GOVERNMENT TARGETS KEY AREAS WITH EXCESSIVE BUDGET CUTS.
The Howard government has directed an excessive budget cut at key areas
vital to the well-being of First Peoples.
Some $400 million over four years is to be cut from ATSIC. I heard on ABC
radio that this will be $96 million per year, or some 9% in the first
year, and 11% thereafter. The government had said that cuts would be in
the order of 2%.
Social Justice Commissioner Mick Dodson has said that the government are
"liars". Extremely strong language from a man with legal training.
And, at the same time, the Coalition government has decided not to remove
the diesel fuel rebate which props up the mining industry and farmers to
the tune of $1.3 billion. Only some need to suffer to plug the budget
deficit, apparently - those already worst off.
SAVAGE CUT TO THE INDIGENOUS AND RIGHTS COMPONENT
You would think that you need look no further to determine the present
government's policy directions. But it is worth looking a little closer.
ATSIC funding for housing, health and employment will not be targeted.
These three items are part of the modern day assimilation process which
still works away with its ethnocidal intent to convert First Peoples into
copies of Anglo-Australians.
But these three items can also be seen as being basic citizenship rights
which should be provided, without question, to a dispossessed people to
bring their standard of living back up to an acceptable standard.
This money also quickly finds its way back into the hands of
non-indigenous people. One way or the other it stimulates the mainstream
economy, having been channelled through Aboriginal organisations.
INDIGENOUS SOCIAL DIVIDEND FUNDS TARGETED
What is more telling is the area which is being targeted. You could call
it the indigenous component of the ATSIC budget.
It includes adminstration, legal and cultural preservation funding. When
you allow for this, the impact of the funding cut becomes greatly more
savage than 9% or 10%. Some ATSIC people are talking about a crippling cut
in the order of 30%
ATSIC is unlikely to be able to greatly reduce its adminstration costs as
it is already comparably to other service delivery agencies. Bureaucrats,
as the government well knows, cut themselves last anyway.
This particular funding pays a social dividend to indigenous people by
marginally improving their position either in jails; or having been
removed from their families; or pursuing the broad agenda of the social
justice package which was part of the Native Title settlement deal.
According to one ATSIC spokesperson, included in the area which will be
hardest hit is the social justice package, deaths in custody
recommendations and the inquiry into the stolen generations as well as the
vitally important cultural preservation funding.
DOING AWAY WITH THE HARD WON GAINS
So where will the increasingly concentrated impact be felt? In the vitally
important key areas. A fine piece of micro-economic reform alright, like a
brain surgeon carefully removing just a little bit - the frontal lobes.
And very carefully packaged. The government can say "But look what we
left." It is easy to sell to the mainstream voters because the protection
of housing, health and employment is something they can relate to. The
"other" aspects are largely lost on them. Not a vote lost in the whole
exercise of doing away with the hard-won gains.
AND THAT IS WHY...
And that is why it is of crucial importance that we direct what surplus
energy we have to give voice to the vital importance of keeping those hard
won gains just as much as it is for the farmers and miners to keep their
diesel fuel rebate.
Indeed, that rebate should be reduced to provide the funding for this part
of the ATSIC budget. It is the farmers and miners who benefit most
directly from the dispossession of Australia's First Peoples. The farmers
and miners lifestyles are underwritten by the ongoing suffering of First
Peoples.
The provision of the funding for First Peoples which is necessary for them
to stabilise their lives from the lethal impact of the European invasion
must be placed in a separate category than 'merely another program which
will take its cuts like the rest.'
Formalised arrangements between Anglo-Australia and First Peoples need to
be made to provide reparations and resource rents (as a percentage of the
Gross Domestic Product) without strings, and paid first without tampering
just as we pay our rent or get evicted.
WHAT NEXT?
Budget Day in Canberra is 20 August. There is to be a major demonstration
by others against the government's cuts on monday 19th.
Where do we stand?
Bruce Reyburn
13 August 1996