Opinion & Commentary
Out with the Outstations?
After thirty years, it finally seems the Northern Territory government is acknowledging the failures of the outstation movement. Last Monday, the Northern Territory government released a discussion paper seeking input on proposed reforms to outstation policy.
Despite spending millions or even billions of dollars, successive governments have failed to provide appropriate standards of housing, education, and essential services in these Indigenous communities. The catalyst for the government’s change in policy is the crisis in Indigenous education, which has occurred because of separatist educational policies.
In these outstations, Aboriginal schools known as ‘learning centres’ do not have the same standards of classrooms, teaching aids, and materials as regular primary schools. They have a separate ’Indigenous‘ curriculum, and largely rely on fly-in-fly-out teachers who do not meet the normal requirements of the Northern Territory’s Teacher Registration Board. Finally, Marion Scrymgour, the NT’s Indigenous Policy Minister, has admitted that the cultural benefits of these outstations have come at the expense of children’s education.
The discussion paper argues that the NT government’s priority is to give children access to adequate services, especially education. People who are uneducated do not have true freedom, because they lack the capabilities to make real choices about their lives. At last, the NT government has recognised that ‘children must have access to education so that when they are adults they have the capacity and options in life to make a considered decision on the path they wish to take.’
The outstation movement, or homelands movement as it was originally known, began in 1978 under the Whitlam government’s policies of self-determination. The government provided grants of up to $10,000 to groups committed to moving back to their traditional lands. This level of funding enabled people to establish fairly basic facilities. Housing consisted of lean-to shelters, humpies, and tin sheds. The majority of dwellings in homeland centres had no reticulated water, sewage, or electricity.
Government support for the homelands movement was based on the belief that it allowed Aboriginal people to live traditional lifestyles and manage their own affairs. Yet, from the very beginning, the idea of self-sufficiency was a myth. Most of the people living in these communities relied on income from social welfare payments.
The introduction of the Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) program was intended to address the problems of passive welfare. But, except in a few isolated cases, CDEP has failed to provide people with meaningful work and to develop the economies of remote communities. It has propped up the provision of essential services, but denied participants the benefit of full-time employment and all the responsibilities and entitlements that come with it. The availability of rent-free homes and generous welfare payments has discouraged many Indigenous people from moving to places where there are jobs.
Those who have supported the homelands movement have relied on questionable statistics to support their arguments. The findings of the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Survey (which has a sample size of only 9,400) are regularly used to argue that a hybrid economy operates in these communities. According to this view, people are able to support themselves through a mixture of state payments, customary activities, and work or CDEP. The 2002 NATSISS survey showed that people living in these communities were more likely to participate in cultural activities, but the data was less conclusive about their engagement in fishing and hunting. Aborigines living in these remote communities do not spend more time on fishing, hunting, and cultural activities than the average Australian worker spends on recreational and social activities.
The proposals put forward in the discussion paper show that the NT government is no longer prepared to keep throwing money into a black hole. The government has said, unequivocally, ‘no government funding will be provided to construct housing on outstations/homelands.’
Of course, people should have the choice to live where they would like, but is it the government’s responsibility to fund these lifestyle choices? If people want to live in remote areas, away from any essential services and employment opportunities, then surely the onus should be on them to support themselves and meet their own housing needs?
This seems to be where the government is going with its latest round of policy changes. The Australian and NT governments are working in partnership with Indigenous Business Australia to support homeownership on Indigenous land (through the HOIL scheme). Supported loans will be offered to eligible individuals and families wishing to buy houses built on Indigenous land. But this program has been slow to kick off, as lending depends on land tenure and most Indigenous land is communally owned.
A lot of work still needs to be done, and the NT government has indicated that it will carefully research the new proposals. But now that the territory government must bear the cost of essential services and housing, instead of the federally funded CDEP or community housing program, it has realised that the outstations are a policy disaster. Hopefully by the middle of next year government support of the homelands movement may finally be put to bed.
Sara Hudson is a policy analyst at the Centre for Independent Studies.
