By SARAH MARLAND, campaign co-ordinator for Amnesty International Australia
June 14, 2010
Three years on from the intervention, there is scant evidence that compulsory income management is doing any good.
REPORTS of widespread child abuse in Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory shocked the nation in 2007 and prompted the Northern Territory Emergency Response - a large-scale Commonwealth government intervention into nearly every aspect of the lives of about 45,000 Aboriginal people.
The measures were, controversially, exempted from the scope of the Racial Discrimination Act. This left thousands of people subject to racially discriminatory measures and the Australian government in breach of its international human rights obligations.
Within the next two weeks, the government is expected to push through legislation it claims will reinstate the Racial Discrimination Act. This should be cause for celebration, but the legislation before Parliament waters down certain protections and comes with some significant strings attached. The bills will not reverse racially discriminatory actions already initiated under the emergency response and they offer no redress for discrimination already suffered.
Race-based compulsory income quarantining, in its current form, will continue until mid-2011. The legislation further proposes that compulsory quarantining be extended from ''prescribed'' indigenous communities to so-called ''vulnerable'' groups in areas identified as chronically disadvantaged. The system has a major effect on how and where they can spend their money.
Of all the emergency response measures, blanket compulsory income quarantining is the most contested. The stated aim of the proposed reform of the welfare system is to protect children, reduce reliance on welfare and build stronger communities. But the evidence being used to justify not only the continuation of compulsory income quarantining, but its expansion across the country, is very thin.
The few hard facts that are available show that income management is not working and, in some cases, may be making things worse. For example, data differentiating child abuse rates in a community where the emergency response is in operation, as opposed to rates where it is not, does not exist.
The available facts, such as those in the government's NTER Monitoring Report in 2009, show that across the Northern Territory, reports of child abuse have increased since the emergency response started.
Quarantining a percentage of certain income support and family payments for food, housing, clothing, education and healthcare is also supposed to ensure children are healthier and better fed. This sounds good in theory, but it is an uncertain way to make sure that children in remote communities are properly nourished. Good nutrition depends on many variables, including the availability of nutritious food, its cost in remote area stores and the ability of people to keep food fresh once it is bought.
The evidence used to assess food security and child nutrition in this case does not stand up against international standards. The government is measuring food security and nutrition by asking parents and store owners (who clearly have a conflict of interest, being licensed by the government) whether more fruit and vegetables are being bought. It is not measuring child malnutrition.
Compulsory income quarantining, regardless of whether it is intended to serve a broader purpose, fails to address the specific dietary needs of children. Fruit and vegetable consumption, for example, does not help alleviate anaemia, which, according to studies such as the Sunrise Health Service report from 2008, has grown substantially worse in ''prescribed'' communities. While poor diet is a major cause of child malnutrition, it can also be related to other factors such as inadequate care practices or health services, and an unhealthy environment.
In Australia's overseas development programs, poverty reduction is seen as critical for improving access to food and standards of nutrition. These programs recognise that a combination of income growth supported by direct nutrition interventions and investment in health services, good water supplies and education is what works.
UNICEF emphasises that child nutrition can be addressed relatively affordably and simply through the fortification of staple foods, the availability of vitamin tablets, dietary education and control of diseases that compromise the body's ability to absorb and retain minerals and vitamins.
All this raises an important question: if the Australian government can take a systematic, targeted approach to improving the lives of children overseas, why do we use shoddy standards and flimsy evidence for programs to help Aboriginal children?
Those in remote Aboriginal communities deserve the same respect, safety and protection as other Australians, but this will not be achieved in a sustained manner under the blunt force of the emergency response, which is stigmatising and disempowering an already marginalised people and which is in violation of Australia's international obligations.
Three years on, despite unprecedented levels of investment, the emergency response remains a political game that leaves the best interests of the children on the sidelines.
We need a new approach, grounded in a genuine respect for traditional culture and with human rights principles at its core, to tackle the entrenched poverty and discrimination faced by indigenous peoples in Australia.
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/nt-policy-failing-the-children-20...
