By RAINER CHLANDA
Those who work in the social service sector in Alice Springs, as I do, know this fact intimately: there is an incredible amount of money funding our response to a community who have incredibly little.
Our system watches as desperate people stumble and waits for them to fall before extending a paternalistic hand or one gripped around a gavel. Only once crisis strikes comes a swath of expensive support services or an inhumane prison system.
We are building prisons before houses, funding health services but not health, and responding to trauma instead of preventing it.
I’ve worked in various therapeutic support services with “at risk” youth in touch with the justice system for the last nine years, which brings you up-close with our struggling underclass.
When doing this work, you become a member of a group of “stakeholders” from various services that form a “care team” for the young person. At the extreme but not uncommon end of the spectrum, a care team may include a Support Worker from a Youth Support Program at an NGO; a Community Corrections (NTG) Case Worker supervising their parole or bail; a Behaviour Support Practitioner; a non-mainstream school attempting daily at-home pickups; a multidisciplinary team of allied health professionals conducting assessments; a Disability Support Worker from the NDIS; a worker from a Diversion Program; and a Government Child Protection Practitioner who oversees all of this.
Dizzying amounts of money and resources swirl around a young person who survives on their portion of their caregiver’s $493 per week parenting-payment.
Cathy Alice at Whitegate by ROD MOSS
If the efforts of the team fail and the young person is incarcerated in a Youth Detention Centre, the tax-payer will cough up a further staggering approximate $900,000 a year, according to the NT News, to detain them in a system that has been proven to further criminalise young offenders (and increasingly so the younger they are).
The well-intentioned and often highly skilled care team will meet occasionally for updates and to finesse the care plan, but in many meetings I’ve attended, the bulk of the stakeholders have next to no traction with the young person and several will have never laid eyes on them.
Even if a Support Worker achieves regular contact with their clients, their engagement is unlikely to meaningfully resemble the work their respective programs set out to do, as the clients’ much more pressing need to survive takes precedence.
A Social Worker, working for an NGO on a good salary, is likely to find themselves supporting their client and their family to access, for example, an “emergency relief voucher.” This involves picking them up in the organisation’s leased vehicle, often taking them to a local org to have an ID card issued, on to Centrelink for an income statement (and a lengthy wait) and to the bank for a bank statement to evidence their need, then finally to an org that will hopefully issue a $60 food voucher that can be received once a fortnight.
The worker in this scenario has to try hard to avoid the realisation that what their client needs more than their specialised support, is a fraction of their salary.
Whilst “self-determination” is a central tenet in “trauma-informed practice”, the apparatus in place appears to reflect that we’ve decided our clients are incapable of managing daily living tasks and require highly paid professionals to take over.
This isn’t an argument to say that therapeutic programs have no value, but when they are delivered within the context of the constant stress of poverty their important work falls by the wayside, along with any hope of achieving sustainable change.
The issues that determine disadvantage which play out so clearly along racial lines here and throughout our country are stubbornly complex.
Supreme Court Building
The country’s recent answer of “No” to The Voice to Parliament referendum has left us bereft of an opportunity to better understand some of these complexities. However, not every facet of disadvantage is complicated, and there are voices on the ground that are heard but not answered.
The people I work with voice their needs constantly, saying: We need food, we need adequate housing, a working car, we need to get back on Centrelink. Only with basic needs met can people afford to turn their minds to further aspirations such as employment and education and meaningfully exercise self-determination.
The impediment to meeting these needs lies not with the difficulty of complicated policy design or a lack of evidence to inform them, but with weak social and political will to enact simple measures.
Policy makers could decide tomorrow that everyone who is entitled to a Centrelink payment receives it unconditionally, and that all payments are increased so that no one is in poverty.
Tasking someone with surviving with zero income is an absurd arrangement that the whole community suffers for. This obviously dictates either relying on one’s family for support or acquiring necessities illegally, thereby risking catalysing a cascade of legal processes and interventions which of course completely dwarf the cost of simply keeping that person on their humble income.
An unconditional payment would also save the taxpayer funding the cumbersome division of Centrelink that polices whether recipients meet their obligations. The big stick of this humiliating practice is ultimately futile as, provided English is your first language and you have relative stability and some digital literacy, satisfying the requirements is easily doctored.
Those who wish to “dole bludge” and are of relative privilege work the system and stay on payments whilst those who require the most support fall through the cracks and plunge further in to disadvantage.
The near doubling of Jobseeker Payments during Covid saw millions of people relieved from poverty around the country, and a positive social impact including a dramatic reduction in property crime in the Northern Territory (where residents were not subject to lockdowns) to the lowest in a decade (see graph).
Find details here and here and here.
The assumptions that an unconditional income will generate lazy people and increase anti-social behaviour have failed to materialise in countless experiments of a “Guaranteed Income” (GI) around the world since the 1960s. These experiments have produced a strong evidence base that a GI leads to better health outcomes (not surprising), increases in employment (perhaps surprising), lower crime rates, and increased school attendance amongst a swath of other improved measures of societal health.
The policy, often dismissed as fanciful or idealistic, is increasingly being considered by governments around the world, with the rise of AI and its threat to jobs contributing to its growing relevance. There are over 100 pilots of GI currently being delivered in the US, the ANC South Africa is promising to introduce it if re-elected, while the largest ever trial of it is underway currently in Kenya and showing promising results.
Beyond increasing cash flow to impoverished members of the community (not just to professionals surrounding them), any measure that directly improves the conditions in which the poor survive is the best form of early intervention.
Adequate funding could be allocated so that social housing provision meets the demand. In Alice Springs the estimated wait for social housing is in between six and 10 years with overcrowding in the NT being 43% higher than the national average.
Poker machines could be banned from pubs and clubs (as WA has done and achieved the lowest gambling losses per capita in the country). Better yet would be to eradicate them completely thus stopping the flow of upwards of $14m (figure not including the losses on machines at Lasseter’s Casino as this data is not made public) from the poorest members of our community to rich investors interstate like Iris Capital.
A landmark study of the effects of gambling on crime in NSW just found that increased spending on gambling is associated with increase in assaults, break and enter offences, and motor vehicle theft among other offences.
The gambling industry preys upon addiction and desperation and is unaccountable as its effects ricochet through the community.
Evidence-based offender rehabilitation and therapeutic programs need to be introduced to the prison. Currently there are none at Alice Springs Correctional Centre, and scarcely any training / work programs.
Persons who are incarcerated in Alice Springs sit on remand for an average of 293 days (statistics from January, 2024) in an understaffed overcrowded prison without air-conditioning.
Can we be surprised that several riots have occurred there during sweltering summer months? Gangs and violence fill the void and we wonder why the NT has the worst rate of recidivism in the country.
Basic measures to address obvious systemic failings stare us in the face whilst we elect a government who believe that the answer to crime lies with locking up ten-year-olds, bringing back spit hoods, and fining (even prosecuting!) parents whose kids miss school.
Ryders and Johnsons in camp. By ROD MOSS.
And, in an unbelievably callous decision announced this week in the CLP’s “Corrections Infrastructure Master Plan”, youth offenders in Alice Springs will be transferred to Darwin Youth Detention Centre to serve their sentences. This will see the most vulnerable members of our community taken 1,500 kms from their home communities, severing contact with their families and support services.
The CLP are also pledging to increase the capacity of the adult prisons across the NT by an extra 1000 beds – a clear indication that they are a government who see imprisonment as a solution, not a contingency.
These punitive measures capitalise on anger, appeal to our lowest common denominator, and have no evidence base whatsoever. Our humanity takes a blow, desperate people suffer further, and division is inflamed.
Support for these policies appears to reflect that we value our right to punish over our right to thrive together, that our thirst for retribution is so great we wish to satiate it in spite of ourselves. But these responses only find traction with inflammatory lies fed to a constituency desperate for relief from chronic crime.
To address disadvantage, the suffering it encompasses along with the chaos that spills out into the whole community, the “Hard on Crime” fallacy must be resisted and rational, evidence-based responses pursued.
Other reading:
100 GI experiments
Reduction in Crime due to increase payment
PAINTING at top by ROD MOSS, Akeyulerre Easter.
Thanks.
A very well researched, documented and thought out piece.
Now how do we get it through to our elected members?
Charlie Carter
I’m often reminded of a Spanish saying: “El sentido comun, es el menos comun de todo los sentidos.” (Common sense is the least common of all the senses.)
A well written informative common sense article. Well done Rainer.
I fear that those who should read and think about it (inter alia Charlie Carters elected members), won’t.
Thankyou – well done. We have a lot of good work ahead, in coming together and letting go of some unhelpful stuff.
An excellent piece. Can you please mail it to the idiots who run the NT?
Let’s hope for wide readership Rainer ie. beyond such as myself who fully endorse your insights.
Excellent piece. Heartbreaking, insightful, and right on point.
Impressive. Yes compulsory reading for politicians. And for those who criticise.
An excellent, well-crafted article. You write extremely well, Rainer. Promoted through Facebook and Twitter.
Guaranteed Income sounds simple, but its effectiveness depends on leveraging many social assets (eg trust, leadership, accountability, education, inclusion, sobriety) that don’t exist here, and need to be created through difficult black-white collaborations.
Otherwise, GI can become yet another perverse incentive.
Fine piece Rainer. Gambling, like dependence on alcohol or tobacco is often a huge drain on families with high stress and low incomes.
Maintaining a floor price on alcohol is a practical measure to reduce spending on ridiculously cheap grog. Banning pokies would likely benefit everyone, except of course the big business and government coffers which pocket the proceeds.
This is an excellent contribution by Rainer – and by someone who is deeply involved.
I think Rainer is right on the money when he points out very clearly how vast amounts of money does little to serve the interests of those in desperate need. Rather, it serves the interests of an increasing number of vested interests and hangers-on (stakeholders). Most of these live in relative affluence in urban centres with good facilities and have zilch in common with their “clients”.
I also agree that many should be left to manage their daily tasks and that these should not be taken over by highly paid professionals. It brings to mind the piercing, perceptive comments of Noel Pearson: “The bureaucracy views people on the ground as incapable, irresponsible, disorganized, without expertise, imbecilic, pitiful” and therefore to severely circumscribe, decision making in a range of areas. This has increased, rather than reduced, since Pearson wrote this.
In the scenario presented by Rainer, where a young person is in desperate need, without support, funding should be available for the person to survive without criminal activity. However, some form of supervision would appear necessary, to ensure the funding was not misdirected, by perhaps, a trusted, respected and senior mentor.
It is a very good point that only when basic needs have been met can a person be expected to consider employment and education. It is one of the reasons I have been a strong supporter of a carefully designed CDEP scheme that should enable and lead to steps into training and longer-term employment.
Of course this scheme was terminated by the activists on the basis that Aboriginal people should not have to work for the dole. Another example of how to throw the baby out with the bathwater!
I also support the notion that someone with an Aboriginal background, in particular whose first language is not English, should receive CentreLink unconditionally and quickly, so that a person does not need to try and survive in poverty, in Australia.
With respect to the concept of a guaranteed income, I am of the view as I have said in this publication, that it is essential that Aboriginal people are rapidly involved in the mainstream economy as clearly enunciated by Mundine. I agree with Mundine that economic participation, education and safe communities are the priorities.
I turn again to the lucid, wonderfully instructive writings of Noel Pearson: “When you look at the culture of Aboriginal binge drinking you can see how passive welfare (or a guaranteed income?) has corrupted Aboriginal values of responsibility and sharing, and changed them into exploitation and manipulation. The obligation to share has become the obligation to buy grog when your cheque arrives and the obligation of the non-drinkers to surrender their money to the drinkers. Our traditional value of responsibility has become the responsibility of the non-drinkers to feed the drinkers and their children when the money is gone.”
It is now high time that Land Councils and their Investment Arms as well as bodies such as Aboriginal Investment NT, engage their vast resources to assist the Aboriginal people in desperate need you so cogently point to, rather than lock-up such immense resources for dubious, often “stakeholder” purposes.
After all, aren’t they the bodies who claim to represent and understand Aboriginal people and their needs, better than anyone else? Why then have they not done far more with their vast resources to overcome these all too obvious and desperate problems?
Excellent article. If only the NT politicians had a bit more imagination, a bit more courage and compassion, and a bit less liking for tossing good money after bad.
Refreshing to hear a voice from the streets.
I see the work of the “well-intentioned and often highly skilled care team” as inherently conflicted.
For example, you say that people you work with voice their needs constantly.
You would have heard the saying” “Once a precedent, twice a tradition.” (Fred Myers).
So, doing things things for Aboriginal people more than once reinforces the expectation that you will continue to do them.
The team may be thinking that eventually, the person they are helping will get the hang of this and do it for themselves.
But they see it as the team reinforcing its obligation to do it for them.
If the team suddenly refuse to do it, the tempo of humbug will rise exponentially.
If that doesn’t make the team see “reason” and they continue to refuse to fulfil their obligation, the client will be outraged.
The typical response to that is shock at the lack of gratitude.
I find myself wary of establishing unwanted traditions of dependency in my relationships with Aboriginal people.
I’m not sure that a care team can avoid the trap.
@ Don. The abolition of CDEP (Community Development Emplyoment Projects) was announced by the Howard Government almost simultaneously with the NTER (Intervention). It was subsequently phased out and replaced by several other schemes. You’re absolutely right in calling it a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Living in Yuendumu I have witnessed far too many babies being thrown out.
@ Ralph Folds: Years ago some may remember Ray Martin taking a group of Eastern states people to the Top End. They visited a house with an obviously unhealthy kitchen. It was filthy. [The woman there] demanded that government should build her a new house rather than the inhabitants (many) should help her clean it up.
I wish they would do that for me!
I also saw a large team of local builders repairing houses in a remote community out West where the builder speculated that when he had finished the last house, he would be starting again on no 1.
I watched in awe as a large group of seemingly abled bodied men sat near a large scattering of rubbish, playing cards.
Again I am patiently waiting for the government builders to arrive at my house to upgrade the deterioration that I cannot manage myself as my income decreases and the need increases.
I also recall a 12 year old student throwing a chair across a classroom.
When challenged his response was immediate: “You can’t do anything to me. I’m Aboriginal.”
How did that arise and are we feeling the consequences?
While I enjoy reading Rainer’s articles, this one has a few serious errors and contradictions. In the interests of spirited debate, here’s a few:
1. Any caregiver receiving parenting payment would also be receiving family tax benefit part A and most likely part B too. That’s not to mention rent assistance, remote area allowance, pension supplement, etc. When all these are tallied up it’s easy for a non-working single mum with three kids to receive upwards of $1100 a week, half of which is not taxable income. So it’s quite a bit more than $493.
2. Let’s say our single mum with three kids (we’ll call her Jane) was on $1150 a week total Centrelink benefits. Out of all of these, parenting payment is the only taxable income. So Jane, paying around $1k in tax a year, would actually quite likely be “above the poverty line” in Australia. How do we get that figure? $1150 × 52 – $1000 = $58,800/year, or $1130/week — which is $40.40 more than the Melbourne Institute’s 2023 poverty line for a single parent of three, $1089.60. Woohoo! Go Jane! That’s probably enough for a pack of Winnie Blues these days.
3. Most UBI trials are in third world countries and their success would not be transferrable to Indigenous welfare in the NT. In Africa, India, many parts of Asia, there is little or no government welfare. If you are poor and want to eat, you may have to forage through landfill to find tin cans to sell to recyclers, or fish from poo-polluted rivers, etc. We don’t see this happening in Alice. There’s no one starving to death in Kintore or Truckies Camp.
4. UBI is “universally eligible”, meaning that it is not test on income or assets and hence applies equally to paupers and billionaires. UBI as Rainer envisions it here in Oz/NT doesn’t really make sense. If it’s based on eligibility criteria such as weekly income, marital status, number of children in care, rent paid per week — that is, if it’s what we’d generally call “fair” — then naturally recipients will have obligations. If you’re on an unemployment benefit, you’re obliged to provide evidence that you’re job hunting — because the definition of unemployment is not working but actively looking for work. If you’re broke and single then shack up with a sugar daddy, should you receive the same amount? If not, you’re obliged to declare that change in marital status. You popped out another kid? You’re obliged to tell Centrelink so they can pay you more. You get the idea. Unless the sole eligibility criteria are fixed attributes, like place of birth, annual parental income at birth, Aboriginal/TSI status, etc, then there will always be reporting obligations as recipients move in and out of these criteria.
5. You can’t really lament the overcrowding in the Alice Springs prison and then lambast the decision to build more prisons across the NT. More prisons = less overcrowding. Also, it’s absurd to suggest that public housing is a substitute for prisons. DV offenders, neglectful parents, etc need to be removed from households so they don’t f**k up the next generation of kids. Unless you want violent criminals camping in your back yard, or in Charles Creek, jail is the best option. And yes, it’s expensive, because Aboriginal people are expensive — whether you’re buying prisons, youth centres, social workers, CDEP schemes or higher welfare payments.
6. As a more general reflection, I find it odd that long-term/born and bred Alice locals working in the Aboriginal sector can hold the view that giving Aboriginal people more money with fewer strings attached will somehow result in a golden age of social, cultural and economic revival. I’m reminded of Blair McFarland saying in interviews last year that we should double welfare payments to lift Aboriginal people out of poverty.
But let’s be real — if we doubled the dole for Aboriginal NT residents next week, any funds not immediately disbursed on grog, smokes, ganja, soft drinks, and overpriced streetwear from Urban Rampage would be quickly humbugged away by kith and kin.
How can Mr McFarland, after many years working with troubled youth in and around Alice, seriously think this is a good idea?
Aboriginal people don’t lack discretionary income. They lack the capacity to budget for healthy choices in life. There are complex reasons behind this, and I’m not saying it’s a matter of “don’t buy grog and smokes”, but measures like income management do go a long way to improving matters.
And don’t even get me started on advocating for a pokies ban while not mentioning the catastrophic effects of alcohol. Yeah gambling sucks but grog is far worse.
7. Nothing I’ve written has been intended to cause offence, instead, I’ve simply stated facts as I see them. These observations, of course, don’t apply to “all” Aboriginal people in the NT — but then again, neither do Rainer’s. We are broadly talking about chronic welfare recipients who may or may not have regular contact with the justice system.
8. What’s the solution to this big mess? I don’t know. Perhaps there isn’t one!
@ Malcolm: Your comments are well thought out and I appreciate what you are saying. It’s not simple and perhaps there is no solution that we can get to from here. But a few points in defence of reducing poverty – as well as the numerous economic benefits involved in the reduction in crime – see Rayner’s graph – there is a moral argument about fairness.
Why are we punishing people who for whatever reason don’t work, especially as the RBA works to ensure a percentage of citizens are unemployed. Any money given to poor people is spent which stimulates the economy.
Your argument about extra money being spent on grog etc is valid but can be addressed through basics card strategies.
Your argument about the single mother being a packet of smokes above the poverty line also valid but in practice she is also feeding quite a lot of her relations with her income – ABS stats indicate about 50% of working age remote residents are neither in employment nor on Centrelink.
And kids aren’t starving to death but hunger is a frequent issue for them and their families.
The suicide rate of Indigenous people above the poverty line is lower than the general rate. Not keeping people in grinding poverty as a government policy might not fix everything but it certainly helped during COVID – what else has worked?
@ Malcolm Reynolds: Don’t forget the $230m paid in mining royalties to Aboriginal residents per annum in the NT.
These windfall payments are typically used to buy a car and gamble.
@ Susan: Exactly. Banning pokies might help a little but that brand new mota’ car gets used by extended family, abused on dirt roads, never gets serviced or maintained etc, and eventually ends up as one of the many unroadworthy vehicles on the streets of town.
Aboriginal poverty is much more a result of poor investments on the personal level, inability to budget for essentials, cultural pressure to share income and assets, than lack of welfare income.
Aboriginal people may claim “we need food, we need houses, we need a car, we need to stay on Centrelink without reporting obligations”; interestingly, they don’t claim “we need help budgeting, we need support cleaning and maintaining personal assets, we need help with admin and paperwork”.
This things can be onerous but other people generally manage to keep up with them.
The problem is not insufficient dole, it’s a thorny combination of lack of basic modern life skills, admin capacity, and personal responsibility, made harder by interfamilial income and asset sharing obligations. Without these in place, discretionary income will continue to be poorly spent.
The problem won’t be fixed by flinging more cash at people who are, in all likelihood, lifelong wards of the state.
@ Blair’s final question, “what else has worked?” reminds me that 50 years ago there was a great burst of cross-cultural creativity in Alice Springs to meet the widely-recognised needs for education, employment, health, media, and language translation by founding many of our existing NGOs.
Most notably, each was founded by a small trusted group who worked together. In addition, those organisations (and churches) collaborated with each other and even sat on each other’s Boards (!)
Sadly, over the past two or three decades selfishness, manipulation and theft in plain sight gradually destroyed hope that an inclusive society is possible, and those execrable behaviours are now excused as a necessary evil but … Hope Springs Eternal!!
Just imagine if a group of trusted, cross-cultural community leaders existed. If this imaginary group put forth an inclusive long-term vision for a better Alice Springs that everyone would support and hold each other accountable, I see no reason why civic creativity would not “work” again.
@ Blair McFarlane: Yes, it’s not simple, and it’s good you can acknowledge that after years of saying that it is just a matter of giving more money to people living hand to mouth.
But your new explanation that government policy is to keep Aboriginal people in grinding poverty is drawing a very long bow,
Spending directed towards Indigenous Australians equates to approximately $40 billion a year.
That’s not counting royalties and services provided by churches, individuals and benevolent societies.
That’s roughly equivalent to annual federal government spending on Australia’s national defence.
The impact of the Reserve Bank’s policies promoting poverty is far outweighed by this expenditure.
@Trevor. My memory of that Ray Martin programme differs from yours. I saw ethnocentric poverty-porn. The portrayal of the situation in that community lacked nuance, depth and respect. From memory that community was deeply offended by the progrmme and felt they’d been ambushed.
Rainer – a very good reading of the Social Service sector and an empathetic understanding of the fellow Central Australians we wish the best for.
Seems to me you need to take your understanding, passion and knowledge to the next level. Best avoid Government Departments, NGOs and Aboriginal organisations, though!
@ Blair: You’re distorting the facts as always.
1. Rainer’s graph showing the mid-2020 drop in property crime is far from conclusive evidence that double dole payments had a meaningful impact on crime. In addition to the $550/fn Covid bonus from March 1, there were remote community travel restrictions from late March to mid June. These would have had a significant impact on the drop in both property crime and assaults in that quarter. Also, the Covid bonus had dropped to $250/fn by September 1, but in that quarter, property crime had jumped back up again to 83% of pre-Covid bonus numbers (see the ABC article linked below the graph). So the “clear evidence” you and Rainer refer to in this case is anything but.
Also, Deborah Di Natale from NT Council of Social Service Sources is quoted (in another of the articles Rainer linked) saying that “there isn’t any evidence to show that JobSeeker rate relates to crime”.
2. The RBA aims to keep unemployment in a target band to avoid wage-push inflation, but all it can really affect is what is termed cyclical unemployment (more / fewer total jobs nationally due to higher / lower economic growth and other macroeconomic factors). But the kind of unemployment we’re discussing here is known as hardcore unemployment. What’s that?
“The term ‘hardcore unemployed’ refers to individuals who face significant and multiple barriers to gaining and maintaining employment. These barriers can include a lack of work experience, limited educational qualifications, criminal records, long-term unemployment, or other personal and societal factors.” Thanks Google.
As you might expect, the RBA has zero influence on hardcore unemployment. It’s the domain of social workers, not economists. And it’s very hard to shift, whether in boom or bust cycles.
3. Re kids going hungry, again, it’s not because of a lack of income for their carer — it’s due to what their carers spend it on before they buy them food. If mum is giving money to relatives or children not in her care, well, that’s spending. It may be culturally mandated rather than legally mandated, like car or house repayments, but it’s spending nonetheless.
And if people eligible for the dole aren’t receiving, well, that’s their own fault. Personal responsibility has to start somewhere, and it may as well start with filling in a few Centrelink forms. Not a massive ask.
4. “Money given to poor people stimulates the economy” — yes, chiefly these economic sectors: alcohol, tobacco, ganja and other drugs, processed foods, soft drinks, gambling, payday loans, etc. Let’s give the poor more money so they can keep these selfless social enterprises afloat.
5. On a positive note, I’m glad you can admit that income management has merit. Slow progress is still progress.
Thanks for your comments everyone.
@ Malcolm
I acknowledge that there are other additional payments a caregiver may be entitled to but you are wrong in saying “Any caregiver receiving parenting payment would also be receiving family tax benefit part A and most likely part B too…” as this would require all caregivers to be fluently navigating the Centrelink system and continually meeting all its obligations. The fact that this is not the case is one of the main points of the piece.
Blair’s point that 50% of working age remote residents are neither in employment nor on Centrelink captures this perfectly.
In regards to UBI trials being mostly successful in the third world, please see the embedded link to one of the first and most famous UBI experiments which was in Dauphin, Canada. The piece also mentions the hundreds that are underway in the USA.
I won’t take you up on your other points, but I appreciate your perspective. I would however like to push back on you making unhelpful generalisations about Aboriginal people. I approach talking about these issues, that disproportionately effect Aboriginal lives, with care and sensitivity. You should too.
@ Rainer
You’ve got it back to front re PP and FTB. PP has stricter eligibility requirements (youngest child must be under 8, both income and assets test applies) while FTB has more a generous income range and also no assets test. Assets test = more admin and forms to fill out.
Re Dauphin / Mincome, hardly comparable. One one hand: a rural town in an agricultural region with poverty primarily resulting from seasonal / structural / regional unemployment plus a lack of industrial development, in the 1970s stagflation era with both high interest rates and sluggish economic activity. There were low levels of crime, social dysfunction etc; in fact much lower than many urban areas at the time.
On the other: remote town / community inhabitants with intergenerational welfare dependency, over-served by Aboriginal industry service workers (as you vividly illustrated), health and social conditions related far less to poverty and far more how to money is spent (diabetes, kidney disease, DV etc).
Crime rates through the roof. Stab capital, murder capital, now DV capital of Australia. Let’s not mention the entrenched attitude of many Aboriginal people to regard handouts, free food as their birthright — a very different attitude from proud self-sufficiency culture generally found in rural communities.
There’s absolutely no guarantee that UBI would work here, and many good reasons to suggest it would be an unmitigated disaster.
As regards unhelpful generalisations, I’ll reiterate point 7 in my original comment:
“Nothing I’ve written has been intended to cause offence, instead, I’ve simply stated facts as I see them. These observations, of course, don’t apply to ‘all’ Aboriginal people in the NT — but then again, neither do Rainer’s. We are broadly talking about chronic welfare recipients who may or may not have regular contact with the justice system.”
I’d prefer to be straight up and risk causing offence than pussyfoot around the root causes of these issues. It’s worth adding that they disproportionately affect Aboriginal people in great part due to the ongoing refusal of NGOs, governments and other relevant decision makers to face uncomfortable facts.
Fabulous piece Rainer, have passed it on!
@ Malcolm: “That brand new mota’ car.” Unlikely.
Almost all that I have seen are clapped out cars that are imported from “down south”
with the minimum done to make them registrable.
Probably wouldn’t be worth spending even that on them without the Aboriginal market.
And probably not worth the new owners spending money on them either.
Extravagant exaggerations don’t add anything to your arguments.
@ Charlie Crater: The new car comment by Malcolm may be an exaggeration, but your clapped-out car’s rejoyner is also one.
The cars you refer to may have been in good condition, valued at around $10,000 (a common royalty payment) just a few months ago.
Cars are driven almost non-stop between distant communities and to and from town.
On sandy roads, the air filters clog up, so are thrown away, allowing grit to be sucked straight into the engine.
Kids jump on the roof and during disputes doors and body panels are kicked.
There is no maintenance whatsoever and the life expectancy of a car is about six months.
Susan: Very specific, detailed knowledge here: “On sandy roads, the air filters clog up, so are thrown away, allowing grit to be sucked straight into the engine.”
I wonder where this came from?
And based on how many observations?
In my experience most of these cars sold avoid the mandatory warranty, that is, they are over 10 years old, and have done more than 160,000km.
Rainer’s article has a fair bit to say about incarceration. The system is clearly broken.
The current solution to the “crisis” is to shuffle the prison population to make more room. Not sure how that works. A clear case of re-arranging the deck chairs. Makes me think of those Japanese railway officials whose job it is to push passengers into carriages before the doors close.
As for the motorcar metaphor, there is only one bit of Susan’s generalisations that in my experience I can fully agree with: “Cars are driven almost non-stop between distant communities and to and from town.”
As for the air filter and no maintenance assertions, again in my experience, many Yuendumu locals are pretty handy with a spanner and a screwdriver. Several times I’ve witnessed air filters blown out by being held at the exhaust. When you think about it, considering how much they’re driven, it is almost miraculous how long some motorcars are kept going.
@ Frank Baarda: The next thing you will be saying is that they also change the oil and lube their cars.
Many of the burned-out cars from town on the way to Yuendumu seem in reasonable cosmetic condition.
Why did they die?
Susan! How dare you question Frank or Charlie’s version of these things.
Charlie, Frank and John
Drive up the Nth Stuart Highway and look at the car sales.
You won’t see them packed with old bombs.
There are some excellent vehicles for sale, and Aboriginal families are buying them with the $230m they get PA with payments every six months.
There are no big mortgage payments for their free houses.
Royalty payments are used almost exclusively to buy vehicles.
Charlie is at least 10 years out of date.
Frank is right in saying that Aboriginal people are good bush mechanics.
But did the series Bush Mechanics say a word about car maintenance?
Yes, you can blow out an air filter once.
After that, you damage the micro fibres, and the filter will not prevent sand from getting into the engine and destroying it quickly.
Car maintenance is unheard of in a harsh environment.
But more royalty payments are assured, so being without a vehicle is only temporary.
Susan! My comment was tongue in cheek. I am on your side.
Rainer makes a well-informed and intelligent argument for GI and solutions to end poverty, yet for some reason the people with the power seem to want to maintain the status quo.
Why?
Think about it folks. The willingness for both major parties federally and territorially to “progress crime” in our neighbourhoods is to maintain the nonsense re. punitive, inhumane, and barbaric treatment of criminals so deeply entrenched in their poverty cycles that it is almost impossible to imagine change.
Why?
I don’t think people in power really want change (not all off course).
Look at what happens every election time around here. Crime continually becomes our most urgent and motivating reason to vote while the major parties tear each other apart while victim blaming every Aboriginal person who dare to try and exist on their traditional interruptus lands.
The cynic in me could/would believe that those earning the big salaries to maintain the dysfunction have no desire to change things.
They appear to want to keep the Blackfella down in his/her place by our failure to recognise the depth of their despair while benefiting from an Aboriginal Industry that is inept, incompetent and damn right corrupt in so many places.
We all know it but do we dare to open a can of worms and open a Royal Commission into such allegations? We bloody well should.
Dare to want to change for the benefit of us all. Let’s stop the rot we all contribute to. Take on the new and innovative well researched ideas that can make a difference.
Stop the political aggrandisement that continues election upon election.
Lead for all of us no matter what the personal cost. Realise where we are and search for desert knowledge.
Hope is eternal!!
Well done Rainer for daring to offer real solutions.