Dealing with the tragedy of indigenous communities in Central Australia

Beautiful but barren, what do you do to give these young people in Central Australia a future or at least the option of a future?

And the stolen generations report has petrified authority. That report did not in its terms of reference seek to find any success stories.
I can see no way forward without education for all the youth of Central Australia. Many if not most have no supportive home life. So to create the circumstances for a meaningful education they must have access to boarding schools.

At the primary level those should be built around Alice Springs itself having regard to family susceptibilities so that there are no white elephants. Perhaps dormitories and schools need not be together.

But once students pass on from primary to upper school, in my view they need to be sent to boarding schools all round Australia to give them a glimpse of the wide world. Not in some haphazard fashion but in groups of at least four for mutual support.

My reason for this is that these schools have support networks that will encourage these young people and look after them, get them jobs, be a fallback.

We are not talking in thousands we are talking in hundreds, maybe a few hundred a year and the Australian education system has enough boarding schools to accommodate that. Of course, Govt funding will be essential but even allowing for many failures, especially at the outset, the money will be better spent than it is now.

And these children are going to need a lot of support to ensure that they can stay the course. There is scope here for some of the talkers about indigenous matters (and Sydney is awash with them) to actually carry out some deeds by involving themselves in support groups. There will be lots to do.

Kids will run away, it happened regularly among homesick kids at my boarding school. So it's sure to be a regular event for quite a while and they will need support of all kinds to get them through. These school's support networks will help them to an assured future if that's what they want.

It is vitally important that the boarding schools round Australia to which young Centralians are sent wholeheartedly join in the process of outfitting them with real options for advancement. I have seen what the networks of supporters of these schools can do to help those not greatly gifted achieve a respected position and make a beneficial contribution to the community. In those cases that will come their way no effort should be spared.