15.9.10

Deserving or not? The tricky language of the NT intervention

Income Management is where the Commonwealth government suspends welfare payments (the dole etc) and restricts what it can be used on (i.e. food & clothing, and not smokes, piss, porn). John Howard suspended the Racial Discrimination Act to force Income Management onto some disadvantaged communities in the Northern Territory where predominantly Indigenous Australians live. In Kevin Rudd's term (the Coalition supported it, too), the policy was extended across all of the Territory.

Why would they do such a thing? Tony Abbott: "Welfare payments aren't lavish and if you're fair dinkum about looking after your family and if you are honestly claiming welfare, well then why not have 50 per cent of that payment quarantined to the necessities of life?". Kevin Rudd: "Welfare should not be allowed to become a way of life in Australia". Noel Pearson (leading Indigenous Australian scholar): "The Aboriginal struggle has to wake up to the fact that our belated citizenship... gave us two things. Firstly it gave us land rights and increasing recognition of our human rights - and this has been a good thing. Secondly, it gave us passive welfare as an economy - and this has been disastrous". The idea is that the Indigenous shoulder the responsibility of working towards becoming contributing members of society as healthy, productive human beings in the capitalist democratic system that is life in Australia.

Now, I'm not a mad Human Rights junkie, but the thing about democracy is that it represents the voice of the majority. Compulsory Income Management across the board in NT is an arbitrary and discriminatory denial of Indigenous peoples' fundamental human rights. Yes, they should pick up the slack in the struggle to close the Indigenous-non-Indigenous gap, but this policy just doesn't sit well with me, and it shouldn't with any Australians.