Government supresses Bath report on Aboriginal kids
The issue of Aboriginal child welfare is always going to be a difficult one.
On one side of the fence you have the traditionalists. People who place Aboriginal heritage above all else, including the welfare of the child in question.
On the other are people like me who, and you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see it, think that the system is horribly broken. Amongst a decrepid sea of apologist policy, castrated government departments and a bunch of old tribal members blindingly out of touch with reality stands the current situation with Aboriginal children.
In this environment it’s easy to see why for two years the Northern Territory government would hide a damning report of a truly failed policy.
The Bath report was suppressed for two years presumably because it didn’t fit in with the Australian government’s apologist ‘everything is going ok’ public image.
Sure Kevin Rudd got up and said sorry but all that achieved was a bunch of old Aboriginals whinging about the lack of monetary compensation that was forthcoming afterwards. From the rest of us then came the annoyance that the government apology was merely symbolic and failed to address any of the current issues facing this troubled community.
With everyone running around too scared to intervene or remove Aboriginal children from abusive parents and relatives the current climate these kids live in appears to have been swept under the carpet.
Amongst other things the Bath report found that;
Aboriginal children were at particular risk, often consigned to carers who lived in violent or abusive homes in remote communities where standard case reviews rarely happened.
Barely any Aboriginal carers underwent a registration process, and the Government’s bureaucrats warned it that a “sense of complacency” governed the assessment, review and management of cases of children placed in the care of a relative.
Dr Bath found the Aboriginal child placement principle – which states that Aboriginal children should be placed with a relative or other Aboriginal carers if possible – sometimes took precedence over child safety, and that the standards applied to foster carers were followed with much greater rigour than with relative carers.
So what did the knuckleheads in power do?
They hid it for two years and pretended everything was fine.
I’m not for a second going to suggest throwing money at the situation is going to fix it. But can somebody in power please grow a pair and start the ball rolling on what needs to be done?
If anyone else in Australian society abuses children directly or is charged with their care and is clearly not fit there are penalties put in place. If the parents of Aboriginal kids are deadbeats and their relatives are no better then the culture itself has failed them and it’s time to go.
Mind you if there’s suitable Aboriginal carers in the area willing to take the child/children in then I don’t see why this can’t happen.
What we have here is a predictable chain of inaction that will ultimately lead us down the path of a whole new generation of Aboriginals either growing up into adults and perpetuating the cycle of abuse, or worse still getting out of their childhood hell holes and wondering why nobody did anything to help them.
The problem is that by then it’s too late. A whole new generation of Aboriginals will feel cut off and failed by the system that governs the rest of us.
Ironically the most vocal opponents of such change are the people supposed to be in favour of Aboriginal welfare and rights.
Aboriginal or otherwise child abuse is child abuse and cultural tradition should never take precedence over the law of the land. Australia doesn’t tolerate honour killings, polygamy or the random violence that occurs in other war torn countries, so why are we as a society and government so continually lenient towards Aboriginal offenders?
Call me racist or whatever else you want but all I know is that the experience some Aboriginal children go through would never be allowed for children in greater Australian society.
Yet by calling for this equality somehow I’m the racist.
If I make the call for equality now in the best interest of Aboriginal children, at least in ten or fifteen years time I can say I wasn’t sitting around with my thumbs up my arse making cultural excuses for Aboriginal child abusers.
February 10th, 2010 at 10:59 pm Smithee(Quote)
I believe the reason virtually every campaign and program has completely failed is that the modern day policy insists you begin with the premise that Aboriginals are in all intellectual ways equal to mainstream society. But they’re not. Thousands of years of selective breeding for a nomadic lifestyle has – I believe – wired their brains in different ways.
Not inferior, just different. They are simply not capable of absorbing the type of information we routinely require for most jobs in the ways we usually do. Reading and mathematics seem especially difficult for them; but on the otherhand they generally have extraordinarily good memories and are capable of reciting long stories verbatim.
Combine that with a completely different cultural approach to such things as timetables and work obligations and you have a guaranteed epic FAIL in just about anything you want to try.
For example, in my time in the NT I was good mates with a primary teacher who worked waaaay waaaay out. His class included an Aboriginal teacher’s aide. This was a respected older member of the local community who was there to provide a cultural “bridge” from the whitefella teacher to the young Aboriginies, and to impart traditional values and knowledge.
On those days she bothered to turn up she would curl up at the back of the room and sleep.
But she always got paid every week as a teacher’s aide and was repeatedly congratulated as a wonderful example of how things should be done.
My teacher mate couldn’t say anything – certainly not the truth – because that’s never palatable, especially to southerners who simply have no idea how things really are and have almost certainly NEVER me a full blood Aboriginal. And teachers and police who speak too loudly in the NT never work in the Territory again. Simple.
One day this teacher’s aide was told the average annual wage of a primary teacher in the Territory and she squealed !
For two years she’d been flattered and congratulated and told what a great contribution she was making, and so she now wanted at least equal pay to the whitefella.
And to our dear southern city bleeding hearts I’m sure that sounds like a terrible injustice, and certainly a case of lingering racism that this poor elder should have NOT received equal pay.
Bad, bad, racist whitey. But was anyone who actually knew ever going to spoil the little illusion and tell the truth ? Nope. The school admin is not going to say anything; the program administrators want to report a success, and the Aboriginal wasn’t stupid either – she knew how to get excellent money for sleeping at school one or two days a week.
That program was judged an outstanding success.
February 12th, 2010 at 1:49 am ozsoapbox(Quote)
As you acknowledge, unless you’re talking in the context of cultural differences, saying this is instantly going to get you labelled a racist.
I’m surprised more people don’t speak up about the working conditions or social problems that are happening out there. Why do we need to rely on government reports like this to shed light on the situation?
Is nobody who lives there willing to out the problems themselves or is doing so not looked upon favourably by the rest of the community.
February 13th, 2010 at 5:17 pm Carla(Quote)
Hi Oz,
Great to see you also believe in the welfare of every child, regardless of their background – race, culture, socioeconomic status etc.
I have worked in child protection for a number of years and have spent some time in Alice Springs and to be brutally honest, the living conditions for Indigenous people in the town camps are appalling. They are third world and I was horrified to see that people live like that in Australia and not only does the Government know it happens, but they allow it to happen.
Without going into gory details, I witnessed a lot of things during my short time in Alice Springs that were very sad and left me feeling disillusioned.
However, having worked in a number of states in child protection, I can also say the problem isn’t exclusive to Aboriginal communities. The Government MUST inject more funding into these systems and actually move to a national legislation and Federal Department for the investigation of child abuse, rather than the current division between the states.
Children fall through the gaps and I agree, as a society we should not stand there and let it happen. Unfortunately, K.Rudd is all talk and it seems all his rabbiting on about a national framework for child protection was just about the usual aim of politicians – winning votes.
Shame.
February 14th, 2010 at 12:38 am ozsoapbox(Quote)
Does anyone know anybody who’s gone and had a look at these communities and come back with a positive view of the government policy in place?
February 14th, 2010 at 7:49 am Douglas(Quote)
More Funding ?????? billions , and billions have been given to help them , God knows where it all ends up, they have been living in so called squalor for years and years , they blow there money , its not managed properly , but God forbid it is brought up . for fear of being labelled , racist etc etc etc
February 15th, 2010 at 8:23 pm Smithee(Quote)
*MORE* money !!! You’ve got to be kidding. One of the biggest problems is that there’s so much money splashed around for doing absolutely nothing. The classic “sitdown money” as it’s called in the Territory.
A relative helps build and repair housing in the Territory. You can place disadvantaged Aboriginal families in a NEW house and within six months the place will be absolutely trashed.
The some southern do-gooder or academic will come along and weep at the shocking conditions Aboriginals are forced to endure. “More money for housing” will be shout. But that will be utterly and completely pointless as everyone in the NT knows.
Aboriginies don’t live in standard western nuclear families and they don’t have the same attitude to appliances, upkeep and cleaning that mainstream Australia does. Nor do they have the same attitude to work. Most Aboriginies I’ve met don’t want a job and can’t see the value of having one.
Again this is a problem where the politically correct dogma insists that everyone be treated as if they think and act in the same way when clearly they don’t.
March 23rd, 2010 at 12:41 am Carla(Quote)
You missed my point. I stated:
“The Government MUST inject more funding into these systems and actually move to a national legislation and Federal Department for the investigation of child abuse, rather than the current division between the states.”
Note where I said the funding should go – to national child protection for all children. Not just being thrown at people with no rhyme or reason and actually worsening the problem.
Sad to see people just attack you before putting thought into what you wrote and responding. Have you worked in these places? Please come back and comment on my experience when you have,
March 23rd, 2010 at 12:42 am Carla(Quote)
Might also do you some good to learn about the Stolen GenerationS, note plural, and the impact on trauma on people regardless of race or background.
I am not saying there are no problems here, quite on the contrary. However, regardless of what social issue the Govt/society deals with at any one time, compassion should never be absent.
March 26th, 2010 at
[...] government knows nothing about it either. A few years back now the Bath report was commissioned and found that Aboriginal children were at particular risk, often consigned to carers who lived in violent or [...]