Opinion & Commentary
Let's start to expect greater outcomes
Australia's got an attitude problem. Our own attitude. Our parents' attitude. Our community's attitude. And our Government's attitude.
We talk a lot about barriers to work: low income, poor education, disability. But we rarely discuss attitude. We have such low expectations - such a bad attitude - that some people's exclusion from work and poor performance in education becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Fewer than half of Australians with a disability are employed. But we know that given the right help many people, even those with serious disabilities, can work.
Many organisations are helping people with disabilities into jobs. Jobsupport puts 50 to 60 Sydney school leavers with moderate intellectual disabilities through its Transition to Work program yearly. About 70 per cent go on to work in the open employment market.
Cerebral Palsy Alliance NSW takes high school kids with cerebral palsy on ski trips to teach them they can take risks. Young disabled adults are placed in mentoring programs with some of Australia's biggest corporations.
We know that working is good for your health. Yet our disability system funnels people with poor health away from the workplace and onto welfare.
We need to shift our thinking.
Almost one in eight Australian children lives in a household where neither parent works. These families tend to be poor, but poverty is not their only problem. We now understand that joblessness can be inadvertently passed from parents to children. Whole neighbourhoods have become either ''work-rich'' or ''work-poor''. Jobless families are overwhelmingly concentrated within some communities.
It's in communities like these that a culture of low expectations can be so debilitating.
The Brotherhood of St Lawrence's ''Life Chances'' study gives an insight into just how important a culture of high expectations can be. Since 1990, the study has followed a group of 140 Melbourne children from different backgrounds. The findings are surprising.
Of the 10 children most disadvantaged at birth, eight had moved out of the highly disadvantaged group by the time they were 18 years old. They had finished secondary school, and many were attending university.
These eight children, who had begun their lives in extreme disadvantage but ended up performing better than average, were children of new migrants. The Australian-born children were more likely to remain disadvantaged.
Perhaps the new migrant parents told their children that with hard work they could create better lives. Perhaps the Australian-born parents did not.
Culture matters. In a meritocratic and socially mobile country like Australia, parents' attitude and behaviour can have a greater bearing on their child's future than whether they are rich or poor.
About 70,000 indigenous Australians live in remote settlements. Most are unemployed. Jobs are often available, but not many go to local indigenous people.
Few young people in remote indigenous communities can read or write. Instead of going to school, remote indigenous children in the Northern Territory go to one of the 42 Homeland Learning Centres.
The NT Government admits that these centres are not ''real schools''. Students do not follow the national curriculum. Teachers might fly in for a few hours a day, if at all. Is it any wonder these kids can't get ahead, when the adults have given up on them from the start?
The common theme that brings together these three groups is that for too long we have told them they can't achieve. Sometimes it's implicit. We give welfare without attaching conditions. We bend the rules. Sometimes it is more explicit, like a Centrelink officer telling a young person to apply for a disability pension rather than look for a job.
Why should we tell people with disabilities that a life on welfare is the best we can do for them?
How can we tell Aborigines living in remote communities their children don't deserve the same standard of education as other Australian kids?
Why can't we help kids who have nothing achieve as much as kids who have everything?
In a wealthy country like Australia, perhaps the most damaging kind of poverty is not a lack of income but a lack of aspiration.
Jessica Brown is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies. This is an extract from her paper, ''Overcoming a Culture of Low Expectations'', released by the CIS on Monday.
