Opinion & Commentary
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.
Mr Rudd wisely rejected the Northern Territory’s demand that seasonal guest workers be brought in from Timor Leste. The mango growers’ plea for Pacific guest workers is also likely to be ignored because everyone knows that more than 80% of working age Aborigines in the Territory are unemployed. Surely it is time for the Northern Territory to shift its attention from water parks for Darwin to getting hard working, reliable workers for growers and jobs for Aborigines.
At least 10,000 young Aboriginal men and women, many living within a stone’s throw of the ripening fruit, are the key to the growers’ labour shortage. They have missed out on schooling so that most speak less English than Pacific Island guest workers. They cannot read, write or count. Not having been to school, they have not learned the discipline of getting up every morning and working through set tasks, individually or in groups. In the ten years they should have spent learning to become adults, many spent the nights roaming round the streets and sleeping through the days. Picking fruit is one of the few jobs they could do, but even for this they need support they have been denied all their young lives.
Everyone in the Territory knows that CDEP ‘sit-down’ money top-ups to other welfare benefits make up a ‘welfare stack’ of tax payer funded income. Taking a job such as fruit picking or stacking shelves in a super market would often reduce a youngster’s fortnightly income. Expecting totally unschooled young men and women to recognise that with work experience they will be able to exceed their fortnightly welfare income ‘stack’ is unrealistic. Welfare plus CDEP are thus the principal obstacle to getting Aborigines into fruit picking jobs.
Young Aborigines cannot be blamed for a situation created by years of counterproductive education and CDEP policies. They must be helped to take what have become very difficult steps to get into the labour force and thus onto the track of saving, buying a house and bringing up a healthy family.
At present Centrelink’s staff cannot implement the rules that apply to all other Australians. According to ‘Newstart’ unemployment allowance rules, recipients who refuse reasonable job offers lose welfare payments. But CDEP participation, no matter of how few hours’ duration, and how small the ‘work’ content, counts as work. Aborigines are absolved from ‘mutual obligation’ rules. They are encouraged to stay on welfare in perpetuity.
As currently formulated, CDEP is a component of the separatist policies that have led to the dysfunction of Indigenous families and communities. It has been widely acknowledged that its destructive effects overwhelm its original constructive intentions.
CDEP reform cannot be put off while fruit rots on the trees. The CDEP exemption from ‘mutual obligation’ job acceptance rules must be removed. The administration of CDEP must be moved to Centrelink. With these changes Centrelink staff could put an end to CDEP as an instrument of work avoidance.
Only the most outgoing unemployed Aborigines, however, will be able to respond to reforms without further help. It would be unrealistic to expect most of the youngsters who cannot read a café menu, add up their purchases in a shop or catch public transport to become transformed into productive workers without help.
Because the ‘welfare stack’ of income has prevented Aborigines from taking real jobs, harvest labour recruiting organisations in Darwin reach world wide to Europe and the Americas but do not attempt to recruit Aborigines within the Territory. They must turn their attention to locally available labour. This means developing capacities to recruit unemployed Aborigines. In their first fruit picking jobs Aborigines will need support to handle accommodation, catering, handling banking accounts and other living-away-from-home experiences that back packers – often highly educated university students taking a lap years abroad – find a breeze.
Farmers are willing to pay fares for fruit pickers from Tarawa and Villa because they think Pacific Islanders who do not have welfare alternatives will make good workers. The Commonwealth guest worker scheme provides for ‘pastoral care’ for Pacific workers. But there is no support for fruit pickers from Maningrida or Wadeye. Funds allocated for CDEP are available. The Northern Territory has for years used CDEP funds to pay for local government tasks that are its responsibility. Shifting CDEP funding for local government functions from homeland organisations and resource centres to the new shires is essential to raise the efficiency of services and to introduce much needed transparency in the use of government funds. Homelands organisations could devote themselves to their cultural responsibilities instead of using CDEP funding presently used to build unproductive administrative empires. Aborigines would be encouraged to get real jobs. This is the only way to put an end to the dysfunction of families and communities that plagues the Northern Territory.
Emeritus Professor Helen Hughes is a senior fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney.
