Posted on 06/21/2006 6:16:54 PM PDT by blam
Call to put whites back in charge of 'unhealthy' Aborigines
By Mark Chipperfield in Sydney
(Filed: 22/06/2006)
A senior minister yesterday recommended installing white administrators in some of Australia's more troubled Aboriginal communities, re-igniting argument about a problem that has divided the country for decades.
Tony Abbott, the health minister, said the 500,000-strong indigenous population was falling so far behind the mainstream community that only a return to the "paternalistic" government policies of the 1950s would save them.
"Paternalism based on competence rather than race is unavoidable if these places are to be well run," he said.
Mr Abbott's speech was condemned by Aboriginal leaders, welfare workers and the Labour opposition.
They accuse him of wanting to return to the racist policies of the past - when half-caste aboriginal children were forcibly removed from their parents and indigenous people were denied the right to vote.
Releasing a new report into the nation's health, Mr Abbott said the system of self-governing Aboriginal communities created "appalling living conditions" where problems such as petrol-sniffing, domestic violence and child sexual abuse were rife.
"Having rejected the paternalism of the past, we now insist on forms of self-management for Aboriginal people that would be totally unworkable even in places where people are much more used to them," he said.
The report said Aboriginal health was declining at a time when that of the rest of community was markedly improving. Death rates for indigenous infants are three times higher than for the general population.
Mr Abbot's audacious plan proposes giving administrators wide-ranging powers to organise basic services such as water, transport and sewerage - and reverse what he calls the pervading "culture of directionlessness" in remote Aboriginal settlements.
"The challenge is to go beyond acknowledging that a decades-old policy has largely failed and to build a workable government structure against the pressure of vested interests and the inevitable cries of racism."
Chris Evans, the opposition indigenous affairs spokesman, said: "What we know of 200 years of Australian history is that paternalism didn't work. Paternalism is what saw the black children taken away from their parents.
"I think Aboriginal people would be very concerned that we're going to have another experiment enacted upon them by the government."
But the fiercest criticism came from Julia Gillard, Labour's health spokesman.
She said it was not Mr Abbott's place to lecture Aborigines on the state of their health: "Tony Abbott... should be taking responsibility for the fact that after 10 long years of the [John] Howard government we haven't made any difference to the huge gap in life expectancy between indigenous Australians and other Australians."
Most of Mr Abbott's colleagues said they were uncomfortable with the term "paternalism" but agreed that urgent government intervention was needed before life in aboriginal communities improves.
Some type of a similar plan should be devised in our nation to protect leftist socialists (and the rest of us) from themselves.
One is "Rabbit-Proof Fence" with Kenneth Branagh. The other is "The Fringe Dwellers", directed by Bruce Bearsford shortly after he did "Breaker Morant".
I can give them some good advice. they could give them affirmative action jobs. Lower standards for hiring, minirity contracts, minority small business loans and spend milions integrating their schools and lowering educational expectations.
If all else fails teach them to play basketball and give away college scholarships.
It works for us.
Biggest catastrophe for Aboriginals was when they dropped the "paternalistic" policy of forbidding drinking in their towns.
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