Where’s the economic modelling?
Dampier Peninsula outstation at Chile Creek. Photo: ardi.com.au
NT Opposition leader Adam Giles of the Country Liberal Party has pointed out one of the Government’s many flaws in their outstations policy. Macklin has announced that funding will be targeted to larger population centres, and which communities these are would be based on their prospects for economic development. As Adam Giles points out, no economic modelling has been made to determine which communities are chosen. The communities were therefore chosen based on population size, existing services and location. What kind of economic development does the government have in mind? Industry? Mining? Manufacturing? Education? None of this has been made clear, but one thing is clear: the government understands poorly what self-determination entails for economic development.
The “Healthy People, Healthy Country” report from 2007 shows how connections with country are one of the key elements in healthy Indigenous communities, along side employment and education. Larger communities deny the nurturing of bonds with country, connections that are much stronger and hold far more importance than simple walks in national parks do for non-Indigenous Australians. Denying that bond contributes to a loss of self and thereby health that needs to be considered in the government’s economic policies of centralisation, or ‘normalisation’ as the process has been termed this time ’round.
The government here shows another joint in the series of dishonest reasoning for their interventions into Indigenous communities. The ‘emergency’ intervention into Indigenous communities in 2007 was also based on half-baked rationales, for solving a crisis the Howard government had ignored for 10 years. These are thinly veiled means to continue two centuries of cultural erasure, to get rid of the symptoms of a dysfunction the Australian government has created.
What of the excellent employment ideas that are emerging out of remote communities? Rangers patroling Australia’s borders and maintaining biodiversity in Australia’s unique natural environment, running tourism operations, or very promisingly -becoming part of the global carbon trading scheme? The latter is potentially worth millions of dollars to Indigenous land holders, depending on whether the participants at the Copenhagen meeting this year will include land use emissions in the carbon equation. -Here surely is a place for the government to be lobbying to achieve economic sustainability in Indigenous communities?
Where is the economic modelling for identifying economically viable communities? I’d like to see it involving all potential economic opportunities.. and I wouldn’t like to see economic viability equated with proximity to non-Indigenous culture.
