What Cape York communities can do to help themselves

The main quality of such social entrepreneurs will be their belief in the capacity of our people. There must be absolutely no hesitation on this. They have to know our potential as a people such that they will never presume that our future lies in other people "saving" or "serving" us.

To avoid creating relationships of dependency and passivity, the social entrepreneur will have strong thinking to guide his or her role. They will face situations where they will be under pressure to do things in the ‘traditional’ way – through ‘service delivery’, rather than maximum self-service. Many social and ideological pressures will be brought to bear, but the social entrepreneur will resist returning to the old ‘saviour/servant’ model of leadership.

How are communities going to find such social entrepreneurs?

This is where partnership with the business community is essential. The business community harbours entrepreneurs who, if they turned their talents, experience and networks to social enterprise, could help to transform it from a problems management service into an opportunity-seizing business.

We need a recruitment facility to find good resource people to work in community development in Cape York. The difficulties in recruiting people to remote locations mean that the pool upon which communities can draw is extremely shallow.

Such a facility would form links with overseas aid organisations and the business sector and would network with them to recruit high-quality people to work in our communities. The recruitment agency will work with Cape York organisations to actively promote Cape York as a region where we actually have a genuine conviction that our problems can be overcome and our opportunities can be seized.

As well as the recruitment of external resource people to work in the communities, the proposed recruitment facility should also aim to provide job search support to Cape York people who wish to find employment outside of the Cape. If Cape York people wish to move to urban centres like Cairns, for reasons of undertaking training or studies, for supporting students attending educational institutions, or for health reasons, or because they want to participate in sporting competitions or they simply want to live away from their community for a while – then they should be assisted in finding employment.

Social entrepreneurialism and social order

I have previously spoken about the primary importance of our people in Cape York confronting our overwhelming grog and drug problem, and the inextricably related problem of the breakdown in social order. I have argued that there is an urgent need to restore social order in our communities and these problems of addiction and violence will not be overcome if we simply believe that they are just "symptoms" of underlying issues. These dysfunctional behaviours must be confronted as problems of behaviour.

The requirement of social order is not inconsistent with social entrepreneurship and greater freedom and devolution of responsibility for families and individuals in our communities. We are in fact advocating greater devolution of responsibility and resources to families away from community and official governing structures – so that families can take initiative and seize opportunities. But the community and government have a responsibility to ensure there is social order. The grandmothers and other sober and responsible people need to be supported in their desire to have peace and freedom from threats and abuse.

Many of our social problems will be overcome as a by-product of our people taking up positive opportunities. However, there are some problems that will need to be addressed as problems of behaviour. Grog and drug problems will not just be solved by making positive opportunities available to people. It will require the establishment and enforcement of standards of social order.

When I say "social order", I mean what progressive people might also understand to be ‘Aboriginal law’. While progressive people might instinctively recoil from talk of ‘social order’, they would no doubt support the recognition of Aboriginal law. What I mean is that the Aboriginal values and relationships which constitute Aboriginal law must be enforced so that social order is re-established in our society.

We are also developing a trial of Family Income Management in three communities in Cape York. Contrary to assumptions that have been made about our proposals, Family Income Management is not a community welfare pooling or voucher system but rather, it is about family-budget management – something that mainstream families do because they have the facilities and support services to do it.