The culture wars and petty feuds obscure the seriousness of indigenous education

But the petty feuding between the left and right obscures the seriousness of the issues raised by the Intervention and the issue of Indigenous participation in higher education. It is sad that the public's attention should be drawn to trivial squabbles and rather flawed opinion pieces and away from the more serious topics at hand.

Whilst, I am not an expert on Indigenous affairs, from a law and policy perspective I would offer the following observations on the Intervention.

First, the need for the Intervention has not been undermined by the flaws in its implementation. The circumstances which gave rise to the need for the Intervention were extreme and as such some action was warranted. As far as I am aware no other community in Australia is subject to the type of circumstances that have been raised in relation to remote and rural Indigenous communities. Even allowing for the fact that not every Indigenous community in the affected area is the same, the weight of evidence in 2007 suggested the need for an intervention. That the Intervention may have been poorly managed by the Rudd-Gillard Government does not invalidate the need for the Intervention in the first instance. It is wrong to conflate the need for a particular policy with the problems raised by the poor execution of a policy.

It is worth bearing in mind that every policy solution, designed to combat a particular problem, will have unintended or unforeseen consequences. This is the reality of applying public policy programs in a dynamic environment made up of numerous individuals and stakeholders. The skill is to monitor the implementation of the program and to identify problems and to respond to them.

Given the poor handling of the 'Education' Revolution and the Insulation scheme it is not entirely surprising that the Government's handling of a complex problem like the Intervention has been imperfect.

Second, placing a fetter on the use of welfare money through the Basics Card is not inappropriate. Welfare money is not individual income in the normal sense of the word. Welfare monies are funds provided by the entire community through the Government to those individuals who are in need. The notion of a social contract informs this process wherein the community is willing to subsidise an individual during a period in which they are unable to obtain a sustainable income on their own. It is not inappropriate that constraints might be placed on the manner in which welfare monies are spent by their recipients. Spending welfare money on alcohol is likely to be inconsistent with the public purpose that lies behind providing that money.

Third, the Racial Discrimination Act can be validly suspended. Further, discrimination can be both positive and negative. For example, affirmative action can be a form of positive racial discrimination. It does depend upon your point of view, but the suspension of the RDA can be seen as an act of positive discrimination in favour of those vulnerable community members affected by violence and poverty. That is, by limiting the rights of some members of Indigenous communities the scheme seeks to advance the rights of other Indigenous people by ameliorating conditions of violence and poverty. Even if the suspension of the RDA is seen as an act of negative discrimination it has been done in the pursuit of a legitimate policy objective.

When Mal Brough first spoke of the Intervention he did so with a very genuine concern for those Indigenous Australians who were affected by the conditions he had seen and who were mentioned in the Little Children are Sacred Report. No statement or action by the Rudd-Gillard Government suggests that they do not share that genuine concern. Regardless of how poorly or otherwise the Intervention has been carried out it is clear that the RDA was not suspended for malicious or improper reasons.

The Higher Education Review will no doubt look at the depth of Indigenous disadvantage in education.

Given that a university degree can very often be a pathway into a middle class lifestyle and a sound career it is very tragic that Indigenous Australians are poorly represented in higher education. No doubt the review will countenance various measures of affirmative action to get Indigenous Australians into higher education. Affirmative action measures are very appropriate in this context.

I doubt very much that any Australian would begrudge those Indigenous peoples affected by the Intervention access to greater levels of education support. Education is vital to eradicating poverty and to stabilizing communities.

But it should be borne in mind by the Committee that access to higher education is only meaningful if the students in question have had access to a strong primary and secondary education.