ANOTHER FAILURE OF SPECIAL DEALS FOR MINORITIES

An Australian Leftist government set up the "Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission" to administer big handouts to Australian native black communities. It was riddled with corruption from the beginning and John Howard's conservative Federal government is now trying to abolish it

Former Australian Leftist politician, Michael Duffy reflects views aired recently by Keith Windschuttle: "When Howard was elected in 1996, most of his supporters with any knowledge of Aboriginal affairs knew ATSIC was a disaster. Treating Aborigines differently to other Australians in this way was in conflict with liberal and conservative thinking. Even if you weren't interested in the theory, all you had to do was look at the facts. Aborigines who'd assimilated - about two-thirds of the total - were far better off than those who had not. This one-third lived in separate communities where there were huge problems of unemployment, sexual and substance abuse, and violence. Yet it was this way of life that ATSIC promoted. ...

The sad truth is that it was irresponsible to expect Aborigines to do so much for themselves. Just like it was irresponsible for Australia to walk out of New Guinea in the mid-1970s. The results have been remarkably similar: the remoter parts of Aboriginal Australia are now like a Third World country. This means the closure of ATSIC is a good thing because it gives us the chance to try a new approach. .. But there's a big problem with this. Many Aborigines live thousands of kilometres away from the mainstream world of jobs, good schools and hospitals. These facilities are never going to come to them. No matter how much we spend on Aboriginal affairs, we can't place teaching hospitals within an hour of every remote community. And very few good school teachers don't want to live in the outback. So unless they decide to move to population centres, these Aborigines are never going to be part of the mainstream. That's a sad fact that no government has the power to change. A lot of the problems we associate with Aborigines are actually the same problems whites would have living in the same places. I'm not suggesting we shouldn't do more for Aborigines in remote communities. We should, and the closure of ATSIC creates the chance for some fresh thinking. But it's unlikely their problems will ever go away...."