Big sticks, little carrots and truancy

Social welfare philosophies have undergone a change in Australian society over the last 20 years, and the most significant manifestation of this is the notion of "mutual obligation". It is now applied across all types of benefit paid by the Commonwealth government, and has shown itself to be putative in its adherence to compliance requirements and of dubious benefit in impacting upon benefit reliance. Much is claimed, little has been proven as regards its effectiveness in assisting the transition from benefit reliance to self-sufficient income status.

Assisting - a curios choice perhaps but quite intentional. Mutual obligation in the manner in which it is practiced is not so much about assistance as requiring. The problems that an insistence upon compliance to a set of rules and required actions causes are well documented for people receiving income support such as Newstart or Disability Support - homelessness, illiteracy, mental health issues all make compliance difficult and if the obligation is legalistically applied without careful case management, the loss of benefit is certain, the impact upon the individual greatly disproportionate to the stated notion of mutual obligation.

This philosophical change has also been introduced into the governance of Carer Allowance. There is evidence that inter-generational reliance upon benefit is an issue, however this is not a significant presence among those receiving Carer Allowance - most recipients are women, most recipients are short to medium term reliant upon the payment, most return to part-time work before the new obligations require them to, and those who do not either have issues that impact upon their ability to manage the familial unit, lack work-ready skills or have medical, literacy or psychological factors impacting upon their ability to engage with the process of income earning.

This is not as a consequence of the introduction of mutual obligation and its requirements upon the individual. It was the reality before the concept was introduced, before the legislation was enacted. I would argue that the concept of mutual obligation has much less to do with concern about inter-generational benefit reliance and the resulting problems of children growing up in familial units disengaged from mainstream economic activity and values, than about the ability to reduce the number of people receiving the benefit, salving the concerns of middle Australia convinced their streets are flooded with pramloads of unwanted babies popped forth by malignant teenage mothers. At a time of an economy running at close to full capacity, it also provided a new source of low skilled cheap workers, particularly useful for casual and part time positions. All of which you could argue are good outcomes - but I would argue that it is social engineering - governments manipulating the regulatory environment to bring about social and political outcomes of benefit as much to itself, much less to those it impacts upon.

Much of its "success" is measured by budgetary outcomes - less persons receiving benefit and new sources of income revenue for governments via taxation. There has been almost no effort put into economic regulatory changes such as raising the tax free threshold, or educational and training programmes which would be of enormous benefit to the individuals shifting from income support into the workforce. The privatisation of employment services has been an experiment that has failed the subjects, but pleased its political parents. Employment has grown not because of the mythic flood of thousands of well-prepared job-ready individuals has somehow magically generated employment but because we have been living in an economy that had need of low skilled and part-time workers. As the full-capacity economy is now shrinking, the employment opportunities will shrink too. Those who once would have been eligible for Carer Payment will now be required to apply for Newstart, a lower payment with mutual obligation requirements manifestly children and family unfriendly.

The NT intervention was social engineering writ large. The quarantining of welfare payments may have been of benefit in certain circumstances, but as always the devil is the detail. One size does not fit all - there is no such thing as an Aboriginal Australian. There is no such thing as a typical Aboriginal community. The impact of such quarantining has created as many problems as it generated solutions. Rudd promised to move to greater community consultation. Whatever wheels may be slowly turning in Canberra, this is yet to be seen in the processes of the intervention in each community. Instead, an expansion of the model is likely to occur.

Access to educational opportunity is heralded as central to the raising of opportunity for Indigenous Australians. Grand plans for establishing early literacy skilling are mooted, but the missing resources and missing pedagogies are going to have be addressed or yet another "good intention" will do little to improve existing realities and lead to further alienation from a process already labouring with generations of mistrust and disengagement. Truancy is used an indicator of disenagement. The subtleties of why it happens are lost in the Promised Land of Educational Opportunity solving much of Aboriginal social disadvantage. Truancy is not a cause in itself, it is a symptom complex and constantly shifting in its causes.

This is the case as much for non-Indigenous Australians as it is for Aboriginal peoples, but the added problems of language and cultural difference are so often not acknowledged. And while they can be described with greater ease among Indigenous peoples, they are also of relevance to why truancy may occur among non-Indigenous Australians. Across most of Northern Australia, the patios heard, spoken and lived in by most young Indigenous people is Kriol. They may have some functioning traditional languages, they may have had some exposure to Standard English but they will almost certainly lack phoneme recognition necessary for their engagement in the schooling environment - an environment where the language is entirely Standard English ( with a few notable exceptions in communities who utilise local languages and whose resulting outcomes are far far better than schools that do not).

How many school programmes utilise TESOL techniques for Indigenous students with a Kriol language base? Where are the pre and early literacy resources using Kriol? Where are the basis training modules for non-Indigenous teachers to even grasp that their Indigenous students are not using "bad" English as it is so often described but a local patios? They simply do not exist, except in a few isolated circumstances where the remarkable dedication and commitment of individuals has developed such programmes and resources. If we cannot acknowledge the lived reality of vernacular language among Aboriginal peoples, whether it is Aboriginal English, Kriol or traditional language, how do we think we can engage them in our educational processes?

The answer, obviously, is to be punitive. According to our new world notion of mutual obligation.

Truancy is a symptom of disengagement. But we have to be clear to firstly define it. 80% of kids attend school across their education without tripping the trigger for definition as a truant. 10% have levels of absenteeism that can be disruptive to their learning outcomes. But, and this is a big but, these are children who have parental approval for their absence. The common reasons are to support the familial unit because of illness, chronic or short-term, to assist with income earning, to fulfil social and familial obligations, bullying in the school, and shame. The shame of being so poor that you cannot provide your children with the basic resources required to attend school and to function within that school. To not be able to provide uniforms, text books, school fees, excursions costs, lunch, breakfast - all those things middle Australia believes a familial unit surviving on welfare can somehow afford. These children will, unless we have an extremely nuanced definition of truant, attract the focus of "authorities" and their already shaky economic status will be further worsened by the loss of those benefits.

As for truancy, it is most often caused by a complex blend of problems. Learning difficulties that are not addressed in the school, schools so often under-resourced to adequately deal with whatever form the learning difficulties may take. Social and health issues in the home. Abuse, sexual or physical. Addiction issues for the kid. Bullying. Homophobia. Racism. Xenophobia. And growing up in an familial unit where parental experiences of education were so negative that there is no one in that child's immediate emotional environment able to offer a good reason why they should continue to engage with something that is a place of continual contestment.

For non-Indigenous kids, the reasons why they may truant are complex enough. For Indigenous kids, you have to add language issues, cultural insensitivity, a dominant society that struggles to acknowledge its racism, and the insistence upon using educational models that fail to engage with the nuance of Indigenous realities. If Macklin's call for remote communities to close that are not "economically viable" is seen through to its logical conclusion, I predict that the much vaulted focus on providing educational opportunity will fail miserably. Because what it demonstrates is the inability to focus upon cause, not symptom. Because it demonstrates a fundamental lack of empathy, an absence of imagination, a dull grey world driven by economic imperative to standardise, homogenise - a world where the problem is the individual's alone, where structural causes can be noted in a report and ignored in policy development. Where mutual obligation is punitive. Where aspiration allows us to be blind to lack of real opportunity, real engagement, real diversity. We are the truants - we have walked away from our obligations to ethically engage and assist with empathy and wisdom.