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‘Bashing women not terrible in Aboriginal law’, ‘Remote communities in total collapse’, ‘Aboriginal courts fail to deter violent offenders’, ‘Aboriginal children being exposed to sexual abuse and violence’: Gary Johns’ book is a must read for everyone dismayed by these headlines. It is a commonsense introduction to the misery that has been created by government policies on remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander lands. Johns introduces an ATSIs abbreviation for ‘Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders’ to substitute for ‘indigenous’, who surely are all those born in Australia. The Aboriginal industry will no doubt object, but following Johns’ lead, the abbreviation is used here. Johns notes that in capital cities and regional towns more than 330,000 ATSIs work and another 140,000 are welfare dependent, side by side with other Australians. Together they account for more than 85 per cent of the ATSI population. Only 75,000 ATSIs live in the remote settlements that are the focus of Johns’ book. A giant scam has pretended to transfer 20 per cent of Australia to ATSI ‘control and ownership’. But individual landowners have not been identified, so that all land transfers have been to undefined communal bodies. ATSI landowners have also been deprived of the private property rights that other Australians enjoy along with communal property rights such as roads, schools and parks. The nominally ATSI lands are therefore unusable. The ATSIs living on them have been condemned ‘to a living hell’. Johns leaves behind the ‘gappery’ that claims that there is a mere 10 to 12 years difference between the expectation of life between ATSIs and other Australians. The reality is that working ATSIs have a similar expectation of life to other Australians, are catching up in education and occupational status and have similar home ownership. The real gap is between mainstream working Australians and those in remote settlements where health is appalling and lives are 20 to 30 years shorter. Remote settlements’ literacy has dropped far below that of their missionary-educated grandparents. Remote ATSI unemployment is almost universal even though labour is in acutely short supply in remote Australia. Johns demonstrates that the ‘dreaming’ of white men seduced by a romance of ‘each being equally poor’ led to policies responsible for the extreme dysfunction of remote settlements. These white dreamers created an apartheid world because they saw ATSIs as essentially different from other Australians. Unlike South Africa, Australia’s apartheid was designed by the left. Johns shows that the Office of the Registrar of Indigenous Corporations (ORIC) has deprived ATSIs of the protection of regulation by the Australian Securities and Investment Commission, leading to colossal losses and waste of private and public funding. The book provides a guide to misleading reports (including Deaths in Custody and Separation of ATSI Children) that culminated in Prime Minister Rudd’s ‘exercise in empty moralizing’ apology. Reforms needed to end the blight in remote settlements were stalled. In a wide-ranging discussion of ATSI culture Johns identifies aspects, such as polygamy, that are not relevant to modern society. Noel Pearson has also pointed out that new traits were created by welfare dependence. In addition, much of current remote dysfunction is the result of communalism. The drab community stores behind iron bars, drunks lying in the street and domestic violence have the feel of communist Omsk without the snow. Culture is in any case not a principal social determinant. Japan, France and many other countries have retained distinct cultures while adopting modern, dominantly private sector economies. These are Noel Pearson’s vision for remote communities. Johns concludes with a review of the ‘pretend’ economy of 26 remote townships designated for ‘development’. He reviews the failure of the CDEP (Community Development Employment Projects) ‘sit-down-money’, but greatly underestimates the weakness of the township programs. Bob Beadman, the Northern Territory Coordinator General for Remote Services, notes in his six-monthly reports that these townships continue to be sad slums. The absence of private property rights is the insurmountable barrier to development. The Commonwealth has tried to take back control of ATSI townships through long-term head leases by its Office of Township Leasing, but despite the large bribes on offer, the uptake has been limited. The sub-leases under this arrangement that provide titles for private houses are far less advantageous than the Australian Capital Territory 99-year leases available to Canberra’s public servants. Only 16 have been issued in three years. For the 99 per cent of ATSI lands outside townships, no solutions are offered. It remains to be seen whether other traditional landowners now applying for individual long-term leases will be treated similarly to Australian Capital Territory residents. Being denied private property rights on their own land, ATSIs miss out on the substantial financial benefits of first homeowners’ grants and capital gains exemption on a home. These are not the only remnants of apartheid. A different census form, denying privacy and asking different questions in a different order, has been used for ATSIs in remote communities on the grounds that they were illiterate. Yet the latest immigrants not literate in English received the mainstream form. Dogs attack people in remote settlements with impunity. ATSI drunks are served in separate bars in pubs that throw out non-ATSIs showing signs of inebriation. Labour market mutual obligation rules are not applied to ATSIs on ‘Newstart’ unemployment benefits; they are not penalised when they do not take up jobs or enroll in remedial literacy classes. Johns shows that when long years of discrimination against ATSIs were replaced by positive discrimination, the unintended consequences were even more disastrous. The government strategy that has never been tried is to treat ATSIs exactly like other Australians. Decent education, private property rights, doing away with excessive welfare, policing existing laws and removing all the other vestiges of apartheid — all this would transform remote settlements.

Low down on the ladder Helen Hughes | The Spectator

I like reading the Autralian edition of the Spectator, mainly because even the prissiest of arts reviews can usually be relied upon to contain a few shits and wanks.

This one fails in that respect but is interesting in others. Sure, I know everything from the Spectator comes with a hefty hardline libertarian bias, but you can't deny the fact that all the bajillions of $$$ we have spent on *helping the ethnics* hasn't actually helped them.

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