Local Government - colonialistic , patronising, apathetic - Ali Curung - the internet facility closed

One of the first actions by the new Barkly Shire was to close the internet facility at Ali Curung.

See also - The Barkly Shire- Still on P- plates.
http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/08/05/up-to-their-ankles-in-sewage-a-remote-communitys-patience-runs-out/
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/08/05/2646601.htm
http://www.greenleft.org.au/2009/806/41456


The email below was sent out to members of the ICC, Ali Curung Council, Northern Territory Government and new Barkly Shire Administration. The Barkly Shire reply made it clear that they would not be able to support the facility. They are of the opinion that it is not a core service, and to continue it should pay for itself. No other department responded. Even a request to provide the agreed 35,000 for a coordinator as part of the SRA was ignored.

The centre will never be a proper business in an impoverished community and this is an 'inconvenient truth' for the new Barkly Shire and other government bodies. It connects to the Internet via satellite, charged at extortionate rates by Telstra. Telstra has so far defaulted on their contracted agreement with Ali Curung Council to supply the far cheaper option of BDSL. Even ADSL would be acceptable. Also, the fifty or so thousand dollars a year for a coordinator can never be generated from time charges alone.

The message from the bureaucrats also suggests that it has to be run as a business. This community has no one with adequate literacy or numeracy skills, experience even desire to do this. The whole aim of the facility is to help people break out of their situation so that in the long term they can run their own businesses or gain qualifications suitable for the main stream economy.

There is a paradox. We installed highly regarded literacy and numeracy software, 'Successmaker' on two computers. Not only is the internet centre educational but it is also diversionary. The only other place these people access this software is in Alice Springs prison.

The Email:

Before I leave Ali Curung it is important to give you a full run down on the state of play with the internet cafe and try and provide some insight as to its crucial role in this community as well as the complexities of running it.

The internet facility is more than just an access point for the internet. It is also of major importance as a diversionary and educational centre for disengaged school leavers.

Currently, the internet cafe is run by a combination of me, Luke Kelly with periodic appearances by Lionel James. My main function is to maintain the computers and network while Luke Kelly works as a tutor funded by DEET helping people with computer access and most importantly mentoring about a dozen people a week in literacy and numeracy using a software programme called "successmaker". Luke also plays a major supervisory role in the facility to ensure no damage or misbehaviour takes place. This work is voluntary.

Lionel James is paid by CDEP and is often away. In addition, because Ali Curung is a complex community comprising four language groups, he has limited influence and ability to carry out a supervisory role to a standard needed to maintain the facility. An outsider can only carry this out.

There are ten client computers (fully utilised) plus a 'server'computer all of which access the internet via another computer with satellite access to the internet. Two computers are loaded with "successmaker" software, which is highly regarded. An internet cafe software management software from Antamedia manages the client computers. This software also logs all use. All computers have filtering software, antivirus and malware software.Basic computer security is controlled by several levels of user names and passwords.

The whole setup was funded by 50,000 from DBERD as a part of a Shared Responsibility Agreement and I understand, was enthusiastically supported by Elliot McAdam.

Currently, the community accesses computers and internet by purchasing a ticket from the council for 50c. This allows one hour of computer time. Access to literacy and numeracy learning is free. An initial charge of 2.00 was levied but declining bank deposits suggested this charge was too high. A conversation with an experienced operator in the BIA (Building Indigenous Ability- Dept of Broadband Communications and the Digital Economy) suggested that any charge in impoverished communities was too much so the council agreed to the current charge of 50c. This has maintained and increased community engagement. For people here, working in the community to build capacity, this is seen to be a crucial part of the process.

There is an opinion that the charge of 50c should be increased to 5.00 because this is what is charged at Alpurrurulam. Ali Curung is quite a different community to Alpurrurulam. The main difference is that Alpurrurulam has one language group and Ali Curung has four. It is likely that this factor more than any other is a main barrier to capacity building. This is why we consider the internet facility to be a vital component of the capacity building process. Complex traditional rules govern individuals within language groups and complex rules exist between groups. Combined, this means that for any individual to work in the community of Ali Curung for the whole community is a very difficult task.

This facility is neutral ground with a whole set of rules that are outside traditional, opening windows on life in the outside world in unprecedented ways as well as providing learning opportunities for individuals in their own time and at their own pace.

Two individuals in particular epitomise the importance to the people.

Joseph Thompson:
He is the Ali Curung community representative on the Shire Transition Committee. He has poor literacy and numeracy and finds engagement with mainstream very difficult. He now spends 12 hours a week being tutored by Luke Kelly on the "Successmaker" program.

Esaw Marshall:
A young man, Esaw has discovered E-bay. He buys his clothes there. He does this because they are cheaper and what he wants. To do this he had to arrange for a debit card. Because E-bay trading requires reasonable levels of literacy and numeracy he now spends a lot of time with Luke Kelly on "Successmaker". So, because he is finding ways to spend money in a way that he likes, he is looking for ways to make money for himself.

Finally if the internet facility is to survive someone Like Luke Kelly needs to be employed to supervise and mentor. Luke is keen to take on the job. Without this type of supervision and left open for business, the facility will quickly disintegrate. The rules about children, dogs, babies, food and drink and operational hours will rapidly erode.

This internet facility could be an opportunity for the Barkly Shire Council to demonstrate their good will, support and willingness to invest in communities and develop capacity. Also, it could support the on going quest by the council to find community based literate people with computer skills. Full support of this facility as a training centre could be crucial tool for the council to identify people and foster relationships for mutual benefit.

After a life of loss, a housing legacy of shame

Tony Koch | August 15, 2009

Article from: The Australian

A TINY, black-skinned woman on remote Groote Eylandt, off east Arnhem Land, her shoulders slumped from decades of pain and unimaginable hurt, looks shyly down as she speaks in a whisper of "blame and shame".

Yet the battle this amazing Aboriginal woman has dealt with through all her life marks her as one of the most courageous humans alive today.

It is hard enough to live in a community in the grip of a hereditary degenerative disease for which there is no cure.

But the hardship of life on the island is compounded by the empty promises from government to indigenous Australians living in remote communities in conditions that locals correctly describe as "below Third World".

Just over 18 months ago, the federal government announced a $672 million allocation to the Strategic Indigenous Housing and Infrastructure Program in a massive assault on the accumulated disadvantage. But as The Australian revealed last month, not one house has yet been built under the program.

Bureaucratic red tape, a confusion of organisations, the employment of "consultants" with their endless visits to the communities and a creaming off the top by the Northern Territory government has delivered the usual result: nothing. What most defies belief is that the federal and Northern Territory governments know that the lack of appropriate housing on remote and regional communities is critical.

Commonly, three-bedroom houses with just one toilet and shower have to accommodate more than 20 people, including the elderly and the newborn.

The houses cannot cope, and neither can the occupants, who usually have nowhere else to go. On Groote Eylandt, there are families living in tents on the beaches because they can no longer live in the homes. Yet they still have $30 a week deducted from their wages or dole payments to meet the "poll tax" for the shameful housing, even though they are not living under a roof. The heart-wrenching example of Gayangwa Lalara must soften the most cynical political heart. In reality, it should be enough to see Kevin Rudd strap on a nail-bag himself and help somebody whose degree of need almost defies belief.

Gayangwa is 65, a proud and intelligent Warnindilyakwa woman revered in her island community for the strength of character and family loyalty she exhibits.

She nursed her father for the 20 years he took to die when afflicted by the mystery "Groote Eylandt Syndrome".

It is a cruel way to die, with the brain fully alert but the body functions and muscle control gone.

There is no cure for what has now been identified by medical researchers as Machado-Joseph Disease, a hereditary neurodegenerative condition in the disease family that includes Huntington's disease, and for which there is no cure. MJD is an inherited autosomal dominant disorder, which means each child of a person carrying the defective gene has a 50 per cent chance of developing the disease.

The first signs are the child, youth or adult developing a "drunken sway" gait, and mobility and muscular control degeneration follows. Within a decade, the patient is confined to a wheelchair, incontinent and without any control over limbs or muscles, unable to sleep and awaiting death, which in most cases can take up to another decade.

Gayangwa's three brothers saw their father die. They were in turn diagnosed with the disease and died, as did her two sisters and a young nephew. A niece, now 14, is already confined to a wheelchair, having been confirmed with MJD as an 11-year-old. The mutation of the disease when passed to the next generation -- the anticipation effect -- means symptoms appear eight to 10 years earlier and are more severe. Medical experts estimate that 300 Australians, mostly living on Groote Eylandt and several other Northern Territory communities, will develop MJD.

The disease is thought to have been introduced to Groote in the 16th century by Portuguese sailors. Yet despite Territory and federal governments knowing of the dreadful disease for four generations, little real attention has been paid, particularly regarding the provision of MJD-specific infrastructure.

Gayangwa lives with eight adults and four children in a two-bedroom house. The residents include her wheelchair-bound niece, Rosanne Mirnyowan. The small loungeroom has a string across the centre with sheets hanging from it so an improvised bedroom can be made for four adults, who sleep on mattresses on the floor.

They each pay $30 in rent for the house, which has recently had added a purpose-built disability shower and toilet block. The younger family members have lived with older adults dying in the house and know the stark truth that one morning they could wake up with "the drunken walk" -- and face 20 years of undignified suffering before death.

Although a blood test would confirm beyond doubt whether they are to become MJD sufferers, the young people are frightened to know the result. They live a life of horror and fear.

But the house, like so many on the island, is a wreck. It is not vandalised -- just worn out because a single house with one bathroom and a small kitchen cannot cope with the needs of the number of family members who need to be housed there because of the accommodation shortage on Groote Eylandt.

Gayangwa points to the overcrowding, and speaks again of the "shame" she has of showing outsiders the living conditions. "All I want is a house like white people, with enough bedrooms for my family to live in properly," she said.

She cannot understand why she and other families like hers -- the traditional owners of the land -- have to live in such conditions, and is tired of the endless political promises that do not change the sad ratio of Aboriginal people to available accommodation.

An example of government ineptitude and dismissal of the plight of the seriously ill and elderly on Groote is the aged care respite centre constructed there. It has eight beds and facilities for MJD sufferers and others, and it would be ideal for such patients to stay there overnight or even for extended periods, which would give all parties involved a much-needed break. But it is usable only during the day because there is no housing available for staff, who would have to be employed if it were a 24-hour facility.

When governments speak of taxpayer funds being spent on "priority housing", there cannot possibly be more deserving people in this country.

Gayangwa is vice-chairman of the MJD Foundation. The chairman is occupational therapist Libby Morgan, a non-indigenous woman who was raised by missionary parents on Groote and returns periodically from her Brisbane home to ensure whatever help is available is rendered to these souls.

She is every bit as remarkable as her close friend, Gayangwa, and is an outspoken advocate for help and facilities to be provided to the MJD sufferers throughout Australia's Top End.

Information for donations and support of the MJD Foundation can be found at www.mjd.org.au

ON lush islands off Australia's tropical northern coast and in the desert interior, three Aboriginal communities live in hope

Natasha Robinson, Tony Koch, and Michael Owen | August 15, 2009

Article from: The Australian

ON lush islands off Australia's tropical northern coast and in the desert interior, three Aboriginal communities live in hope.

That is all they have, even though they are awash with money; a combined $127 million has been promised by the federal government to improve housing for the communities on the Tiwi Islands, Groote Eylandt and Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory.

In the 15 months that the $672m Strategic Indigenous Housing and Infrastructure Program has been on foot -- the biggest project in remote housing -- the three communities have been abuzz with talk. Endless conversations have taken place. Designs have been drafted and re-drafted in a mania of consultation that has even included discussions on prospective residents' desired bathroom tile colours. Yet not one house has been built and the pool of money available for building is shrinking day by day.

Housing was the big-ticket item of the federal intervention into remote Aboriginal communities in the Territory ordered by the Howard government in 2007. But the rollout of the big-budget SIHIP has exposed a bureaucratic rip-off of long standing in the Territory, where money for Aboriginal programs is systematically eaten up in bureaucratic expenses and consultants' fees or not spent on its allocated purpose at all. It is now clear the system, which for years has churned through billions in public money meant for combating disadvantage, has instead been responsible for entrenching it.

Former Territory indigenous policy minister Alison Anderson walked out on the Labor government last week in disgust at what has been labelled the NT's "bureaucratic gravy train", sparking a crisis that yesterday brought the Henderson Labor government almost to the brink of collapse.

The NT political crisis has brought into sharp focus the huge task that confronts federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin in overcoming bureaucratic inertia to deliver the promised housing. But there are ominous signs that Macklin's Aboriginal allies have already begun to desert her: Arnhem Land leader Galarrwuy Yunupingu's renunciation this week of his previous support for the federal intervention represents a heavy blow to the government.

Macklin has been steely in her determination to deliver the housing her government promised. She has put a rocket up the NT bureaucracy and building alliance managers have been working overtime this week in a frenetic attempt to increase the pace of their projects. "I'm absolutely determined to deliver on the upgrades and the houses and the rebuilds that we said we'd deliver," Macklin says. "It's the biggest housing package that has ever been put in place in remote parts of the Northern Territory and it's also part of a very significant reform agenda."

But confusion over the goals of the SIHIP has reigned. The NT government had publicly announced that the $53m allocated to Nguiu on Bathurst Island would deliver 29 houses, then sharply revised its figures upward to 90 this week in the wake of the SIHIP furore. The same occurred on Groote Eylandt: 26 planned houses suddenly became 80. Macklin's office insists the lower figures represented only the first stage of construction. That statement surprised everyone familiar with the rollout of the SIHIP in the Territory.

As the wheels of the machine for indigenous reform continue to grind and the urban consultancy class grows fatter, great risk lies ahead for the federal Labor government. The widespread doubt that exists among indigenous people at the Rudd and Henderson governments' joint ability to deliver on their housing promises threatens to derail the entire SIHIP.

The housing program hinges on the willingness of Aboriginal communities to sign over their traditional land to the federal government under long-term leases. It is a politically fraught issue that cuts to the heart of the battle over indigenous land ownership, and few communities have taken the step. Many will be looking at the progress of the SIHIP on the Tiwi Islands, Groote Eylandt and Tennant Creek and wondering why they would bother.

At Nguiu, a peg has been hammered in the ground. It marks the spot where Territory Alliance will put its construction camp, which has yet to arrive on the island despite 12 months of consultations over housing. Tiwi Islands Training and Employment Board chief executive Norm Buchan is deeply frustrated. "The only visible evidence that the people have got that something is happening here is this peg on the ground," he says. "The charter planes are coming in and out, the airlines are making a killing. There's lots of people making money out of this but there's nothing on the ground yet, and we're running out of time because when the wet season hits the work will stop, if it's even started."

A $600,000 construction camp that was recently used to house tradesmen working on the island sits empty, surrounded by tall weeds. Territory Alliance, which late this week ferried materials and flew workers to Nguiu, plans to use the camp initially to house its workers, but the camp, unsuitable for the wet season, will then beabandoned.

Down by the beachfront, the shell of two barbecues sit on the grass, minus their hotplates. They were built during a pre-vocational course for Aboriginal men due to be employed under the SIHIP. The course ran for five weeks with about 20 participants. The barbecues are built out of 22 bricks each. The men have nothing else to show for their training. "It's just training for the sake of training, and dollars being wasted," Buchan says.

In a shipping container that has been his home for 10 years, Walter Kerinauia is asleep on a bed in his lounge room in the midday heat. The floor of his home is bare concrete. Between the rooms, there are gaping holes in the floor where rats creep in at night and terrify his children. "All I want to see is a new house," Kerinauia says. "I would be happy and proud. People here want proper houses to live in. They don't want overcrowding. If the young people get a new house, they won't do anything like suicide any more. When they know they are getting a house, they're going to be really proud, and they'll look after it. I don't want to live in this old house any more." As the biggest project in Aboriginal housing falters, Kerinauia sits and waits. But around him he can see something else happening, and it has nothing to do with the government.

In a fenced lot a few doors down, a concrete slab has been laid that will form the basis of local school principal Leah Kerinauia's new home, which will be the first house in Nguiu to be privately owned.

Several other people in Nguiu have also obtained home loans since the community signed a 99-year lease with the federal government. For locals, the contrast between obtaining a new home through private ownership and waiting forever for a government-delivered dwelling is only too clear.

NT Chief Minister Paul Henderson has promised that 55 houses will be built under SIHIP by the end of this year. But as the wet season approaches across northern Australia, it is hard to see how this target will be met. When Inquirer visited Groote Eylandt this week, there was little sign of building activity. Three trainees were being supervised knocking down a wall in a house to berefurbished.

The concrete footings on just one house had been poured a week earlier apparently for a photo opportunity for an NT government minister's cameo visit, but there was not a strapped-on nailbag in site, and certainly no signs of new homes being erected.

Inquirer spoke to Simeon Lalara, who stands 190cm tall. His handshake would make a village blacksmith wince, and even at 46 years of age he has the classic physique of a middleweight boxer. It comes as no surprise that he has killed a man in a fight. His own father was stabbed to death by his eldest son in a family altercation. A century ago this man would have been a typical warrior leader of his tribe, revered by family and friends, feared by foe.

Yet Lalara, senior Groote Eylandt land and sea ranger and Warnindilyakwa clan elder, a traditional owner of thousands of hectares of the most beautiful island real estate off the entire Australian coastline, is homeless in his own country.

He and his wife, Eileen, have been forced to join the growing throng of Aboriginal people on the island off east Arnhem Land to move from the overcrowded housing on their community to tent communes on the nearby beach.

They are refugees on their own land that has been their home, traceable back for centuries. "In most of the homes here there are more than 20 people, with dying people in some, and there are newborn babies too," Lalara says. "All we want is a home of our own where we can live quietly and have a family life. But there are no homes available. We are told the government is going to build more, but we never see that happening."

Lalara has a full-time paid job as a ranger and could easily afford rental charges, or even instalments on a home purchase. But he and Eileen go back each night over the corrugated track to the tent by the water, cook over an open fire, fish with lines and a spear in the Gulf waters, and keep their perishables in two battered Eskys.

It's a hard life.

He says the 5 1/2 years he spent in Darwin's Berrimah jail in the early 1990s for a payback shooting of a man who had earlier shot him were more comfortable than the life he now leads as he gets older.

Richard Preece, chief executive officer of Groote Island's Anindilyakwa Land Council, says the three local Aboriginal communities have a floating population of about 2000 people, living in 212 dwellings.

The high percentage of disabled and infirm people, including principally those suffering from the tragic and incurable Machado Joseph Disease, has resulted in the demand that all new housing on Groote be constructed with bathrooms suitable for severely disabled people, and that they all have wheelchair ramps to the homes and across road gutters.

"The overcrowding is at a serious stage and the promised houses will be most welcome," Preece says. "This community has been the lead agent in a great many reforms, but they are being held back because of the housing crisis."

It is the clear view of concerned people such as Preece and others on Groote that overcrowding is the base problem from which all other problems flow. If people cannot get a good night's sleep, they don't want to go to work the next day. Children who have disturbed nights don't want to go to school. Another local issue is that all non-indigenous public servants -- police, nurses, health workers and teachers -- moved off the communities and live in Alyangula, the mining township on the island. The Aboriginal people have no everyday contact or interaction with non-indigenous families in what has become, although for reasons innocent enough, a situation akin to apartheid.

All the police are resident in the township, which is an hour's drive from one of the island communities, and there is no police station facility outside Alyangula.

Well-organised employment training programs operate on the island and, unlike the majority of remote Aboriginal communities, real employment is available at the local manganese mine which is owned by Gemco.

More than 1000km southwest in the red-desert Centre, Tennant Creek is the territory's forgotten town. Once a thriving mining centre, now there is no commercial airline service to the town, nor a permanent dentist.

On the edge of the gunbarrel Stuart Highway running through the middle of the town, which is 500km north of Alice Springs, a large federal and NT government-endorsed sign declares: "Site under construction". But in the town's seven town camps, there is no sign of any construction and very few "sites".

As in the rest of the NT, there is an Aboriginal population boom in Tennant Creek. And for more than two years it was planned that the town's growing indigenous population would be the recipients of "major housing works in the Northern Territory".

The reality is there are no new houses planned at all. And of the nine unoccupied homes that have been cleaned and earmarked for an upgrade in the past couple of months, there are just two that are still weeks away from having their refurbishments completed, despite the fact that works were supposed to begin in November lastyear.

Real work only started this June, shortly before federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin arrived in Tennant Creek to see for herself what was going on. She tells Inquirer there is "progress on housing" in the town.

Although the chairman of building consortium New Future Alliance, Brian Hughey, tells Inquirer there was never any intention to build new homes in Tennant Creek, this is disputed by his own project partner, Julalikari Council general manager Pat Brahim, and others such as former NT local government minister and Tennant Creek resident Elliot McAdam.

Brahim says new houses are part of the original plan, but everything changed once the cost estimates came in. She says the council's long-term strategy now is to train local indigenous people by upgrading existing homes, with a view to securing more government funding later to ultimately build new houses.

McAdam is angry about what he calls a "stuff up" in the Tennant Creek SIHIP package and has documents to prove his warnings about high costs for new housing construction were ignored by government. "I was being lobbied by local businesses who were saying 'this is bullshit, the costs are just inflated and too high'," McAdam says. "At a public meeting, attended by about 60 businesses, we were told by Territory Housing personnel there will be no management fees attached to the $30m, other than training. That's all appeared to have changed. I am now told new housing is not the priority."

Joe Carter, the workshop's manager for the refurbishment project and the Julalikari Council's Community Development Employment Projects co-ordinator, confirms that "initially, the plan was to build new houses here".

But the building consortium in charge of housing works, New Future Alliance, concedes that the issue of overcrowding will not be solved by building new houses. Supervisor Phil Bevan says: "It comes a lot down to the indigenous family structure. You could build a thousand homes out there and it doesn't mean each family is going to go and live in each one of them. Only a small number would be used because families will like to be together and love having their relations around them."

Carter concedes "the refurbishments will address the refurbishments but will not address the overcrowding, it never will".

"You can refurbish 100 houses and it will still not solve the overcrowding," he says.

"That's really one of the concerns with the communities, the overcrowding. We are trying to address the standards of housing, not overcrowding. In my opinion, the issue of overcrowding will never be resolved."

A small house that one of Carter's work crews was refurbishing this week in the Wuppa Camp will probably house up to 20 people once it is handed over to a town camp family, he says. "All these houses around us here will have 15 to 20 people in them; no house can hold 20 people unless it has got 20 rooms," Carter says.

Wheelchair-bound renal dialysis patient Alice Limbiari moved to Tennant Creek from Alice Springs about four years ago and lives in a rundown home in the Marla-Marla Camp. The aged pensioner is angry two crude concrete ramps and a set of iron rails she asked Julalikari Council to install in her home for better access ended up costing her $2000, which is being taken out of her bank account in instalments.

"We have no money to buy tucker. How am I supposed to pay for that? Why not build a proper new house? We were told that is what they were going to do," she says. "I need a new high fence to keep the drunks out. Most people want new houses because overcrowding is such a problem. Families come to visit from a long way away and they need somewhere to stay.

"Today we have two cars full of my friend's family and then family and my grandchildren coming too. We could have 20 people here in this tiny house for who knows how long.

"We want to have a good house."

Far to the north in Darwin, tradesmen put the finishing touches to the capital's new billion-dollar waterfront development, the proud legacy of the Labor government. As the sun sets on another perfect late dry season day, parents fish their children out of a huge wave pool, which sits behind the city's convention centre, a silver-steel symbol of modernity. The waterfront is an idyllic playground for Darwin locals, the kind of place where the town's public servants might go to relax on the weekend with their families. In the remote enclaves, such a life is something that Aborigines can still only dream of.

NT in a 'political calamity'

Tony Barass | August 12, 2009

Article from: The Australian

THE post-colonial mindset among Darwin public servants did not allow them to grasp the changing complexities of delivering services to remote Aboriginal communities, causing a breakdown in the basic workings of government.

Rolf Gerritsen, a former director of social and economic policy in the chief minister's office under former Northern Territory Labor leader Clare Martin, also said the political calamity now under way in the Top End manifested itself in a range of issues stretching back to the 1970s, from black-white relationships to poor policy and a reliance on the federal government to dig it out of any hole.

Adding to the hotbed of issues paralysing the Northern Territory, the "quasi-ideological" fight now occurring among Aboriginal leaders such as Noel Pearson and the Dodson brothers, sparked by the federal intervention in the Territory, had only muddied the waters and caused confusion and anxiety among those bureaucrats who knew what they were doing.

Professor Gerritsen, now a research leader in central Australia with Charles Darwin University, said the NT's public service reflected the white community in which it worked, dominated by expatriates who were not long-term residents.

In the three years he worked within the bureaucracy, Professor Gerritsen said, staff turnover was about 35 per cent. And the paralysis that had engulfed the NT had only slowed down the clunky wheels of government even more, with public servants hesitant to sign off any projects or make any decisions until the political crisis was over.

"The public service had always reflected the peculiar nature of the Territory," he said. "We have always suffered from a lack of capacity ... we just don't have the grunt to properly carry out what we are supposed to be doing. We are forever looking for the grant, looking for the federal government subsidy."

But it wasn't just overall ability, it was also a government that was often dealing with completely wrong priorities. He said a recent decision by the NT government to build a $3 million racehorse training area in Darwin after it claimed it could afford only $50,000 for its part in a swimming pool at a remote Aboriginal community revealed an underlying reluctance -- and perhaps admission -- that indigenous problems were just too big to tackle.

"That to me shows you they are more interested in spending their money in Darwin's northern suburbs, where the swinging seats are, than seriously tackling the issues at hand," he said.

"The nice new boat ramps may be in Darwin, the races are in Darwin ... but the ones we're supposed to be helping are not. But you try to get any of the public service out into the remote areas -- it is an impossibility."

Because of that, other agencies often got "top-up" money to deliver programs they weren't meant to, changing the process and effectiveness instantly.

Canberra's inability to grasp the human or geographical complexity of the NT only exacerbated the failure, and added to the costs of trying to deliver services.

"There are way too many programs, and the high administration costs in delivering them makes them almost certain to fail," Professor Gerritsen said.

"The NT government sometimes chews up to 40 per cent of the costs. Transaction costs on the ground are also unbelievably debilitating."

But there were more serious underlying issues at play, he said.

The entire process of delivering services to indigenous communities -- at last count 696, some with as few as 25 people in them -- went to the heart of black-white relationships, and more recently, indigenous relationships among themselves.

Amanda O'Brien | August 13, 2009

Article from: The Australian

THE paralysis engulfing Aboriginal housing in the Northern Territory has spread to Western Australia, with the Barnett government admitting a $496million federal injection will not fix the crisis.

Native title, unsustainable communities, Aborigines barring bureaucrats and the extraordinary cost of delivering services to remote areas are frustrating state and federal attempts to solve the problem.

WA Treasurer and Housing Minister Troy Buswell -- who revealed in December that 2400 houses in the state needed upgrades or replacing at a cost of $500m -- said the challenge was daunting.

Figures obtained by The Australian show that just five new remote homes and 27 refurbishments were completed in the first half of this year, at a cost of more than $6m.

Northern Territory MPs will vote tomorrow on a no-confidence motion against the Labor government sparked by the resignation last week of indigenous policy minister Alison Anderson, who claimed bureaucrats were failing to deliver much-needed remote accommodation.

Arnhem Land leader Galarrwuy Yunupingu withdrew on Tuesday his support for the NT federal intervention, condemning Canberra's inability to deliver on Aboriginal housing.

Mr Buswell acknowledged the plan to fix WA remote housing was "beyond our financial capacity".

"In the current format, in terms of the number of remote communities and their spread, I think it's beyond our financial capacity to deliver upgrades in all of those communities," he said yesterday.

"Part of the public policy discussion that needs to happen around addressing this issue is around this concept of community sustainability."

Mr Buswell said the government was blocked from building homes in many areas because to do so would extinguish native title.

"Building new dwellings on new footprints, we simply can't do that until we resolve this native title issue," he said.

"It's an enormous concern to the people in the communities. It's very frustrating for us. It's a real blocker.

"The commonwealth are aware of that and are moving forward in relation to some legislative changes."

A spokeswoman for federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin said a discussion paper would be released soon, but gave no indication of when legislation would be drafted.

Mr Buswell said homes in some areas would "struggle to reach a reasonable test of being habitable" and he wanted people out of them as soon as possible. However, he said even with the significant federal funding, there would not be enough money to go around.

Under the national partnerships agreement, the federal government will provide $496m over five years for indigenous housing. The first instalment of $19m was received in mid-June.

"There is state money as well and that will address some of that $500m backlog, but it won't address all of it," Mr Buswell said. "We're currently conducting an audit of essential service delivery into remote communities, and I think the financial challenge there will be at least as daunting as the challenge around housing."

--
Vic Martin
www.marraworraworra.com.au
www.trekkokodatrail.com
Phone 0488995138

Same old same old

Costs erode 70pc of indigenous housing fund

Natasha Robinson | July 23, 2009

Article from: The Australian

NORTHERN Territory government ministers have been warned that the federal government's $673 million remote housing package is likely to deliver as few as 300 houses - less than half the number originally promised.

Figures revealed in a confidential briefing given last week to Territory government ministers and senior bureaucrats showed the Strategic Indigenous Housing and Infrastructure Program was seriously off-track, with up to

70 per cent of allocated public funds swallowed up in indirect costs, including contractors' fees, fees paid to expensive consultants and government administration fees.

A source at the briefing in Darwin last week told The Australian the figures -- which suggested only 30 per cent of the $673m in SIHIP funding would flow to direct costs of refurbishment of housing and the building of new houses -- shocked MPs and bureaucrats.

Fifteen months ago, the federal government announced SIHIP would provide 750 new houses to remote Aboriginal communities in the Territory. So far, not one house has been built.

While bureaucrats consult with indigenous communities on remote housing in the Territory, construction began this week in Woolloongabba in Brisbane -- in Kevin Rudd's electorate -- on the 1000th home built under a $6.4 billion social housing stimulus package expected to provide 20,000 new homes by 2012.

The problems besetting SIHIP come as it was revealed yesterday that NSW Labor senator Ursula Stephens wrote to Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin last year warning that no houses would be built under the program until 2011.

The memo, obtained by the National Indigenous Times, warned that SIHIP was open to collusive tendering and potential corruption.

"Those from the construction industry were flabbergasted by the approach -- which they best likened to a 'shoddy defence procurement model'," it said.

"The only winners in such a process are the consultants who form part of the 'alliances', or who draw up the legal arrangements for the procurement process."

The head of SIHIP, Jim Davidson, and the chief executive of NT Housing, David Ritchie, refused requests for an interview.

The Tiwi Islands, 80km north of Darwin, along with Groote and Bickerton islands in the Gulf of Carpentaria and Tennant Creek, 500km north of Alice Springs, had been chosen to receive the first round of SIHIP funding.

The Tiwi Islands, which had been allocated $53m under SIHIP, were set to receive 155 upgrades to existing housing and 29 new houses at a cost of between $404,000 and $674,000 a house.

The town of Nguiu, on one of the Tiwi Islands, Bathurst Island, recently received 25 new houses built using funding from previous indigenous affairs minister Mal Brough.

A local company, Bathurst Island Housing, built eight of those houses at a cost of about $350,000 each. Another company, Sitzler -- one of the companies chosen to form part of the Territory Alliance, the consortium responsible for SIHIP construction at Bathurst Island -- built 12 of the 25 houses.

However, Sitzler's houses, built from virtually identical plans, cost $650,000 each.

Territory Alliance manager Allan Gill said he had no doubt a local firm could build houses under SIHIP for less than the larger companies chosen to form the alliance.

But he said the alliance companies had been awarded the job because they had the required safety accreditation and were capable of building quality housing that would last.

Mr Gill said the profits to be reaped by alliance members were set at less than 20 per cent of the total housing package, and all costings had been independently reviewed.

A spokeswoman for Ms Macklin said the alliance model would be "monitored and evaluated closely".

Her office said the high costs of remote housing construction must be taken into account.

The Local Road to Recovery

Nicolas Rothwell | July 18, 2009
Article from: The Australian

COMMUNITY-focused and traditional routes offer the ideal means of tackling the lot of indigenous citizens in remote communities.

ON rare, revealing occasions, the scale of Australia's Aboriginal crisis -- and the incapacity of successive governments and bureaucracies to frame or comprehend it, let alone to devise effective responses -- becomes clear.

One such moment came earlier this month at the Darwin meeting of the Council of Australian Governments, which coincided with the release of the grim new Productivity Commission report on indigenous disadvantage. Two years had passed since the launch of the Northern Territory federal intervention and the commission's previous bleak statistical inquiry into the wellbeing of Aborigines.

Little had changed, though there were intriguing clues to the depth of the problems besetting the indigenous landscape. Many of the key social measures were static or showed a worsening trend, even though there had been improvements in the economic indicators for Aboriginal communities.

Employment levels were up but substantiated reports of sexual abuse and neglect hadalso risen between 1999 and 2007 to a level six times the rate recorded in the non-indigenous population.

Kevin Rudd, alighting briefly on the nation's most urgent moral agenda, announced his confidence that the great measures being pursued by his government -- the modified federal intervention, systematic schemes for job creation, the slow-dawning program for new housing in the Territory -- would eventually bring progress.

"A large number of inter-governmental agreements have been signed which go to our common national resolve to act to close the gap as it occurs in the critical areas of disadvantage for indigenous Australians," he said. "Areas such as infant mortality, educational attainment, health outcomes, as well as employment outcomes."

Rudd went on to single out the three large-scale ventures in indigenous social re-engineering under way across the north of Australia -- the new broom in the Northern Territory, the alcohol restrictions in the Kimberley and the Family Responsibilities Commission in Cape York -- as "different forms of intervention", marking a break with the patterns of the past.

This is the new paradigm: observation and consultation, followed by targeted intervention and constraint. It strips away the anarchy of unbounded freedom, the better to build the structures of responsibility. Will it succeed? Bluntly, Rudd went on to say he was committed to the new approach because "everything we've tried in the past hasn't worked". It is being applied with particular commitment to the remote communities of the Aboriginal world, whose members make up less than a quarter of the half-million indigenous population.

The prescription book for this fresh approach is the Productivity Commission report, a work of sweeping scale and ambition that represents the distilled wisdom of the Aboriginal affairs policy establishment. Though few of the politicians and bureaucrats who cite its headline findings will be familiar with the detail of its 700-odd pages, it goes far beyond mere statistics and enshrines a set of core beliefs about how best to achieve development and progress across the indigenous domain. One of its crucial underlying assumptions, shared by many potent Canberra public servants, is the view that the failures of the past were due to insufficient government attention or consultation. On this argument, more, rather than less, outsider involvement and more precise managerial oversight hold out the best promise of a shining future. The commission's report is studded with analysis of "things that work" and it even identifies "success factors". These include co-operative approaches between indigenous people and government, direct community involvement in program design and decision-making, and the nebulous ideal of "good governance" for Aboriginal institutions.

This vogue term, borrowed from Native American sociology, tends, at least in remote areas, to be bestowed on indigenous organisations that administrators find easy to deal with, rather than ones that represent Aboriginal interests well and are popular at a grassroots level.

So strong is the persuasive force of the Productivity Commission's world view, with its dream of perfectly informed surveillance, that the COAG leaders decided to spend an additional $40 million on collecting further statistical information on Aborigines.

Rudd's approach is aimed at strengthening indigenous communities. But can intervention on such a draconian scale, when prolonged, breed strength and resolve?

One of the most significant consequences of the administrative upheavals in remote central and northern Australia is the intensity of the consultation process. It acts as a fiercely disruptive, capacity-sapping force. Few community leaders have time to do anything but discuss their plight with government representatives and program managers. So many programs are being delivered, in so many conflicting ways, that the commonwealth and Northern Territory governments have been forced to appoint co-ordinators of remote area services: a confession of Kafkaesque gridlock.

"People are overused, pulled from pillar to post," says one central Australian leader. "They have no thought in their minds about the future direction, their lives are lived in meetings, constant meetings."

External management on the scale required by the intervention also implies a high degree of control. Indeed, the draining away of autonomy and authority has proved the one constant in the administration of the indigenous realm. When the missions came to the north in the early 20th century, strict rules were put in place to govern their populations, as anthropologist Peter Sutton points out in his landmark new book on indigenous policies and their consequences, The Politics of Suffering. When the welfare era came, in the late 1960s, Aboriginal communities were controlled and weakened by the provision of "sit-down money". When the intervention of 2007 came, the limited autonomy of remote communities was eroded by the drastic measure of income management.

All these manoeuvres stemmed from different philosophies; all leached power from the local communities. How to build power back up and create new, effective institutions for remote Aboriginal Australia? This is the hidden policy challenge before Rudd and Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin. Significantly, it is one that has already been taken up in a quiet way by indigenous groups on the ground. Old forms of representation have failed and, as this power vacuum deepens, new ones are slowly being built.

The political revolution in the remote Aboriginal regions may well be the most significant mid-term consequence of the intervention, though it has yet to register at federal level. By now, the sweep of recent history can begin to be seen: the collapse of the welfare dream, the long chaos it brought, the undermining of indigenous cultures and the creation of a loose, fraught pan-Aboriginal political identity. The removal of the former Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission from the scene and the collapse of relations between the most prominent members of the old national Aboriginal leadership and the Coalition government of John Howard ended that phase. Something new began to form in Cape York, where Noel Pearson began working to build up local communities from ground level, and in small areas with forward-looking Aboriginal councils, such as the Western Desert's Ngaanyatjarra shire.

The X-ray map of today's Aboriginal power system in the Northern Territory and the remote northwest shows a fascinating picture quite at odds with the official blueprint. The legitimacy of the old architecture has begun to fade. Federal bureaucrats and their praetorian representatives continue to hold sway and to hold the purse-strings, but the sense is strong among many remote-area leaders that the reformist zeal of the Mal Brough era has vanished. Indeed, the emergency response is in danger of stalling: the key housing program is advancing at a snail's pace, its funds soaked up by administration. Attempts by indigenous politicians to streamline the vast public service machine and instil a mood of urgency have proved unavailing. Struggles for bureaucratic control of projects are commonplace.

Of all this, not a word in public. Meanwhile, the survival of the new policy initiatives is in doubt. The Territory's minority government appears stalemated on its indigenous initiatives, now its Chief Minister Paul Henderson is being held hostage by a Labor defector turned independent. Beyond government, the picture of decay in the old authority networks is similar. For decades the accepted political voice of Territory Aborigines was provided by the Northern and Central land councils. Both are Labor creatures, heavily enmeshed with the federal and Territory parties. Macklin's key confidant on central Australian affairs is CLC director David Ross, while the NLC's chief executive Kim Hill is the Labor heir presumptive to the Territory bush seat of Arafura. The two councils derive their power from their position as gatekeepers, mandated to issue permits and negotiate on behalf of Aboriginal landholders.

But a tide of anger against the NLC is blazing in the key northern communities of Wadeye, Maningrida, Borroloola and Ramingining, where local traditional owners have been trying for years to advance commercial development. In the centre, the CLC last month advised Warlpiri leader Thomas Rice Jangala that his ownership of a key set of dreaming sites was in dispute: the controversy, first reported in Alice Springs News, has received little attention in the outside world, but this was a shot heard all across the Western Desert, where Rice is one of the region's most senior traditional men.

The authority of the CLC, whose new, $16m headquarters was just opened by Macklin, is in shreds among the people it purports to represent. Meanwhile, different indigenous institutions have begun to take form. Several of the new Territory local shires are in effect Aboriginal regional bodies, exercising considerable power. The councillors of one shire recently removed their white chief executive, to vast surprise and consternation in official circles. In the Top End, autonomous bodies of traditional leaders are emerging; new councils made up of senior figures have been set up in the Thamarrurr region around Wadeye and in the Yolngu region of northeast Arnhem Land.

Not only are these developments telling responses to the recent phase change and to the slow breakdown of old authority structures caused by the paralysing welfare culture and the collapse of the schooling system; they also highlight the divide between traditional Aboriginal societies and the indigenous institutions set up under the Northern Territory Land Rights Act to serve as designated representatives in mainstream society.

The Aboriginal politics triggered by the intervention is thus tense and complex: the struggle being played out is largely invisible to outside politicians, since their information comes from the placemen and administrators charged with controlling the field. Why, indeed, should Rudd know any of this, if his sources are the Productivity Commission's statistics and a quick COAG breakfast with a broad spread of NT Aboriginal figures?

But the optic through which to view much in north Australian indigenous affairs is precisely this battle for influence between old institutions and new. Significantly, two of the key official interventions listed by Rudd in Darwin were in fact governmental co-options of promising local plans: the Cape York Family Responsibilities Commission and the Kimberley alcohol controls. Both are testimony to old, local, lurking networks of social capital rising up to defend Aboriginal interests.

Various paradoxes flow from the strange configuration of divergent interests in the Territory. Traditional community leaders and those close to the cultural heart of remote Aboriginal societies tend to have quite strong biases in favour of a degree of modernisation and integration into market economic structures, while preferring a sharp boundary between their own realm of law, language and culture and the Western world. But the leaders of old representative bodies and their advisers, whose influence is tied to the preservation of the status quo, often hold opposite positions.

Thus many traditional leaders welcome the breaking of the welfare trap and yearn for large projects that offer prospects of sustainable employment, even as they oppose excess commercial development of the Aboriginal art sector and, secure in their own languages, oppose plans to deliver bilingual education. In the long-dominant "progressive" establishment that comments on indigenous affairs, the view is almost the reverse.

How, though, for the federal government, still very much the post-colonial power in the north, to oversee the successful transformation of a broken system? The intervention, in its first two years, has been a one-size-fits-all affair; its natural evolution would be into a range of local regimes, with calibrated degrees of social control and specifically tailored economic projects for different areas.

Traditional Aboriginal power structures and local indigenous councils, rather than old regional bodies dominated by partisan networks, are the way ahead for a Prime Minister who understands the powerlessness of today's remote Aboriginal world, and who is on record as saying that "everything we've tried in the past hasn't worked".