Opinion & Commentary
Opinion and Commentary contains media articles written by CIS researchers.
Categories
Let’s get serious about tackling indigenous violence
For many remote Indigenous people, life is so bad that jail is often a better option. Read More
To get Aborigines out of jail give them education and jobs
Rather than continuing to focus on applying 'culturally appropriate' responses to indigenous disadvantage, we should focus on basics such as education and employment. Read More
Progress is possible in remote Aboriginal lands
It is possible to make a real difference in remote Aboriginal communities, provided there is genuine commitment and engagement. Read More
Better schooling, not uni quotas
LARISSA Behrendt's recent report recommends doubling the proportion of indigenous students at universities. Only 1.09 per cent of university students are indigenous and Behrendt argues that the target... Read More
What Price friends?
Price has been called a puppet because of her support of the intervention, but it is hard to argue with what she wants for her people: "real education based on real standards" so they can walk the line... Read More
What Price friends?
Price has been called a puppet because of her support of the intervention, but it is hard to argue with what she wants for her people: "real education based on real standards" so they can walk the line... Read More
Literacy problems hidden behind culturally separate careers
One of the primary reasons for the problems experienced by AHWs is ambivalence about the need for English literacy and numeracy. When the role was first created in the 1970s in the Northern Territory,... Read More
Education crucial to Aboriginal jobs
The problem is not a shortage of jobs in the mining sector. More local Aboriginal people would be employed in mines if they had the skills for employment. Read More
An Indigenous program that’s boxing clever
At risk Aboriginal youth are given an outlet to build self esteem through a boxing program with Redfern police. Read More
An Indigenous program that’s boxing clever
At risk Aboriginal youth are given an outlet to build self esteem through a boxing program with Redfern police. Read More
An Indigenous program that’s boxing clever
At risk Aboriginal youth are given an outlet to build self esteem through a boxing program with Redfern police. Read More
NT intervention: action better than apathy
It is hypocritical that the very same people who lament the gross violation of Aboriginal rights carried out under the intervention can remain so silent about the injustice that has seen so many remote... Read More
Changing expectations of Aboriginal school attendance
If my son wasn't hassled every time he was late to school then he would probably continue to be late. If there were no consequences, then despite the carrot of a real job one day, he like many remote Indigenous... Read More
Remote disadvantage even worse than reported
Billions of taxpayer dollars are wasted on programs that mostly benefit bureaucrats IN February, the Productivity Commission released Indigenous Expenditure Report 2010 showing that an additional $5.1... Read More
Degrees of difference
Many people have taken umbrage at this arguing that having a separate form for some remote communities is an example of 'positive discrimination'. Few people seem to understand the broader implications... Read More
Census apartheid: separate form separates a community
The use of a separate Census form for some discrete Indigenous communities is not only state-sanctioned apartheid but statistically invalid. Read More
OOHC not working for at-risk kids
The causes of the OHHC crisis care are multifaceted. But the consensus among experts is that at the heart of the crisis is the increasing numbers of children with 'high needs' entering care because of... Read More
Lands where no one can feel at home
Indigenous ‘community’ a misnomer. Read More
False notions of Indigenous community
Indigenous communities are not homogenous. Read More
Bar must be raised to curb pub violence
Follow NSW and crack down on problem pubs. Read More
Custody for Indigenous kids more than black and white
We should find better ways of combining Aboriginal child safety and the passing down of traditional lore by responsible elders. Read More
Back to six-pack politics
'Wet canteens' have been tried and utterly failed in indigenous communities. Read More
Petty name-calling just adds to polarisation
Increasing polarisation emerges in the aftermath of Larissa Behrendt’s tweet on Bess Price’s support of the NTI. Read More
Apartheid at the local pub
Double standards in the responsible service of alcohol have contributed to the growing alcohol problem in remote indigenous communities, and are one reason why alcohol restrictions are now in place in... Read More
Fat cats feed on needy
If government expenditure on indigenous Australians is divided among the welfare-dependent, the average per head is $75,000. Read More
Protecting bad teachers produces chronic failure
My School confirms that funding is not the cause of Indigenous educational failure. Read More
Education the key to living in two worlds
Key to the maintenance of a cultural or ethnic identity is the passing on of cultural knowledge and fostering a positive self image among the next generation. Read More
Remote chance of university
Although Indigenous graduates are taking their place in the professions and doing postgraduate studies, most of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children living in remote areas and on welfare... Read More
Aborigines should be given houses for free
Indigenous people are locked out of home ownership. Read More
Land rights must come first
Private property rights are the foundation for self-sustaining Indigenous businesses. Read More
Ownership would transform Aboriginal towns
The denial of private property rights to Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders on indigenous lands continues to cause extremes of poverty and dysfunction. Read More
Home ownership key to ending dysfunction
Indigenous Australians are being denied their right to own the house they live in. Read More
Education is only way out of ghettos
Separate schooling is disadvantaging indigenous children in remote communities. Read More
Collective apathy: alcohol and child abuse in the NT
What has been tolerated in Aboriginal communities would never have been tolerated in the major cities and towns of Australia. Read More
Little Gungaleeda girl: a preventable tragedy
The death of the 'little Gungaleeda girl' is a tragic outcome of poorly resourced medical care in remote Indigenous communities, says Sara Hudson on The Drum, 1 September 2010. Read More
Helen Hughes opens her diary
Helen Hughes writes the Diary for Spectator Australia about her trip to Cape York, 31 July 2010. Read More
Government doing something for Indigenous people not with them ...
Without community engagement Outback Stores will be yet another example of government doing something for Indigenous people not with them, says Sara Hudson in Online Opinion 29 June 2010. Read More
Outback Stores is not the solution
Rather than running stores for Indigenous communities, Outback Stores should be empowering residents to run the stores themselves, says Sara Hudson in The Canberra Times, 29 June 2010. Read More
Would-be Indigenous homeowners abandoned
The redirection of funds away from the Home Ownership on Indigenous Land program signals that remote Indigenous Australian’s dreams of home ownership will remain only a dream. Read More
Aborigines hurt by the stereotype of suffering
The majority of Indigenous Australians don’t need government hand-outs but unfortunately they hardly get any recognition. Read More
NAPLAN tests show the Indigenous gap
NAPLAN results show just how behind the mainstream remote students are, says Helen Hughes and Mark Hughes in The Newcastle Herald, 11 May 2010. Read More
Indigenous students from welfare-dependent families perform poorly
South Australia has some of the most disadvantaged remote Aboriginal communities and some of the lowest indigenous employment. Read More
Another brick in the wall
Public housing cannot remain the only option in Indigenous communities. If residents of remote communities could access some of the 'dead' capital currently tied up in the communal ownership of land, they... Read More
Competitive disadvantage is hardly the healthiest option
Determining the appropriate level of government responsibility is a vexed issue. Nowhere is this more apparent than in remote indigenous communities. Years of welfare dependency have demoralised communities... Read More
Where Does all the money go?
One of the reasons why increased funding has failed to make any significant inroads in closing the appalling health ‘gaps’ between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians is that no one really knows... Read More
Wasting money damages Aboriginal health
Public hospital reform wasn't the only issue put on the backburner at this week's Council of Australian Governments meeting in Brisbane. The Rudd government has also put off decisions about indigenous... Read More
Hale and hearty, say their parents
Ninety-seven per cent of Indigenous children are reported to be in excellent, very good, or good health, but these findings of the federal government’s study into Aboriginal children’s health are based... Read More
A sense of despair at Indigenous housing policy
Despite billions of dollars being spent, residents of remote communities still don't have enough houses. What houses there are continue to be poorly maintained, overcrowded and run down to the point of... Read More
Authorities must not wag school
The just released National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) results for this year confirm the Northern Territory remains far behind the rest of Australia in educating its children. Read More
Environment before people, says Wilderness Society
The misanthropic attitude of conservationists was revealed last week when a group of Aboriginal protestors from Cape York gate-crashed a Wilderness Society and green fundraiser in Sydney. Read More
Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage 2009
The Commonwealth government hoped for favourable coverage from the release of the Productivity Commission’s Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage. Instead, the Government was subjected to widespread criticism... Read More
Statistics obscure the truth
The media has been quick to sensationalise the statistics in the Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage report released last Thursday, particularly those figures that show that indigenous child abuse has increased. Read More
Permits will throttle growth towns
The Northern Territory government's tourism department recently mounted an advertising campaign encouraging people to ‘make a great investment’ by travelling to the Territory. But if you want to head... Read More
Who are Indigenous Australians?
In 1967 Australians overwhelmingly supported a referendum that altered the Australian constitution in regard to Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders. The strong support was a measure of mainstream Australia’s... Read More
Quietly making the grade
Contrary to popular myths, Left and Right, Indigenous students in mainstream society, representing the majority of Indigenous children and youngsters are doing well at school, staying to Year 12, and going... Read More
Commonwealth government fails remote Indigenous students
The second round of National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) tests took place this week. Australia wide, all children in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 will be tested for literacy and numeracy. Read More
Is more money for Alice Springs town camps the answer?
The federal government is offering $125 million to the Alice Spring town camps in an attempt to resolve the deadlock over negotiations for 40 year housing leases to the Commonwealth. This works out to... Read More
Making remote schools work will take commitment
Indigenous illiteracy and non-numeracy has been recognised as a problem in Australia for more than 20 years. But government targets have gone backwards from ‘fix the problem in four years’ in 1997... Read More
Indigenous people in NT deserve fair go at private homeownership
On the surface, the recent government decision to provide funding for new public housing to four troubled communities in the Northern Territory sounds like a good thing. Finally government appears to be... Read More
Aborigines shut out on home front
Among the multitude of policy failures in Aboriginal communities, public housing is poorly designed and constructed, with few of the amenities that most Australians take for granted. Read More
Has Indigenous Education Been Shortchanged Again?
The minister for education’s plan to fund two hundred additional teachers with $100 million of support is a commendable response to the Northern Territory’s crisis in Indigenous education. But the... Read More
School litany of shame
With the May 2009 national literacy and numeracy tests only six months away, it is not too soon to focus on the reasons why more than half of the Northern Territory's Year 3, 5, 7 and 9 school children... Read More
Numbers don't go remotely to issue
The news that the Australian Bureau of Statistics has found the 17 year gap in the life expectancy between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians has been reduced to 11 years would be welcome if it... Read More
Out with the Outstations?
After thirty years, it finally seems the Northern Territory government is acknowledging the failures of the outstation movement. Last Monday, the Northern Territory government released a discussion paper... Read More
Leadership can make all the difference in a CDEP organisation
This week the Rudd Government announced sweeping changes to the Community Development Employment Projects program, an indigenous work-for-the-dole-scheme. It will be axed in non-remote regions, and CDEP... Read More
Welfare stretcher at bottom of cliff
The federal Government has announced that it is reforming the Community Development Employment Program, an Aboriginal work-for-the-dole scheme. But there's an air of deja vu. The Howard government axed... Read More
The Northern Territory's performance in national literacy and numeracy testing
When we drew attention to the failures of Northern Territory schooling in April this year, our report Indigenous Education in the Northern Territory wasaccused of being‘poorly researched’ and ‘relying... Read More
Guest workers and the Northern Territory
To Australia’s embarrassment, by not tackling the problems that prevent Aborigines picking the fruit that is now ripening on trees, the Northern Territory is failing both its growers and unemployed Aborigines. Read More
Major General Jeffrey and aborigines in the open society
Major General Jeffery is to be congratulated for drawing attention, on his last day as Governor General of Australia, to the achievements of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders in the open society.... Read More
Stepping away from CDEP
The Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) program was established to help Indigenous Australians move from welfare into work. But despite its good intentions, thirty years of CDEP have proved... Read More
South Australia – the forgotten state no longer?
Yesterday the federal government finally came to the party and acknowledged that it has failed Indigenous communities in South Australia. Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin has been in negotiations... Read More
Fruit picking jobs for local aborigines or guest workers from the Pacific?
Growers' struggles to get fruit and vegetables picked and processed have led the Australian Farmers’ Federation to campaign to bring in ‘guest workers’ from the Pacific Islands and East Timor to... Read More
Governments are failing East Arnhem Land
Kevin Rudd’s ‘Community Cabinet Meeting’ in Yirrkala unfortunately did not tackle the failures of public policy in East Arnhem. Amending the constitution to recognise Indigenous Australians will... Read More
The three 'R's of Northern Territory Indigenous education: responsibility, reform and 'rithmetic
Ms Scrymgour, the Northern Territory Minister for Education, is to be congratulated for taking responsibility for the crisis in Northern Territory Indigenous education by directing her Department of Education,... Read More
Policy reform to close the gap between black and white
After some 200 years of discrimination, the basic principles that must inform policies that affect Indigenous Australians are at last emerging. Firstly, it is clear that as the oldest immigrants, Aborigines... Read More
Failures in education policy are creating a lost generation
The Northern Territory has known for more than a decade that Indigenous students are completing its Aboriginal schools (Learning Centres and Community Education Centres) with the numeracy and literacy... Read More
Pretend Schools: Educational Apartheid in the Northern Territory
The Northern Territory Department of Education reports that only 20% of Indigenous students in remote schools pass year 3 and 5 literacy benchmarks. For Indigenous students in Darwin and Alice Springs,... Read More
Strangers in their own land – An extract
Two teenager girls from East Arnhem Land undergo a ten-week educational marathon in Sydney with Helen Hughes to help them bridge the gap Read More
Let local Indigenous communities decide who comes and goes
The Rudd Government's legislation to restore the permit system for access to indigenous settlements in the Northern Territory is being introduced in parliament this week. Contrary to popular opinion, the... Read More
How can we move forward?
It should go without saying that ten year old child cannot consent to sex. Sex with a ten year old child is a crime and few crimes are more reviled in our society than rape or paedophilia. Read More
Life after kava needs education, real jobs
As part of the Northern Territory ‘emergency intervention’, the Australian Government announced a ban on the import of kava, a ceremonial drink from the Pacific Islands that was introduced into North... Read More
Aboriginal artists in the remote 'homelands' downtrodden by too much aid
The director of the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research at the Australian National University, Professor Jon Altman, was reported in a newspaper on Monday saying that ending the Community Development... Read More
Breaking the cycle
Are Australians racist? This is the question that New Zealanders were asking last month after the Australian Government sent the army in to Aboriginal communities to help combat shocking rates of child... Read More
Teachers key to remote schools
In Aurukun on Queensland's Cape York, the school leadership refuses to accept that the complexity of the issues facing the indigenous community is an excuse for its children not getting a good education. Read More
South Australia's "homelands" have only a small proportion of Australia's 500,000 Aborigines...
South Australian "homelands" have only a very small proportion of Australia's 500,000 Aborigines, but they include some of the most dysfunctional settlements, with appalling health, overcrowded and derelict... Read More
Our state of disgrace
Queensland, with a quarter of Australia's Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, has some of their most dysfunctional settlements. Read More
Helen Hughes writes on Lands of Shame
The pernicious permit system that censors reporting about remote ‘homelands’ has been sufficiently broken into to make Australians aware of the appalling conditions in these areas. It is a national... Read More
An edited extract from Lands of Shame
After the passage of the 1967 referendum, and with the beginning of the transfer of land to Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, two main approaches to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander development... Read More
An extract from Lands of Shame
About a third of Australia's 500,000 Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders work in mainstream jobs, own their houses and live like other Australians, mainly in the southern states. About 250,000 live... Read More
State must focus on Aboriginal schooling
When the nation’s education ministers met in Darwin last month, nit-picking over the national literacy and numeracy benchmarks was on the agenda. According to newspaper reports, the States and Territories... Read More
Law must be upheld by all sides
Fifteen years after the royal commission, the appalling handling of the death in custody of Mulrunji Doomadgee has reignited controversy over policing in indigenous communities. The Palm Island police... Read More
Palmed off and abused
The concerns aroused by the Mulrunji case are a long-overdue reaction to failures of policing and jurisprudence towards Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders. But Aboriginal exceptionalism -- apartheid-like... Read More
Stop excuses on indigenous education
Last month, Treasury secretary Ken Henry said Australia would not have managed its current prosperity well unless it improved areas of chronic policy failure, such as indigenous policy. Read More
Funding for indigenous communities still not finding targets
The funding intended to help Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders does not reach most of them. Abysmal overcrowding in run down dwellings is well documented, yet the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs,... Read More
Skills better investment for indigenous
In remote indigenous communities, there is little local economic development or mainstream employment. Those employment opportunities that do exist in the mining, pastoral and tourism industries largely... Read More