The Minister for Indigenous Affairs Nigel Scullion seems to be presiding over the destruction of Aboriginal life in Australia
Aboriginal Communities have very recently been informed about the annual allocations to enable the running of Aboriginal Communities given under what is now known as the Indigenous Advancement Strategy. The stated aims of the IAS is named by the Coalition Government in the terms of get ting children to school, adults into work and building safe communities.
But in reality – as one of the Aboriginal administrators of a well established regional Aboriginal community in SA explained to me the day after the shock of receiving the IAS funding news, the policy and practice can only be assumed to be about making both regional and remote communities unsustainable. ‘If they don’t fund the communities, it is a given that they will become unsustainable.’
In SA the situation is made even more precarious by the unresolved situation of the water, power and other essential services known as MUNS funding. Back in November 2014, the Minister called on the South Australian Government to take responsibility for servicing its Aboriginal residents, just as it does for non-Aboriginal residents.
In a clever media release, he disguised his Government’s own abrogation of duty for funding Aboriginal communities’ essential services, known as MUNS funding, by attempting to switch this, their long held responsibility, to the State Governments. The SA government refused to accept this role.
In contrast, WA had accepted a one off $90 million for their ‘transfer’ grant and consequently announced 150 communities would be closed down. This has received much publicity, and the South Australian situation is much less known.
The SA government, having refused the original one off $10 million ‘transfer’ offer as totally inadequate, continues to call on the Federal Government to re-assume these responsibilities held since 1973.
Some Aboriginal communities in South Australia are large settlements, larger than some small mainstream country towns and with a great deal of infrastructure like schools and health clinics. All are presently facing a ‘future’ with no funding to ensure water supplies, power, sewerage and sanitation, airstrip maintenance where this applies for emergency hospital evacuation – no funding for every possible essential service; services which are taken for granted by other Australians.
Late in March, the revelation came to various communities in South Australia that this desperate situation is not the last word. In 2014 the Minister announced the Abbott Government’s new framework for Aboriginal funding. All organisations and communities would have to apply in a competitive process for funding named (ironically it would now seem) the Indigenous Advancement Strategy (IAS).
Currently, Aboriginal communities and organisations throughout the nation are being informed of their funding – it would seem very much in the form of cuts. These include cuts to health and many other needed community and administrative on the ground services. Aboriginal people in South Australia, at least, have just discovered that Aboriginal communities have received, in the words of one Community leader ‘not even 10 per cent of the funds requested ‘ to run a community.
These are cuts which, as they say, 'in no way will advance these communities into the future.’ What is going to happen to the many residents and resident workers? Among the people, this is incredulous. How can the Federal Government admonish other countries on how to treat their citizens when it does this to its own?
Many of the Aboriginal communities in South Australia have suffered a 90 per cent cut to their requested funding under the IAS. The exceptions to this are reportedly, the APY Lands – Amata, Pukatja (Ernabella), Indulkana – which will receive no funding at all. These Lands in the north west of the state include these large settlements as well as smaller communities and homelands. There will be no funding for the Maralinga Lands.
On 24 March, The Australian newspaper reported that Minister Scullion ‘has bowed to pressure’ of Aboriginal leaders, both bewildered and angered by the cuts, to release a full list of organisations that have received grant funding under the IAS. A further shock, as the list reveals that just one third of these organisations are actually Aboriginal organisations and communities. The two-thirds majority includes major organisations, governments, shire councils and large well-funded non-government agencies. Swimming Australia, Rugby Union and AFL national bodies received grants.
The Australian summarised that ‘thousands of organisations which once received small grants will no longer be funded and those funded have received a lesser chunk of money.’ The result? ‘Many Aboriginal community-controlled organisations … driven to the wall…and forced to lay off staff or close their doors.’ Obviously their services will then no longer exist, or at best, be severely curtailed – with predictable results.
Yalata is a substantial Community in the Far West of SA. Pitjatantjara Elder Mima Smart OAM from Yalata was in Port Augusta on March 28 at the Crisis Summit called for SA leaders in Aboriginal Communities. Mima is worried people will be forced to move. "I want the people, the community people, to stay in the country," she said
It’s puzzling, then, to know how the drastic cuts to both the Aboriginal communities and to the community-controlled organisations is going to enable the fulfilment of the Abbott Government mantra – getting kids to school, adults to work and communities safe.
Similarly puzzling is the response of the Minister when asked to comment on the funding reality as outlined.
Senator Scullion called it a process to ‘deliver the long term, sustainable results Indigenous communities want and deserve.’ HOW? Aboriginal people are asking. How can there possibly be ‘no service delivery gaps’ as claimed? The Minister’s ‘Strategy’ has created them. Just how will the Minister ‘address’ these issues of fixing any funding gaps as promised? Again the explanation is from the people:‘These words [of assurance] aren’t meant for us but for the broader community to believe Aboriginal people are getting what they need.’
Will we believe it? Or will we believe the words of the First Nations peoples lived experience and go the next step to stand in solidarity and protest with them, working, as Pope Francis says in Evangelii Gaudium #188, ‘to eliminate the structural causes of poverty’?
Michele Madigan is a Sister of St Joseph who has spent the past 38 years working with Aboriginal people in remote areas of South Australia and in Adelaide. Her work has included advocacy and support for senior Aboriginal women of Coober Pedy in their campaign against the proposed national radioactive dump.
APY lands image from sbs.com.au