Opinion & Commentary
Helen Hughes opens her diary
The time we take to fly from Sydney to have dinner with Noel Pearson on Cape York highlights why northern Aboriginal communities are out of sight and out of mind in this election. Noel misses dinner because yet another 'wild' Cape York river blocked access to his people's development. His staff report on the Family Responsibilities Commission’s progress on Cape York. Education is key. Two new 'academies' are in place; Coen has celebrated its first week of full student attendance; and contributions to voluntary individual children's education funds exceed $1,000 per child.
We are up before dawn next morning for the further two-hour Cessna flight to Aurukun. Locking away vast areas of the empty lands over which we fly apparently rewards the misanthropes we have left behind discussing anthropogenic global warming under outdoor gas heaters in Double Bay. Aurukun is no longer deeply dysfunctional, but shabby 'social' houses, empty streets and a barred community store contrast sharply with the shopping malls, cafes and private homes of most Australian coastal communities. The mayor, Neville Pootchemunka, is passionate about education. In the new 'academy' we observe teachers following a curriculum that embraces phonetics and rigorous maths. The children are engaged. At 'little lunch', class monitors distribute a hot meal. Regular attendance has more than doubled.
A weekend around Cairns reveals a steep decline in numbers of Japanese and other tourists; unemployment is 11%, interrupting the region’s booming growth. But Aboriginal communities, despite idyllic coastal and rainforest locations, have remained oases of lassitude and miserable 'social' housing. Without education, labour force participation was low even during the tourist boom. To buy a house, a family had to leave the community. Yet Cape York continues to absorb immigrants from Papua New Guinea — a trickle that is likely to become a flood following that country's disastrous economic policies supported by Australian aid.
Djarragun College, an Indigenous day and boarding school, is clearly a first-class independent school. The Wangetti secondary and vocational school is on the same track. We cheer ourselves further by a couple of hours in second-hand bookshops and cafes in Yungaburra on Lake Tinarroo — Australia’s answer to Hay-on-Wye.
We fly on to East Arnhem Land to meet with Galarrwuy Yunupingu AM, the eminent leader of the Gumatj clan, which runs a cattle property, a sawmill and a furniture factory, all providing real jobs. He has the same concerns: children are not passing literacy and numeracy tests; his people aren't employed in the Gove bauxite operations; Ski Beach, only a few kilometres from thriving Nhulunbuy, is another 'social' housing slum.
Next morning we make good progress along the Central Arnhem Highway, but the 51km 'front drive' to Baniyala, where Rotarians have been helping for five years, is still barely passable after the wet. As we unpack, Djambawa Marawili AM, a highly respected artist as well as Baniyala’s leader, his wife Kathy and others come across for coffee and stay to dinner.
Baniyala is on beautiful Blue Mud Bay. Its art centre, women's centre and visitors' residence, all built by the men of the community, together with a new health centre and new classrooms with assembly space, surround a large, well-kept, grassy village green. An ancestor's tree marks the clan's arrival at Baniyala in the 1970s. The community has high standards. Drug-and violence-free, the quiet nights are only broken by the few dogs' barks when buffalo or pigs invade. Yet Baniyala's 17 two- or three-bedroom dwellings house more than 120 people. Each bedroom is occupied by a family, so floors are covered by mattresses and there is no room for furniture. There are no living rooms, an outside cold water sink serves as a kitchen and there are some outhouse cold showers. Deep drop 'dunnies' dot the community. A recent two-bedroom house built for the Head Ranger has an outside sink for a kitchen, no shower and, away from the house, a deep drop 'dunny'.
In marked contrast, the two recently built three-bedroom houses for non-Indigenous teachers have kitchens, bathrooms, toilets and laundries. Amazingly, they face inland, with living rooms away from cooling breezes. At the back, small bathroom windows look to the beach across a Hills Hoist.
Baniyala has been seeking schooling for its children since the early 2000s. In 2006, a Rotary Club initiative revealed that not one of 29 tested children aged between five and 17 could read at the level expected of primary Year 1 students. Permanent teachers finally arrived in 2009. They remain under the direction of an East Arnhem public education office that has the lowest literacy and numeracy test results in Australia. Baniyala has therefore approached the Northern Territory Christian Schools Association to run its education and more broadly to assist this Christian community. A request for registration made in August 2009 has not received the courtesy of a reply. No non-Indigenous community would be treated this way.
A beautiful day with sea breezes greets special guests, including Bails Myer, who fly in from the Brunette Downs 100th anniversary races to see the community they have been generously supporting. We tour the village, inspecting the room that was 'home' to the lead singer of Baniyala's Garrangali band, his wife and two children, until a cyclone ripped the roof off showing that the walls were destroyed by termites. The family had to be moved to the art centre, which has no kitchen or bathroom.
On our last evening, the Garrangali band returned from successful gigs in Sydney so that we could catch up with band members who are also Baniyala's construction workers.
We spend a couple of days in Darwin searching for information. Identifying the causes of Indigenous disadvantage means working from data and documents that cover Indigenous issues Australia-wide, but even a few days in the far north show that the situation in these Aboriginal communities is 100 times worse than data and documents convey. Apartheid policies continue to rule. Australians need to go north to see for themselves the millions of dollars absorbed by bureaucrats, contractors and consultants while Aboriginal communities remain shameful slums.
Helen Hughes is a senior fellow of the Centre for Independent Studies. She has written widely on Indigenous issues.
