A BRISBANE Aboriginal woman and long-time Church leader has supported a recent statement by Australian bishops that “costly and invasive government inquiries” have done little to improve conditions in remote indigenous communities.
Stradbroke Island elder Aunty Joan Hend-riks, who served for eight years as an indigenous representative on the Council for Australian Catholic Women (CACW), said Bishop Christopher Saunders of Broome and Bishop Eugene Hurley of Darwin were correct in saying that “more committees and more inquiries” were not the solution to problems in indigenous communities.
“My belief is that no matter how much money is poured into these communities, until we can bridge the gap between Christian and Aboriginal spirituality which is my passion – we will not mend the brokenness in the Aboriginal people which is at the heart of the problem,” Ms Hendriks said.
National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Ecumenical Commission (NATSIEC) executive director Graeme Mundine also agreed with the bishops’ comments noting that governments typically “mismanage inquiries or take no notice of recommendations arising from the inquiries”.
Bishops Saunders and Hurley made the comments in a submission they helped prepare on behalf of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference.
The submission was made recently to the House of Representatives Standing Committee for an inquiry into the high level of involvement of indigenous juveniles and young adults in the criminal justice system.
Bishop Saunders, who has spent more than 35 years working with indigenous communities in Western Australia, said “juvenile justice in the indigenous context would be better labelled ‘juvenile injustice'”.
He said the ACBC submission had pointed out “that an indigenous juvenile is 28 times more likely to be in prison than a non-indigenous juvenile” and that the situation has been getting worse rather than better.
“Between 2001 and 2008, the juvenile detention rate increased by 27 per cent,” Bishop Saunders said.
The worsening situation served to highlight the failure of government inquiries, the bishop said.
The report also referred to “turf wars across every level of government (which) are a major inhibitor to the proper delivery of services to indigenous people”.
“As noted in the ACBC submission, one indigenous leader said that in a community of 300 people, there were 70 government programs or services in operation, each with its own requirements and that the community was visited by 120 public servants in a six-month period,” Bishop Saunders said.
“Non-indigenous people would not accept such experimental intrusions into their lives and indigenous people are cynical of each latest initiative imposed upon them from afar.
“Such inquiries are both costly and invasive.”
The ACBC submission also noted that employment was a key requirement to help develop appropriate social norms and behaviours for indigenous juveniles and young adults.
“But for many indigenous young people the reality is more likely to involve grossly overcrowded housing, inadequate or inappropriate family support, health education and nutrition and almost impossible barriers to secure employment,” the submission said.
Ms Hendriks said she and other CACW members had visited the Northern Territory last year to look at the situation in Catholic communities in the wake of the Federal Government’s intervention program in indigenous communities originally started under the Howard Government in 2007.
She said she “knows in her heart” that something had to be done to deal with problems in remote indigenous communities.
“But this paternalistic attitude of government is no use,” she said.
Mr Mundine said bureaucracy “soaks up a lot of funds” in these communities.
The inquiry began in November last year when Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs Jenny Macklin requested the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs inquire and report into the high level of involvement of indigenous juveniles and young adults in the criminal justice system.
