Can We bribe our N-g-s this way?
Australia's conservative government has offered to supply a remote Aboriginal township with fuel if parents agreed to wash their children, under a controversial plan to end health problems plaguing indigenous communities.
AFP/File Photo
Critics labelled the deal patronising and discriminatory, while supporters said it was an innovative solution to endemic poor health among Aborigines, who form Australia's most disadvantaged community.
Under the deal, the Mulan community in the Outback of Western Australia state will receive a 172,000 dollar (132,400 US) grant to acquire petrol pumps, a move expected to generate jobs by making the settlement a more attractive destination for tourists.
In return, Mulan residents agreed to ensure their children shower daily and wash their faces twice a day, to empty household rubbish bins twice weekly and carry out home pest control four times a year.
It is an extension of the government's policy of "mutual obligation", which aims to eradicate decades of welfare dependency among Australia's 400,000 Aborigines.
Prime Minister John Howard, who has pushed his vision for Aboriginal Australia with renewed vigour since retaining office with an emphatic election win in October, said the deal was "common sense".
Indigenous Affairs Minister Amanda Vanstone said it was about practicality.
"If this agreement goes ahead and it works, what could anyone complain about?" she said. "A community gets what it wants, a petrol bowser (pump) ... the kids get better health outcomes."
The Australian Medical Association backed the plan, saying it could help reduce high levels of the eye disease trachoma among Aboriginal children.
But the opposition Labor Party said the government was using its power to conduct social engineering in a way that demeaned Aborigines and could breach anti-racial discrimination laws.
"I can't see why you need to humiliate people to improve social conditions," said Labor indigenous affairs spokesman Kim Carr.
Aboriginal activists said the deal had uncomfortable echoes of last century's paternalistic policies, which saw thousands of Aboriginal children taken from their families and housed in missions "for their own good".
"What's scary about this stuff is it's not new," said NSW Reconciliation Council executive officer Sylvie Ellsmore.
"It's decades old and it's the sort of stuff that's been rejected as racist over and over again -- why are we moving back to it?"
The move coincided with a march by more than 1,000 Aborigines in the Queensland city of Townsville, protesting the death of an indigenous man in police custody last month at a community on Palm Island.
The death of Cameron Doomadgee, 36, sparked a riot on the island when a post mortem examination found he suffered four broken ribs, a punctured liver and ruptured spleen in the police lock-up.
Authorities have refused to release the results of a second, independent autopsy.
Howard and his senior ministers would meet a new government-appointed body, the National Indigenous Council (NIC), Thursday to discuss problems facing Aboriginals.
Howard established the NIC last year after abolishing the elected Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, accusing if of being rife with nepotism and corruption.
The government faced criticism ahead of the NIC meeting for insisting all the members except its chairwoman sign a gag order preventing them from speaking to the media.
Aborigines make up barely two percent of Australia's population but suffer far higher rates of alcoholism, unemployment, imprisonment and domestic abuse.
The average life expectancy of Aborigines is 20 years less than other Australians. |
