Monday, 10 September 2012

Noel Pearson and Hope in Aboriginal Australia


Welfare has a destructive influence on any society in the long-term.

In Australia, we have witnessed the disempowering effect of decades of hand-outs, government housing, communities devoid of employment, propped up by welfare, and tragically most concentrated among the Indigenous population of the country.

Most of the push to provide and fund this hopeless way of life has probably been motivated by a perverse mixture of 'white guilt' on the part of the general Australian population, ignorance and intellectual laziness regarding how best to respond to the obvious cycle of poverty and despair in our own backyard, combined with a vocal subgroup of Indigenous activists who have jumped onto the hand-out bandwagon because of a victimhood mentality.

Who is Noel Pearson?

The argument that the current mode of delivery of welfare services to Aboriginal people is deeply antithetical to their interests and wellbeing, has been strongly reasoned by Noel Pearson, an Aboriginal activist lawyer and social commentator.

Growing up, he slept five to a bed with his brothers in the Cape town of Hope Vale.
“He was raised in a home with just one book – the good one – at a time when there still dignity in poverty, and at that historical crossroads between the end of the mission protection for Aboriginal people and the start of what would become known as ‘self-determination’. He remembers the year, 1971, ‘when the first social housing came to Hope Vale and Aboriginal people discovered that it was no longer necessary to work’.” (Caroline Overington, writer for The Australian)

Noel Pearson went to boarding school at St Peter’s Lutheran College from the age of 12, studied history at the University of Sydney, got involved in advocacy for land rights from the 1980s, studied law, became a lawyer, and started the Cape York Land Council from a flat in Sydney’s Balmain.


Pearson’s principles

A push towards accountability, a reward for motivation, and facilitating independence; these are the things I like about Noel Pearson's way of thinking.

His first core proposition is that the welfare policies of the last three decades have produced an artifical welfare economy within Aboriginal societies, which contrasts with the ‘real’ economies of both traditional Aboriginal subsistence and the market economy, thus producing a passivity and dependence now deeply embedded within Aboriginal society and culture, (Martin, 2002) which are the root of alcoholism, substance abuse, violence and hopelessness. Pearson sees that “the past generation has been one of utter devastation, that social capacity has almost gone, that the welfare and helper networks bored unto communities have eroded their central core”. (Rothwell) “Money acquired without principle is expended without principle […] the irrational basis of our economy has inclined us to wasteful, aimless behaviours […] we waste our money, our times, our lives.” (Pearson, in Saunders 2004) “The main problem is thus not government under-funding of Aboriginal services so much as the total absence of the sort of incentives that shape citizenship and individual behavioural responses in mainstream society.” (Davidhoff and Duhs, 2008)

His second core proposition is that meaningful change to address the terrible consequence of passive welfare will require structural change through informal and formal institutions of Aboriginal governance and through reform of existing institutions of government. (Martin, 2002)
“By 2007, Pearson had gathered his thoughts into a policy document called ‘From Hand Out to Hand Up’, and in 2008, he secured funding from both the federal and Queensland state government for a daring new program called the Cape York Welfare Reform Trial, which encourages four communities to meet certain standards of behaviour.” (Overington, 2012)

His reforms

In the weekend edition of 'The Australian' last week, several articles (here, here and here) revived the attention on placed on Noel Pearson, and reforms he has instituted through the Cape York Institute which illustrate his principles.

One of these reforms is a new voluntary community program called Pride of Place, which gives residents of four communities in the Cape the opportunity to improve their houses, backyards and community infrastructure, while also requiring them to save up for a portion of the costs from their own salary or paycheck, and to contribute 'sweat equity' by physically helping in the construction. Some people have joined the program to build a brand new fence around their property, others have created vegetable gardens, built pagodas... The idea is to reinstate a sense of ownership and pride in the community’s appearance, and also to mentor willing individuals in budgeting and monetary discipline. One couple saved up and built their dream, a simple white-picket fence on their property:
"We wouldn't have been able to afford that before. It would have been just a dream in our mind. ... [Before welfare] every house had its vegetable garden, just like the one we have here now. We lived off the land: jackfruit, soursop, watermelon, pumpkin, sweet potato. Then things shifted, we got spoilt, we'd go to the nearest corner shop, to the IGA, and that took away people's pride. But this program has started changing the lifestyle of people." (Esmee Bowen, partkaker in the Pride of Place program in Hopevale)

Another program is MPower, a money management reform, which carries the simple slogan ‘A better life begins with a budget’. Individuals who agree to take whole-hearted part in the reform program are coached in managing their income, planning, budgeting, and setting funds aside for schools needs and home improvements. The manager of MPower sees her job as being about “behavioural change altogether, helping people to come to their own goals, in finance, in family priorities. People are more independent, more knowledgeable. Participation is at the heart of everything.” (Nicolas Rothwell, writer for TheAustralian)

Christianity shines through

Many of Noel Pearson’s principles are essentially Christian principles.
"Pearson is himself a figure imbued with mission values, and those values, subtly secularised, shine through in the atmospherics and precepts of the programs now being implemented. One might call them moral programs, more than purely social policy exercises.” (Rothwell, 2012)
You can see Christian values shining through. The parenting program staff wear uniform shirts with a motto on their backs: “Strong families have faith, hope and love – and the greatest of these is love.” As Rothwell points out:
“How not to hear the crashing echo of Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians? How not to be startled, in the arid context of indigenous social services language, by words so rich and full of heart?”
A ‘moral entrepreneur’ is what Noel Pearson has been labelled, grouped with other Indigenous leaders (namely Warren Mundine and Sue Gordon). (Paul t’Hart, 2007)


Paternalist or not

Critiques of Noel Pearson’s policies centre around their cost, around his programs taking credit for other groups’ work, but mostly around paternalism.

As part of the Family Responsibilities Commission, one of the programs at the core of the Cape York Welfare Reform, families “have to stay out of trouble with the law and they must send their children to school or else they’ll get rousted by elders and, if that doesn’t work, they’ll have their welfare cheques managed for them.” (Overington, 2012)

Another part of the Welfare Reform is a new way of teaching, Direct Instruction, which is “energetic rote learning until the age of 12, when children are encouraged to leave their communities and go to boarding school”. (Overington, 2012) Direct Instruction has been credited by its main funding body, the federal Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FaHCSIA), with significantly improving school attendance in communities partaking in the reform, particularly in Aurukun.

Paternalism has had a bad rap, revived with renewed focus in Australia since the federal Northern Territory Intervention.

Noel Pearson’s programs have been called ‘reverse social engineering’. (Rothwell 2012) They are costly and most of them depend on government funding, rather than private charitable giving.

Critics are also concerned about how much credit Pearson’s team should be able to take for gains made on the ground. As per another Aboriginal leader, Chris Sarra, chief executive of the Smarter Stronger Institute:
“In my view, some of the heavy lifting, particularly in regards to school attendance in Aurukun, was done by (former principal, now Queensland education bureaucrat) Ian Mackie and his wife (Liz, who is likewise a former principal of the school).” (Overington, 2012)
One of Pearson’s vocal critics, Murrandoo Yanner, traditional owner in the Cape, feels insulted by Pearson taking an interventionalist approach to the Cape’s problems, and doesn’t see welfare as playing as great a part as ‘institutional racism’:
“He’s a paternalist. The reason our people take drugs, bash each other, is dispossession and the racism inherent in white society. We don’t need the Great White Man to come in and manage things for us.”
Pearson’s defence shows how convicted he is, even it sometimes requires being confrontational:
“I’m not going to excuse myself. My view is, if there’s no conflict, no strife, if nobody’s disruptive, where there’s no movement at the station, we will never achieve any result.”
There are local people who have seen his programs in action and who understand what he is trying to achieve.
"Noel's attitude is for us to come out from that shady tree, move on in life and prove to government that we can do it. This whole reform's an opportunity: if we don't grab it we'll be lost. The picture he's drawing, I can see it. ... He's trying to tell the people out there that our community indigenous people can do it, but we have to get up off our backsides. The test's for us." (Bernard Hart, partaker in the Pride of Place program in Hopevale)

Who is going to make it happen?

Reform doesn’t have to be top-down. Noel Pearson’s programs carry the ideal of voluntary participation with a strong focus on taking ownership, which is probably the only way that a sense of responsibility and self-reliance can be fostered. It’s like grassroots work, with a bit of structure and help.
“It’s not enough just to rip out the welfare system: it must be slowly replaced; new networks, economic and educational, must be put in its stead. The usual intellectual contradictions threaten: to set free, you must set down conditions; to strengthen, you must patronise.” (Rothwell, 2012)
Some are sceptical that a solution will ever be delivered by the right people. David Martin from the Australian National University questioned how Noel Pearson’s philosophy can and should be implemented. He highlighted concerns that there may be no ‘social capital’ left within Aboriginal Australia for a ‘grassroots’ or Aboriginal-lead solution to be born.
“The ethnography from Cape York and elsewhere suggests that certain widespread Aboriginal values and practices may be inimical to the kinds of social and attitudinal changes which Pearson is advocating. […] [C]ontemporary groupings [such as ‘families’, other local groups and ‘communities’] do not have the requisite moral and political authority over individuals”. (Martin, 2002)
Martin further argues that Indigenous groups do not have the capacity to institute the changes within Indigenous polity required for new forms of Indigenous governance and leadership, and that facilitation from external sources including government carries risks because “government is inherently incapable of moving beyond its own dominating rationale”. In other words, Indigenous people aren’t capable and nor is the government capable of providing a solution. A grim view.

Where David Martin sees no hope in Aboriginal people taking charge of their own problems without government steering, Noel Pearson maintains hope that traditional social patterns of accountability and family priorities inherited from both the tribal and missionary eras still survive in small pockets of each community and can be revitalised.
“I’ve wrestled with [the allegation of paternalism], and I’m unapologetic. Every successful society depends on a degree of paternalism. What I’m trying to grapple with here is, how do we solve poverty? How do you activate that fire in the belly that’s necessary to life people from their circumstances?”
Noel Pearson sees government playing a limited role of facilitation by approving and/or funding community-driven local programs with a strong participatory focus.
“The biggest item is convincing [the Liberal National Party in Queensland] we don’t need a government-led solution. You’d expect the [politically conservative] Liberals would be more accepting of the limitations of what government can do, but no. They’re as bad as Labor in terms of their belief in government. The fact is, it’s jealous regard for your own children… that’s what produces uplift. It’s madness to think government can lift people up. [T]he business of climbing, it’s an individual thing.”
Government, Aboriginal institutions, communities, families, individuals. Are those the only possible agents of change? Who else can redeem any hopeless situation? Of course, the spiritual undercurrent of life is usually unacknowledged in the mainstream political discourse. God’s applicability to all of life, to all of the institutional pillars of life including the ‘civil-social’, and his ultimate and exclusive role as the only redemptive agent in this universe is hardly ever publicly voiced let alone privately accepted in the procedure of politics in Australia today.

'Remember the poor' and social engineering

At the centre of the poverty and despair in Indigenous Australia lies the question, how should Christians respond? The mandate to ‘remember the poor’ is clear (1 John 3:16-18, Prov 29:7, Deut 15:7,10, Lev 19:19, Luke 12:33, Luke 14:12-14, Mt 5:42). But are political structures, including social welfare, the most effective or the right agents of good works for the poor?
“Welfare turns caring for the poor and needy from a spiritual compassion to a social agenda. […] Welfare as a social program negates the spiritual dynamics of supporting the needy.” (Kuban, 2010)
I would close with the following four points:

  1. Although government is a God-ordained institution for the orderly conduct of man in this world, (Rom 13:1-7, Matt 22:16-21, 1 Pet 2:13-17) government is by no means the redemptive agency of this world. Only our Lord God is, through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
  1. Christians should not allow government-led initiatives to lull them into believing that their tax contributions have already satisfied the mandate to remember the poor. We need to be interested and our minds must be awake when it comes to responding in a Godly way to the poor in our midst. Compulsory redistributory taxation does not negate the command to “give generously to [your poor brother]” (Deut 15:10) nor the command to “be transformed by the renewal of your mind” (Romans 12:2).
  1. Every individual is called to be productive and not to be idle. “If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. For we hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busybodies. Now such persons we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living.” (2 Thess 3:10-12)
  1. The call for each person to be productive should not stop us from remembering the poor, and serving them with love, regardless of their ethnicity, their righteousness, their productivity or their so-called value to society. “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbours, lest they also invite you in return, and repayment come to you. But when you give a reception, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, since they do not have the means to repay you; for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” (Luke 14:12-14)
Pearson concludes in a recent article with the following sentiment:
“It was my father who told me, you’ve got to serve God and serve your fellow man. While we still have women being airlifted to [the regional base] hospital with broken jaws, who are we to say, I am not my brother’s keeper?”
Be salt and light in every sphere of life. Wake up, think, and serve the lost within our own country.

References
at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)