Dear Editor
Could you please shine more light on the excellent proposal by Marion Scrymgour, the Member for Lingiari, for the establishment of a Family Responsibilities Commission in the Northern Territory.
Every country must aim to help the less fortunate of the population with a hand up. It is the design of those programs that is the challenge. Too often poorly designed programs worsen the circumstances of the people we are trying to help.
In Australia, in many remote locations, over the last fifty years we have taken people out of gainful self-help activity into idleness and deteriorating social outcomes. The jails and hospitals are full, and the schools are empty. And the ‘gap’ is widening.
Our programs of welfare support are fundamentally flawed.
Consider these anomalies.
We are paying unemployment benefits to three quarters of a million people, while we traverse the world to recruit a similar number to fill our labour needs.
We have an aging workforce (post WWII baby boom) meaning fewer workers to support a quickly growing number of dependents on the budget. We won’t be able to afford this for much longer.
We provide free alcohol. Well, okay free money, just one transaction removed. Mutual obligation-free money. This isn’t a fair call on taxpayers.
There have been stop-start attempts over the years to quarantine some of it – the Basics card, Cashless Welfare card (other names?). These attempts at income management were partially successful, but always the target of libertarians. The main problem was the rules applied to everybody in a locality, stigmatising model citizens along with those who needed help.
We effectively removed the ‘work test’ for remote area recipients of unemployment benefits about forty years ago. Before then most jobs in remote communities were filled with local people. They are now filled by outsiders.
When welfare benefits were so generously extended the small-scale economic activities like gardens, poultry, orchards etc, quickly fell away.
The amount payable for benefits like unemployment, supporting mothers, is almost always greater than the entry point salary for the available jobs.
Even so, every year at budget time the call goes out to increase those benefits. Politicians, and welfare advocacy groups, seem to be blissfully unaware that the higher the benefits, the greater the disincentive to seek paid employment. This is happening again this year.
Are readers also sickened by politicians and senior public servants repeating the jargon ‘”evidence-based policy’” endlessly? In this context it is a meaningless concept. Such focused policy would not get to a first draft because wokeism and political correctness would kill it off. I mean one or more of the Discrimination Acts would block it.
Could this be a reason we get one size fits all, or generic rather than focused programs?
A Northern Territory minister once said: “The Australian government creates these problems, and the Territory is left to mop up”.
I understand what he meant.
Can we expect the Australian government to rectify these issues anytime soon?
Given that the issues have drifted for half a century in the face of deteriorating outcomes, the answer is obviously no.
But it might be possible to gather support for a Family Responsibilities Commission.
Such a commission has been in operation on Cape York since 2006. What follows is copied from its website:
“The Family Responsibilities Commission is a statutory body conceived by Aboriginal Australians and driven by community members, whose purpose is to support welfare reform, [and] community members, [and] restore socially responsible standards of behaviour, local authority and well being.
The success of this commission speaks for itself.
The need for change in the Northern Territory is unarguable.
Bob Beadman,
Darwin
If you want your letter to the editor published send it to ntindependent@protonmail.com. Please include your name, address and phone number for verification. We will only publish your name and suburb or town. We do reserve the right to edit the letter for length and clarity purposes. PRIVACY POLICY: You can find our privacy policy by clicking here.
The Wave Hill walk-off (union supported) was the worst thing that happened to Aborigines. It led to Aboriginal employment totally collapsing, and it has never recovered.