The transformation of Aboriginal communities in crisis; what does it entail?

CAEPR Seminar Series August 22, 2007 (Streaming audio, MP3)
—David Martin (Visiting Fellow, CAEPR)
Abstract: This seminar is set against the background of the Federal government's 'National emergency' response to the Children are Sacred report into child abuse in Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory. It is based as much on my personal experience of living and working in a remote community, and raising an Aboriginal son within and outside that community, as it is on my anthropological research.
There are understandable reasons why many commentators have expressed cynicism about the response, given that the matters canvassed by the report have been placed before governments for decades now. Nonetheless, the available evidence demonstrates that in many Aboriginal communities, and not just those in the Northern Territory, there is indeed a deep crisis around a cluster of factors such as extremely high levels of interpersonal violence, abuse including that of children, and severe alcohol and drug abuse.
The government's response as announced thus far involves a curious mix of short and longer-term initiatives. The seminar argues that the restoration of social order in severely dysfunctional communities is a defensible intervention to establish the conditions for change—if the long-term goal is the transformation of Aboriginal societies to more sustainable forms, as it must be. However, in the absence of a very substantial commitment by governments to redress the well documented historic deficits in such areas as health, housing, and education, such change cannot and will not take place. In particular, without these essential precursors, the reliance on Aboriginal personal responsibility leveraged through market-based incentives simply avoids government responsibility, and will fail as an instrument of sustainable change. .....