Feed the children
A black leader wants a portion of some Aboriginal families’ welfare money redirected to schools to provide meals and books for children whose parents don’t budget properly.
This is a key proposal in atough-minded approach on indigenous issues being promoted by Lionel Quartermaine, a candidate for the deputy chairmanship of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission. The post has been vacated by “Sugar” Ray Robinson, for years a powerful and controversial figure in ATSIC, who is before a court.
Quartermaine says siphoning off some of the payment would tackle the problem of children who don’t get fed properly because their parents drink away their money or spend it on drugs. At least this way the children would get one good meal a day, he says. Social workers would need to decide when children were being neglected. He wants ATSIC to take up the idea.
Early this year I was having a beer with a couple of friends of mine, Matt and Lindsay. Matt suggested that at least a portion of people’s Centrelink payments should be in the form of food stamps, for this very reason — that the parents of alcoholics and junkies don’t feed their kids. Lindsay and I both argued that food stamps stigmatise the poor and suggest that they are in that situation due to their own economic incompetence. That is undoubtedly true for a small proportion of welfare recipients, but to imply that they all neglect their children is unfair. Matt challenged us to come up with a better solution to the problem, and after some frustration Lindsay finally suggested a school breakfast program.
That type of scheme has been successfully implemented in several WA schools on an ad hoc basis. The Looma community of the Kimberley region is one example, as is this award-winning program to assist the Wongai people at Laverton. There is also a long list of NSW schools that offer breakfasts.
I think there is potential for this scheme to be universalised. Every child at every government school (and possibly at every private school, too) could be offered a free breakfast. This could be funded by a slight reduction in the Parenting Payment, in recognition of the reduced financial burden on the parents. As most schools have canteens that are open before school, the cost of setting things up would be minimal, while the food is cheaper to buy in bulk than it is for individual families. That means the public will get a better welfare outcome for the money it spends.
I don’t see this as a radical policy. A school lunch program has been running in the US for over fifty years. It’s about time we caught up. If these are the policies the “new ATSIC” will be pushing, then things are looking up.
It’s NOT at all a BAD idea, but personally, the combination of “schools” and “food” merely connotes the grind of late-capitalism as learnt at the age of eight; aka “Who stole my lunch money?”.
as a society, we’re become much better at producing band aids, than we are dealing with the underlying causes. Over the past three decades or so, there’s been an increasing slide into different forms of dependency, which don’t bode well for those of us young enough to still be around when it gets really messy.
I have the good fortune of having reasonable expectations of being dead by then; but I worry about what’s in store for my kids, and even more so for my grandkids.
Sometimes ‘paternaism’ isn’t merely a dirty word. Sometimes disadvantaged sectors of any society need structure and discipline, if thwy’re ever to break the debilitating cycles which are now so prevelant in all too many parts of our community. Assuming, of course, that it’s even still appropriate to see Australia as trying to maintain some sense of community?
The food as dole thing is already being considered by govt as part of its welfare package, but some of us have hassles with the idea that we’re in essence being told how to spend/distribute our income.
The main problem I see with the above suggestions though is if it’s unniversal, good parents end up paying for bad parenting, which seems an unfortunate punitative measure. If it was targeted and implemented from those who weren’t adequately provind for their kids, then that seems fair, though I can imagine that levels of unpleasantness may well rise when parents have less money because it’s going to their kids. It’s a tough case.
We could always remove children from bad parents.
But that would be lefty interference in the God-Given Right to Raise Children Proper With the Strap. Or, er, something.
The major problems with aboriginals are:
They eat toomuch bad food and consequently are overweight
They smoke too much
They drink too much.
I can’t see for the life of me how any Government can help them unless they are severely paternalistic much as I hate this.
Homer, *I* eat, smoke (well, second-hand) and drink too much stuff that’s bad for me.
There will always be poor, either through economic self-mismanagement, or circumstances beyond their control. Current systems do the job, but could always be re-jigged depending on the focus of the Government of the day. The primary focus needs to be placed on the children. Todays children become tomorrow’s adults. Unless society as a whole provides a proper grounding, we’re simply sowing the seeds for future crop disasters.
Mark,
compare aboriginal death rates with non-aboriginal death rates and then try and make smart comments.
The time has come to do something and I really can’t think of anything that doesn’t involve paternalism however Noel Pearson appears to be going this way to.
In the U.S., as you probably know, one highly popular solution to the chronic problems of Native Americans — very similar to the ones described above — has been to allow them to open casinos on tribal land. The rationale is that Indian tribes, for historical reasons, are entitled to a degree of sovereignty over their own reservations. Hence, they can offer fireworks and tax-free cigarettes and petrol, along with casino gambling, a.k.a. “the red man’s revenge.” There’s something almost poetic about greedy white gamblers voluntarily surrendering large chunks of their own money in aid of those they marginalized in the first place.
I assume the operators of existing casinos would never let such a thing happen in Australia, though. Besides, casino gambling has not been an unmitigated boon for Native Americans; the profits have a way of ending up in the pockets of a select few, and many remote tribes have opened casinos only to see them fail for want of visitors. But some tribes have become quite wealthy indeed.
Grant, that’s why I don’t support the food stamp plan. Feeding the kids at school is, in my opinion, a different kettle of fish.
Norman, I agree that this doesn’t solve the underlying problems, but sometimes you need to use a bandaid while you work out how to stop people getting cut in the first place. The kids shouldn’t be punished for their parents’ flaws.
Vaara, I’d like to see a variation on that theme — mining and pastoral royalties for leases in native title areas.
I think parents with heroin and alcohol addictions have other things in mind than over-disciplining their kids, Mark.
I agree, Steve; it, and my later post in reply to Homer, were bad-taste attempts at humour.
Mark,
I am sorry I overreacted.
When one examines the appalling deathrates for aboriginals and realises Australia has met third world benchmarks and nothing is done one tends to get angry.
The underlying problem is that society has set principles in stone which are fundamentally flawed, but politically ‘untouchable’. As someone who grew up in circumstances far more economically poor than many people can now even comprehend, and who also worked and socialised with aborigines, I’m impressed by the extent to which we’ve managed to create such disasterous outcomes for ALL disadvantaged groups.
We now apply “band aids”, not so much as a temporary measure to hold the line, as to cover over problems so they’re no longer visible. Any attempt to provide long term approaches which might eventually resolve the problems would be howled down by the ‘do-gooders’, who assume that they know ‘what’s best’.
I’m all in favour of letting Aboriginals open casinos.
Hell, I’d support a casino run by trained parrots if it broke the ridiculously counterproductive monopoly that is Burswood. It is, by far, the world’s worst Casino.
i work in the school at Kowanyama, which is an indigenous community in Cape York. This year we have started feeding the kids every day at the first lunch break about 11am. It comes out of the school budget and isn’t anything special but its OK, usually a stew or sausages on bread.
It won’t win prizes for nutritional value but it gives the kids something to eat when at times they might not have anything.
it helps to concentrate on learning when you’ve got something in your stomach.
Don’t underestimate the long term value of what you’re doing, “bb”. It’s a surer path to success, than much of what passes for assitance these days. Good luck.