Intervention thinking

I have spent this afternoon ruminating over Marcia Langton's piece in the latest Griffith Review. It's a difficult piece to read, and Langton says many things that she has said before. However, this time she may be listened to more intently. And her views represent one of many from Indigenous Australia. This must not be viewed as the press seems to delight in doing as schisms or fractures within Indigenous politics, but the vital articulation of knowledges and experiences, opinions and beliefs that co-exist throughout indigenous Australia. The dialogue we laud as evidence of the health of our democracy, and castigate as evidence of dysfunctionalism in others.

One issue she does raise is, what happens when people are so stressed by the appalling living conditions they have to endure, that they are effectively de-sensitized to the chaos around them, they are no longer able to define behaviour as at the best dysfunctional and no longer able to prevent its occurrence or argue its immorality? I am baldly para-phrasing, but it is an appalling reality for many. And as Langton & others have said before, people who are living such lives may no longer have the skills or energy to make the choices that would break the patterns of abuse & destitution. And as she then argues, this makes Howard's intervention less about any cynical motives for land grabs & wedging Labour, and more an opportunity for intervening in communities too long left to struggle with drug & alcohol problems, violence, poverty, and non-existent services the rest of us take for granted. I'm more ready to question Howard's motives than frustration at poor performance outcomes of various branches of government, but her point is that it provides a realpolitik moment to insist upon at least a basic provision of services and attitudes into communities too long unable to provide them for themselves.

And it is a really really difficult issue to tussle with. How do you engage with communities that have become so dysfunctional that violence is endemic, women and children victimised, and drugs & alcohol consumed at addictive levels? Is it paternalistic to intervene? Is that a really pointless and heartless question when people are continuing to experience violence and disadvantage? Langton's answer is clear, and like Noel Pearson, she argues that uncritical support for "self-determination" can be used to perpetuate the monstrous actions of some. And the niceties of philosophical debate allows for the do-nothing let's write another report response to Indigenous realities to continue. But within this, the indiscriminate application of policies such as welfare payment quarantine or health service providers not adequately trained in dealing with the third world general health problems so endemic, have to be questioned and rigorously examined and changed if they are causing a new set of problems. Rudd's commitment to respond on a community by community basis is part of that equation but how that will deal with the concerns that Langton raises when it is a community socially & ethically dysfunctional is not at all clear.

Rudd's commitments to outcomes & goals included every Aboriginal 4 y o accessing a preschool learning environment within five years. Laudable but I suspect unachievable. This in not being achieved in the broader community, and putting university graduates from the southern states into isolated communities will require more than offering bonuses. Children have to be healthy enough, fed enough and safe enough to venture into early learning environments with any continuity. Policies such as withholding welfare payments if children do not attend may be implemented, but if parents or carers are substance abusers, the ethics of feeding & caring for kids comes a long way down the list of priorities. Macklin's identification of housing as the key first step is vitally important, and there is enough knowledge and expertise out there to develop & implement housing programmes that recognise cultural mores and climatic realities. But it has to be accepted by the bureaucracies as valid & vital. And then implemented.

There's a bit of wheel re-invention going on here too. Indigenous training through TAFE has already generated some fantastic working models for delivery to non-urban peoples with much success, and I would argue that a programme that further develops a system of TAFE qualifications around childcare training, that can be studied as distance education while employed has much greater chance of staffing community childcare centres than shipping in graduates. If previous experience is any guide, huge costs will be incurred providing housing "suitable" & retention rates will be atrocious. Training people from within community, using a TAFE based programme of accumulated qualifications that will allow for advanced standing should tertiary training beckon, people who know custom, know law, know language is far more likely to achieve Rudd's aim of early childhood exposure to pre-numeracy & pre-literacy skills than shipping 'em in from the south.

None of which can be achieved if civil society is dysfunctional. Policing and judiciary have to function fairly and thoroughly. In many communities there is nothing of either. Social dislocation is not a consequence of Aboriginality - any society and culture will begin to fail when assaulted by substance abuse, poverty, disadvantage & the failure to provide basic social order. Langton's descriptions of communities remind me not so much of war zones but the writings of Colin Turnbull of the Ik people of Uganda. As problematic as Turnbull's failure to see the Ik within a temporal specificity is, the social collapse that he describes is chilling in its thorough erasure of civil knowing and social function.

The question we have to answer is, how do we intervene? Who do we listen to, and who do we exclude?