Daily Lessons from Life 02 July 2009

"Declining Aboriginal conditions 'unacceptable': Australian PM - Thu, Jul 02, 2009 AFP

SYDNEY, July 2, 2009 (AFP) - Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on Thursday described as "devastating" a report showing conditions for Aboriginals were worsening despite efforts to improve them.


Rudd's government, which made a historic apology to Aborigines for past injustices last year, released the report showing indigenous children were six times more likely to be abused or neglected than their non-Aboriginal counterparts.

The Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage report found abuse and neglect of Aboriginal children had doubled since 2000, with 35 in every 1,000 suffering compared with six in 1,000 non-Aboriginals. It also found the indigenous homicide rate was seven times higher than in the rest of the community, with hospitalisations from domestic violence 34 times higher and Aborigines 13 times more likely to be imprisoned.

Rudd said "the fact that despite all the efforts in the past, when it comes to such basic things as literacy and numeracy standards, that we have achieved no effective progress, means that we have to redouble and treble our efforts to make an impact." "It is unacceptable and it requires decisive action."

Australia's original inhabitants, Aborigines account for 2.5 percent of the 21 million population.
They are Australia's most impoverished minority, with a lifespan 17 years shorter than the national average and disproportionately high rates of imprisonment, heart disease and infant mortality.


Rudd delivered a historic apology for past abuses in February last year and committed to halving the gaps in infant mortality, overall life expectancy, literacy and numeracy achievement and school completion rates within 10 years.

He was forced to defend progress earlier this year when a report card showed little had been achieved since the apology, despite the deployment of police and troops in remote Aboriginal towns and quarantining of welfare payments. Under the quarantine policy a portion of Aboriginal welfare payments are set aside for food, electricity and clothing, in a bid to curb spending on alcohol, cigarettes and pornography.“

It is a fairly sensitive issue to comment on and draw lessons from. It is a fact that these numbers reflected some entrenched issues and challenges for the Aboriginal people.

Lessons for me are:

1. there were successful Aboriginal people who made it to the entertainment and sporting world in Australia quite some years ago. These people could have been role models. Maybe they did. Why did it not change how those disadvantaged Aboriginal people live is a mystery. Maybe I need to understand more about what type of programs were put in place for them to establish a new habit and behavior that better fit with the modern live but with a healthy slant!;

2. some will attribute it to nature. That the Aboriginal people are not suited to living the modern world. This cannot be right as some of them did make the transition and transformation successfully. There must be a way to help them get to the positive effect of modern living. It is actually very much like the Black in the USA where quite a lot of them, despite many of them making great progress and establishing themselves as highly successful sports people/ business people/ entertainers/ educators/etc, their well being are still relatively worst off then the Chinese immigrants! If they started with a natural bias towards less inclined to live the modern healthy lifestyle, then we simply just have to double or treble our nurturing efforts as some of them have made it!!;

3. as long as the people don't allowed themselves to be labelled as 'cannot do', they will be successful with external help and internal resolve to help themselves! It has to start with leaders who are genuinely concerned about the well being of the disadvantaged people and want a better life for them, and get them to own this desire and dream! If these disadvantaged people believed in the dream and understand that helps are given to help themselves and not have a 'cluth mentality', they will succeed!

May the Aboriginal leaders continue to help their less advantaged folks while the rest of Australia also get behind this effort. It will not be easy as it is a nation-wide thing! Mr. Rudd simply just have to persevere! Good luck Australia.