Opinion & Commentary
Employment is the Key
At the Male Health Summit on 3 July 2008, over three hundred Aboriginal men from across Australia got together to discuss ways to be better male role models. They issued a historic apology to their women for the ‘pain, hurt and suffering’ that Aboriginal men had caused. According to one participant at the event, he walked away ‘a proud Aborigine.’ The issue of men’s lack of pride is at the heart of the community dysfunction facing many Indigenous communities today. Of course, it is important to remember that not all Aboriginal men hit their wives and partners, and they are not the only ones to do so. But statistics paint a bleak picture of Aboriginal domestic violence: Indigenous females are thirty-five times more likely to be hospitalised due to family-violence-related assaults than other Australian females.
What has happened to Aboriginal men? Some commentators argue that it all went downhill for Aboriginal men in 1967, when the decision on equal pay for Aboriginal stockmen saw many lose their jobs and take up the unemployment benefit. Others, like Louis Nowra say that historically, Indigenous men have always had a propensity for violence towards women.
The reduction in domestic violence offences since alcohol restrictions were imposed in the Northern Territory lends support to the ‘drunken bum theory of wife beating,’ which is based on the premise that alcohol combined with low socioeconomic status is the principal cause of domestic violence. But although research has showed that excessive drinking is associated with higher wife-abuse rates, the issue is more complex. In most families, alcohol use is not an immediate precursor to violence—rather, it is the combination of unemployment, drinking, and cultural approval of violence that is associated with the highest rate of domestic violence. Arguably, all three of these factors play a significant part in the community dysfunction that plagues many Indigenous communities today.
To date, most responses to this problem have focused on the symptoms rather than the causes of domestic violence and community dysfunction. Hence, the government’s response to appalling child abuse in the Northern Territory was to increase the numbers of police and safe houses, and restrict alcohol consumption. But one of the biggest problems facing men in many Indigenous communities is that they are unemployed.
Employment is much more than just a means of income—it is a source of self-esteem, and provides people with a sense of belonging and a purpose in life. When asked what the factors were behind alcohol abuse in their community, two Indigenous men pointed to the lack of meaningful employment. ‘People go onto CDEP and it kills their motivation. They scratch the dirt for 1½ hours and get paid for four.’ And ‘a lot of people just haven’t got the jobs, and they just sit around waiting, doing nothing and being bored.’
People who are employed are less likely to commit crimes. Over a five-year period, only 8.41% of employed Indigenous men and women were arrested by police, compared to 24.8% of Indigenous men and women on CDEP and 34.8% who were unemployed. One of the nine Aurukun men convicted of raping a ten-year-old girl had limited English and was unable to read or write. According to the pre-sentence report, his signature uses only his first name. The court said, ‘WY left school at 16 years of age after completing grade 10. He has been employed in the CDEP scheme, but is currently without a job. The psychological report ... refers to a “poor work history”.’
Andrew Forrest’s plan to create fifty thousand private-sector jobs for Indigenous people has been criticised as being far-fetched, unrealistic, and too ambitious. While it is true that many Indigenous people will need intensive training even to become ‘training ready,’ there is nothing wrong in having this goal. For far too long, Indigenous affairs has been plagued by people with low expectations of Indigenous people’s abilities and little regard for their aspirations. But it is vital that the employment scheme is used to provide work for the most disadvantaged job-seekers—not for people who would have found employment anyway, as is currently the case with the Job Network.
Andrew Forrest’s idea of on-the–job training is also more likely to appeal to Aboriginal men than other forms of tertiary training. Indigenous women are twice as likely to go onto tertiary education and gain a bachelor’s degree as Indigenous men. One Indigenous woman told me her husband would not go to university or TAFE, as he saw these as places for women.
Employment may seem like a simple solution to a complex problem, but having a job is more likely to make men feel better about themselves, and to lower the instances of domestic violence, than any number of anti-family-violence programs will.
Sara Hudson is a policy analyst at the Centre for Independent Studies.
