illnesses of deprivation and defective
environments. Aurukun at that time had only one water tap to each 10
dwellings, and only 6 showers and 1 laundry for 650 people who were
housed in huts so small and derelict it was said they should be
burned. It was clear, as medical inspectors reported,8
that the massive infection loads on the communities ‘resulted from
substandard living conditions’; they specified a base requirement of no
overcrowding, better water reticulation, and proper housing with
separate bathroom, kitchen and toilet facilities. These remain largely
unattainable on communities today.
The government’s own officials on the communities recognised that the
extreme social deficiencies undercut political rhetoric towards
‘assimilation’ and made it ‘nearly impossible’ for children to develop
to take their rightful place as citizens anywhere in Australia. Although
parents made full use of medical options, extreme poverty underlay
continual worm infestation despite regular treatment; homes were
infested with vermin and cockroaches which crawled over food and into
the ears of sleeping infants. Children were sent to school but the
illnesses of poverty ‘to a large extent wasted’ their education:
continual ear infections caused deafness and lost school time; school
time was lost when parents took kids to outpatients or hospital
treatment for scabies, school sores and other infections, as well as for
malnutrition; school time was lost during regular clinic treatments for
worms and head lice. The cost to child health and psychology was
horrifying:9
‘you
have a child that is continually being smothered with Benzyl Benzoate,
Gentian Violet or numerous other ointments, stuffed with tablets of
various kinds, injected with anti-biotics, continually nauseated with
worm control syrup and inhaling the fumes of the hydro-carbon DDT which
must remain in their hair for hours to control head lice…how can we
expect them to learn their school work at the same rate as white
children and grow into worthwhile citizens?’
Children were in fact paying the price of life in a poverty-stricken
environment. The 15 most deprived homes on one community housed 210
adults and children (half with over 14 people); none had a hot water
system (without which, noted the hygiene officer ‘a reasonable
hygiene standard cannot be obtained’ – his emphasis). ‘Can one
eat a meal either standing up or sitting on the floor, not for one meal
a day but every day…and still develop satisfactorily?’, he asked.
While the rations system had entrenched poverty and deadened employment
initiative on the communities, the introduction of starvation wages from
1968 dramatically altered community dynamics at the root – it forced the
reconfiguration of the social fabric. As individuals and families
weighed their options to maximise financial access the carefully
nurtured ideal of the nuclear family was exploded, as one 1979 report
reveals.10
A working husband, wife and 5 children depended on the ‘wage’ of $85 a
week, while an unemployed husband, with wife and between 2 and 7
children on supporting parents benefit received between $104 and $141 a
week. A single unemployed male with a single unemployed partner each
brought in benefits of $51.45, as did unmarried couples who did not live
together openly. Separated mothers received $98 a week plus a share of
their partner’s income, either the dole or the wage. Either way,
concluded the liaison officer, women with children were better off
financially without an obvious male partner, and younger single mothers
were better off financially not getting married at all.
The effects of these financial dynamics devastated family cohesion. As
the report observed, most community households had no male figurehead,
and middle-aged men were evicted with no home to go to, moving from
relative to relative, a large floating population of aimless and
rootless individuals, easy prey to alcohol and violence. The cost to
the men? ‘Loss of dignity, purpose in life, companionship, home life, a
figure of ridicule whether working or unemployed, resulting in abuse of
alcohol, loss of ambition and total lack of responsibility.’ While most
women’s conditions had improved, especially for older women who had
gained confidence, there was a loss of companionship and for some a loss
of dignity in rejecting husbands in order to protect their pensions.
Many younger women, without a domestic base, had become promiscuous and
irresponsible.
For the children, the break-up of the family unit was devastating: for
many, father figures were no longer at home, young mothers were out
drinking, older women were visiting for companionship. Children who had
previously enjoyed a multiplicity of ‘mothers’, ‘aunts’ and ‘uncles’ now
lost this consistent network of carers. Where previously they had
roamed freely and safely on the communities, now their environments –
both domestic and outdoors – were increasingly fraught with danger.
Bereft of safe havens many roamed the streets till late at night. The
result? ‘…absenteeism from school, aggravated by a future of
unemployment, early pregnancies by young girls seeking a stable
relationship, someone to love them, and abuse of alcohol at all levels
as a substitute for things lacking in their lives.’
But one can argue it is not simply easy welfare money that was
destructive to the Aboriginal communities. With regard to income, the
destruction occurred because the single-waged family unit was a less
logical option than the fragmented welfare opportunities. If we
extrapolate to the general community the crux is the (deliberate and
intentional) depreciation of the community wage compared to welfare
benefits. If the economic benefit had attached to the wage-earning
parent or parents, then the nuclear household becomes the optimum
financial unit. (And I’ll be looking more closely at CDEP later in the
paper.)
To manage a household of several generations numbering more than 20
persons in a small three-bedroomed house is to wage a losing battle
against order and dirt. There is no room for chairs and beds;
mattresses on the floor are shared by several people and serve for
bedding, seating and dining. Even where space and income allows it,
some communities have no retail access to bed bases and lounges.
Residents on communities seek ways to overcome this systemic
deprivation. A recent trial of family income management at Aurukun
enabled several families to group together to finance larger items of
furniture and white goods.
Undermanned, under-resourced and financially deprived communities are
the legacy of 80 years of monopoly management. This was the inheritance
of councils as they took over local government functions in the late
1980s. The overcrowding and multiple-family tenancy of today is a
direct result of funding and policy decisions implemented over many
decades which have entrenched poverty and an insufficiency of
dwellings. Social mobility and extended family living are not indices
of a cultural preference for multi-generational domesticity; a study in
200111
revealed families would prefer separate ‘nuclear’ homes. Overcrowding
increases household conflict and the greater wear and tear on homes
increases maintenance costs which in turn reduces funding available for
house construction. It impacts on children’s school attendance and
impedes their ability for home study and scholarly progress; this in
turn militates against access to the formal labour market.
Rural living
In 1901 the government assumed the power to manage the property of all
Aborigines under its control, including possession, retention, sale or
disposal of that property. Under new regulations brought down in 1919
all wages of rural workers went directly to government control, while
community workers remained unpaid. Wages in the pastoral industry, the
foremost employer of Aboriginal labour, were pegged at two-thirds the
white rate, and remained so into the late 1960s. The wages of every
worker were now paid directly to the local protector or superintendent.
Minimum conditions were set for Aboriginal employees although for the
next 50 years most pastoral stations were never inspected to ensure
their enforcement. The norm was to work extreme hours, surviving on
poor-grade food, sleeping in open-sided lean-tos and lacking clean water
and basic sanitation. Physical abuse and sexual assault of both boys
and girls was common. To complain to the protector commonly brought
allegations of lying, deviousness or the ‘cheekiness’ which routinely
resulted in being ‘taught a lesson’. And always there was the threat of
being deported to a government reserve, separated forever from family
and country.
Because of entrenched frauds by police protectors, the government
centralised all savings in Brisbane in 1933.12
By this time Aboriginal wealth in government control amounted to over
$15 million (today), yet no family would have dreamed of this wealth as
they struggled in abject poverty, denied control of their own accounts
or even knowledge of their bank balances. Families had to go cap in
hand to local protectors to request permission to make small
withdrawals, and were frequently rejected.
People were well aware they were working for a pittance. Although
‘pocket money’ was supposed to be paid during the work period, many
people today remember they were never given cash, just tobacco, matches
and perhaps some old clothes. In the 1940s the Coen protector described
the system as ‘farcical’, effectively a subsidy for employers. Right
through until the late 1960s the department was aware of widespread
doctoring of pocket money books by employers, yet did nothing to change
the system. Not even the base pay rate – set in 1919 at 66% the white
wage – was secure, the department failing to adjust for award increases
in every year from 1931-1951: in 1949, for instance, contracted workers
were paid only 31% of the white wage. This massive failure to secure
endorsed wage rates stripped millions of dollars from Aboriginal
earnings, and directly impacted on the likelihood of receiving
permission to make purchases from private savings.
Massive separate trust funds were built from deductions from private
savings, deductions which workers neither knew nor consented to.
Successive internal inquiries reveal how readily these trust monies were
misused to cover government costs, while legitimate disbursement – to
the unemployment fund or to the deceased estates fund – was often
grossly deficient. On many occasions money was simply taken out of
accounts of those who lived on rural reserves, to cover costs of
fencing, shelter and amenities – all legitimate government expenses.
Government management of Aboriginal savings was endemically
incompetent. Decade after decade evidence of fraud and negligence
mounted, from as early as 1904 when thumbprints were initiated to reduce
theft by both employers and police protectors, to the mid-1960s when
auditors re-iterated that no checks had ever been implemented to ensure
Aboriginal wages were either accurately paid or securely banked. Public
service inspectors in 193213
described frauds as both common and entrenched, despite third-party
‘witnesses’. And they were not the last to suggest that only Aboriginal
access to private accounts would stem illegalities; non-disclosure, they
said, left these accounts more vulnerable to fraud than any other
government accounts. Yet the government refused to give workers this
basic right.
It was only after the 1971 Aborigines Act that people could
request termination of official management of their property. Only then
could they finally access their private savings and control their own
property, barring objection from the director upheld by a magistrate as
to their competency to do so. No training was given in budgeting or
financial management; indeed many people found little was left in their
accounts despite decades of work. For the first time also, people could
not be arbitrarily transferred to and between reserves as a disciplinary
measure.
Only after gazettal of the 1972 regulations did Aboriginal workers
finally win equal wages and freedom of movement, still excepting of
course those deemed in need of ‘assistance’, a category which
automatically included all those who were based on reserves. ‘For the
first time’, reported the department’s Coen manager,14
‘men did not have to go to a station if they did not want to…if they
feel they have not been fairly treated, or have not been paid’. Workers
were no longer ‘owned’ by particular stations which frequently put them
off in slack times in breach of long term contracts, ‘to leave their men
simply sit in the reserve until they needed them’. Elderly family
members, and wives who had been compelled to work for free on the
stations (supposedly limited to 12 hours per week) could now also refuse
exploitation. As the Coen manager reported: ‘Pensioners are coming in
to sit down, this is hitting the stations, and most of the women will
not now go out as they never got pay only food.’ Pastoralists were
angry, he wrote: ‘there was a lot of local tension to put it very
mildly’.
Indeed the early 1970s was a period of massive upheaval for Aboriginal
pastoral workers. Many were laid off when award wages became mandatory,
others were displaced because of increasing mechanisation in the
industry, and the severe downturn due to international competition. For
many Aboriginal people in the north, this is remembered as the most
destructive in living memory.15
In the late 1970s a deal was done between the State and Federal
coalition governments to use bulk private welfare payments to fund local
government administration on two northern communities. It was
anticipated that diverting unemployment entitlements to the state
through CDEP (Community Development Employment Program) would mean most
people ‘would be retained in employment and would make a valid and
useful contribution by way of work for a cash return.’16
Initially the Queensland government opposed this option for all the
Aboriginal communities, primarily because it was the community councils
which received the bulk payment, decided the projects, and disbursed the
wages. When the remaining Aboriginal communities were accorded a degree
of self-management under Deeds of Grant in Trust (DOGITs) during the
late 1980s, councils were informed their local government liabilities
would be funded through CDEP, that is, bulk unemployment entitlements
dispensed through the federal department of Aboriginal Affairs.
Through CDEP employees could access only a portion of their unemployment
entitlement, never the whole, according to how many days they worked.
CDEP thus continues the discriminatory wages policy which has
characterised government controls for around 100 years. Aboriginal
workers are thereby denied legal wage rates, have no sustainable
jobs and no career paths; consequently there is little incentive in full
time work, attendance is often erratic and effort marginal.
Aboriginal families are trapped below the poverty line; work is
often rationed at less than the equivalent to the unemployment benefit
(the rate in 2001 was $11.38 per hour). Only from 1987 could
individuals choose to opt out of CDEP in favour of individual
entitlements, although surveys revealed few did so,17
and only after ATSIC took over the CDEP scheme in 1990 could wives of
low-income community workers also claim Family Allowance.
There is no doubt federal and state governments are profiting from this
entrenched deprivation: CDEP is a far cheaper option for the federal
government than full payment of social security, and even as the program
was introduced on all Aboriginal communities in the late 1980s the
federal government was expressing concern ‘that the CDEP is being used
to prop up State Government functions’.18
Indeed over 90% of CDEP employment is in public administration and
community services which are, in all non-indigenous communities, the
responsibilities of state and local governments. In some indigenous
communities up to 80% of CDEP funds, that is private pension
entitlements, are supporting mainstream municipal services such as town
and infrastructure maintenance.19
Courtesy of this unconscionable contrivance the majority of Aboriginal
community workers are paid less than their legal wage entitlement and
the majority of Aboriginal community families are forced to struggle on
less than the dole available to all non-indigenous families. Aboriginal
communities are deprived of the local government funding which supports
all remote non-indigenous communities, none of which fund their
municipal services through private pensions. Only on Aboriginal
communities is CDEP a substitution, rather than a supplement, for local
government requirements.
Community elders are concerned that the CDEP predication on labour force
numbers rather than occupational advancement is deskilling the workforce
and producing undisciplined and disinterested youth. CDEP tends to
quarantine people in mindless community maintenance, and parents despair
that such work does not encourage pride or responsibility in the young.
The funding pool is insufficient to cover a full workforce and women are
routinely excluded, many relegated to pension dependence and boredom
despite an eagerness to pursue paid labour.20
Indeed recent studies21
show household dependency on welfare payments is a recipe for precarious
domestic economies. The boom-to-bust cycle of the pension period
precludes the establishment of workable household budgets. For most
Aboriginal households budgetary choices are a matter of prioritising
between the material needs of children and the daily demand for food.
Surveys show that Aboriginal families spend proportionally more of their
incomes on staples such as meats, bread, cereal and sugar than does the
non-indigenous population, and less on dairy products, fruit and
vegetables. But income is so meagre that, after food purchases, few can
afford service provision. A major factor also is access and
availability; many remote communities are poorly serviced in terms of
fresh produce, there is no option to shop at cheaper stores or take
advantage of discount prices, transport is not widely available to
women, and the poorest households lack storage and refrigeration.
Sole parent families now account for over one-third of indigenous
families, twice the rate in the non-indigenous population.22
Incomes are proportionately less than that of other Australian sole
parent families, as are the gross incomes of households in which they
live. Like other income recipients, sole parents, predominately young
women, struggle to quarantine this cash from the general demands of
extended family, and the ‘humbugging’ of those who claim a cut of the
payment. Recent analysis suggests many sole parents are supporting a
far wider group than the pension is intended for, raising the very real
spectre of inter-generational poverty for children.
Recent research by the federal department of Family and Community
Services23
has confirmed that income support payments to indigenous families are
ineffectively delivered, in part because of the role of extended family
in child care, high residential mobility among children and differing
categorizations of ‘family’. Many older women care for grandchildren
without formal financial assistance; others will take and provide
long-term care for children from the community who seek food, a safe
sleeping place, protection and comfort. It is not unusual for younger
women in receipt of parenting allowances to continue receipt of the
pension although their children are cared for by others; for cultural or
personal reasons, however, many carers are disinclined to notify
Centrelink of their entitlement to the pension, instead carrying the
extra financial burden.
Analysts maintain that the most important factor in the poverty of
indigenous families and their children is the employment status of the
adults; poverty rates for families where there are no employed adults
are very high for both indigenous and non-indigenous families. They
conclude that low income is ‘a symptom of poverty rather than a
fundamental cause. The fundamental cause continues to be the lack of
meaningful employment.’
24
It is apparent that far too many indigenous families struggle in
welfare-based households and are further penalised by poor housing, high
rates of unemployment and consequent domestic poverty. These factors
have significant immediate and long term impacts on the capacity of
families to secure the wellbeing of their children.
1
Presbyterian
Archives, Correspondence Heathen Missions, 14.12.25.
2 Queensland
State Archives (QSA) TR254 4D/20 14.3.47.
3 QSA TR254
3D/8 13.7.45.
4 QSA TR254
3D/23 30.3.50.
5 Presbyterian
Archives, Mission Correspondence, 27.1.42.
6 QSA TR254
1A/467 April 1959, memo.
7 QIMR
Annual Report, 1970, ‘Report on Health of Aboriginal
Children on Queensland Settlements and Missions, 1967-1969’.
9 QSA TR254
15D/12 10.1.74.
10 DAIA
01-084-029 5.7.79, ‘A Study of the Effect of Social Change
on an Aboriginal Community’, written by C Farren.
11 Henry, R, and
Daly, A., ‘Indigenous families and the welfare system: The
Kuranda community case study, Stage Two’, Centre for Aboriginal
Economic Policy Research (CAEPR) Discussion Paper, No 216/2001.
13 QSA A/58856
9.11.32, Report on the Inspector of the Office of the Chief
Protector of Aboriginals.
14 QSA TR254
9L/57 1.5.74.
15 Sutton, P,
‘The Politics of Suffering: Indigenous Policy in Australia
since the Seventies’, proposed paper for
Anthropological Forum, 11:2, November 2001.
16 DAIA
01-007-006 22.3.79.
17 Sanders, W,
‘The rise and rise of the CDEP scheme: an Aboriginal ‘workfare’
program in times of persistent unemployment’, CAEPR
Discussion Paper, No 54/1993:7.
18 DAIA
00007-006 6.8.1986.
19 Altman, J C
and Sanders W, ‘The CDEP scheme: administrative and policy
issues’, CAEPR Discussion Paper, No 5/1991:9.
20 Deloitte
Touche Tohmatsu, No Reverse Gear: A National Review of the
Community Development Employment Projects Scheme, Report to
ATSIC, May 1993:52.
21 Finlayson,
J.D. & Auld A.J., ‘Shoe or stew? Balancing wants and needs in
indigenous households: a study of appropriate income support
payments and policies for families’, CAEPR Discussion Paper, No
182/1999.
22 Daly, A. E. &
Smith, D. E., ‘Indigenous sole-parent families: invisible and
disadvantaged’, CAEPR Discussion Paper, No 134/1997.
23 Finlayson &
Auld, op cit.
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