EXPENDABLE HUMANS

Harry Throssell

 “Slavery has been abolished throughout the world” commented former New South Wales Premier Bob Carr on ABC1’s QandA show on 14 August [2008].

Perhaps he was referring to British Member of Parliament William Wilberforce ending legal slavery in the British Empire in 1833. But trafficking people is very much alive and well - or alive and sick - around the world, with Australia a lucrative market.

‘Trafficking’ involves moving people by force for the purpose of exploiting their labour, bodies, or organs; ‘smuggling’ refers to helping people who wish to move across a national border.

Caroline Cox of the British House of Lords, author of This Immoral Trade: Slavery in the 21^st Century (2007) spoke on ABC Radio National’s Encounter program about her work on the exploitation and persecution of minority groups. “Every child in the world should have an idea of being someone to be cherished, and none should be called abeete, or slave”, she said. “But Wilberforce’s work is still not accomplished. Slavery exists … in many other parts of the world in different forms. International protest and prayer brought down apartheid; why are we silent about slavery?”

According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, trafficking in persons has reached “epidemic proportions” during the past decade, involving 127 countries of origin, 98 transit countries and 137 destination countries. Financial estimates of the global trade in human beings vary from $500 million dollars a year to $32 billion, with only military and drug sales higher.

An International Labor Organisation Report shows 12.3 million people forced into slavery worldwide, while the U.S. Free the Slaves organisation quotes 27 million, the proportion of women varying from 50 to 90 per cent. Most, including children, are destined for the sex trade, others in forced domestic work or other labour.

In Trafficked, Kathleen Maltzahn of Project Respect in Australia quoted a 2004 US Department of State report estimating 600,000 to 800,000 men, women, and children were trafficked across international borders each year and millions more within borders, at least half of them for sexual exploitation. One thousand women were brought to Australia each year making billions of dollars for criminal networks.

Most victims are from South-East Asia and Eastern Europe with Australia being in the second highest category of recipient countries.

In 2004 The Good Shepherd Sisters of Melbourne helped fund the first major research into human trafficking in Australia. Estimates ranged from under 100 to over 1,000 trafficked persons here at any one time, mostly involving Asian females. Extreme poverty was a major causative factor.

Christine Carolan told ABC RN’s David Busch of a young woman trafficked into Australia. “She thought she was coming to look after Australian children, and when she came from Sydney airport to the house she saw toys on the floor and thought ‘these are for the children I’m going to mind’. But she was moved immediately to a brothel in Sydney and repeatedly raped until an Immigration raid freed her”. She was 14 years old.

Maltzahn writes “Women - often Thai women - were coming to Australia on the promise of decent conditions and good pay. Many knew they might be doing prostitution [but] a small minority had no inkling … Women told us of being lied to, raped, beaten and locked up, of having no control over how or if they had sex with customers, having to have sex when they were sick or menstruating, being deprived of their passports and threatened with violence and deportation. Some were sold from one trafficker to the next. All were paying off ‘debts’ of at least $35,000”.

Puongtong Simaplee left her farmer parents in the hills of Thailand at age 13 or so, travelled to Bangkok, on to Malaysia at age 15 where she did prostitution, was married for a time, and by 21 was sold into sexual slavery in Australia. She died in the Villawood Immigration Detention Centre in 2001 at age 27 after vomiting into a bucket over a period of 65 hours.

Maltzahn: “Records show she had a heroin addiction, was homeless [and] was so physically underdeveloped that detention officials ordered a medical examination to establish if she was male or female. Her arms were marked by scars”. When she arrived at Villawood her weight was 37 kilos, when she died 72 hours later it was 31 kilos.

The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission made strong comments on the wretchedness of this young woman’s life and she has become symbolic of some of the worst aspects of trafficking. Attorney General in the Howard Federal Government Daryl Williams rejected Opposition calls for an enquiry into the sex slave trade in Australia.

Busch on Encounter in 2007: “Just as people were feeling good about the 200th anniversary of the end of Britain's Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Act … along came Australian film The Jammed. Shot in Melbourne and based on court documents, it put a fresh spotlight on the reality of the trafficking of young women into Australia”. The film details the physical and psychological conditions enslaved women endure, and explains how brothel owners are able to control them without fear they will run off to the police.

Good Samaritan Sister Pauline Coll coordinates some 40 religious congregations in Australia under Australian Catholic Religious Against Trafficking of Humans (ACRATH). In 2001 and 2004, the international leaders of 800 congregations of Catholic women religious declared the trafficking of women to be a global priority issue for their one million members.

Louise Cleary, a former world leader of the Brigidine Sisters, referred to ministering to young men in detention centres and becoming aware of small groups of women who were there one week, gone the next. It became clear the women were picked up in raids. “They appeared to be extremely cautious and untrusting ... we discovered they had been brought into the country against their will”.

Internationally the Salvation Army has also declared trafficking a high priority concern, with Commander Paul Moulds overseeing the Army's outreach programs in Sydney.

“There is a new understanding that some of the people we meet - girls standing on street corners … are in fact trafficked”.

Moulds talks about a girl working in the back streets of Kings Cross whose knowledge of the English language was limited but who was trying to communicate with Army workers. They became aware she was being coercively held, tried to become more active in helping her and found themselves in a risky situation. “On one occasion one of our workers was approached by someone obviously looking out for this girl … he pulled his jacket open and revealed a gun - he was making it clear ‘you stay away from our property’”.

The next week the girl had disappeared but later phoned from another Australian city still seeking help.

Moulds referred to a brothel customer who was so concerned about the poor condition of the girl he had been matched with he called the Immigration Department. They raided the brothel and liberated the girl.

Louise Reeves, a Sister of St Joseph and an immigration lawyer, works voluntarily in Sydney University of Technology Law Faculty’s Anti-Slavery Project. Some women, she said, come to Australia on a visitor or tourist visa knowing they want to work in the sex industry, but never dream they will be put in such exploitative situations: passports taken, herded from brothel to brothel, forced to work seven days a week non-stop until they have worked off a ‘debt’. Others arrive believing they are going to a job such as work in a restaurant so it is an enormous shock to be forced into a brothel within days and told they have several hundred clients to service.

“Sometimes the traffickers know the girls’ families. They can be blackmailed, photographed in compromising situations, they may have told their family they have quite a different job. There is coercion, debt, violence, often they have poor English, no understanding of our legal system, perhaps have developed drink and drugs problems.

“A woman may just roll up to the office, come in, sit there with tears rolling down her cheeks, she's literally in a desperate situation, she listens to her options, disappears and may not come back”.

POVERTY THE ULTIMATE CAUSE

In March this year Franciscans opened a new office in Bangkok. The plan is to offer training programs, one of them for those working with people trapped in “contemporary forms of slavery and trafficking” with the major focus on prevention. “We're always going to have inhumanity, greed, injustice … But what is human-made we can do something about, and that is poverty”, said Julie Morgan.

When working in Cambodia Morgan had a group of young sex workers in a health education class. She realised some were no more than 12 years old, perhaps the oldest 18. “You just knew what it was they were experiencing … sold by their parents because of the grinding poverty in which they live ... For some it's by an older brother or uncle … a 12-year-old girl was then worth about $US300, and if younger the price went up.

“It's a phenomenon deeply rooted in poverty”.

Morgan invited them to ask questions about life in Australia. The oldest said “What will you do to support us if we want to leave this work?”

A Cambodian staff member responded. “The problems in Cambodia are huge so we've got two priorities at the moment. The first is to help you with your health and our second is to help your parents with their vegetable and rice production because then if they're not so poor …” and she stopped. But, explained Morgan, “every single one of those kids from the eldest down nodded because they all knew that if their parents weren't so poor, the kids wouldn't have to be sold.

“People don't want to sell their kids but it's a situation so horrendous. For us in Australia where we can participate meaningfully is in campaigns like the Millennium Development Goals to eradicate extreme forms of poverty. This is where some of the solutions lie”.

Cleary agrees. “A key driver of making women and children susceptible to being trafficked is poverty. Through our networks in Nepal, the Philippines, Thailand, Cambodia … we've been able to see that poverty, and a lack of value being placed on the girl-child, have led young women to be trafficked. So we fundamentally believe that there is a need for the world community to give much greater attention to the Millennium Development Goals”.

Liz Hoban, an Australian academic and community development worker, works in rural Cambodia where she's developing a range of micro social enterprises for income generation, ranging from sewing and embroidery workshops to a flower farm, all designed to counter the lure of job prospects touted by traffickers.

She described a family where the mother died of AIDS, the father was currently ill with the disease and was expected to die within 12 months, so the oldest of five children, aged 17, was the breadwinner, doing daily labour on road construction for $1.50 to $2 a day.

About her future she said someone had already come to the village and asked her to go to Thailand. Someone would organise the day she was to meet the taxi out on the road. Hoban asked what she'd be doing in Thailand, she didn't really know but thought she'd be working in the construction industry just over the border. Asked if she wanted to go she replied “No, because my father is ill and my mother is dead and I am in charge of this family”.

“So it's as innocent as that”, commented Hoban. “This young girl has no education so she's ripe for the picking by the recruiters”.

However, the girl joined a local project learning sewing skills so eventually she can have her own business. The organisation also has a savings scheme. “And she's safe”, said Hoban, “She won't be lost across the Thai border. She'll stay in her village with her family”.

Ms Joy Ngozi Ezeilo of Nigeria, a human rights lawyer and professor at the University of Nigeria assumed her position as United Nations Special Rapporteur on Trafficking in Persons, especially women and children, on 1 August 2008.

 First published in On Line Opinion 25 August 2008

Harry Throssell

It is not uncommon to see young couples walking hand in hand while each chats away separately to other distant folk via the ubiquitous, insistent mobile phone. Hardly seems romantic. On public transport passengers make calls to announce they will be home in a few minutes, perhaps a warning the spouse should get the tea on and pour the drinks. Is it kindness or controlling? It certainly reduces uncertainty, fills the spaces.

It is the rare home where there is no television, sometimes one in every room. Many are never switched off during the day, some have mammoth-sized screens virtually impossible to ignore. A large proportion of the population gaze into computer screens at work or school, then again in study or bedroom at home in the evening and weekend for information, entertainment, to communicate with others known and unknown, near or distant. It is alleged many teenagers are not seen by the family after school because they are communing with the world via Face-book or whatever in their own room until they choose to go to bed. Youngsters accessing pornography is a worry to many parents.

Inevitably what someone somewhere chooses to post on these many screens is likely to influence what is the good life, what to think, how to vote, mostly what to buy. An electronic Big Brother, the all-seeing, all-controlling leader of the scarily oppressive ‘Oceania’ in George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Whereas reading requires concentration television is often permanent background like wallpaper. Those who attend traditional church services make a positive decision to do so but mostly as a once weekly ritual for an hour. The TV may be on 24 - 7.

Even old-fashioned readers of newspapers or books find it difficult to resist the pull of this new creed. Undoubtedly we know through television more about wars and catastrophes in distant places in the world, in distant parts of Australia. The Internet has opened up new opportunities not only for the spread of information alongside government and traditional media sources, but also for conversations across the world. And there are still some media controllers with a commitment to the ethics of keeping the public informed objectively rather than simply selling goods.

But it’s also true much of the panoply of seductive modern media is tailor-made for propaganda, subtly spreading often unchallenged values in the interests of certain sections of the community for financial profit or to acquire political power. It is striking, for example, that on television there are regular daily bulletins of financial news of interest to those with stocks and shares, but there are only rare bulletins on the numbers in poverty, housing stress, homeless, on hospital waiting lists.

This is the New World, the New Word, Holy Writ. The altar of modern life is the electronic gadget: computer at work, school and home, mobile phone in the spaces between, for leisure the cinema. Whoever controls the screen controls the world, for good and for ill. How better to school the masses in how to spend their time, their money, what to think, what to prefer? How Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin would have welcomed such easy control of their populations’ cerebral processes.

There is a profound process going on here. Philosophers through the ages have maintained the human needs time and space to reflect on what is happening in the world, in the locality, in his or her life, breathing space to allow unconscious and subconscious ideas to emerge into awareness. To ponder, dream, write and read poems, tales and think-pieces, to stop and smell the roses. But this meditation space is now dangerously squeezed almost to oblivion by the many forms of electronic communication insistently pummelling the brain.

No doubt in times to come babies will be born with a phone as part of the ear, a mouse at the end of the arm.

Just as important as the means of communication is the message. Most forms of modern communication are laced with advertisements, selling goods. In some cases it seems the purpose of entertainment is to attract attention to what’s for sale. Even an important social issues program like SBS Television’s Insight is interrupted to show advertisements.

Take the invention of the motor-car. Initially the petrol engine mounted on four wheels gave those who could afford it greater freedom to travel, over much greater distances in shorter time. But now our towns are throttled often to a comatose state by the number of cars, most of them absurdly carrying only one person, every day the news includes deaths from crashes, frequently involving young people, taxes go increasingly towards more and more roads and bridges. And television programs showing what fun it is to take drive at dangerous speed with the inevitable risk of death. Are we intelligent beings or not? Are we any happier than in the days when the horse was the main form of transport and we could walk anywhere?

Much of life is understood by its portrayal in screen fiction. The police never turn a hair at viewing yet another battered or wasted body, they carry out lengthy interviews and never make a note, are frequently engaged in gun battles but never get a scratch, are young, good-looking, unmarried, never go home, rarely have children, and their professional partner is of the opposite gender. Or if older are quaint. In a boost for female emancipation most senior policemen are now women. In yarns generally you usually know from the beginning which good-looking single young woman is going to finish in the arms of which good-looking single young man, whatever adventures go on in between.

In the Middle Ages, for several centuries millions of people in Europe, mainly women, were burnt to death or drowned after being ‘scientifically’ diagnosed as witches and therefore a threat to society. Then it was discovered the science was mistaken, they had brainwashed themselves. We always have to question what we think we know and what governments and other authorities want us to believe. Brainwashing is still in fashion, and easier because of the ubiquity of the modern silver screen. Modern society’s main cultural value is to become richer than your neighbour - which is why in very rich countries like Australia and USA, there are those defeated in the competition for whatever reason, the poor, who may struggle to survive. What we as a society don’t believe in is sharing.

Take the problem of obesity. Australia is reported to be the fattest nation in the world with nine million people overweight and life expectancy, which has been increasing for a hundred years, now expected to go into reverse. Australians are going to die younger. According to nutritionist Rosemary Stanton and numerous other health authorities, takeaway or fast food, which is tasty and cheap, has a high proportion of fat, salt and sugar, and therefore has to shoulder at least some blame for the fatness epidemic associated with particular diseases contributing to earlier death such as diabetes. And yet in spite of this scientific research it is almost impossible to avoid fast foods advertisements. Not surprisingly parents in Toowoomba are protesting because the local authority has approved the building of a new fast food outlet next to a school.

It says much about ultimate values when some of the richest billionaires in Australia, USA and elsewhere are in gaol for cheating, trying to acquire even more wealth, land, property, perhaps to outdo the billionaire down the road. In the SBS show How A Geek Changed The World we heard how Bill Gates gave $25 billion to set up the Bill and Melinda Gates charitable foundation. Warren Buffett has added more billions to the fund. Fortunately Bill and Melinda use the money to improve the health of many who would otherwise have miserable lives and die at an early age.

But there remains an ethical question. There are now several people with greater wealth than Gates or Buffett, so we can only hope they are planning similar ways to share it. They may not. If one person controls $50 billion, that is $50 billion not controlled by others.

Competition as a way of life has its extreme forms. Some compete by shooting or spearing tribal rivals to acquire a food source for the family. It may be to gain control of the lucrative drugs market (which of course is only lucrative because so many people, including the respectable middle class, use the stuff). Or it may be to sell increasingly powerful bombs to gain possession of the world’s oil. And half the global population is struggling to survive.

At least when the church was dominant there was, at least in most traditions, consideration for the poor. Now even in the world’s richest national economy, USA, there are very large numbers of the very poor, giving rise to crime, a large prison population, and often very poor access to health services. This because the general philosophy is to compete, not to share, and this creed is promulgated via the new church, the electronic screen.

You have to wonder if youngsters become immune to killing and wounding when they spend many hours playing wall-to-wall computer war games.

The church in its myriad forms is still there, of course, but it is tough competing with wall to wall commercial screens. There are of course outstanding servants of the community, some well known like Archbishop Desmond Tutu in South Africa, but also many humble religious people like the nuns who work to assist young women trapped into the sex trade.

Then general ethic of much public discourse, as exemplified by politicians, football coaches and others who get access to the screen, is to be tough, competitive, to see the world as struggles between enemies, never to be so ‘weak’ as to cooperate.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's 2020 Summit is an unusual opportunity for the people to get down to unearthing the roots of serious unfairness in Australia and show courage in making radical changes.

Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes described his 1930s childhood in Ireland when their only income was church charity and they lived next to the street’s one lavatory. In heavy rain floods brought toilet effluent into their ground floor room. Three children died very young.

Then Dad, Malachy, found work. They would now be able to buy shoes and food. On pay day Ma and the kids waited expectantly with the kettle on. But Dad decided first to celebrate in the pub. He arrived home happy but money-less. Ma and kids remained hungry.

Dad had the money and power, the others had poverty. This is the essence of economic competition.

In modern economies we like to boast everyone gains from competition. But obviously not everyone does.

Would it make sense to open a new shoe shop in a suburb already with six shoe-shops, or where there are no shoe-shops? When they can smaller businesses often join larger conglomerates, like the Woolworths retail group or the Coles group. Why? As Kerry Packer said, “I don’t believe in competition, I believe in monopoly”.

Competition can create disadvantage. Australia is the third richest country in the world in average wealth per person, but while 1,200 Australians have more than $30 million in the bank there are areas where Indigenous incomes are extremely low and healthy food costs 30 per cent more than in the cities. Consequently diets are poor, low birth weight common, 11 per cent of children are “wasted” through malnutrition and average life span is nearly two decades shorter that the rest of the population. Nutritionist Sharon Lawrence says a national action plan to counter this problem has been ignored for eight years!

’Twas ever thus, of course: the original invaders of this land in 1788 seemed to have no intention of sharing its bounty with the original inhabitants.

At the other end of the social spectrum a Governor-General and State Governors, however nice they are personally, have no essential work but live in free luxury lodgings, with cars, servants and other characteristics of an outdated aristocracy headed by an overseas Queen.

This gives the lie to former Prime Minister John Howard’s much vaunted belief in “equality, mateship, and fairness”.

Meanwhile, Australia, the clever country, did not predict the need for affordable public housing of which there is now a critical shortage. “Housing stress”, defined as paying more than 30 per cent of income on rent, is suffered by one million Aussies, some paying more than 60 per cent.

Furthermore, due to the current state of the economy, people who can no longer afford their mortgage repayments are moving into the rental market, pushing up rents further.

Perhaps it should not be possible to own property that others live in, unless it is rent-free or the rent strictly controlled by legislation.

Gary Highland calls it ‘this nation’s gravest national crisis’. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner Tom Calma says ‘it is simply not credible to suggest that a country as wealthy as ours can’t fix a health crisis affecting less than three per cent of our citizens’.

Highland, National Director of Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation, goes on ‘Things have been bad for so long … we’ve come to see an Indigenous child born in 2007 living for 17 years less than a non-Indigenous child as somehow normal and inevitable … a person from Nigeria or Bangladesh can expect to live for about 10 years longer than an Indigenous Australian’.

With only a few days to go in the Australian Federal election we are still to hear from leaders of the Liberal, National and Labor parties anything at all about the country’s foremost domestic issue: the health of Indigenous Australians.

At a time when we could have expected to hear of new political initiatives for this shameful national problem, we have heard, a week before voting day … zilch. Nothing. No mention in John Howard’s main election policy speech, nor in Kevin Rudd’s reply.

This in spite of Australia’s ‘greatest economic boom of any developed country in the world’, according to The Australian. The editorial continued ‘One of the most dispiriting aspects of the election campaign has been the shameless way in which both parties have sought to buy votes in marginal electorates rather than to limit spending to redress real disadvantage - in remote Aboriginal communities, and among the mentally ill’.

The issue was raised on ABC Radio National’s Breakfast program on Friday 16 November, a week before voting day. Presenter Fran Kelly asked three highly experienced political journalists, Michelle Grattan of The Age, Ray Martin of Channel Nine and Steve Lewis of News Limited why Indigenous disadvantage and consequent health problems had not been raised during the election.

Their explanation was alarming. The consensus of opinion was that raising Indigenous issues was a no-no because it would lose votes for that political party. In other words it is assumed there is so little sympathy in the general population for Indigenous suffering any political party advocating positive action would lose votes. It should be hidden, ignored. Like ‘Don’t mention the war!’ in Fawlty Towers.

The quotes from Highland and Calma are from Success Stories in Indigenous Health published by ANTaR, a report which illustrates some remarkable initiatives taken by individuals, communities, and professional organisations to combat severe health problems in Indigenous communities. But some projects may have to be discontinued due to lack of funds. This is where government financial support should come in.

Furthermore, in health problems such as diabetes and heart disease, where diet is fundamental, in remote communities important food items like fruit and vegetables can be as much as 180 per cent more expensive than in major urban centres. This is where the free market system should be abandoned in favour of keeping people alive.

The Australian Medical Association asked for a huge increase in funds for Indigenous health before the past two federal budgets, but was ignored. The Institute of Health and Welfare reported in October that spending on public health had fallen by ten per cent. A doctor said there was a ten-year under-estimation of health resources needed in the Northern Territory.

How can we explain this extreme neglect of a section of the population in the third wealthiest nation in the world (according to United Nations Human Development Indicators)? Why is there not even discussion about the fundamental political and economic factors which have caused community, family and individual poverty, the basic cause of poor health? It is not rocket science: the cause and effect of poor health have been known around the world for centuries.

Is it racism? Would it make a difference if the victims of this system were of a different cultural heritage? Does Indigenous economic and health neglect betray traces of British colonialism?

Or is it social class snobbery? Is the problem that Indigenous folk are among the losers in the economic wars, like the poor in USA or Brazil?

Or is the Indigenous situation simply one aspect of the more general problem of public health? For years we have seen graphic examples of personal problems caused by gross under-funding of public health services throughout Australia: years-long waiting lists; hours-long waiting times in ‘emergency’ departments; women having miscarriages while they wait in hospital out-patient queues; junior staff doing the work of seniors; operations cancelled because qualified staff are not available. In great contrast with the private, usually expensive, medical services used by politicians including ministers of health.

It increasingly smacks of a deliberate policy of under-investment in public services which forces people to find the cash to go private or do without. In his film Sicko, Mike Moore graphically illustrates the problems caused in USA by such a system. It also smack of not caring.

The deliberate nature of this policy suggests Australian governments are following the economic doctrine of Milton Friedman, originator of the Chicago School of Economics and the intellectual guru of US President George W. Bush and his strongly neo-conservative cabinet. Friedman argued there should be no public services for health, education, housing, social welfare or anything else because they should be provided by private companies for profit. Friedman’s disciples have included US Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Chile’s Augusto Pinochet, and other conservative national leaders, apparently including Oz Prime Minister John Howard.

An exquisitely Friedmanesque situation has developed in Iraq. American bombs and shells manufactured by American companies and bought by the American taxpayer for the armed services flatten industrial, domestic and rural areas, with loss of many lives. Then, completing the financial circle, US companies are paid to clear up the mess and rebuild.

But it gets worse. Increasingly the actual fighting war has been taken over by the armed employees of American private ‘security’ companies like Blackwater.

Another Friedman-style project is the reconstruction of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. Former public housing areas have been replaced with up-market gated communities while former tenants languish in evacuee camps. Similarly public schools have been replaced by Charter (private) schools.

Both Iraq and New Orleans illustrate another aspect of the Friedman doctrine. If you asked people if they wanted public services to be replaced by private services those on lower incomes would say no. But when there’s a crisis - a war, a hurricane - people are so focused on basic survival they don’t consider the ramifications of radical changes taking place round them. So supporters of the Friedman theory advocate waiting for, or even causing, a crisis in order to bring about what they see as desirable change. This is why Naomi Klein calls her detailed account of the Friedman theory The Shock Doctrine.

In Australia there is no doubt that public health services, like public housing services, are being run down even though the need for them is great and the Australian economy is booming. The evidence is all too obvious. In the Friedman approach this deterioration is intentional, with private services the victors and public services the casualties. Anyone who can’t afford fees or insurance is also a casualty. In the Friedman approach that’s just tough.

How else to explain the extreme neglect of public health services in one of the wealthiest economies in the world?

In many Aboriginal communities material poverty is a characteristic which explains the prevalence of poor health. There is nothing new about this connection although it is rarely acknowledged by political leaders in Australia. Harvard Professor of Infectious Diseases Paul Farmer made the point strongly in his 2001 book Infections and Inequalities basing his observations on poor districts in USA, Haiti and Peru.

Pus in the lungs has not been found in the general Australian community since the beginning of last century but it is still relatively common in Aboriginal children in the Northern Territory. Why? ‘It is caused by poverty’, Dr Paul Bower of Royal Darwin Hospital told ABC Radio National’s Fran Kelly on 25 June.

In May 2007 The Guardian Weekly reported ‘The standard of health of Aborigines lags almost 100 years behind that of other Australians, according to the World Health Organisation. Some indigenous people still suffer from leprosy, rheumatic heart disease and tuberculosis ... Surveys reported Australia ranked last for health among rich countries with indigenous populations’.

Yet in both 2006 and 2007 the Australian Medical Association implored the Government to include an extra $400 million for Indigenous health in the Federal Budget but Treasurer Peter Costello did not even mention the subject, nor did the Opposition Leader. That was as recently as May, yet now we’re at panic stations.

Around the globe connections are evident between poverty and poor health, unemployment, addictions, involvement in illegal drugs, violence, sexual exploitation, prostitution at an early age as well as much older, despair. In some countries, like Brazil, most young men in the favelas (slum districts) sell drugs, own guns, and do well to survive beyond the age of twenty-five.

Health and destructive behaviour patterns improve with improvement in a community’s economy. In other words when employment replaces welfare, produces personal income and a sense of pride. It has to be recognised, however, welfare payments are still often necessary for those unable to work - children, the aged, sick, disabled.

The Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody of 1987 - 1991 was established by Prime Minister Bob Hawke in response to growing public concern that ‘deaths in custody of Aboriginal people were too common and public explanations too evasive’.

Chief Commissioner J.H. Muirhead QC examined all 99 deaths in State or Territory custody between January 1980 and May 1989, 88 males and 11 females aged 14 to 62 years.

A significant finding was the high rate of Aboriginal deaths in custody was ‘not because Aboriginal people in custody were more likely to die than others in custody, but because Aborigines were grossly over-represented in the numbers’, with Aboriginal admissions 29 times more common than others in spite of being less than three per cent of the population. Muirhead acknowledged this finding ‘could disappoint those who anticipated foul play’ but he also found there was insufficient dedication by authorities to the duty of care of those in custody.

The deaths were by hanging (30), head injuries (12), gunshot wounds (4), other external trauma (7), substance abuse (9), and natural causes (37).

Of these 99 prisoners 83 percent were unemployed when detained, only two had completed secondary school, 43 had experienced separation from their natural families through intervention by authorities, 43 had been charged with an offence by age fifteen, all cases involved alcohol.

The standard of health varied from poor to very bad, economic situations were ‘disastrous’, social position was ‘at the margin of society’, and of the 22 deaths by hanging 19 had a blood alcohol level of 0.174 per cent or more.

‘Aboriginal people have a unique history of being ordered, controlled and monitored by agents of the State’, the Commission reported, tracing the familiar pattern of control from birth including adoption, forced removal from parents with mixed racial origins, described as truant, intractable and unteachable at school, court appearances, ‘dismissive entries’ in medical records like ‘drunk again’, and standard notes like ‘no suspicious circumstances’ when police investigated death in a cell. ‘All too often the files disclose the prejudices, ignorance and paternalism of those making the record’.

Commissioners felt important aspects of Australian history, including two centuries of European domination, had an important bearing on behaviour in an individual’s last hours. Aborigines were often dispossessed of their land without compensation, suffering brutality and bloodshed when they showed resistance to losing the basis of their hunting and foraging culture and economy. Then there were ‘dramatic effects of introduced disease’ to which they had no resistance.

Having reduced many to a condition of abject dependency the colonial governments decided upon a policy of protection. Aboriginal people were ‘swept up into reserves and missions where they were supervised as to every detail of their lives and there was a deliberate policy of undermining and destroying their spiritual and cultural beliefs’.

Another aspect of that policy was removing Aboriginal children of mixed race from their family and placing them in institutions to grow up as ‘good European labourers or domestics’. Even those outside reserves were ‘under the eye of the non-Aboriginal police’. Although legislation varied over place and time the effect was the same, control over personal lives, with institution supervisors and missionaries having all the power. A person needed permission to live on a reserve, leave or return, have a relative visit, work - usually under supervision - and there were special laws about alcohol.

These practises were based on the theory that ‘full blood' Aboriginal people would die out and those of 'mixed blood' would be bred out. When this didn’t happen assimilation was tried, the hope being that children removed from their families would disappear by becoming culturally indistinguishable from the dominant Westerners.

Land dispossession made Aborigines dependent upon government or employer for rations, blankets, living conditions. Deliberate disempowerment meant decisions were imposed, usually by non-Aborigines. An Aboriginal woman living with a non-Aboriginal man was outlawed. ‘With loss of independence goes loss of self esteem’.

The Commissioner argued these social forces were of central importance in understanding Aboriginal over-representation in custody. He also acknowledged there were strong people who kept the culture alive. ‘Some strove to organise a better deal, to call for rights, but the battle was uphill, and while some gains were made it was a slow and painful progress’. They were still not counted in the population, they were not entitled to social security benefits, mothers still gathered their children about them and ran into the bush when they heard the welfare was about. ‘The damage to Aboriginal society was devastating ... In some places, dependency, despair, alcohol, total loss of heart wrought decimation of culture’.

Government policy took for granted ‘the inferiority of the Aboriginal people’. Taking their land was based on the assumption it was not occupied and the people uncivilised. The protection policy was based on the view that Aboriginal people ‘must be protected against themselves while the race dies out’. The policy assumed non-Aborigines conferred a favour on them by assimilating them into their ways - even to the point of removing children from family.

‘Non-Aboriginal Australia has developed on the racist assumption of an ingrained sense of superiority that it knows best what is good for Aboriginal people. With many people associated directly or indirectly with land settlement, the assumption was underpinned by economic interest; while with many others it was underpinned by an absolute certainty that it was essential to religious enlightenment that Aboriginal religious belief be obliterated where possible. That feeling of superiority towards Aboriginal people, which is a racist view, was very strong’, the Commission reported.

Immediately after Federation, White Australia, the concept of white superiority, was adopted as national policy. ‘What Aboriginal people have largely experienced is policies nakedly racially-based and in their everyday lives the constant irritation of racist attitudes. Relations between the two groups were conducted on the basis of inequality and control’.

The worst relationships of all, the Commissioner concluded, were between Aboriginal people and police forces. The latter ‘naturally shared all the characteristics of the society from which they were recruited, including the idea of racial superiority’. The police were the enforcers of government policies: control and supervision, often the takers of the children, rounding up people accused of (ironically) ‘violating the rights of the settlers’. Not surprisingly animosity and often hatred developed between Aboriginal people and police.

The consequences of this history were several: destruction of Aboriginal culture, breakdown of society, disadvantage in all areas of social life, consequences like excessive drinking and violence. The Commission saw this legacy of history going far to explain the over-representation of Aboriginal people in custody.

There were of course, outstanding people, Indigenous and others who campaigned for equality. The 1967 Referendum was a watershed. Since then, ‘governments have moved in the direction … of an assault on inequality’. Laws have been passed outlawing discriminatory behaviour reflecting international conventions to which Australia is a party and efforts have been made by government. ‘But what is absolutely outstanding is the efforts which have been made by Aboriginal people, organisations and communities to grasp the opportunities which have become available and to assert their rights’.

‘It must be acknowledged as a blunt reality’, concluded Commissioner Muirhead, ‘despite all endeavours to lessen the risks, there will be future Aboriginal deaths in custody. The adequacy of coronial investigations is critical if the tragic aftermath of such deaths is not to perpetuate the feeling of anxiety and suspicion in the minds of the deceased's family and the Aboriginal community.

‘It is very desirable that no suspicion should arise in the public mind that deaths in Government Institutions such as gaols are made the subject merely of investigations by Government Officers … The public should be satisfied that the prisoner came to his death by the common course of nature, and not by some unlawful violence or unreasonable hardship put on him by those under whose power he was while confined. There should not be an opportunity for asserting that matters with regards to deaths in public institutions are “hushed up”.

‘A Coroner inquiring into a death in custody must be required by law to investigate not only the cause and circumstances of the death but also the quality of the care, treatment and supervision of the deceased prior to death’.

The Report went on ‘investigations into deaths in police watch-houses should include full inquiry into the circumstances leading to incarceration, including the circumstances of arrest or apprehension and the deceased's activities beforehand … In the course of inquiry into the general care, treatment or supervision of the deceased prior to death particular attention should be given to whether custodial officers observed all relevant policies and instructions relating to the care, treatment and supervision of the deceased; and the scene of death should be subject to a thorough examination including the seizure of exhibits for forensic science examination and the recording of the scene of death by means of high quality colour photography’.

The 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody was unusual in that it not only looked into the immediate causes of 99 recent deaths in custody, but comprehensively considered the historical economic and cultural causes of the over-representation of Indigenous people in police custody. A history which has as much relevance today.

In spite of Commissioner Muirhead’s optimistic conclusions many Indigenous Australians remain among the poorest people in the world today, hence the persistence of chronically bad health, dependence on substances, and violence, world-wide symptoms of community infrastructure poverty, largely ignored by Australian governments.

Another report on the problems of Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory, Little Children Are Sacred contains much that can be explained by Commissioner Muirhead’s report on Aborigines’ economic history, not only following the arrival of the First Fleet but right up to the present.

‘Why aren’t you at work?’

‘Public holiday’.

‘Holiday? What for?’

‘Queen’s birthday’.

‘The band? That’s different. I didn’t realise Queen were so popular. Is there a public holiday for the Beatles?’

‘No, you clown, not the band, our queen, our royal leader’.

‘Our queen? We don’t have one, we’re a republic’.

‘Well we are and we aren’t. Officially we still worship the British queen, Elizabeth Windsor. Our PM, Johnny Howard, who’s in charge, likes President Bush because he has lots of guns but likes royals better. More … you know … prestige, aristocracy, ancient history, they speak proper, and all that. So we stick with Elizabeth. In the future we’ll probably have a public holiday on the US President’s birthday too’.

‘But what about Vietnamese people like me? She isn’t my queen, never was. And all the Aussies from China, Philippines, USA, Korea, Germany, Belgian Congo, what about them?’

‘Stiff cheese’.

‘But does the Queen of England have any power here?’

‘No. We did have a referendum and most people really wanted us to become a republic but the questions weren’t very clear and voters didn’t like the republic they’d have to have. So, we decided to stick with being part of the Pommy Empire, by mistake, sort of. I don’t think Elizabeth would mind if we became a republic. Her family would still own much of Britain’.

‘So she has lots of power over there?’

‘No, not for a couple of centuries’.

‘She must have power in the English bit?’

‘Nah’.

‘But doesn’t she open their ancient parliament every year and make a speech about new legislation?’

‘Yes’.

‘There you go then, she does decide what happens there’.

‘Nah. The speech is written for her. She just has to read it’.

‘Who writes it? One of her secretaries?’

‘No, the Prime Minister’.

‘So he’s the boss man? Why doesn’t he read it himself?’

‘Dunno’.

‘And why do they dress up in fancy clothes and arrive in a gold coach with lots of soldiers and horses and all that?’

‘Just tradition’.

‘So let me get this straight. This Mrs Windsor just does as she’s told, comes along and reads her script?’

‘Yes’.

‘Does she have to agree with it?’

‘No, it’s nothing to do with her, she’s not the government’.

‘It’s just play-acting?’

‘Suppose so’.

‘And for that she owns lots of the best land in little old Britain, has four sumptuous castles for her family and staff to live in, her folk are the richest people in the country?’

‘Up there. Among the richest in the world’.

‘And our Prime Minister goes along with that?’

‘Yes, he seems to love it all’.

‘But I’ve often heard him say he believes in the Australian Values of Fairness, Mateship, and Equality’.

‘That’s right’.

‘So … he’s working towards a situation where all of us have four castles to live in, huge amounts of land, the best horses, coaches, private planes to rock round the world, looked after by an army of servants, and our children don’t need to go to work?’

‘Er … ’.

‘Sounds terrific. Can’t wait. But who would be the servants?’

THE Bringing Them Home report, first presented at the Melbourne Reconciliation Conference ten years ago, documented the forced removal of Indigenous children from their families through much of the twentieth century with the aim of bringing about the demise of their race. The wounds have still not healed.

The film Rabbit-Proof Fence told the story of Molly Craig, a 14 year-old Aboriginal girl kidnapped with her younger sister and cousin by a State policeman in 1931. This was not because the children had committed crimes or were neglected but because it was the policy of A.O. Neville, Western Australia’s ‘Chief Protector’ of Aborigines (1915-1940), to enforce the Aborigines Act by transporting them 1500 miles to a government Settlement and telling them to forget family, language and home.

The monumental cruelty is to some extent masked by Molly’s refusal to submit to incarceration, escaping to find and follow the rabbit fence she’d observed during their long train journey with the slender hope it could lead them home. It becomes an adventure story of great courage and perseverance as the three youngsters embark on a very long walk to freedom. A story of tragedy but also triumph.

Reith Lectures 2007. Lecture 1. (Broadcast in Australia 20 May 2007)

BURSTING AT THE SEAMS - Jeffrey Sachs

You might think the Australian Government’s Federal Budget would be the ideal place to start setting this right. Especially when the previous week The Australian reported ‘The Treasurer will unveil a significant funding boost for Aboriginal health programs’, and The Sunday Age predicted ‘Indigenous Australians will be among the biggest winners in Treasurer Peter Costello's 12th budget on Tuesday’.

But no. Costello made clear in his Budget address Australia is cashed up to the tune of a $10.6 billion surplus, GDP growth of 3.75 per cent, wage growth of 4.25 per cent, and absolutely no debt, so all pensioners could have a $500 gift and many others tax cuts. But in his hour-long spiel the health of Indigenous people received not one mention, even in his section on Healthcare. Not one.

Nor did Indigenous disadvantage make an appearance in Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd’s Budget reply two days later. Nothing.

Further, there were no comments or questions on Indigenous health by political affairs journalists on ABC Television immediately after Costello’s speech, or on ABC Radio National’s Breakfast, including AM, the next morning. Chris Richardson of Access Economics reiterated the government is ‘rolling in money’, but representatives of welfare organisations commented the poor in general are still left behind, the housing rental crisis not addressed, and there were references by the St Vincent de Paul Society to the ‘growing cohort of working poor’ not affected by the budget. Australian Council of Social Service President Lynne Hatfield-Dodds said there was little relief for those on low incomes, those paying rent, and no real measures to help the jobless.

There were brief mentions of Indigenous needs in newspaper back pages. The Australian’s Caroline Overington had a story about Indigenous ear, nose and throat surgeon Kelvin Kong, who said it’s embarrassing in 2007 to be the nation’s first Aboriginal surgeon ‘because I’d rather be the 100^th’. On Indigenous health ‘we’re in an emergency situation and it’s not being addressed’, he said. Hatfield-Dodds referred to ‘looking for the Government to invest … greater resources to tackle Indigenous disadvantage’.

The front page of the Courier-Mail: ‘Whether you are a pensioner, a student, an apprentice, a working mum or a high-income earner, there was something substantial announced last night just for you. And invariably, the substance is in the form of cold, hard cash … and a stack of giveaways for everyone from parents to pensioners’. Well, not quite everyone.

In the Australian Financial Review’s budget supplement John Breusch commented Australia’s health system ranked among the world’s best, although its flaws include ‘the appalling state of indigenous health’.

The National Indigenous Times had a different take: ‘The area that is most disappointing is health. Despite under-funding to the tune of about half a billion dollars a year, the federal government has announced additional Indigenous health funding of just $90 million, and two quarters of that will be spent on drug initiatives and capital works programs.

‘At the same time, Australian taxpayers get a surplus of almost $11 billion, plus tax cuts worth three times that amount yet they still wonder why Indigenous Australia is in such a mess ... The tragedy is that the government is likely to be applauded for it, because mainstream media analysis of the Indigenous affairs budget has been almost zero’.

Professor Jon Altman of Australian National University’s Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy was scathing in his budget review. On SBS TV’s Living Black he said the budget was simply more of the same, ‘enormously disappointing … turning a blind eye’ to the need for massively increased expenditure on community based housing, health services and jobs. There was too little recognition that 75 per cent of Indigenous people live in urban areas. Budgeting only $37 million for health was ‘enormous under-expenditure’ considering the Australian Medical Association called for $460 million. There were proposals to send children to exclusive schools in the cities but there is a great need for improved basic education in home communities. Community Development Employment Program (work for the dole) is to disappear but real jobs available are ‘a drop in the ocean’. The government has missed an opportunity to create new infrastructures to break into the cycle of poverty in health, housing, and education, he said.

After a few days to think about it journalistic luminaries Barry Cassidy, ABC, Misha Schubert, The Age, George Megalogenis, The Australian, Piers Akerman, Daily Telegraph, met for an hour on ABC’s Sunday morning Insiders, with Paul Kelly of The Australian also calling in. They talked about Howard, Costello, Rudd, Zimbabwe, Murdoch, Blair, Keating, refugees and Indigenous people on AWAs in north Queensland. But no mention of Indigenous health.

Oxfam Australia Executive Director Andrew Hewett said the Budget ‘delivered less than one-tenth of what’s needed to make the slightest impact on the health and well-being of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders’.

According to The Australian, at Wudapuli, 380 kms southwest of Darwin, an Aboriginal family who signed up for an eight-bed roomed $420,000 house will receive special government funding. Four families in the scheme will become eligible to buy the properties after two years if their rental record is strong and the children are sent regularly to school. Reporter Patricia Karvelas referred to giving children in remote communities scholarships ‘to attend the nation’s wealthiest schools’, youth leadership scholarships to attend high-performing schools and university, and the plan to convert CDEP jobs into ‘real jobs’, in environmental and heritage protection, childcare, night patrols, community care. ‘The budget signalled Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough’s focus on remote communities, with urban Aboriginal people being forced to use mainstream services’. But National Indigenous Council member Wesley Aird said much of the $3.5 billion committed to Aborigines in the budget will be wasted because ‘Indigenous people still want to go to Indigenous organisations’.

Brough said the lack of any real economy in remote communities could be overcome because ‘this is great cattle country’, there are opportunities in crocodile farming, and market gardens could supply produce to communities. ‘You can make your own jobs and your own destiny’, he said. The Courier-Mail reported scholarships will be offered to encourage Indigenous people to study dental health.

But it seems no-one has the courage, even when Australian money-bags are overflowing, to create the grand plan for comprehensive economic, social and culturally appropriate structures likely to overcome poor health in a rich country.

Around the world the worst health profiles are in places where ‘poverty’ does not refer to too little cash in the wallet, but describes the total social infrastructure in which people exist day to day. Where drinking water carries disease, waste disposal spreads disease, the diet is inadequate for healthy growth and resistance to infection, housing overcrowded (and often without necessary mosquito nets), there are no means of earning income, little or no education is available, health services non-existent or inaccessible. These daily conditions all too easily produce violent competition for resources, hopelessness, bewilderment, despair and early death. Such scenes have been described in very moving terms by United Nations special envoy Stephen Lewis in his book Race Against Time - searching for hope in AIDS-ravaged Africa.

Overcoming destructive infrastructures requires long-term investment of funds, effort, radical ingenuity, imagination, determination and cooperation. At present in Australia there seems little government interest in this kind of commitment, only little projects here and there, some of them controversial, and judging by experts’ reactions under-funded. Australia, one of the richest countries in the world, could do much better, given the will.

Ends

1326

WE all like to collect stuff, be it boxes of matches, the stuffed heads of endangered species, or – and I have a charming, crazed artistic friend who actually does this – the little plastic tags from bread bags. A remnant from our hunter-gathering past, accumulation is a natural impulse up there with wanting to accost those hunch-shouldered girls who go out in winter wearing miniskirts and kidney-baring tops, then wrapping them in a home-knitted cardigan.

The main problem with collecting, however, is that it can spill silkily into obsession, meaning your long-dead body will be discovered (a) partly eaten by your starving cats, (b) buried under a toppled pile of mint condition X Men comics from January 1972 through to March 1986, or (c) battered beyond recognition by a nervous burglar because you valiantly placed yourself between him and your display case of celebrity belly-button lint