Sunday, April 15, 2012

First it applied only to Aborigines...

Vanguard February 2010 p. 5
Nick G

The old adage of how repression directed at a minority may become generalised across the rest of society is playing out in the wake of the racist Northern Territory intervention into remote Aboriginal communities.


Paternalistic and draconian measures were enforced by the Howard Government onto 73 “prescribed” Aboriginal communities. This required the suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act (RDA) in the NT.


One of the most controversial measures was the introduction of income quarantining requiring Aboriginal welfare recipients to have 50 percent of payments withheld and available only for food and other purchases at designated stores through a special BasicsCard. Through Centrelink, many “customers” are in fact encouraged to have all of their welfare payments pre-committed to designated items including household goods, clothing and footwear.


This so-called “income management” became a focus for Aboriginal complaints about the suspension of the RDA. The shame of having to stand in special queues to pay on the BasicsCard, the inconvenience of not being able to make purchases when “the computers are down”, the resentment at the procedures for surveillance on spending and how bills were paid, and the fact that designated stores were not subject to price controls - leaving Aborigines open to rip-off merchants - became the shared experience of the communities.


In all, some 16,000 NT Aborigines were required to have BasicsCards with Centrelink using the issuing process to preclude some forms of payment to over 800 recipients and change the payment type for nearly 600 more.


The incoming Federal Labor government was well aware that an intervention based on such a flagrant device as the suspension of the RDA was unsustainable. Aborigines, progressive Australians and the international community were joining forces to protest the racism inherent in the intervention.


Labor’s agenda was to continue the intervention (which is essentially a land grab orchestrated by huge mining and pastoral monopolies at the expense of Aboriginal land rights) whilst reinstating the RDA.


For seven of the eight main intervention items, a loophole in the RDA allowing “special measures” of a beneficial nature to a disadvantaged group provided Labor with the solution to its dilemma of putting back the RDA alongside racist policies. Alcohol and pornography restrictions, community store licensing, compulsory five-year leases on community land and other items are to be considered “special measures” for the purposes of the RDA.


Given the focus of Aboriginal resentment on income management, Labor had to drop plans to include it as a “special measure”. Instead, Macklin announced on November 25 that it would be “redesigned as a non-discriminatory measure” and the only way to do that was to apply it to other non-Aboriginal Australians.


If Macklin gets approval for the necessary legislative changes, she will be able to make any area in Australia a “declared income management area”. It is expected that three types of welfare recipients will be targeted:



· “disengaged youth” between 15 and 25 years old who have been receiving Youth Allowance, Newstart, special benefits and parenting payments for 13 out of 26 weeks
· “long-term recipients” for those over 25 but not yet old enough for the pension and who have been receiving the above payments for 52 out of 104 weeks
· “vulnerable welfare recipients” for anyone who is on a welfare payment who is considered “at risk”.


Obviously Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians will be over-represented in these groups anyway; however, the inclusion of non-indigenous persons will make the provisions legally non-discriminatory.


Thus, measures first designed to apply only to Territory Aborigines under a racist regime, but effectively test-driven over Aboriginal communities and found to be acceptable to governments, are now poised to be imposed on a wider section of the population.


The effect will be to take away what little independence and individual empowerment is now enjoyed by marginalised peoples, and make welfare payments harder and more onerous to access as part of a general cut in welfare benefits.


How much longer can we tolerate this system that impoverishes so many so that so few can enjoy immense wealth, and then punishes the victims for their poverty?




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