Breeding dependency
Uncategorized - - Posted on July, 1 at 11:44 pm by Ken L
I don’t pretend to know enough about the conditions of indigenous people to have a definite view about initiatives like this:
The new Family Responsibilities Commission will have the power to quarantine welfare payments if parents do not send their children to school or look after their homes.
Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin says the Cape York Welfare Reform trial involves Aurukun, Hope Vale, Coen and Mossman Gorge.
“It’s going to go for four years,” she said.
“There is a lot of money being invested - it’s all about the wellbeing of children.
“We want to make sure that we learn from this trial and anything that comes out of it of course we will be looking to expand elsewhere if it works.”
I can only surmise that the ‘lot of money being invested’ is going to pay for public servants to administer the scheme - to decide who needs to have their welfare payments quarantined and to ensure the scheme is not abused.
Well I have known some (non-indigenous) kids for whom such a scheme would have been a benefit - kids whose single mother had a serious gambling addiction that meant the fortnightly welfare payment seldom lasted more than 48 hours. I don’t doubt for one moment that gambling, drug or alcohol addiction puts a lot of kids in the same situation.
But the ’solution’ is that not only will the state support these people by paying them an income, it will take over the basic role of managing their finances. Like I said, there are circumstances where that might be in the interests of the children involved, but I’m buggered if I can understand this bit of the rhetoric:
Today marks the official start of a program aimed at combating welfare dependency in four Indigenous communities in far north Queensland.
Far from ‘combating welfare dependency’, the scheme seems to me to entrench it in perpetuity. Alternatively, the scheme can be ended abruptly when the money runs out whereupon, presumably, all the dysfunctional families will return to the status quo ante.
I’m afraid that it smacks of one more short-term measure that panders to the punishers and straighteners in the general community, creates an officially endorsed social category of second class indigenous citizens, and offers no rational hope for any worthwhile long-term changes in the current situation.
Posted in Uncategorized |
July 2nd, 2008 at 8:11 am
Looks like a more evolved version of the Stolen Generation. Let’s call it the Pandered Generation or the Nannied Generation, or the Subsidised Generation, or the Take The Sit-Down Money and Let Some Other Bastard Do It For Me Generation, or the What, Me Worry Generation, oh Shit, the list goes on and on and on and………..
July 2nd, 2008 at 4:50 pm
Another racist decision. I could accept this more easily if it applied to all parents who neglect their kids.
July 2nd, 2008 at 5:01 pm
It may be seen as giving up on the parent’s ability to learn to look after themselves.
OTOH a key indicator of life success for aboriginal (and all other kids) is just showing up at school, so if the child is fed and educated until they’re of age, they will be less likely to need or want welfare.
I’m not a fan of giving up on adults either. There’s no reason why the quarantine couldn’t go hand in hand with whatever that parent needed: rehab, basic domestic budgeting course, support in getting away from an abusive partner, whatever. No doubt they try but reports of places like Gove and Arakun make you wonder if they know where to start.
July 3rd, 2008 at 2:32 pm
Funny, I could have sworn that none of the cases of child neglect and abuse recently in the media involved indigenous parents.
Whitebread suburbanites, if I remember correctly?