Dysfunction Downunder

Aboriginal performer Les Saxby plays a didgeridoo on the shores of Sydney's Botany Bay to commemorate the spot where Captain Cook landed in 1770. Picture / Reuters

The ramshackle tropical town of Wadeye is a microcosm of the acute dysfunction in Aboriginal society and a ticking time-bomb waiting to explode.

A potent cocktail of under-investment and neglect has produced a generation of unemployed, perhaps unemployable, young men with nowhere to go and nothing to do.

Until arson, vandalism and gang warfare brought Wadeye [pronounced Wad-air] to national attention last weekend, most Australians had barely heard of the place.

But the days of ignoring the plight of one of the country's largest Aboriginal communities may be ending.

Dale Seaniger, from Wadeye's Thamarrurr Council, says for too long investment and attention have been poured into what he calls "the Territory's frontyard" - Darwin - at the expense of the rest of the Top End.

"Unless you look after the backyard, it will come and bite you on the bum," he said.

He fears that more and more bored youths from Wadeye will drift towards the state capital, swelling the ranks of the "long-grassers", or Aboriginal itinerants, who already live rough on the city's fringes.

"The long-grassers in Darwin are just the advance party," Seaniger warned. "Darwin will become the Port Moresby of the Northern Territory" - a reference to the crime-plagued capital of neighbouring Papua New Guinea.

Wadeye is just one example of the social paralysis which is afflicting Australia's 410,000 Aborigines, from the inner-city ghetto of Redfern in Sydney to the far-flung desert settlements at the end of bone-jarring dirt roads.

Warring gangs in Wadeye, and revelations of horrific sexual abuse against Aboriginal children as young as seven months around Alice Springs, have once again pricked the conscience of the nation and reignited the debate on Aboriginal despair.

Everyone agrees that indigenous people are stuck in a vicious cycle of welfare dependency and self-destruction. Forget romantic notions of the old hunter-gatherer lifestyle. That has been consigned to history.

Instead many Aborigines find themselves crippled by poor education and slim chances of employment. In Wadeye and similar settlements, there are children and teenagers who barely speak English and never go to school.

Boredom and frustration lead to alcohol abuse and petrol sniffing, which often result in violence and shocking sexual abuse. Abused children often become abusers themselves, perpetuating the cycle of harm.

Australians have become numbingly familiar with the grim statistics: Aborigines are seven times as likely to be murdered and 11 times as likely to be jailed as the rest of the population.

How is this allowed to continue in one of the world's wealthiest countries, where most of the population is riding the crest of an unprecedented 14-year run of prosperity?

It's the $64 billion question and the answer combines elements of apathy, ignorance, cynicism and guilt on the part of successive Australian governments from both sides of the political spectrum.

For a start, not enough money has been spent on the problem. That may surprise the millions of Australians who believe that far too much cash has already been squandered but it is true, insists Fred Chaney, a director of Reconciliation Australia.

"There's a prevailing myth of over-expenditure on indigenous problems," he said. "It's a fallacy. In reality there has been gross under-provision of infrastructure like housing and under-expenditure on health and education."

Collective guilt over the "stolen generations" has also hampered the efforts of white Australians to help Aborigines. Between 1910 and 1970 hundreds of Aboriginal children were forcibly removed from their families and brought up by white foster families or in institutions as part of a policy of racial assimilation.

Desperate not to repeat the mistakes of the past, authorities have been reluctant to intervene on issues like truancy and sexual abuse for fear of appearing paternalistic, even racist.

"There has been a lot of reticence about this because some people would say [it could result in] another stolen generation," the federal treasurer, Peter Costello, said recently.

Sue Gordon, an Aboriginal magistrate and head of the National Indigenous Council, was taken from her parents at the age of 4.

But she insists that Aboriginal children who are being abused should be taken into care, regardless of guilt over the stolen generations.

"It's bred a huge reluctance to take kids away and that's the worst thing that could have happened. Our kids are being denied their fundamental rights out of misplaced political correctness," she said yesterday.

Geography presents another problem. The nation's politicians are in Canberra, thousands of kilometres from most Aboriginal communities.

Nor has it escaped the attention of many politicians that there are few votes in remote Aboriginal townships.

There has also been a depressing history of bickering between state, territory and federal governments, each reluctant to assume responsibility for problems which sometimes appear to have no solution.

In the most recent squabble, the head of the Northern Territory government, Clare Martin, initially turned down an invitation from the indigenous affairs minister, Mal Brough, to attend an urgent summit this week on sexual abuse, dismissing it as just another "talk-fest". The two eventually met on Thursday but failed to resolve fundamental differences in how to tackle the Aboriginal crisis.

Remoteness and harsh conditions also make it hard to attract well-qualified doctors, nurses, social workers and police to work in many Aboriginal communities.

"You get fly-in, fly-out, episodic intervention," said Chaney. "Most people only stay for a couple of years."

Communities like Wadeye, which is 450km southwest of Darwin, lack services which the rest of Australia takes for granted. It has no secondary school, for instance, despite the fact that around half its population of 2500 is under the age of 18.

It has only five full-time police officers - towns with similar populations elsewhere in Australia have more than 20.

A report leaked this week revealed that although Wadeye lacked the most basic facilities, the Northern Territory government spent A$200 million on a convention centre and wave pool for Darwin.

But continuing to give Aborigines handouts is a recipe for disaster, many critics believe.

Dole payments - or "sit down money" as Aborigines refer to it - has bred a culture of dependence which has crippled initiative and perpetuated unemployment. Many Aboriginal communities receive a "remote area exemption" under which the unemployed are allowed to receive benefits without having to work for the dole or look for a job.

Welfare has deprived Aboriginal men, in particular, of their self-respect and traditional role as providers, critics say.

"The instrument we used was social welfare," the historian and social affairs commentator Keith Windschuttle wrote in the Australian newspaper. "The social policy of the past 30 years is the principal culprit."

The problem is that depriving Aborigines of social welfare would rob them of their rights as Australian citizens.

A report released last week revealed that despite all the health programmes, official reports and committee meetings in the past two decades, there has been no increase in the longevity of Aborigines in the Northern Territory - they still die 20 years earlier than other Australians.

But the alternative - to give up, or try to ignore the problems - is worse.

"If you allow yourself to get buried under it then you've lost the fight," Gordon said. "The federal and state governments have the money and the authority and they are the only ones who can start the ball rolling."