Wis[s]e Words

Howard has a plan

I didn't say much about John Howard's little plan to stop selling alohol and porn to Aborigines to stop child abuse yesterday, because I wasn't quite sure what to say, other than it's so obviously stupid. It sounded like nothing so much as any of Blair's big crime and social deprivation initiatives, a pound of repression dressed up with an ounce of community initiatives -- tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime and all that. Howard may have a lower profile outside his own country than Blair, but he's cut from the same authoritarian do-gooder bully cloth. On that basis alone I distrust these plans.

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one. Over at Club Troppo, Ken Parish calls it Australia's day of shame:

What effect will banning alcohol from all remote remote Aboriginal communities have? I can tell you immediately, from 24 years living in the NT. All the drinkers would immediately move into town in Darwin, Alice Springs, Katherine and Tennant Creek, where there is no way they could be stopped from drinking without restriction. The electoral effects of this urban social chaos would certainly be fatal for Dave Tollner, the incumbent CLP federal member for the Darwin-based marginal seat of Solomon. At least some Liberal advisers (notably Territory born and bred senior Howard adviser and policeman’s son Mark Textor) would be well aware of the practical effects of such a policy, which is why you can guarantee it won’t actually be introduced before the election and will be quietly shelved thereafter whoever wins.

What will happen if, as announced, all Aboriginal parents living in remote communities have 50% of their welfare benefits withheld to ensure that their children are fed? Well, apart from the repugnant unfairness of treating all Aboriginal people indiscriminately as irresponsible children when the majority are responsible parents and only a minority of them drink at all (albeit that those who do are disproportionately serious alcoholics), how could any such policy practically be enforced across 70 or more very remote communities, without employing a large army of additional bureaucrats to dispense the withheld proportion and ensure that it is spent on food? And what would happen if they did somehow find an effective way to enforce such a policy? Again, lots of people (especially the drinkers) would simply vote with their feet and move to the major towns, abandoning their children with extended family members. Any such policy would simply worsen existing social dysfunction.

Today is a day of shame in Australian politics. Everyone deplores the appalling incidence of violence and child sexual abuse in indigenous communities. But there simply isn’t any quick, magical solution. The policy Howard has just announced is worse, more racist and more wildly impractical and misconceived than anything Pauline Hanson ever spouted. Kevin Rudd’s meek, kneejerk endorsement of it is almost as disgusting, and marks him unfit to lead Australia. At least Howard has the guts to announce policies of his own, however repugnant and ill-considered.

Hoyden About Town draws attention to the racist dogwhistle lying below the surface of these plans:

There’s so much here to cater to the former One Nationites and other social conservatives who think that our indigenous people have just been mollycoddled too much and need a short sharp shock (presumably Tony Abbott will want those schools well supplied with canes). At least part of the push to restrict indigenous people comes from a belief that they have received "more than their share" of federal funding over the years without improving their conditions, so Something Must Be Done (and the more punitive the better).

Polemica meanwhile has the original report on which Howard's plans are based and it makes quite different recommendations than those Howard wants:

The report does contain sections on alcohol (Sect 61-69) and pornography (sect 87) amongst other things. But the pornography section is about educating parents on what the classifications mean and enforcing the existing law of not exposing pornography to a minor. This is a very different policy to prohibition.

The alcohol section is mainly on making licenses more difficult to get and easier to regulate. Again not blanket prohibition. It also focuses on social and cultural enjoyment of alcohol rather than abuse. There is a section for community drinking clubs.

In all, my first instinct has been vindicated: that this was a authoritarian, kneejerk response to a real problem that targets the symptoms of that problem rather than its true causes, either because Howard is unable or unwilling to tackle these, though not unwilling to use it to look good. A certain part of the electorate --whether in Australia or the Netherlands-- is always happy to see authoritarian solutions being forced on minorities they're not members off...

Read more about: John Howard, Australian politics, authoritarianism, no quick fixes

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Posted by Martin Wisse at 6:40PM EDT [ Permalink] End of post.