Opinion & Commentary
Hard facts hit home on Indigenous jobs
Although remote indigenous communities in the far north have the worst living standards in Australia, so that the Northern Territory, Queensland and Western Australia are criticised most for their indigenous policies, there are low indigenous living standards closer to home.
It nevertheless comes as a shock to find that regional NSW has a rate of indigenous unemployment of 21%, the highest outside the Northern Territory. It is more than three times the non-indigenous NSW rate of 6%.
In addition, indigenous non-participation in the labour force is 44%, far higher than the 26% non-indigenous rate.
Perhaps most distressing of all, NSW is responsible for 37% of total Australian indigenous unemployment.
The news is not all bad. Of the 80,000 NSW Aborigines of working age, 35,000 live in Sydney and another 41,000 in regional towns, all within reach of jobs. More than 60% have taken advantage of Australia’s decade of high prosperity to work.
These Aborigines own, are buying or commercially renting their homes. They send their children to public and private schools and TAFEs and universities. They remain proud of their indigenous heritage, but play sport, go to the cinema and participate in civil society like other Australians. They only see bureaucrats once a year when they hand in their tax returns.
The bad news is that despite living within commuting distance of jobs, a large minority is either unemployed or not even in the labour force and trying to get a job.
Welfare dependence is, of course, not just an indigenous problem. Welfare payments have been growing so that 17% of working age Australians receive some welfare payments and tax benefits. Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders are only 16% of these welfare recipients, but this is much higher than their 2.5% share in the total population.
Welfare dependence is not a classical indigenous tradition. Traditionally, Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders had to work hard to survive. To quote Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson: ‘Our traditional economy was a real economy and demanded responsibility (you don’t work, you starve). The whitefella market economy is real (you don’t work, you don’t get paid).’
But in a misguided effort to make up for past discrimination, since the 1970s education policies have been undermining the education of indigenous children just as unskilled entry jobs have been disappearing. Getting a job now requires much higher educational levels than 30 years ago.
Welfare has been repackaged and added to for indigenous recipients. Although Community Development Employment Projects are being phased out, welfare incomes are still often higher than entry wages. Large flows of unmonitored funds to indigenous organisations have created a culture of welfare dependence that makes it extremely difficult for people to take on the risks of employment.
Differences between indigenous and non-indigenous welfare-dependent communities are only matters of degree. Indigenous and non-indigenous welfare dependent children tend to attend the same schools that leave them poorly educated. Low socioeconomic status is being used as an excuse for poor school performance. Education is no longer seen as an offset to economic disadvantage and family breakdown.
Iron ore magnate Andrew Forrest’s Australian Employment Covenant aims to get 50,000 indigenous welfare-dependent people into jobs. Covenant programs get them job-ready. Corporations are approached to commit to the costs of further on-the-job training and mentoring that is likely to be required for two years or more.
Some corporations have also started programs to get welfare-dependent indigenous people working. The mining industry has been a leader; it makes sense to employ a local labour force in remote mines.
But most so-called reconciliation programs recruit indigenous people who are already working. The costs of programs such as the Australian Covenant are too high.
Unless education, welfare and indigenous funding policies are reformed, high indigenous unemployment and low labour force participation will continue, remedial action such as the Australian Employment Covenant will forever be needed.
Emeritus Professor Helen Hughes is a Senior Fellow at The Centre for Independent Studies and Mark Hughes is an independent researcher. Indigenous Employment, Unemployment and Labour Force Participation was published by the CIS.
