The Sydney Morning Herald
Progressive thinking the enemy, says Pearson
Date: 16/08/2000
By MICHELLE GRATTAN, Chief Political Correspondent
Aboriginal leader Mr Noel Pearson (left) has lashed out at much
"progressive" thinking on Aboriginal issues, saying it is destructive
and
compounding misery.
He attacked treating substance abuse as a symptom of disadvantage, and
said high levels of Aboriginal incarceration require the
restoration of social order and law enforcement rather than just legal
aid.
Mr Pearson said the indigenous experience of the welfare state had been
"disastrous".
"A rule of thumb in relation to most of the programs and policies that
pose as progressive thinking in indigenous affairs is that if we did
the opposite we would have the chance of making progress," he said.
Delivering the "Light on the Hill" Ben Chifley Lecture in Bathurst at
the weekend, Mr Pearson said people who wanted to be progressive
today "are in objective fact regressive in their thinking".
"This is especially and painfully obvious if you know the situation in
the Aboriginal communities of this country.
"Petrol sniffing is in some places now so endemic that crying infants
are silenced with petrol-drenched rags on their faces.
"In one of our communities in Cape York, among less than 1,000 people,
there were three murders within one month a few months ago.
And we don't know what to do."
"Progressive" thinking about substance abuse held it was "only a symptom
of underlying social and psychological problems".
"But addiction is a condition in its own right, not a symptom. It must
therefore be addressed as a problem in itself."
The "symptom theory" absolved people from their responsibility to deal
with addiction. "Worse, it leaves communities to think that
nothing can be done to confront substance abuse because of its purported
causes: dispossession, racism, trauma and poverty, are beyond
reach of social resolution in the present."
The "progressive" response to the level of Aboriginal jailings had been
to provide legal aid. "This progressive response - providing legal
and support services - has not worked ... In fact Aboriginal legal aid
is part of the criminal justice industry ... It is like a sausage
machine,
and human lives are processed through it with no real belief that the
outrageous statistics will be overcome.
"The truth is ... the real need is for the restoration of social order
and the enforcement of law."
On welfare, he said he advocated its reform, not its abolition.
A new consensus was needed about welfare built on the principles of
personal and family empowerment and investment and the use of
resources to achieve lasting change.
"Our motivation to welfare reform must be based on the principle that
dependency and passivity are a scourge and must be avoided at all
costs. Dependency and passivity kills people and is the surest road to
social decline. Australians do not have an inalienable right to
dependency; they have an inalienable right to a fair place in the real
economy."
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or mirroring is prohibited.
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