Skinny latté ideology

I accepted the offer to present the 2nd Rob Riley Memorial Lecture at Curtin University, Perth on May 23 (Pat Dodson delivered the first) with the rhetorically challenging title of Skinny latté ideology, because I have fond memories of Rob's unwavering conviction of proactive Indigenous advocacy.

I got to know Rob well when I worked in Canberra in the 1980s and met him regularly when he made his frequent trips over the Nullabor Plains from Perth in his capacity as Chairman of the National Aboriginal Conference (NAC). My father Jim was also Chairman of the NAC in the late 1970s.

I considered Rob to be one of our finest leaders and acknowledge his grass roots practical endeavours. Reflectively, I also view his achievements as a symptomatic accumulation of goals from a man whose visionary disposition was a redeeming feature that paved the way to a multitude of strategic national outcomes. I viewed Rob also as a man of high intellect who I believe would not be out of place today in the austere corral of academia.

The following observations are abstracts from my paper:

Should Indigenous Australians proportion all blame for their parlous living conditions on the government or should they accept the lion’s share of the responsibility?

The Little Children are Sacred report released in 2007 highlighted the extent of Indigenous dysfunction. In particular the single most oppressing finding that gained national and international attention, was the high level of sexual abuse of children in the Northern Territory communities.

Co-authors Rex Wild and Pat Anderson identified the various causes for the escalation of child sexual abuse:

Excessive consumption of alcohol is variously described as the cause or result of poverty, unemployment, lack of education, boredom and overcrowded and inadequate housing. The use of other drugs and petrol sniffing can be added to these. Together, they lead to excessive violence. In the worst case scenario it leads to sexual abuse of children.

The chronicle of abuse of Indigenous children is not specific to the Northern Territory, as illustrated by the Gordon report in Western Australia, the Mulligan report in South Australia, the Ella-Duncan report in New South Wales and more recently the alleged child prostitution racket in the NSW and Queensland border communities of Boggabilla and Goondiwindi - where it was revealed truck drivers are offering Aboriginal girls as young as eight-years-old drugs and money in exchange for sex.

The public reaffirmation of the abhorrent outcome of high levels of social dysfunction in Indigenous communities, aided by Paul Toohey's article in The Australian (May 14, 2008) - which identified a sharp jump in the past year of killings of Aboriginal women in remote parts of central Australia - is conclusive evidence that we all need a seismic shift in attitude on this debate.

We all need to pool our collective thoughts on how we can best tackle this insidious problem afflicting our communities that has obviously been allowed to fester unchallenged by people in positions of responsibility for far too long.

As the title of my paper Skinny latté ideology suggests - or at least the metaphorical imputation evokes - many public figures; Indigenous and non-Indigenous, working in the Indigenous industry have taken the easy option when tackling Indigenous disadvantage - safe in the knowledge that results in their field are not the aspirational outcomes that governments expect to see.

So instead of being proactive in the task at hand many, sadly, are simply going through the process of ensuring their adherence to their duty statement is not brought into question while accumulating their superannuation entitlement through the passage of time. Many simply wait their turn for a comfortable middle management job to present itself without a worry about the plight of the most marginalised group in society.

A bit like drinking a skinny latte or skinny flat white coffee thinking you're addressing a weight issue - the more you drink it the more you believe it. Hence the skinny latte ideology title - the more you believe you're doing a good job of alleviating Indigenous disadvantage, when you're not - the more you believe you are.

Those who fall into this category know who they are - because they must number in the tens of thousands - as the problems at the grass roots level continue to escalate unabated.

Perhaps one of the answers to solving problems of child abuse and domestic violence in our rural and remote communities is to shut them down?

Most Australians would support the view adopted by Senator Chris Evans when he emphatically ruled out such a heavy fisted approach in an address he gave to the Canberra South Branch meeting of the ALP in June 2006:

The fact is that shutting down remote Indigenous communities will not solve the problems of violence and abuse, it will simply re-locate them. The problems in places like Wadeye and some of the Alice Springs town camps demonstrate this. Indigenous communities in urban and regional Australia also face high levels of violence and abuse, because these are problems of entrenched social disadvantage and dysfunction-not problems of geography.

Senator Evan goes a step further and suggests that Indigenous people may actually be better off in remote communities:

Professor Fiona Stanley's Telethon Institute has done research in WA which shows that young people in remote Indigenous communities are less likely to experience mental health problems than their urban and regional counterparts. Employment and education outcomes are not necessarily better for Indigenous people who move from remote communities to larger towns and centres. So let's be clear about this: shutting down small remote communities is not the answer.

Could it possibly be that Indigenous Australians are a product of their inability to adapt, restructure and re-educate?

To answer these questions we must revisit our past in order to explain the present.

Prominent Indigenous academic, Professor John Maynard, uses the sobering words of JD Woods in his book Fight for Liberty and Freedom to express the dire predicament of Indigenous Australians at the hands of marauding invaders in 1879:

Without a history, they have no past; without a religion they have no hope; without the habits of forethoughts and providence, they can have no future. Their doom is sealed, and all that the civilised man can do ... is to take care that the closing hour shall not be hurried on by want, caused by culpable neglect on his part.

Without sounding melodramatic JD Woods could well be writing those tactless words as an observation of Indigenous communities in parts of Australia today.

However, and in light of the above observation, I do believe many of our mob are doing themselves a disservice by routinely singing the “poor bugger me” tune while proportioning blame to non-Indigenous people for their insufferably slow progress in gaining social and economic parity.

The concept I would like to discuss today is social capital and it is through the application of its processes that I believe Indigenous Australians can realise their economic and social worth.

Social capital has been interpreted as the social networks, norms and trust that enable people to act together effectively in the pursuit of shared objectives.

This shouldn't be a difficult concept to master; after all it is exactly what Indigenous Australians did, caring and sharing, before passengers of the First Fleet imposed their will on the Eora people on Gadigal land back in 1788.

Putnam has advocated strongly for the need for more social capital in American society, particularly for the poor. He describes social capital as:

... the social ties that engender civil society, particularly if these ties are conjoined with trust and norms of reciprocity. These ties form a type of “capital” enabling people to do things more effectively than if they were not connected to these relationships.

Baker argues the "social" in social capital emphasises that these resources are not personal assets: no single person owns them.

The resources reside in networks of relationships. If you think of human capital as what you know (the sum of your own knowledge, skills and expertise), then access to social capital depends on who you know - the size, quality, and diversity of your personal and business networks. But beyond that, social capital also depends on who you don't know, and if you are indirectly connected to them via your networks.

Woolcock identifies three basic components to social capital:

• bonding social capital (that is, links among people who are like one another), which is important for "getting by";
• bridging social capital (that is, links among people who are unlike one another), which is crucial for "getting ahead"; and
• linking social capital (that is, vertical links to people in positions of authority), which plays a special role in development and poverty alleviation.

Maybe the time is now right for Indigenous Australians to take charge of their own life and develop strategic plans along the lines of the social capital paradigm so their children and grandchildren can gain future benefits from the networks established today through family, culture, education, business and political ties.

This is a cost neutral exercise with next to no reliance from government, and definitely not from public servants, for successful outcomes to be occur.

If you work at it in a strategic manner over a long period of time you will achieve personal and family success.