Opinion & Commentary
Indigenous students from welfare-dependent families perform poorly
Although only some 30,000 out of the 540,000 Australians who identify as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander live in South Australia, the state has some of the most disadvantaged remote communities and some of lowest indigenous employment. Appalling socioeconomic outcomes, including gangs of young Aborigines bent on crime, are the result.
The majority – nearly 60% – of SA working-age Aborigines are either unemployed or not even in the labour force. Only 40% are working. This is in marked contrast to the rest of Australia – except Northern Territory – where more than 60% of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders are working.
In NT, remoteness is the reason for low indigenous employment, but in SA fewer than 3,000 of working-age Aborigines live in remote or very remote communities, while some 12,000 live in Adelaide, Port Augusta and other towns. That is, they live within commuting distance of jobs.
A 16% indigenous unemployment rate compares with 5% for the non-indigenous population. In addition, 47% of SA working-age Aborigines – compared to 25% non-indigenous men and women – are not in the labour force.
Because of abysmal education, almost all jobs in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands and other remote communities are held by non-indigenous staff. There would be more jobs if SA introduced workable 99-year leases for home ownership and business on indigenous-owned and controlled land.
Owning one's own home provides a great incentive for working. The absence of private property rights deprives remote indigenous communities of shops, take-out food outlets and cafes, hairdressers and other small businesses, and the jobs they create.
The repackaging of welfare to avoid mutual obligation, plus additional entitlements such as Community Development Projects that are only available to indigenous men and women, means welfare incomes are often higher than entry job wages.
A culture of welfare dependence has also been fostered by large flows of public funds to indigenous organisations that generally translate into benefits for ‘Big Men’ who exploit the rest of the community. If the remote community adults who are illiterate and non-numerate because of decades of educational neglect are to be able to get jobs, remedial literacy and numeracy – plus ‘job-ready’ programs – are also essential.
Men and women in these communities cannot use a measuring tape, balance a shop till or fill other requirements of entry jobs. While education standards have been plummeting, unskilled jobs that used to provide entry into the labour force have been disappearing.
For the 75% of working-age Aborigines who live in Adelaide and regional towns, entry into the labour force should be much easier. Nearly 5000 are working. They own, are buying or are commercially renting their homes. They send their children to public and private schools and many go on to TAFE and some to university. These Aborigines play sport, go to the cinema and participate in civil society like other Australians, but remain proud of their indigenous heritage. They only see bureaucrats once a year when they hand in their tax returns.
NAPLAN (national literacy and numeracy) results unfortunately suggest that even in urban schools, indigenous students from welfare-dependent families perform less well than non-indigenous students. Low self-confidence is a problem. It is often reinforced by misguidedly low expectations of Aboriginal children's abilities. Excess welfare is the main barrier to urban indigenous employment, but it is also responsible for the high and growing levels of non-indigenous welfare dependence.
Aborigines are only a small proportion of welfare dependent South Australians. Welfare dependence becomes hereditary and leads to family and social dysfunction for indigenous and non-indigenous families alike.
Australia-wide, Andrew Forrest's Australian Employment Covenant is trying to move 50,000 indigenous men and women into jobs with programs that make them job-ready.
Corporations have been approached to commit to the additional cost of on-the-job training and monitoring, which are often necessary for two years.
The covenant has sensibly started by targeting welfare-dependent men and women in urban communities. Most of those in remote communities could not even read the employee covenant.
Aboriginal culture is often blamed for welfare dependence, but hunter and gatherer societies did not tolerate work-dodging. Men and women had to work hard to survive. To quote 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).’ More than 7000 SA Aborigines are unemployed and not in the labour force in Adelaide and regional towns.
The figure, of course, includes full-time students, mothers of small children and ill and disabled people. To find jobs for those able to work – perhaps 6,000 – should not be an insuperable task.
After World War II, as discrimination against Aborigines lessened, many were able to take the hard road into the labour force.
Maria Lane, who started work as a domestic servant and went on to become a lecturer at the University of South Australia, has analysed how the transition to work has been stalled by misguided education and welfare policies. They must be reformed to move Aborigines out of welfare dependence and misery.
Emeritus Professor Helen Hughes is a Senior Fellow at The Centre for Independent Studies. This article was co-authored by Mark Hughes, an independent researcher.
