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15
July 2007
Australian
Welfare Reform
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 Last
year, Dr Sue Gordon, West Australia’s first Aboriginal
Magistrate and Chair of the National Indigenous Council, gave
a speech at a child abuse conference in Wellington. In her
speech she highlighted some of the appalling statistics
relating to the abuse of Aboriginal children. These included
the fact that in
2004-05, 4,887 Indigenous
children under the age of 17 were abused, a rate 3.6
times higher than
non-Indigenous Australians. Indigenous children are also six
times more likely to
be on care and protection orders than other Australian
children.
Dr
Gordon said, “While this is not a new or emerging problem,
for too long silence has surrounded the prevalence of abuse
and neglect that Indigenous children are subjected to, often
under the false assumption that violence is culturally
ingrained in our Indigenous heritage. In order to protect our
children, it is vital that we bring this issue into the open
and ask the hard questions”.
These
are also hard questions for New Zealand. Our statistics show
that the rate of abuse of Maori children has grown rapidly
over the last few years to the point where it is now double
that of non-Maori. With Maori comprising just 24% of the
children under the age of 17, these figures mean that Maori
children are six times
more likely to be abused than non-Maori.
Maori
children are also six times more likely to be fatally abused than non-Maori, according
to a report produced by the Department of Child Youth and
Family last year. (To read the report, click
here>>>)
In
her speech, Dr Gordon asked, “Why are Indigenous children at
greater risk of becoming victims of child abuse than other
Australian children? Why have we put our children at risk and
allowed this to become an epidemic in our communities?”
These
are very important questions for us to answer. Why is it that
Maori children have become so much more vulnerable to abuse
than non-Maori?
The
CYF report sheds some light on this by identifying the
significant danger to children of living in non-traditional
families. “Children living in households with an adult
unrelated to them were almost 50 times as likely to die of an
inflicted injury as children living in households with two
biological parents. Parents who are co-habiting are more
likely to commit child homicide than married parents”.
The
report explains, “Māori children are more exposed to
the risk of fatal child maltreatment associated with having a
stepparent, as Māori children are twice as likely as New
Zealand European and other children to be raised in a blended
family”.
The
report highlights a number of other key factors that seriously
exacerbate the risks of abuse for Maori children. These
include sole parenthood, being a teenage parent, low
educational attainment, benefit dependency, chronic alcohol
and drug abuse, and violence.
Many
of these are also factors which plague Aboriginal communities.
In an article in the
Australian, “Vale hope in outback hellhole”, Noel Pearson,
the director of the Cape York Institute for Policy and
Leadership, describes life in an Aboriginal community:
“It
was after 2am and I could hear loud music booming from several
stereos in various parts of what I would have called a village
in my youth, but which more accurately answers to the
description of an outback ghetto today.
“The
music emanated from houses known as party houses, where
numbers of men and women congregate to binge drink, share
marijuana, often out of what are called bucket bongs,
laughing, shouting, singing and dancing and seeking sexual
partners - consensual and otherwise. By midnight the bonhomie
of the early evening descends into tension, as various bingers
develop dark moods, vent anger, resentment and suspicions at
those to whom they earlier professed love”.
He
goes on to explain:
“This
Friday night was the third night in a row of parties,
beginning on Wednesday evening following the receipt of
Benefit payments, which continued at a lower gear over the
next day and got back into top gear on Thursday night
following the receipt of work-for-the-dole payments. As I
drove around the streets at 3am, I passed by drunks stumbling
from one party house to another. I passed groups of young
teenage girls walking around or sitting on the kerbside. For
too many of them, sexual activity begins young at Hope Vale,
very young. Who knows the circumstances of their first
experience, but the incidences of abuse that come to light are
only the tip of the iceberg of sexual assault, unlawful
intercourse with minors, and incest.” (To read the article click
here>>>)
Just
over a month ago Noel Pearson published a report “Hand Out
to Hand Up” in which he set out a plan of action to
eliminate the giving out of ‘unconditional’ welfare to
unemployed Aborigines. He believes that welfare money given
freely without any reciprocal obligations to use it in the way
it was intended - to feed the children, pay the rent and keep
the home and family functioning properly - is the root cause
of the crisis in Aboriginal communities. He has called
‘unconditional welfare’ a poison that fuels a cauldron of
booze, drugs, sex and gambling. His plan is to replace it with
welfare that is conditional on responsible behaviour: ensuring
children are not abused, that they attend school, that drug
and alcohol abuse are eliminated, and that the rent is paid
and the house maintained.
His
plan was that if a family breached the conditions of their
welfare contract, then a local agency of a new Families
Responsibility Commission would take over some - or all - of
their welfare budget and manage it for them. His report also
recommended that the unemployed be required to move around to
find work and that families be encouraged into home ownership.
(To read the report, click
here>>>)
Shortly
after Noel Pearson’s report was published, another, which
had been commissioned by the Northern Territory Government -
the Inquiry into the Protection of Aboriginal Children from
Sexual Abuse by Pat Anderson and Rex Wild QC - was released,
confirming the child abuse crisis in remote Aboriginal
communities. (To read the report, click
here>>>)
This
latest report became the catalyst for Prime Minister John
Howard to launch a national emergency response to protect
Aboriginal children in the Northern Territory. At the core of the changes being
introduced is the replacement of unconditional welfare for
dysfunctional families.
Professor
Peter Saunders, social research director at the Centre for
Independent Studies and this week’s NZCPR Guest Commentator,
in his article “Conditional welfare makes sense”, puts it
this way:
“The
plan is that any parent who allows their child to play truant
from school, or who spends their family payments on alcohol,
drugs and gambling rather than putting food on the table and
keeping a roof over their children's heads, will have 50 per
cent of their payments withheld by Centrelink. This money will
then be spent on ensuring their rent is paid and that their
children's food and medical expenses are covered.
“The
Government intends to take over key responsibilities from
parents whose lives are too disorganised to provide adequately
for their children. The message is that if you don't organise
your life and your finances to ensure your children are
properly cared for, the Government will come and hold your
hand until you are responsible enough to make your own
decisions again”. (To read the article, click
here >>>)
In
a speech outlining his initiative “To stabilise and
protect” Prime Minister John Howard explained:
“Without
urgent action to restore social order, the nightmare will go
on – more grog, more violence, more pornography and more
sexual abuse – as the generation we’re supposed to save
sinks further into the abyss. Even worse, believing that what
is happening to them is normal. There comes a point where the
obligations of national governments take over. Action cannot
be delayed by concerns that it’s not ‘culturally
appropriate’. No culture – and certainly no indigenous
culture – believes child abuse is appropriate. This is not
an Aboriginal problem or a Northern Territory problem. It’s
an Australian problem that calls for national leadership”
(To read the speech click
here>>>)
The
new controls will apply to all dysfunctional welfare
households in Australia – indigenous and non-indigenous.
Those controls include: compulsory
health checks on all at-risk children, enforcing attendance at
school by linking income support to school attendance, and
quarantining of 50 per cent of welfare payments to ensure that
funds meant to be used for children’s welfare are actually
used for that purpose.
Clearly
this is something our government must now consider. It is also
clear that the prevent system is failing, and any responsible
government would not stand by and allow that to continue.
The
poll this week asks:
Should the welfare reform proposed by the Howard government in
Australia be adopted in New Zealand? Go
to
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