country hospitality

... and another...

Black dollars go everywhere but to blacks
(Sydney Morning Herald)
Joel Gibson and Debra Jopson
August 21, 2007

HUNDREDS of millions of dollars which the Federal Government says it has spent on indigenous affairs have never been spent, have been used to benefit all Australians or have gone towards opposing Aboriginal native title claims.

A significant portion of the money the Government says it has spent since 2000 - which has risen annually and reached $3 billion last yearalone - was either under spent or the result of creative accounting, a Herald investigation has found.

Over the past six years, at least $30 million of the money the Government promoted as being for Aborigines was used to oppose native title and compensation claims. Spending figures have also been bloatedby money spent on services that benefit everyone - such as medical centres - but the money is nevertheless described specifically as the"black dollar".

Last financial year, for example, almost $50 million of the federal spending on indigenous people was for legal aid, which the courts have recognised as a right under common law. The $500,000 estimated to be the cost of Family Court disputes involving Aborigines has also been counted.

Official federal black spending has included $9.2 million over four years of Aboriginal involvement in the North Australia Quarantine Strategy, which allows officials to tap into indigenous knowledge to help prevent the incursion of new diseases.

The Government's indigenous budget has even included $66,000 over the past six years for the Bureau of Meteorology to gather weather forecasts using traditional indigenous observations of nature.

Creative acounting has helped create the impression that Aboriginal spending is soaring. Three years ago, the amount listed as Centrelink indigenous spending almost doubled from $46.6 million to $85.8 million by adding in all additional expenses incurred in delivering age pensions to indigenous people. Over two financial years, the Federal Government spent $8.7 million less than it budgeted on its family violence partnership program under Mal Brough's families portfolio.

The Government spent almost $110 million less than it said it would on 30 items in its indigenous budget last financial year, according to analysis by the office of Labor's indigenous affairs spokeswoman, JennyMacklin. The shortfall included more than $25 million on health services, $2 million for child-care services, $9 million for the family violence partnership program, $9.8 million for Indigenous Business Australia's equity and investments, and $37.4 million for Abstudy for tertiary students.

In May, Ms Macklin also claimed that budget papers revealed underspending of $60 million in the current indigenous housing program for 2006-07. In the financial year 2005, the Federal Government failed to spend$181.75 million it had allocated to schooling indigenous children and adults, simply moving the money into the following year's budget, Senate estimates reveal. The revelations come as the Government has pledged $580 million in new spending to fund its Northern Territory intervention, and as the Herald has found that in at least one Alice Springs organisation, Tangentyere Council, chronic underfunding has exacerbated Aboriginal disadvantage.

"A lot of indigenous-specific expenditure has not been simply on top of that which indigenous Australians might benefit from by beingAustralians," a federal parliamentary library paper released this month said.

A large proportion is substitute spending for programs that otherAustralians get as a matter of course, said parliamentary researchers John Gardiner-Garden and Malcolm Park. The Herald found numerous examples of "grey dollars" spent on servicesneeded by the entire nation. In many cases the spending was of greater benefit to non-indigenous people.

Almost $250,000 spent over the past six years on courts and tribunals used by both claimants and their opponents sorting out native titleissues has been counted as money for Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders. Other examples of general expenditure put into the indigenous budget include:

• All federal spending on reconciliation, meant to be for improvingrelationships between indigenous and other Australians, with $35 millionof projects listed over nine years.
• The $18.6 million cost of the National Museum of Australia'sindigenous galleries and programs over the same period. These educate all Australians and even overseas visitors.
• A $7.6 million plan to put public phones into remote communities.Andrew Crouch, from the Centre for Appropriate Technology in AliceSprings, which designed the 240 low-maintenance phones so far installed,said there was nothing inherently Aboriginal about the phones.

Even the total $2.6 million the Tax Office spent in the 2005-06 financial year ensuring indigenous corporations paid GST properly has been counted. The Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Mal Brough, said last night thateverything listed in his Government's budgets as such was genuine indigenous expenditure. He said there had been underspending on specific items listed in the indigenous budget, because organisations that may have been slated toget funding had been found wanting.

"I won't apologise for doing that," Mr Brough said. "Too much money hasbeen spent just to expedite getting it off the books in years gone by without driving for outcomes. But we are driving for outcomes now."

Indeed.

articles ahoy!

I have in my mind a rant forming... but as it's being a little slow to develop, instead I'd rather share some aricles, documents and letters I've been collecting these past few months, all related to the NT invasion... intervention...

Here is a letter from one of the leaders of the community in Yirrkala, right up on the north east tip of Arnhem Land.


The Sydney Morning Herald
Lack of respect will not help Indigenous children
Date: August 14 2007

Banduk Marika

Banduk Marika is a community leader and artist in Yirrkala, Arnhem Land.

In 1964 my family joined with others to make the Yirrkala Bark Petition, which is now
displayed in Parliament House, Canberra. The main reason for that petition was to
protect our land, law and culture from people who couldn't or wouldn't understand
our way of life. At the time, the federal government didn't listen to us - it allowed a
big bauxite mine and town to go ahead. It also ignored our Elders who wanted to
prevent bad influences such as alcohol coming into our country.

For more than 30 years we were told by each federal government how important
self-determination is. But there was never any true self-determination. Money to
support our community projects and initiatives such as land management, the
homeland movement and Indigenous enterprises was always very hard to come by.
And there were never any real jobs made available in our communities, even though
many people worked hard for years on training money. Education, too, was limited
and poorly delivered. The same thing happened with housing and health. We
became more and more overcrowded and sickness increased, along with drinking
and fighting. Yet none of this ever prevented the most recently arrived non-
Indigenous workers from getting decent housing and wages ahead of our own
people, including people such as qualified teachers and office staff who had been
working steadily for many years.

And now it seems that our whole culture is being blamed by government and media
for the problems associated with grog, poor education, a lack of jobs, houses and
health care. The main problem our culture is being blamed for is child abuse. I want
to say clearly that abuse of children is something we mothers and grandmothers are
very worried about, because family is even more important to us than it is to most
non-Indigenous people. But such abuse is not limited to Aboriginal communities.
And it occurs in Aboriginal communities because of the situation we are living in, not
because of our culture. We live in circumstances that are not of our own making and
without the kind of support that other people in Australia have had for many years.
The small number of persons who go against their families and bring shame on us
all must be held accountable - but it is not the fault of our society as a whole. Many
of us do not drink or take drugs, and we protect, respect, love and care for our
children, our families and our cultural traditions.

The Government is now trying to say that land, community councils and the permit
system are also part of the reason for child abuse. But this is a lie. Has any non-
Aboriginal council ever been taken over by the government because of child abuse
occurring in its area? Has anybody in non-Indigenous Australia had their land taken
away because of child abuse in their community? I don't think so.

Our relationship to our land has nothing to do with child abuse. It is the foundation of
our spirit and identity, it connects our families and without it our children will suffer
even more. More damage will happen to them if anybody is allowed to walk into our
land, and if we have to put up with more government people who will not listen to us
because they think they know what is best. What gives this Government the right to
say that we are not allowed to control our future, our lives, our families or who
comes into our country? Or that our cultural way of life is no good? We are human
beings with our own languages, kinship system, religious beliefs, and traditional
ways of controlling access to country. And we are living in our own land, where our
families have grown up for hundreds of generations. No other people in this country
of Australia can say the same thing, or identify with our land in the way that we do.

So I want to say that we do honestly welcome any real help with the problems
created by our contact with non-Indigenous society, and by past failures to fund and
deliver basic services, but we will not be treated as though we have no rights in our
own land or lives. Like our Elders before us, we will continue to stand up for what is
right and fair. And for who we are. I am not just talking here for the sake of it: I am a
Senior Traditional Owner of the Yirrkala community land, which the Federal
Government is trying to take from my family, without even having the guts or the
courtesy to speak to us.

Don't use our children as an excuse for stealing this land away from us.

http://www.smh.com.au/text/articles/2007/08/13/1186857427066.html