John Singleton with Bob HowardRip Van Australia (Stanmore: Cassell Australia, 1977), pp. 3-5, under the heading “Aborigines”.

Everything the government touches turns to shit. ~ JOHN LENNON

Charlie Perkins really has a valid point when he complains that so little of the money supposedly for Aboriginal welfare actually gets through to Aborigines.

Of the grand total of $161 million allocated in the 1974-75 budget to Aboriginal welfare, only $9 million1 went in grants to Aborigines. $41 million went to the State governments, supposedly on behalf of Aborigines. $31 million in so-called Aboriginal welfare services. $17 million in Aboriginal “education services”. $5 million for Aboriginal health services. $3 million for community development, whatever that means. And no less than $32 million for business ventures supposed to be of benefit to Aborigines. Including a grant of $30,000 to a group of Aborigines in a small town out of Alice Springs to buy the local pub. And to think it is not so long ago since another government made it illegal for Aborigines to drink at all!

Total outlays on Aboriginal affairs rose nearly threefold in two years of Labor government. The Department of Aboriginal Affairs doubles to 1450 staff, but actual payments to Aboriginals increased relatively modestly from $5 million to $9 million, to a level of $80 per Aborigine, or about $400 per family. But if the whole of the budget for Aboriginal Affairs ($160 million) had been simply paid to Aborigines, they would have got $1500 each, man, woman and child. The average Aboriginal family would be above the average white family’s earnings in Australia without them having to lift a finger. The fact that Aborigines are not the richest people in Australia is a measure of the extent to which the money supposedly spent on their behalf is drawn off into administration, research and services.

The Labor Minister for Aboriginal Affairs in 1975 listed eighty-nine research projects funded by his department, including such work as (incredibly) turtle and crocodile farming, a survey of “the situation of part-Aboriginal girls” in Perth and adjacent towns, surveys of community attitudes towards Aborigines, and the like.

Even the administration realised how incompetent it was (and is). This report is actually by the Department of Aboriginal Affairs: “There was good cause for concern by August 1973 over the department’s ability to cope fully with its administrative obligations … the secretary took the unprecedented step of calling on the Auditor-General in September to tell him he could no longer adequately control the financial operations of his departments.”2 But instead of being given the shove the department got more staff and more money as the reward for incompetence. Their vote went up from $55,151,810 to $69,809,000.

The Aborigines have become a political football. They are being used [kicked] by politicians, empire-building bureaucrats and many of their radical supporters. All the government interference is doing the Aborigines more harm than good. People cannot be forced to accept, like or respect one another, no matter who they are. Such things must be earned. And it’s equally impossible to spend the problems away.

We only make the following suggestions:

  1. Our laws should recognise and protect individual rights — for all people and not just for white or black people.
  2. Outside that, our government should simply leave people alone, and not attempt to “administer”, “regulate”, “control” or “assist” them.
  3. All land currently held “in trust” for the Aborigines should be given to them with absolute rights of ownership — including ownership of any minerals in the ground.
  4. Since most of the land that is held in trust is pretty scrubby sort of land, and therefore not the easiest to live off, why not also give the Aborigines the complete Ord River Scheme land, which is rich in water and game. It has cost over $80 million to develop and now we pay cotton growers $8000 a year not to grow cotton there. Giving it the the Aborigines would get it off the taxpayer’s backs and allow the Aborigine to live his life as he sees fit, which is the only way the Aboriginal can ever achieve equality.

If you want to do more for Aborigines and they want to accept your help, then that is between you and them. But when a government decides it is popular to make us all help whether we want to or not — and whether the Aborigine wants help or not — all that will be achieved is a division between Aborigines and whites which need not and should not exist.

Footnotes

  1. Peter Samuel, “Cut Silly Government Spending and Save Us All,” The Bulletin, 24 May 1975.
  2. Ibid.