Sun 26 Aug 2007
More on Squandered Funds
Posted by jangari under Indigenous, Politics
[19] Comments
Last Tuesday I wrote about a “Herald Investigation” into the government’s creative book-keeping on funding of indigenous affairs. To sum up the story, their accounting gives the impression that the commonwealth has for years been throwing billions at aboriginal Australia. Such funding has frequently and dysphemistically been termed ‘sit down money’.
That, in contrast with the clear squalor and poverty in which some people in some communities infamously live, leads the majority to one conclusion: Aborigines are no good at spending money. This has had severe corollaries, not the least of which has been the move to quarantine commonwealth welfare payments to aboriginal people.
In today’s Herald, the editorial has leapt onto the issue with a scathing attack on the government’s ‘creative accounting’.
With grim irony, some of the money the Federal Government claims it spends for Aborigines is, in fact, used against them. This includes no less than $30 million spent over the past six years opposing native title and compensation claims. Another $35 million spent on reconciliation projects – which, one might think, is intended to benefit all Australians – is counted as spending on Aborigines alone.
It is certainly welcome that the Herald editor has decided to publicise this issue (as most indigenous issues in this country tend to go a little under-the-radar, until recently), and I can absolutely agree with the sentiment the editor (no byline is ever given in Herald editorials) expresses, when s/he says:
Such creative accounting helps explain the enormous gap between the impressive figures nominally budgeted for indigenous Australians, and the deprivation that confronts visitors to remote communities in the Northern Territory and beyond.
Before leaving for my most recent field trip, issues of funding were becoming more discussed, especially in the blogosphere, regarding such events as Mal Brough’s despicable ultimatum to Tangentyere Council: $60 million dollars in housing funding in exchange for tenure of their land. In such discussions, the term ‘sit down money’ was strewn about like parmesan cheese in an Italian restaurant¹. I was mindful therefore, when I arrived in the Territory, of the conditions in the community, the apparent abandon with which the community organisation is alleged to have been wasting their generous federal funds, and the behaviour of individuals rumoured to be awash with welfare money.
What confronted me was consistent with a community almost entirely bereft of adequate funds. I’ve written about this before, but the community president has been perpetually writing grant applications to fund desperately needed housing and infrastructure upgrades, only to be repeatedly fobbed off. In fact it has come to the point where the community president merely phones whichever Territory or commonwealth department is in charge of such things, and asks plainly whether or not he has a shot of getting any funding. The answer is usually ‘no’. This saves him hours otherwise spent writing futile applications.
All in all, the concept of ‘sit down money’ was never made apparent in my recent time there, and I spent a lot of time discussing these matters with the community president. I feel vindicated then, that critical evaluation of the typical opinion towards indigenous communities and their funding is emerging as a result of the Herald‘s investigation. I also feel personally vindicated in a position I publicly took last week, when I said:
This of course is reminiscent of the initial estimates of the cost of the NT intervention, some $580 million, most of which will go to the 725 odd people employed to administer the changes. That too, will probably be counted in the grand total of ‘indigenous spending’.
Compare that with the editorial’s closing statements of yesterday (emphasis added):
Successful indigenous organisations must not be scapegoated and marginalised. Otherwise, the Federal Government’s $580 million intervention in remote communities risks expensive failure – a failure that will no doubt be counted as “Aboriginal spending”.
Maybe I have a future career in writing editorials.
~
¹Sorry for that metaphor. I couldn’t bring myself to say something as rote as strewn about like confetti.
~
<update>
Joe sends me this troubling image from Wadeye, where he’s currently doing some fieldwork, of a banner on a government building, which means it probably counts as ‘Aboriginal spending’ (Click the image to see the larger size):
Note the imagery: sitting down is bad money while working in a mine (or in a kitchen if you’re a woman, evidently) is good money.
I wonder how much it cost the Indigenous Affairs department to design and make signs like this.
</update>
19 Responses to “ More on Squandered Funds ”
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September 6th, 2007 at 11:50 am[…] Photo from Jangari’s mate Joe on matjjin – nehen […]
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April 13th, 2008 at 3:43 pm[…] focus of the intervention. ↩For more examples of misappropriated funding allocation, see here and here. ↩Clearly though, the ideal solution would be to build dwellings that take into account the […]
August 26th, 2007 at 11:29 pm
That “no more sit down money” banner is appalling propaganda. Proper CDEP programs do not involve sit down money, and I know many Aboriginal communities in Qld quite strictly impose a ‘no work, no pay’ policy for their CDEP – I would be surprised if the same didn’t apply in many places in the Territory. It would be a simple thing to just enforce this rule, rather than scrap the whole damn thing. Work for the dole is still the dole, and still has to enforced – CDEP is/was more than just getting the dole, both in money and in value to the community – now the whole thing is being falsely discredited as ‘sit down money’. And as you rightly point out, no doubt the propaganda campaign discrediting it in this way is being counted as ‘aboriginal spending’ by the government.
August 27th, 2007 at 10:34 am
Propaganda is right. Their position that there will be no more ‘sit down money’ is inconsistent with moving from CDEP to (quarantinable) commonwealth welfare since, of the two, CDEP is by far the more productive.
It’s also often vital; Kybrook Farm is almost entirely funded by CDEP, It’s hard to see how the STEP program, or whatever else they’re proposing, could take up the slack.
So, to dismiss it as ‘sit down money’ is disingenuous to say the least.
August 27th, 2007 at 1:21 pm
CDEP here at Ngukurr has been functioning really well for the past 12 months. To accuse CDEP workers here of receiving ‘sit down money’ is just plain rude. If CDEP is so dysfunctional then I just can’t wait to see what will become of these work areas when the Govt’s masterplans come to fruition:
Language Centre
Women’s Centre/Aged Care
Art Centre
Women’s Rangers
Creche
Builder’s Workshop
Mechanic’s Workshop
After School Care
Swimming Pool
Rubbish collection etc.
August 27th, 2007 at 1:25 pm
haha… i just looked again at the poster… it should say: ‘talk to Centrelink in English/in a foreign language/in your best English to find out what you need to do…’
This whole thing is absurd and demoralising.
Thanks Andrew for voting against it. (You did didn’t you??)
August 27th, 2007 at 1:41 pm
Yeah Gagu, same in Kybrook, though not as many projects run; smaller community and so on. But certainly there are many vital community projects whose demise would spell disaster for the community members. I can’t list the projects because I just don’t know for sure which are CDEP. But, as I suspect that all of them are, here’s a small sample:
Office (everything)
Garbage collection
Housing and road maintenance (on a very short shoestring)
Rangers
Women’s rangers (arts and crafts)
Soap manufacture
Cattle business ventures (fences, outstations, aerial surveillance)
Food provision (either bought or caught)
School lunches
Mechanic/building workshop
Arguably many of these come under the same ‘area’, so this is more a list of services that will have to find other sources of funding.
August 27th, 2007 at 9:52 pm
And check out Adele Horin’s SMH article on CDEP last Friday, which points to the pressure on the job placement companies, and the punitive nature of the Work-for-the-Dole scheme..
August 27th, 2007 at 10:29 pm
Joe considers the imagery and iconography on the banner. The written English on the banner also is striking. It must have been a challenge for someone at FACSIA to have to decide on the wording. It had to be relevant and true, also avoid false presuppositions, and had to fit on a banner. I think it has achieved that much: it says Talk to Centrelink to find out what you need to do to keep getting paid. (Imagine the discarded drafts!) But it still strikes me as convoluted. What would be a good way to express this in Kriol I wonder (Wamut?!).
Here’s my quick paraphrase of the text: Ask a Centrelink person for help. The Centrelink person will say to you ‘Do this, then someone will pay you something. If you don’t do this, I cannot say if someone will pay you.’
Which raises more questions… so we can see why there are to be 350 new Centrelink workers.
August 27th, 2007 at 10:32 pm
Thanks for the link Jane (and I fixed you html). Horin points out here, as many of us have done, the real reason for the shutting down of CDEP:
Of course, this is hardly a secret. Indeed I believe the government have made this explicit at some point.
Which leads me to think that despite all the calls that the scrapping of CDEP won’t work and will result in mass unemployment in communities, is actually consistent with their grand plan, which is also publicly stated: to restrict how much money individuals and communities have.
What they appear to ignore though, because I’m sure they’ve realised, is that CDEP provides activity, as Horin also points out, while work-for-the-dole or commonwealth welfare, is much closer to the so-called ‘sit down money’ that they demonise. In fact I think less money and less activity under work-for-the-dole would be worse with respect to the social problems that this whole thing is a result of, than more money coupled with the obligation to go to work.
This is all stating the blatantly obvious though.
August 28th, 2007 at 8:55 am
Hmmm…i just had a quick think about how to translate the banner into Kriol. The first step is to usually change the English into as plain a English as possible, and so I would change the banner to:
Talk to Centrelink to find out how to keep getting money.
This plain English statement doesn’t really lose much from the original but it does seem to reveal the welfare dependency that is being perpetuated (or increased?) by current policies.
And so my first stab at a Kriol translation would be:
Tok la Centrelink bla faindaut hau bla kipgon gajimbat mani.
(Now can I have some of the 580 million for my good work?! Lots of other white people are getting their share!)
August 28th, 2007 at 5:46 pm
There will be plenty of sit-down money available under the Federal Govt’s plan…but it will all be for non-Indigenous workers to sit down in their offices in front of a computer.
August 29th, 2007 at 6:03 pm
These bastards will go to any length to assert their power.
See…. http://www.crikey.com.au/Politics/20070829-Stuart-Highway-robbery-.html
I suspect they are going to soon find, though, that it was much less than they imagined. Bully boys always come a cropper.
August 29th, 2007 at 7:53 pm
Far out Joe2, I think that article warrants its own post.
Thanks for the link.
September 6th, 2007 at 11:53 am
Jangari and Joe,
I’ve used the photo in the following article
http://paradigmoz.wordpress.com/2007/09/05/cdep-the-protection-of-aboriginal-children-and-the-welfare-tit/
Let me know if there is a problem and I will remove it.
kurityityin atyahoodotcom
JT
September 6th, 2007 at 12:38 pm
It looks good, John. I have no issue with it being there, nor does Joe.
December 28th, 2008 at 10:56 am
Coons are the most pathetic scourge on Australian society. I am sick of scum like this specific demographic who cannot take responsibility for their own actions and choose to blame others for their own incompetence.
January 8th, 2009 at 2:47 pm
Hmm, I’m not sure what to do about the previous comment. It’s not spam, it’s a legitimate opinion, yet it’s stupider than Paris Hilton. I’m going to leave it there, and ignore it.
January 29th, 2009 at 7:54 pm
So why may I ask…do I get $200 per week on newstart allowance, after paying $40000 per year in tax for the last few years working on doomed mine… when a friend of mine (aboriginal) who has never had a job, and doesnt intend on getting a job, get over $400 per week on Newstart.. I also have to show that I have looked for work and prove it..and he doesnt. Sounds like sit down money to me… They want equal rights etc… lets give it to them… everyone has to do the same thing to get the same money… Ok I agree they should get something more as we occupy their land…But they seem to be claiming a lot of land back… Doesnt that mean we shouldnt be paying them as much now.. For eg.. If I rent 2 houses for $1000 per week… and I give 1 house back to the landlord… Then I should only have to pay for the house I still occupy and not both!!!!